Thursday, August 19, 2021

“What Not to Believe”

“What Not to Believe”
by Chet Raymo

“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.

Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."

Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.

And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."

The Universe

"Life is not what you see, but what you've projected.
It's not what you've felt, but what you've decided.
It's not what you've experienced, but how you've remembered it.
It's not what you've forged, but what you've allowed.
And it's not who's appeared, but who you've summoned.
And this should serve you well until you find what you already have."

- The Universe

"'Rich Dad Poor Dad' Robert Kiyosaki: The Biggest Stock Market Crash In World History Is Coming!"

Full screen recommended
.
"'Rich Dad Poor Dad' Robert Kiyosaki: 
The Biggest Stock Market Crash In World History Is Coming!"
by Epic Economist

"All factors are aligning; economic and financial indicators are signaling; experts are warning that an epic stock market crash is near. At this moment, the S&P 500 and the Dow are at all-time highs despite the huge selloff that happened on Tuesday. The Nasdaq is also close to record levels, and all three indexes went up between 14% and 18% just this year. It's when the market hits its peak that things start to crumble, and September, historically known as the worst month for stocks, is right at the corner. Right after that comes October, which is remarkably known for the devastating stock market crashes in 1929, 1987, 2008, and, most recently, 2018. And if you haven't noticed yet, there is a series of determinants weighting upon Wall Street and worrying investors right now. The worsening of the health crisis due to the emergence and fast spread of the Delta variant is one of them, along with concerns about the alarming growth of inflation and how the Federal Reserve will handle it. On top of all that, chaos is looming all over the world with rising threats of civil disorder and social conflicts. All of these factors are adding major pressure to the markets and putting the market's bull run at risk of derailing.

That's why investors have been increasingly scared that stocks may soon experience a sizable crash from recent highs. Stocks haven't faced a reckoning since the first round of lockdowns in March 2020, which resulted in a brief bear market and triggered a 20 percent crash from prior peak levels. But many are still ignoring the fact that the Delta variant could lead to another wave of mass shutdowns and push the economy to another recession. Overvalued stocks and an unrealistic economic outlook are setting the stage for what could be the worst financial catastrophe of the century. The notable investor and personal-finance guru Robert Kiyosaki is alerting that financial markets are moving toward their worst crash ever. In a recent Yahoo Finance interview, the "Poor Dad Rich Dad" author pointed out a number of reasons why we might soon witness a stock market crash like no other. He started by stressing that the US government borrowed too much and debased the dollar, trumpeted the value of debt to investors, and encouraged young people to start businesses without offering the right conditions for them to actually stay in business.

"Build a business that does well in crashes, booms, or busts. Young people shouldn't go to school and become employees. They should become entrepreneurs and capitalists, and build businesses that create jobs. I'm not saying that having a stock portfolio is right or wrong, but there are other alternatives. Just open your eyes and see how the rich are really getting richer," he outlined. He also revealed that currently his stock portfolio is empty and he is mainly focusing on Bitcoin. The founder of Rich Global and Rich Dad Company also reminded investors that the entire financial system is changing very fast. His decision to step away from stocks is rooted in a growing concern that investors are becoming too complacent and taking the bull market for granted. "Everyone says the market will stay up two more years. What if bottom falls out tonight? Will you be richer or poorer?" he asked.

Kiyosaki acknowledged that economic booms and surging asset prices, and the thrill of joining the upward path of a bubble can be electrifying, but cautioned that the subsequent downturns are horrifying to live through. "Booms are fun. Everyone is excited," Kiyosaki wrote on Twitter. "Busts are terrifying. Crashes are terrifying." For that reason, Kiyosaki has been sounding the alarm on a massive sell-off. "The next [stock market] crash is basically an avalanche waiting for the last snowflake," he says. "Since 2008, all the federal government has been doing is piling more debt on the mountainside, and they're just waiting for the next snowflake to hit. It's going to be the biggest crash in world history," warned the expert.

Kiyosaki is just one of several high-profile experts who have been sharing their concerns about the current market. The "Big Short" investor Michael Burry and the GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham both see the greatest bubble ever formed now on the brink of bursting. Likewise, billionaire investors Leon Cooperman, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Jeffrey Gundlach don't believe the speculative frenzy can last for much longer. All signs are pointing to a stock market crash of unprecedented proportions, and if your assets are on the line, you should run for the exits before it's too late."

“The Narrative Is Crumbling. Something Bad And Big Is Going On”

“The Narrative Is Crumbling. Something Bad And Big Is Going On”
Google Blogger will not permit embedding this video. 
I cannot urge you strongly enough to view it here:
Related, critically important:

The Daily "Near You?"

Painesville, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What Next?"

"What Next?"
by Bill Bonner

"The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters."
– Genghis Khan, first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire

POITOU, FRANCE – "It’s easy to criticize the Biden Team for its breathtaking incompetence in Afghanistan. So that’s what we’ll do. But the debacle illustrates far more than just the failure of one president, one party, or one administration.

It shows us how the whole elite scam works…
from the delusion that the rest of the world wants to be like the USA… if it could only get the chance…
to the fantasy that its experts know what they’re doing…
to the “exceptional nation” vanity… and misplaced faith in high-tech, super-expensive U.S. firepower…
to the kind of misadventure you get up to when you can pay for it with fake money…
to the collaboration of Wall Street and America’s leading industries…
to the complete lack of historical perspective or intelligent political leadership…
to the bovine-like acceptance by the public of the elites’ conjob…
and the toadiness of its leading media.

Classic Elite Scam: As we pointed out in an early book, "Empire of Debt," the U.S. never really got the hang of imperial finance. Early empires must have been exhilarating… and rewarding. The conquerors raped the women, made slaves of the men, and carried off all the treasure they could get their hands on.

The Roman Empire was more sophisticated. Victorious troops won slaves and booty, and then the captured people paid regular tribute to Rome.

The British Empire was a more modern, commercial variant, taking raw materials from colonies and using them to make finished products in Britain, which were then sold at a profit.

But the U.S. empire was a money-loser from the beginning. The elite enjoyed the thrill of playing World of Warcraft with live ammunition. They also got the jobs… the contracts… and the power. But they never figured out how to make it pay, except for themselves… and only by taking the money from their own people. It was a classic elite scam, in which the rewards go to the people at the top… and the costs (including most of the fatalities) fall upon the public.

Eyes on the Money: Yes, in the Afghanistan debacle, it’s all there… right before our eyes, like a corpse dumped on the highway. And now we ask: What other incompetence are the elites hiding? What other lies are they telling? And… will the lies and bungling continue for years… and then come crashing down in a matter of days?

Our beat here at the Diary is economics and finance. So we will ignore the war against COVID-19, the War on Drugs, diversity, democracy, anti-racism, climate control, and the rest of the claptrap. We’ll keep our eyes on the money. And we note, again, that it’s amazing what you can’t see when you’re paid to be blind.

Investors have made fortunes by not noticing that their stocks are priced nowhere near what they are really worth…
Statisticians are paid to miscalculate the inflation rate…
Economists build careers by ignoring the basics of economics…
Politicians win office by promising to spend more than we can afford…
And Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell becomes the most famous public servant since Pontius Pilate by closing his eyes to the destruction caused by his phony interest rates and trillions of dollars’ worth of fake money.

Delayed Reaction: The fake dollar was introduced 50 years ago last Sunday. It probably would have disappeared long ago had not then-Fed chair Paul Volcker given it a new lease of life in 1980. Thereafter, the U.S. held together fairly well for the next 20 years. So we can probably date the real drift into fantasyland to about the same time as the invasion of Afghanistan… in the early 2000s.

“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” said then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003. Of course, deficits do matter. But not necessarily right away. And by the time you realize that they do matter, you are trying to take off from a crowded runway… with dozens of people clinging to your wheels. More to come…"

"Why?"

"Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? The response would be… to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened."
- Harold S. Kushner

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/19/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/19/21:
“Fear Trade Back On! Inflation Is Surging 
And The Economy Continues to Crater”
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/19/21:
"Goldman Sachs Warns Of Coming Inflation Surge! 
CITI Warns 'Something Will Give In The US Market'"

"Former Spook Warns This Is 'One Of The Most Dangerous, Unpredictable Times In History'"

"Former Spook Warns This Is 'One Of The 
Most Dangerous, Unpredictable Times In History'"
by Tyler Durden

"Brian Dean Wright, a former CIA Ops Officer, explains in a brief but incisive Twitter thread that "former US intelligence colleagues are angry and deeply worried at what has happened in Afghanistan."

Wright warns that "there's nearly universal belief that America and the world are in for one of the most dangerous, unpredictable times in modern history." He continues: "Afghanistan has shown the world - enemies & allies alike - that our military & intel assets are largely irrelevant because we can't deploy them successfully."

The blame lays at the feet of multiple Presidents. The Generals. The Spies. The Congress.

America's Elites are trash.

China knows it. They will become emboldened, covertly & overtly. War over Taiwan and contested islands in the S. China Sea and E. China Sea is now more likely. Russia will consider similar covert & overt moves, focused on Crimea, & former Soviet satellites. The fear is that China & Russia will act in concert. Why? America was whipped by a tiny rebel force and couldn't even retreat properly.

Meanwhile, the American people are angry, COVID weary, & divided. If there were ever a time to push American hegemony aside, this is it.

If Cold War III grows hot, America will need to quickly build up & work with foreign counterparts. But who will trust America after Afghanistan? Who believes we have the leadership to use our military might well? Who will trust us when we say "We Will Stand With You"?

Beyond China/Russia, others will take gambles too. Terror orgs like al-Qa'ida & ISIS are degraded but not dead. Their ideology is very much alive. Iran's Hizballah - with terror cells throughout the US - may see an opening to create chaos too.

Meanwhile, the disaster inside Afghanistan is only just beginning. The Taliban will launch a terror campaign against American collaborators. The pictures will shock the conscience of the world, further degrading American moral authority. Biden & Co will struggle to respond.

There's also the nightmare of tactical weaponry now awash in Afghanistan, in the hands of the Taliban and - soon -on the global black market. These arms will fuel chaos around the world for decades. The Pentagon has no idea where this stuff is and no plans to destroy it.

Finally, if Afghani refugees pour into the US, there are profound implications for security, culture, the economy, & politics.

• Are they properly vetted?
• Do they hold Western/tolerant values re: women, gays?
• Do they bring skills/education?
• Which party will they support?

The existential problem is that America needs good leadership to right its ship but there is none. Our federal bench is weak. Biden is a corrupt old man. Impeachment is a long shot; VP Harris is an unpopular paperweight. The Legislature is a feckless cabal of empty suits. Leadership could come from a state Governor, it's true, but not soon enough.

The above threats by China, Russia, & Co will metastasize well before the 2024 elections, and even a heroic new President will need years to clean things up. Again, our enemies and allies know this.

Upshot: There is fear and outrage streaming through former intel officers over the Afghanistan debacle. America is rudderless. And the world now knows it. Grave dangers lie ahead, some predictable, others unimaginable.

Keep your loved ones tight. Pray. And vote for change."

"Why It Really Is The Way It Is"

 

“It Was Always Going To End This Way In Afghanistan”

“It Was Always Going To End This Way In Afghanistan”
by Dick Polman

"Anyone who professes to be shocked by the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has not been paying attention. It was always bound to happen. It was merely delayed because Uncle Sam kept his trillion-dollar finger in the dike for 20 years. Were we fated to remain forever, in a land that had already proved fatally inhospitable to the British and the Russians and Alexander the Great?

The harbingers of failure had long been obvious, but most Americans, benumbed by the war, had long ago stopped paying attention. In 2019, word leaked that the U.S. officials entrusted with propping up the Afghan regime were disgusted with their proteges, saying in memos and private interviews that “after almost two decades of help from Washington, the Afghan army and police are still too weak to fend off the Taliban.”

They were weak largely because they were deeply corrupt. In the private words of Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador, “they’re useless as a security force because they are corrupt down to the patrol level.” Nevertheless, as another U.S. official admitted to government interviewers in 2015, “The less they behaved, the more money we threw at them.”

Fairly or not, President Biden will own the humiliating images of retreat – but, in reality, the Afghanistan debacle was authored by American presidents from both political parties. What we’re seeing now is a bipartisan clustermuck.

It was launched by George W. Bush, who committed us to the impossible task of nation-building. (From his 2005 Inaugural address: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,” even though, he admitted, “our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill.”)

It was sustained by Barack Obama, who approved a troop surge in 2009 and whose military spokesmen kept saying there was light at the end of the tunnel (Gen. James Mattis to Congress in 2010: “We’re on the right track now.”).

It landed in the capacious lap of Donald Trump, who decided it was time to get out, who invited the Taliban to Camp David in 2019 (“We’re getting along very, very well with the Taliban”), and who set a May 1, 2021 withdrawal deadline for U.S. forces.

Nevertheless, Republicans are predictably hammering Biden, conveniently forgetting that antiwar sentiment has long been rampant in their own ranks. Mitt Romney, the Republican's presidential nominee in 2012, said of Afghanistan in 2011: “We’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”

As recently as last April, Trump endorsed Biden’s announced intention to withdraw the troops: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”

“Biden understood that the choice was between getting out or being stuck there with no end in sight, and he rightly judged that the former was better for the United States," wrote historian and veteran conservative commentator Daniel Larison. "The fact that the Afghan government has lost so much ground so quickly proves that the U.S. failed in building a functioning state that could fend for itself... Far from showing the folly of Biden’s decision, it confirms the wisdom of it. A state as rickety and incapable of protecting itself as this one would not have been saved by delaying withdrawal a few more months or even years.”

As Biden said on Saturday, “One more year or five more years of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

That view also jibes with the sentiments of the most Americans. He’ll likely take a hit in the short run as the images of surrender resonate globally – although that’s akin to blaming President Gerald Ford for our chaotic final departure from Vietnam in 1975 – but the fact remains that the current withdrawal is supported by 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Republicans.

What most Americans appear to understand – even while mostly tuning out the war – is that leaving Afghanistan is basically the least bad option. There’s no point in investing a few more trillion dollars and more American bodies just to keep meeting the definition of insanity, the compulsion to do the same thing over and over again in expectation of a different result. It takes wisdom and political courage to face reality."

Free Download: Gustave Le Bon, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind"

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
- Gustave Le Bon

Freely download "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind",
 by Gustave Le Bon, here:
“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than 
when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.”
- Laurens van der Post

Musical Interlude: Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"

Full screen recommended.
Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

"Covid Situation Update Aug. 18, 2021"

"Health Care Collapse Warning: 
Vaccine Spike Protein Will Unleash 
Widespread Neurological Damage That 
Overwhelms World’s Medical Systems"
by Mike Adams

"Imagine living in a world where every hospital is overrun with vaccine-injured patients of all ages, suffering from extreme neurological damage that places previously able-bodied people in the category of requiring constant medical assistance to survive. Imagine so many people dying from covid spike protein injections (“vaccines”) that entire apartment buildings are abandoned and condemned even with the spike protein-infested dead bodies inside because no one is willing to remove the dangerous bodies.

This dark vision of society may soon come to pass as the full effects of spike protein damage are realized. With nearly 2.5 billion around the world already injected with spike protein bioweapons, and with nearly 200 million Americans having lined up to take the shots, the world is rolling the dice on a global medical experiment that risks the survivability of entire nations (if not civilization itself) in the years ahead.

We already know that as many as 500,000 Americans have already been killed by the “clot shot,” but importantly, those are merely the short term vascular effects from blood clotting. These deaths do not take into account the long-term, slow-acting neurological damage that appears to resemble the human form of Mad Cow Disease, a prion-induced protein folding disorder that irreversibly destroys brain tissue over time. In an interview conducted yesterday (and soon to be posted), Dr. Chris Shaw, an expert in neurology and elemental toxicity, warned me that widespread, accelerating neurological damage is now a very real possibility since the spike protein and mRNA particles cross the blood-brain barrier.

This means toxic nanoparticles are circulating among the brains of the vaccinated. Bio-distribution studies have further confirmed that spike protein injections do not remain at the injection site. Instead, spike protein nanoparticles (or mRNA instructions) circulate throughout most of the body’s organs, including the brain.

What happens when the brain is exposed to a weaponized spike protein, developed via gain-of-function research in a laboratory run by a communist military? (Wuhan lab, via the CCP.) The answer shouldn’t be surprising: The spike protein disassembles healthy neurological tissue, destroying brain cells and impairing cognition in the process.

Imagine if millions of Americans suddenly collapsed to the cognitive level of Joe Biden. We might see homeless, desperate masses aimlessly wandering the streets of blue cities, crapping on the sidewalks and mumbling nonsensical things to themselves. Of course, we already see that in San Francisco and many liberal cities, but imagine the numbers of those afflicted exploding into many millions.

Even those who are closely watching vaccine injuries and vaccine deaths may be missing the longer term neurological implications of this insidious spike protein assault on humanity. What happens to society when tens of millions of people are injured or killed by a government-created biological weapon designed to attack human tissue? It seems we’re about to find out.

No matter what happens in the coming months, right now is certainly not a good time to need hospital care. We strongly urge all readers to do everything in your power to maintain a healthy lifestyle rooted in disease prevention and strong nutrition. Over the next year (or less), the health care facilities may be overrun with vaccine-damaged people, and “routine” medical services may collapse as a result.

Learn more in today’s urgent Situation Update podcast,
 which lays out the full details:
Related, esssential:

"The Stupid Will Believe It And Ask To Be Treated: Pandemic To Depopulate 1981"

"The Stupid Will Believe It And Ask To Be Treated:
Pandemic To Depopulate 1981"
by Martin Armstrong

"Jacques Attali is a well-known French economist and social theorist. He has been a political adviser but also a senior civil servant, which is in itself a distorted term for they never see themselves as serving the people. We have simply been a herd of sheep to manage. Additionally, Attali was a counselor to the French President François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1991 and was the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1991-1993 which I use to visit often. The building was outrageously expensive with a huge white marble slab on each floor as you got off the elevator. I had NEVER in all my years ever visited such a decadent public office anywhere in the world.

I use to do a lot of work in France. I was even a Keynote Speaker for the Bank of International Settlements at a luncheon in Paris with all the central bankers of Europe. And I was asked to debate political leaders in Paris on national TV – but they declined. When I say I have worked behind the curtain for decades, I am not making such a statement up out of thin air.

One of the aspects I have always encountered in various meetings is very disturbing in today’s light. There is a French book entitled "L’Avenir De La Vie" (“The Future of Life”) by Michel Salomon, who is a journalist and doctor back in 1981, he interviewed twenty scientists including seven Nobel Prize winners, and which thus relates his conversation with Jacques Attali, who at the time was the adviser to François Mitterrand. In that interview, it provides a clear warning of how they look down upon us, the great unwashed, which is the blueprint for what they are doing using Covid-19 to change the world economically and politically.

1981: “In the future it will be about finding a way to reduce the population. We will start with the old, because as soon as he is over 60-65 years of age, man lives longer than he produces and costs society dearly. Then the weak and then the useless who do nothing for society because there will be more and more of them, and especially finally the stupid ones.

Euthanasia targeting these groups; euthanasia will have to be an essential instrument of our future societies, in all cases. Of course, we cannot execute people or set up camps. We will get rid of it by making them believe it is for their own good. Too large a population, and for the most part unnecessary, is something economically too expensive.

Socially, it is also much better for the human machine to come to a screeching halt rather than gradually deteriorating. We won’t be able to give intelligence tests to millions and millions of people, you can imagine!

We will find something or cause it, a pandemic that targets certain people, a real economic crisis or not, a virus that will affect the old or the big, it doesn’t matter, the weak will succumb to it, the fearful and the stupid will believe it and ask to be treated.

We will have taken care to have planned the treatment, a treatment that will be the solution. The selection of idiots will thus be done by themselves: they will go to the slaughterhouse on their own. “
“The Future of Life”, Jacques Attali, 1981, interview with Michel Salomon.

This book is currently out of print. Perfect coincidence. This road map to tyranny is well known. The Press will not report the truth nor Big Tech because they all assume that they will be part of those selected to remain. Indeed, society is nothing but a herd of sheep. They know very well that the majority “will go to the slaughterhouse on their own.” Nature will always cull the herd, so to speak. But that is simply how things have worked for thousands of years. Those who see themselves as elitists neither believe in God nor in Nature and simply think they should redesign the world. These ideas have been floating around for a very long time. I have listened to them in meetings for the past 40 years and often asked what was my opinion. While the computer has correctly forecast these dark years, it also clearly shows they will lose. For that, they never liked that forecast but assumed it was just my opinion. Sorry! Wrong again!"

"This Is Your Life..."

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice.
To be or not to be.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.
Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume
and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"
- Chuck Palahniuk

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine

"Discovering Your Self-Worth"

"Discovering Your Self-Worth"
by Dan Millman

"The first step is to realize that you are not alone. We have all made mistakes as part of our life and growth. We have all said, thought, felt, and done things we regret. Our worth is not dependent upon being perfect. Many of us have fallen into self-defeating cycles-behaving badly, leading to a lowered sense of self-worth, leading to more negative behaviors. If we can stop judging our mistakes so harshly, we can also stop ourselves from reactively engaging in the negative behaviors.

The second realization is that no matter what your behavior, you have done the best you could every day of your life. You may not agree with this. So before we tackle that question, consider this principle in relation to your parents or other caregivers: whether they were kind or abusive, they were doing the best they knew how in light of their own limitations, wounds, beliefs, fears, values, and anxieties. Their best may have been wonderful, or terrible, or somewhere in between. In the same way, even though you have certainly fallen short of your ideal many times and made mistakes, you have also done the very best you were capable of at the time.

Most of us have replayed in our minds an incident we wish we could do over. Maybe we could have done better on a job interview, a speech, an exam, or a performance. Or we may wish we could take back hurtful actions-moments of disrespect or dishonesty. You cannot change past mistakes, but you can avoid repeating them. The past no longer exists except as a set of memories and impressions you keep alive in the present. By focusing on doing what you can do now-by reviewing your mistakes with eyes of compassion and asking forgiveness- you do much to heal your fragmented sense of worth.

If you are sorry for never sending your mother a birthday card, send her a special one now. Even if she has passed away, write the card. And ask her forgiveness. If you hurt a brother, sister, parent, or other person, review that memory; then contact them, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. If they will not forgive you, then forgive them for not forgiving you. Then send them flowers or another gift, perhaps with a letter. Going inside and visualizing those you have hurt, and asking their forgiveness, provides a healing that begins to lift your sense of worth as it heals relationships.

The next time you feel that something good can't last, remind yourself that evolution moves in an upward spiral and that life can, and usually does, get better over time. You live and learn, stumble and evolve, rise and fall, fail and grow, expand, progress. If you pay attention and strive to improve, you become stronger, clearer, wiser, and more capable. Life is a process of rediscovering your worth and the worth of all beings.

Finally, it comes to this: To discover your worth, you have to reach within yourself and find it there. You have to create it through worthy actions. The key is to remember that even though we don't feel very kind, or brave, or even deserving, the roof over our head continues to shelter us from storms, the sun shines upon us, our chairs keep supporting us, and so do our lives. Life itself is an unearned gift- and that is the hidden meaning of grace.

Grace reveals that only this moment is real. That past and future exist only in our minds. Your scorecard is wiped clean in any moment of awareness, humility, or repentance. If you have a debt to pay, then pay it in the currency of kindness to the person it is owed, not by punishing yourself, not ever again. It is not necessary. It never has been."

The Poet: A. J. Constance, "All of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"

"All of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"

"Let's not plan too much
or expect
or promise
or say how much
or how little
or outline how things must be
or how they must not be.

All of us here on this beautiful
spinning blue world,
let's just love each other
from one millisecond to the next
as much as we can."

- A. J. Constance

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Deep Still Blue”

Full screen recommended.
2002, “Deep Still Blue”

"The FED Is Trapped, Inflation To Skyrocket; Stop Buying Dumb Stuff; The Masses Have Already Lost"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/18/21:
"The FED Is Trapped, Inflation To Skyrocket; 
Stop Buying Dumb Stuff; The Masses Have Already Lost"

"Everything in Business and the Economy Will Never Be the Same Again - Nothing is Normal"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 8/18/21:
"Everything in Business and the Economy Will Never 
Be the Same Again - Nothing is Normal"
"I am in La Jolla, California. This is the La Jolla Cove. Jerome Powell just said that nothing in our economy will ever be normal again. There is no going back to the way things used to be. You have to get ready just to move forward and understand that so much is not going to come back."

"Brace For A Shortage Of Everything And Explosive Prices: It's Only Going To Get Worse!"

Full screen recommended.
"Brace For A Shortage Of Everything And Explosive Prices: 
It's Only Going To Get Worse!"
by Epic Economist

"Empty grocery shelves are everywhere. It's a major problem all across the nation and consumers have been expressing their frustration with the lack of supplies and the soaring price of everything. More than one year later, the health crisis continues to have an impact on the things Americans love to buy, even their favorite food, cars, and much-needed electronic equipment. In the stores, the shelves are often empty due to an increased demand for supplies, combined with shipping and manufacturing delays. It seems that dark clouds are gathering once again and threatening us with another period of extensive shortages and explosive prices.

What we have seen from inflation so far was just a hint of what is coming next. This month, the US inflation rate has reached levels not seen since 2008, and broken supply chains certainly have not helped with that equation. That means products people need and want are again in short supply -- and we all have witnessed what happens when consumers hear that more shortages are coming. Since the beginning of the year, Americans are facing a relentless rise in consumer prices, and even though politicians and policymakers have been trying to reassure us that those increases are only a "temporary blip," it doesn't feel so reassuring to consumers who are seeing the prices for so many goods surging so much and so fast. Compared with the same time last year, consumer prices rose 5.6 percent.

While supply chain bottlenecks continue to dent manufacturing growth, consumer sentiment has sharply collapsed in recent weeks amid concerns about rising inflation. Already, higher prices are making it harder for people to afford the same products, and the latest reports show that retail sales fell more than expected in July due to shortages, increased prices, and the fact that the boost from stimulus checks has faded, suggesting a slowdown in economic growth early in the third quarter. Businesses across the United States are also growing less confident in the economic recovery, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

On top of part and product shortages, as well as late deliveries, companies are facing labor shortages that have been compromising their ability to operate at full capacity. The National Federation of Independent Business Optimism Index dropped 2.8 points to a reading of 99.7 in July, erasing all of June's gain. Ultimately, owners can only sell more and recover from the losses suffered in 2020 if they acquire more supplies and inventories from their supply chains, and if they have personal to handle their product until it makes it to the shelves. But the strains they are currently facing illustrate the growing imbalances between supply and demand and how the Fed's policies ended up making things worse by artificially fueling consumer demand without boosting manufacturing growth, resulting in shortages and elevated prices, and also creating a historic labor shortage at a time the economy desperately needs more workers.

In every sector of the economy, shortages continue to erupt as the new virus outbreak messes with shipping, demand, supply, and all the other levers of global trade. There's nothing in the near term that looks to control the steady rise in prices. “We still have a very challenged supply chain,” as explained by Naveen Jaggi, the president of retail advisory service JLL. “Many retailers don’t expect any sense of a balanced supply-chain recovery until the summer of 2022 or even later". Everything that is shipped in a container is going to cost more, Jaggi says, as he highlights that "this is a global supply chain disruption. It’s massive from Bangladesh, South Korea, India, China, Europe, and the U.S. The biggest challenge for U.S. consumers will be that demand will outstrip supply,” he points out.

Evidently, the supply chain crisis is just one of the factors contributing to the worsening of shortages all across the nation. America’s many shortages have many different causes, ranging from domestic monetary policies, trade policies, aging infrastructure, and extraordinary spending in the wake of the health crisis. Many factors are also playing into this year’s price hikes, and it's the convergence of all of them at a time when consumer demand is typically more elevated that is making business owners and retailers increasingly desperate as the holiday season approaches. At this point, we can only hope not to see a repeat of the chaotic waves of panic buying we've seen last year. But the truth is that we all should brace for empty store aisles, barren car dealerships, and depleted online inventories once again because everywhere you look, there’s a new shortage, and as global events are starting to spiral out of control, from now on, things are only going to get worse."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this narrowband, false-color view. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete bubble shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge along the top. 
Near the center is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199.”

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/18/21"

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/18/21:
"The Economic Meltdown Is Accelerating. 
Watch This Single Key To A Market Crash"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/18/21:
"Goldman Sachs WARNS On The Economy"

"Doug Casey on the Real Story Behind Collapsing Supply Chains and What it Means for You"

"Doug Casey on the Real Story Behind Collapsing 
Supply Chains and What it Means for You"
by Internationalman.com

"International Man: The COVID hysteria and the shutdowns have caused supply chain disruptions. Central bankers and the media were quick to pin the blame for soaring inflation on these disruptions. It seems like sophistry - a fallacious argument with the intention of deceiving. What is really going on here?

Doug Casey: Government officials always want to be seen as smart and action-oriented. Whenever anything untoward happens, they like to step up and pretend to be saviors. Today’s public thinks that the government not only can but should run the world. The COVID hysteria is a custom-made excuse for them to do so. Unlike people who produce actual goods and services, however, government employees can only take other people’s property and tell them what to do. Because the essence of government is coercion, they can solve problems only by creating more problems, and new problems provide excuses for more intervention, making the government look even more necessary.

COVID will go down in history as more than just another mass hysteria. It’s likely to be classed as an episode of mass psychosis. It’s the Salem witch trials times a million. It is even bigger than the Great Cultural Revolution in China. The public has been convinced that a dangerous - but relatively minor - virus is going to wipe out the planet, and now, on top of the virus, we have to deal with experimental vaccines, which are likely to be made mandatory, either directly or indirectly. Vaccine mandates amount to lighting a stick of dynamite in a nitroglycerine factory. That’s true politically, economically, and perhaps medically.

International Man: In her recent comments about the state of the US economy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said: "There are also bottlenecks in certain supply chains, and mismatches between supply and demand have led to price increases. And yet, the data indicates that these mismatches will resolve with time as more businesses are able to keep up with demand." What do you think about the US government’s explanation for higher prices and the economic situation?

Doug Casey: Higher prices in today’s context are essentially a matter of monetary inflation - money printing. The Fed is printing up 120 billion dollars every month to fund the government’s deficits. If you increase the number of dollars in circulation, of course prices are going to go up. And it’s not a so-called transitory phenomenon.

It’s interesting how "the narrative" works. A neat new word comes up and quickly becomes a popular meme. All the talking heads repeat it, reassuring each other. But this isn’t transitory; it’s growing and will get completely out of control. If they slow money-printing, they risk a wholesale deflationary credit collapse.

As far as the bottlenecks are concerned, the COVID hysteria created them. We still have about 9 million unemployed able-bodied people. Most were producing goods and services 18 months ago, but now they can stay at home, watch TV, and use their stimmy checks to gamble on RobinHood because they don’t have to pay rent. Something like 7.5 million households haven’t had to pay rent, and maybe 2 million haven’t had to pay their mortgages. Landlords are said to be out like $60 billion - they can sue, I guess, but that money has been frittered by deadbeat tenants, many of whom will soon be living on the street. But that’s another story…

In any event, less is being produced and more’s being demanded because of all the money being printed. But it gets worse. Modern economies have long and complex supply chains, where everything is expected "just in time" to cut inventories and improve efficiency. A problem arises if a force majeure eliminates a critical component. For instance, take a microchip for a car; cars have thousands of them, and if some are missing, the whole production line stalls. If Burger King can’t hire cooks because of COVID, meat-packers have to close production lines, cattlemen are stuck with cows, their feed producers don’t get paid, and ripples spread. "For want of a nail," as Shakespeare noted in Richard III. Mandates to be vaccinated - apart from creating antagonism - ensure many workers will quit, creating more bottlenecks.

In a free-market world, everything would straighten out quickly. If the State eliminated mandate threats, the stimulus, and unemployment insurance, and if people had to pay their rent and go back to work, the market would adjust. However, that’s not the world we live in. Your personal health decisions are no longer between you and your doctor but are up to politicos and bureaucrats. This will have economic consequences.

It’s very hard for businessmen to plan when prices fluctuate radically, and supply chains are unreliable. It’s possible that the government will impose wage and price controls at some point if prices seem like they’re getting out of control and rationing if there are persistent shortages. That, of course, would vastly compound the problem. But it’s important to "do something", no matter how stupid.

For instance, I don’t know how many people are aware that, for decades, lumber was roughly $300 per thousand feet of lumber. It was a very non-volatile commodity. Then, a few months ago, it exploded from $300 to $1,700 almost overnight. It’s now about $500. Who knows what the price will be next? Option premiums are gigantic, however, which is great for knowledgeable speculators but horrible for businessmen.

When prices fluctuate wildly, producers can’t plan properly. My view is that we’re going to see much higher prices unless the government stops spending and the Fed stops printing - which they won’t. Also, more supply chain shortages occur until the ridiculous COVID meme and vaccine mandates go away - which I doubt. We’ll also see millions more laid off as their employers go bust and tens of millions of consumers who can no longer afford the products.

There’s going to be a lot more to the Greater Depression than just higher prices and sporadic shortages.

International Man: By focusing on supply chain disruptions, the government and media seem to be addressing only the symptoms - as if they appeared out of thin air - and ignoring the much bigger problem of government intervention that caused them in the first place. What’s your take?

Doug Casey: As I said before, they’re simultaneously restricting the labor supply and creating artificial demand by giving everybody lots of funny money. One major trend is that employers are going to replace employees with computers or robotics wherever possible. You can see it now. You no longer order with a clerk at a fast-food joint; you place your order on a computer or tablet. Amazon is working to replace local drivers with drones and cross-country drivers with AI-guided trucks.

Employers are wise to get rid of their human staff. "Human resources" - a horrible PC term, by the way - are liabilities disguised as assets, starting with the HR department itself. They’re unreliable. They get sick. They pilfer. They’re increasingly entitled and surly. In the Age of Woke, thousands of regulations make them lawsuits in waiting. Entry-level jobs are going to be replaced wholesale across the economy. Much like in the industrial revolution of the 19th century, millions will be tossed out of work.

Of course, from a macro point of view, it’s wonderful when low-productivity workers lose their jobs and then go out and find some high-productivity work. However, in today’s world of guaranteed annual incomes, if somebody loses their job or can’t get an entry-level job, it will create significant social distortions and unpleasantness. It's going to happen everywhere.

IBM used to have a motto: Machines should work; people should think. That’s great. Except most low-level employees doing dog work aren’t good thinkers. And in today’s world, a lot of them won’t even want to work. We’ll have an increasingly large number of what the communists call "useless mouths," which can be easily transformed into what they call "useful idiots." It amounts to a sociological time bomb.

International Man: What does it say about society that a large portion of the population not only accepts the government’s blatant lies and increasingly totalitarian controls, but forcefully advocates for them to do even more?

Doug Casey: Half of the population are already net tax recipients. And with the gigantic amount of new federal spending that's coming out of Washington, there are going to be many millions more Americans employed directly or indirectly by the federal government. Combine that with a nasty economic reality and the decades of indoctrination that Americans have gotten in school, the media, movies, and TV. The trend is clearly in motion for what those horrible people in Davos call a Great Reset. A genuine crisis will, in fact, reset everything. Of course, I'd like to see a reset where the government basically goes away. The elite, like Klaus Schwab, want to see vastly more control.

The average person today has been taught that the government is his friend, though. So the "elite" are likely to win. The hoi polloi have been taught that the State is the source of health, education, welfare, employment, and stability.

International Man: What do you think comes next? What can the average person do about it?

Doug Casey: If you lived in the world that George Orwell projected in 1984, or Aldous Huxley described in Brave New World, there wouldn’t be much you could do about it, quite frankly. Fortunately, we’re not quite there yet. But in many ways, we’re getting a combination of both Orwell’s and Huxley’s dystopias. They’re being married together with the worst elements of both.

Remember, however, that there was a third dystopian novel from that era, which projected an optimistic outcome for humanity. That was Ayn Rand’s "Atlas Shrugged." That story has a happy ending because although everything collapses, the good guys create Galt’s Gulch, enabling civilization to recover. I’m not entirely sure it’s going to work out that way, though, because once we’re really immersed in an Orwellian or Huxleyite dystopia, it will be very, very hard to get out of it. It’s hard to revolt in a world where you’ll own nothing, as Klaus and friends promise, and they try to make you happy.

In the near future, everything you do, every place you go, and every currency unit you spend will be closely monitored. What’s to be done? One thing you can do is try not to be an employee. Try to find goods and services that you can create as an entrepreneur. Your long-term savings should be in precious metals and some cryptocurrencies. Other than that, learn to speculate in the markets because they’re going to be going up and down like an elevator with a lunatic at the controls."

"Every Human Decision..."

 
"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human
decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."
- Jeff Duntemann

The Daily "Near You?"

South Boardman, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Taliban Officially Bans Production, Distribution, And Use of Narcotics"

In Full: The Taliban's first news conference from Kabul.
"Taliban Officially Bans Production, Distribution, And Use of Narcotics"
by Chris Black

"Bad news for the CIA and their friends: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, which means no more black-budget, and less people dying of heroin overdoses in the US and Europe. But hey, we now have dirt-cheap fentanyl from China, right? It will be okay I reckon, no worries CIA man. “We had brought narcotics production to a halt in 2001. That is something we will do. Afghanistan will be drug-free from now on. We need alternative crops, and we hope to bring this scourge to an end.”

"Afghan Lives Don’t Matter"

August 15, 2017
"Afghan Lives Don’t Matter"
by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE - "The financial news this week is overshadowed by the disgraceful fall of Kabul. On July 8, President Biden said a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely,” adding that there would be “no circumstance [where] you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.” And even if the Taliban did eventually take over, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, it won’t “be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.” But that’s exactly what did happen. The Afghan troops that the U.S. trained, bribed, and supported for 20 years didn’t fight to the last man… They simply dropped their guns and joined the other side.

Incompetent and Unreliable: In all of military history, we can’t think of any defeat so quick… so complete… or so ignominious. Biden and Blinken were advised and informed by 17 different “intelligence” agencies – the CIA, the NSA, etc. – with billion-dollar budgets, thousands of big-head analysts, and all the latest spy technology.

How could they all be so incompetent? Journalist Glenn Greenwald reports that the Pentagon had long reported that the Afghan army, which outnumbered the Taliban 4-to-1, was both incompetent and unreliable. They didn’t make a “mistake,” said Greenwald, interviewed on Fox News by Tucker Carlson this morning, “they lied.” So add Biden, Blinken, and a few spook chiefs to the gallows list. Hang ‘em high as a warning to the others.

Corruption and Conflict: But today, we wonder: What else are they lying about? COVID-19 vaccines? Inflation? The economy? The green agenda? Yes, Dear Reader, it’s amazing what you can’t see when you’re paid to be blind. And for a long time – 20 years, in the case of Afghanistan – you can keep the fantasy intact. Then, in just a few days, it collapses like a punctured balloon.

Anyone could have foreseen the whole 20-year fiasco… all they had to do was read about Afghanistan on Wikipedia. The country was invented by Europeans. But it is inhabited by dozens of different tribes – Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Arab, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat – each with its own language, religion, culture… and deep grudges against the others. Building a U.S.-style democracy was preposterous from the get-go. But who wanted to see that… when there was $2 trillion to be made by pretending not to see it?

The generals got their stars… their post-retirement sinecures at Raytheon… and their shares in WestExec, a private equity firm specializing in Pentagon boondoggles. Of course, it was not just the generals who were paid not to notice. The private sector collaborated with the military – and profited handsomely. A portfolio of “defense” stocks – bought at the beginning of the 21st century and held until today – rose 10 times, while U.S. GDP only doubled. How’s that for a pay-off? Trillions of dollars were changing hands. The corruption, the conflicts of interest, the temptation to lie, cheat, and steal were obvious.

Turning a Blind Eye: Here was some high-quality muck, in other words… But where were the muckrakers? Where was the press? Where were the guardians of truth… candor… and justice? As we saw yesterday, some leading reporters were on the military-industrial payroll. But the blindness was far more widespread than just a few newshounds who were paid to shill for the Pentagon. Instead, practically the entire press corps… so eager was it to not see the corruption… poked its own eyes out.

Yes, it could get worked up by the killing of George Floyd. That was someone else’s fault – the low-bred white supremacists. They were “racists,” and everyone knew it. All a reporter had to do was rant and rave about it; he might get a better job at The New York Times… invitations to Georgetown parties… and his name in the hat for a Pulitzer. But Afghanistan? 47,245 times more innocent civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers in the Hindu Kush than by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. But heck… Afghan Lives Don’t Matter!

Elite Con Job: Besides, the Afghanistan debacle was supported by Democrats and Republicans. It was a con job by the entire elite establishment, not the Trumpista yahoos or the make-believe “insurgents” who invaded the Capitol on January 6. The Afghanistan disaster was concocted in elite think-tanks. It was directed by elite Ph.D. experts… coming from elite universities. It was supplied by elite corporations… and boosted by elite lobbyists… And Hillary Clinton (then U.S. Secretary of State) and Antony Blinken (now Secretary of State) were in the White House Situation Room watching the action on TV when Navy seals murdered al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and members of his family.

Hidden Truth: Now, the truth about Afghanistan is out in the open. But what is still hidden? The truth about vaccines? About masks? About electric vehicles? About diversity and anti-racism training? About budget deficits? About the $2 trillion infrastructure bill… or the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget? About the Federal Reserve’s money-printing? Or about inflation? Tune in tomorrow…"
Why is there so much silence around the 47,245 lives lost during the Afghanistan war? What else is the elite hiding? Write us at feedback@rogueeconomics.com.
Related:

"Mass Psychosis - How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"

Full screen recommended.
"Mass Psychosis - 
How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"
by After Skool

"In this video we are going to explore the most dangerous of all psychic epidemics, the mass psychosis. A mass psychosis is an epidemic of madness and it occurs when a large portion of a society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions. Such a phenomenon is not a thing of fiction. Two examples of mass psychoses are the American and European witch hunts 16th and 17th centuries and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. This video will aim to answer questions surrounding mass psychosis: What is it? How does is start? Has it happened before? Are we experiencing one right now? And if so, how can the stages of a mass psychosis be reversed?"
Related:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Relax..."

"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"