Tuesday, September 21, 2021

"Freedom from Fear: Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"

"Freedom from Fear: 
Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
- Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

"America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation - one that has been spreading like wildfire - is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert. Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance. Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power - bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations - move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance. Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored. These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

So far, these tactics are working. An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.) - manufactured or legitimate - has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues: “I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.”

As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes. It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled. The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

• The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

• The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

• The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

• The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

• The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

• The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

• The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

• The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

• The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore. “Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker. “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle - that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.

For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports: "In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling."

The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”

Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries" fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.

Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm: "Can human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love - that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?"

"How It Really Is"

 

“Let Them Eat Kix”

“Let Them Eat Kix”
by Tom Purcell

"I never parted with a $20 bill faster It happened at one of my favorite diners. The Western omelet and Diet Coke I often get wasn’t the $11 it had been for as long as I remember. It was $16. That expense, with my tip for the excellent waiter, consumed my entire $20 bill.

I feel bad for the diner’s owner. He told me that soaring food costs have been killing his profits for months. He’s been forced to raise his prices, yet he’s making half of what he used to. Why? First, his labor costs are up because there is a shortage of workers and he has to pay them a higher hourly wage or they won’t take the job. And second, because he has to charge higher prices, his customer base is dwindling. As wonderful as a diner breakfast is, more people, getting hit by inflation across the board, are choosing to stay home and eat a bowl of Wheaties or Kix instead.

I’m certainly no economist. But I know this: inflation stinks. According to one financial advisor quoted in Forbes, there are a few driving factors behind our current spike in prices – high demand and low supply. COVID-19 lockdowns caused Americans to sit on their money for months but lately they’ve been injecting those dollars back into the economy with abandon.

The nearly zero-percent mortgage interest rates we’ve been enjoying since March 2020 are driving up the demand for houses – and therefore their sales prices. And global supply chains for many products are all goofed up because of the pandemic’s disruptions.

For instance, due to a shortage of vehicles for sale - new vehicles are being held back by car makers because of a shortage of computer chips - new and used car prices are ridiculously high. I bought a new Toyota Tacoma Off Road truck in December of 2019 and it’s done something no other vehicle I’ve bought has ever done in my life: gone up in value. Kelly Blue Book tells me that my truck with 11,100 miles on it is worth $3,000 more than I paid for it brand new.

That is one of the few upsides to inflation. Owning property is another. If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, but the dollar “value” of your home keeps rising, you at least keep pace with inflation. But if you are retired, as my parents are, and living on a fixed income, inflation is an invisible tax that nibbles at the buying power of your money.

Your limited dollars buy fewer groceries and other increasingly expensive basic items you need to sustain yourself. I trust in the efficiency of the many very talented business people in our mostly free economy to adjust to inflation and get our markets running smoothly again. But I don’t trust our government leaders who have been spending recklessly for years and are currently attempting to ram a massive, ridiculous spending bill down our throats that could make high inflation a lasting problem.

I fondly remember the Clinton presidency when, for a blip in time, our government actually took in more money than it spent. But since 2001 Presidents Bush ($6 trillion), Obama ($9 trillion) and Trump ($6 trillion) have reversed that trend and added trillions to our total debt. Way too few people in Washington seem to care about our $28 trillion national debt or the inflation they’ve caused. They don’t care a whit about struggling diner owners or cash-strapped patrons who now eat cereal for breakfast.”

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21: "Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21:
"Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"
Related:

Monday, September 20, 2021

"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized; Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/20/21:
"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized; 
Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"

"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"

 

Full screen recommended.
"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing
 Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"
by Epic Economist

"The world is facing an unprecedented labor shortage that is threatening to derail the global economic rebound as it is sparks widespread business bankruptcies and pushes the price of several supplies, including food, to sky-highs. It's the first time in modern history that the entire planet is facing a severe shortage of workers. At this point, it is estimated that about 10 to 15 million people are still out of their jobs and facing long-term unemployment. Even though government benefits have expired at the beginning of this month, people are still not coming back to the labor force. At least not at the pace most economists were expecting. 

One ominous aspect of this crisis is the impact it is having on global food supply chains. Recent reports describe that, in some countries, the shortage of workers is getting so serious that government officials are having to harvest crops themselves before they spoil and result in local food shortages and steep economic losses. In the U.S., meatpackers are trying to attract new employees by offering Apple Watches, and fast-food chains are offering sizable bonuses. But despite their efforts, staff levels are still incredibly low, and food prices are on the rise. Many can still clearly remember how chaotic it was last year's unemployment crisis. At this stage, employers were expecting to see hordes of people desperate to find a new job. But even now that employees have options to choose from, it seems like they have simply disappeared from the workforce. 

Today, food industry executives say that there aren't enough people to grow, process, and transport our food, and this is threatening to push several small farmers and producers to the brink of financial ruin, while smaller food processing companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. In August, prices went up by 33 percent compared to the same time a year ago, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. And they're about to surge even more given that that agriculture is one of the world’s least-automated industries.

For many businesses, passing along those costs is a matter of survival - especially considering that they didn't have a proper opportunity to financially recover from last year's recession. This should be a matter of concern for everyone. This disruption affects every person, business, and industry, and it is only aggravating with each passing month. 

To make things even worse, at a time millions of businesses are hanging by a thread, our health care system is completely overwhelmed and social tensions are rising in every corner of the country, the federal government decided to impose strict work restrictions on millions of workers who decided not to take the vaccine. 

For several reasons, whether it's a medical concern, a lack of trust in government measures, or a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccine, millions of Americans have chosen not to be vaccinated. And now the new administration may exacerbate the labor shortage as they enforce vaccine mandates to several workers. When these mandates are in full effect, we could see a national crisis of unimaginable proportions. One example of how dangerous these vaccination orders can be lies in the fact that law-enforcement officials reportedly rather be fired than comply with the mandates. 

A local report outlines that, in San Diego, 65 percent of the city's officers said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. Moreover, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate. The force currently has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, fifty percent of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city would inevitably collapse into chaos. The same is happening in the health care sector, where thousands of workers are quitting the workforce because they disagree with the government's mandate. 

And the timing couldn't be worse, since the delta variant is fast spreading all across the nation. That's why the new administration's measures are not only ineffective but also harmful for our people and our economy. But still, no one seems to be concerned about the consequences this can have on our future. And what is happening in the U.S. is just a hint of what is going on all over the globe. We should all be prepared for even darker times because the near-term outlook is only getting grimmer and risker."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21: "STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21:
"STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"

Musical Interlude:Ludovico Einaudi, "Life"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Life"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. 
Distant background galaxies also lurk on the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring view spans over two full moons on the sky, or 17 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251.”

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"
by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":
"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of The Poems this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."
Freely download "Poems" by WB Yeats here:

Free Download: T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

“Little Gidding”, Excerpt

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 
When the last of earth left to discover 
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree.

Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always - 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one.”

- T.S. Eliot

The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," 
which you may freely download here:

"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 9/20/21:
"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"
"The signs are everywhere. We are experiencing a worldwide economic slowdown. As we see international inflation, we are also seeing supply chain problems globally. Today I’m at Laguna Regional Park in southern CA."

The Daily "Near You?"

Kannapolis, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"When Numbers Fib"

"When Numbers Fib"
by Bill Bonner

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
– Tenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Today, we allow ourselves to get sidetracked… shunted off on a rail that goes nowhere. We were at a cocktail party on Saturday. Naturally, the conversation turned to COVID, masks, lockdowns, and shots. And while we were thus engaged, a little girl nearly drowned in the pool.

Overheard Poolside: “I’m just fed up,” said an older man. “I had the COVID. They put me in the hospital. And now, statistically, I’m 27 times less likely to get the disease again or pass it along than the person with the vaccine. Or, to put it another way… if I hadn’t already gotten the disease, a fully vaccinated person would be 27 times more dangerous to me than a person who had recovered from it. If they want to protect other people,” they should give people the disease, not the vaccination. Let them build up a natural resistance. A few old geezers like me will die, but the rest of the population will be really protected.”

An important note to dear readers: This was the comment of someone at a cocktail party. It is the kind of message that might be blocked or censured by the mainstream media in order to avoid any “misinformation” circulating. Is it true that he is 27 times less of a threat than a vaccinated person? We have no way of knowing. Like all the many studies, findings, tests, arguments, “facts,” and figures used in the COVID discussion, it is probably partly true, partly false, and widely misinterpreted. But here at the Diary, we mistrust all statistics, even those we make up ourselves.

Three little children had stripped down to their underwear and were playing in the pool. They were all under six, with the eldest of them able to dog-paddle around… and the two little ones sticking to the shallow area. We were listening to the COVID complaints when we glanced down and noticed that one of the little ones was under water. A young man stood between us and the pool, so we simply pointed to the water... “I think she needs help…” we said. The young man, a professional fisherman, deftly reached into the water and pulled her out, as if he were bringing in an Atlantic salmon. He gave her a slap on the back. As she began to gurgle and cry… her father came running over with a towel… and she was soon as good as new.

Curious Facts: Last week came news that 1 in 500 Americans have died of COVID-19. That, too, may sound like a “fact.” But there are few real facts in life… and fewer still in the COVID-19 story. It may seem indisputable that someone “died.” The corpse may be in the coffin… the smell of lilies in the air… and the check in the mail.

But unless they get shot down in West Baltimore, we don’t always know what they died “of.” The medical industry has its own fads and fashions. And its own motivations. All we know for sure about these corpses is that they were reported to have had a COVID-19 infection when the spark of life went out of them. Curiously, the average age of someone dying from COVID-19 in the U.S. is about the same as someone dying from something else – around 78.

Of course, we’re all going to die. The real question is when. But if there were little difference between the age you die from COVID-19 and the age you die from other causes… How does this rank as a major Plague-like emergency? Also, if the average person dies at 78, you’d expect that out of a group of 500 (assuming an even age spread), 6.4 (500 divided by 78) should be ready to pop off in any given year. If only one of them is taken out by COVID-19, what’s the big deal?

Also, exceedingly odd for a Plague Year, the U.S. population actually rose by nearly one million people. There were 331 million people living in America in January 2020. By the end of the year, there were 332 million.

Freedom Works: Let’s ask a simple question: Would the world be better off… or worse off… if governments completely ignored COVID-19? Of course, no one knows the answer. The question itself could only be posed, sensibly, to God Himself. Who else would know what “better” means? So, instead of worrying about it, the busybodies resort to numbers. The press is full of them – the number of new “cases,” the number of “exhausted” nurses, the number of those who resist vaxxing.

(Another favorite of the mainstream press is the self-satisfied morality tale: “Anti-Vaxxer Dies of COVID,” along with a story that tells us how the person had been misled by “false information” and misguided by an irresponsible attachment to “freedom.”)

The “numbers” substitute quantity for quality. We don’t know what is “better”… but we can count! The higher the number, the bigger the emergency… and the more the powers-that-be need to “do something.” And yet, there are plenty of other numbers. How many lives have been distorted or stunted by COVID-19 restrictions? How many people living on $2 a day will now die early, after being forced (by a locked-down world economy) to live on $1.90 a day? How much human happiness will be sacrificed?

Nobody knows those numbers either. Which is why you can’t really depend on numbers. And why we have principles to guide us. We can’t predict the future… control the future… or even prepare for it. And we can’t count the bodies that haven’t died yet. So we each do the best we can.

Elite Overreach: In America, this freedom to do what you want is supposed to be protected by the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment clearly limits the power of the government to things it is expressly allowed to do in the Constitution itself. This weekend, we found three major articles explaining why President Biden’s vaccine mandate is perfectly constitutional.

Out of curiosity, we searched the founding document. We found no “COVID clause” giving the president such extraordinary power. Then again, the Supreme Court – along with the press, the military, Big Business, universities, and government itself – is part of the elite. Rarely has it shown much inclination to limit the power of the governing group. Today, the president goes to war without an act of Congress – expressly forbidden by the Constitution. The feds print paper money, though the Constitution insists on only gold and silver.

And the government has proclaimed so many laws and regulations that it can send forth a swarm of agents, harass you, fine you, or put you in prison at almost any time… regardless of the many “constitutional” protections you are meant to enjoy. How do they get away with it, you might ask? What happened to the Tenth Amendment? How can they now insist on vaccinations? Oh, you silly goose… Back to business, tomorrow…"

"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

"And Then Everything Happens at Once"

"And Then Everything Happens at Once"
by Jim Kunstler

"This is a very nervous country, and for a good reason: the collective sense of reality has commenced a momentous shift, the compass is spinning wildly, things are shaking loose in the national brain-pan, the gaslight has lost its sheen, and the once-solid narrative is turning to vapor, starting with the unspooling riddles of Covid-19.

The numbers don’t add up, starting with the fact that when you combine the official registered Covid cases (people with acquired natural immunity) with the people who already had some kind of immunity from previous life-long coronavirus encounters, with the number of people vaccinated, you have a population supposedly way beyond herd immunity. Who’s getting sick now? Mostly people who are all vaxed up.

Contrary to the behavior and statements of public health officials and politicians, the news is out that the spike proteins produced by the vax’s mRNA genetic reprogramming are toxic agents that create disorder in the major organs and blood vessels. The news is also out, despite strenuous suppression, that early treatment of Covid-19 with a kit of cheap drugs defeats the disease. People must conclude that there is a malevolent purpose behind the suppression of early treatment. They may also conclude that the vaxes are poison.

Mandating the vaxes was an easily-predicted tactical blunder. Did “Joe Biden” and company not realize that threatening the livelihoods of a hundred million people might generate a whole lot of anger and resentment? Especially since those people have good reasons to believe the vax is harmful to them? Last week, an FDA advisory panel ruled against distributing mRNA booster shots among the general population over age 16 - with exceptions for the vaguely-defined “high risk” individuals over 65.

In spite of that, Covid czar Dr. Anthony Fauci keeps pushing for boosters. On Sunday, he told NBC’s Jake Tapper: “We’re waiting for data on natural immunity. We know that if you have natural immunity and also get the shot, immunity dramatically increases.” Oh, really? Even though it’s known for sure (i.e., established in science) that natural immunity is way more potent, comprehensive, and permanent than anything the vaccine pretends to offer, while it is becoming clear that the vaxes disable people’s immune system - hence, the impressive number of the vaxed getting sick.

Is Dr. Fauci desperate or just plain crazy? The question may be moot, because it looks like he’s out of running-room on his whole crusade, Covid-19, vaxes, authoritative bullshit, and all. The story has fallen apart. It looks an awful lot like the government is trying to harm people health-wise, while it destroys jobs and small business and ruins households financially, and that counter-story is spreading faster now than Covid-19. It’s fair to ask whether all that has destroyed the legitimacy of the people in charge - but that is only one of several issues converging to detonate the people’s faith in their own government.

It appears that the first results of the Arizona 2020 election will finally come out this week. Word is the results are not just eye-opening but devastating; they will show appalling mischief in the balloting that indicates “Joe Biden’s” victory was concocted nefariously - bad “optics,” a little bit, when “Joe Biden’s” government already has its heel on the neck of a hundred million people to get a dangerous vax or lose their jobs and incomes.

The crisis on the US/Mexican border has suddenly gotten so bad that even the mainstream media had to report on it. The shanty town of Haitians and other foreign nationals moiling under the freeway bridge at Del Rio, Texas, grows by thousands each day, to around 15,000 as of Sunday. “Joe Biden” owns the open border, and everybody knows it, and the actual citizens of the USA are getting alarmed and sore about it. On Sunday night, the White House announced “plans” to fly at least 10,000 of the Haitians to Haiti, despite the fact that most of them had been living in Brazil, Chile, and other nations before entering the USA. Haiti, of course, is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and only recently suffered a massive earthquake, not to mention the assassination in July of its president. Does this airlift sound like a plan? Maybe check the “no” box on that. US citizens might have also registered that “Joe B” unloaded 37,000 Afghanis in five states since we bailed on that country August 31, and plans to bring in almost 100,000 by the end of 2022 (Yahoo News). All this at a time when millions of Americans have lost their businesses, lost their jobs, and are under threat of losing more jobs for not getting vaxed.

Think this is enough to cause a national attitude adjustment? China’s financial system has tripped into a liquidity crisis with the insolvency of its colossal Evergrande real estate Ponzi. As I write, US equity markets are down over one percent at the Monday open. Several European markets are down over two percent at their close. Isn’t this a great time for a global financial crisis? Maybe you’re saying, no, not so much. That’d probably be a good call.

Events, you see, are closing in on all the fraught mendacious fakery that permeates the world, and the USA especially, in this time of the proposed “great re-set.” This is the week that will be the week that was. Try to keep your head together while other heads are exploding around you, and see what kind of country we are on Friday. Maybe not quite the same place."

Must Read! “It’s A Fourth Turning: What Did You Expect?” (Excerpt)

“It’s A Fourth Turning: What Did You Expect?” (Excerpt)
by Jim Quinn

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” 
– “The Fourth Turning”, Strauss & Howe
A must read!
Please view this complete, most highly recommended article here:

"Why Is There Suddenly An Extremely Severe Shortage Of Workers All Over The World?"

"Why Is There Suddenly An Extremely Severe 
Shortage Of Workers All Over The World?"
by Michael Snyder

"The unprecedented employment crisis that we are watching unfold around the globe is so bizarre that it could have been pulled straight out of an episode of the Twilight Zone. For the very first time in recorded history, there is an extremely severe shortage of workers in nations all over the planet. When this shortage first started to emerge earlier this year, I thought that it was very strange, because 2020 had been a year when we had seen unemployment absolutely skyrocket in the U.S. and other western nations. In fact, somewhere around 70 million Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last year. Not too long ago we had vast hordes of people that were out of work, and now we are suddenly facing the greatest labor shortage in history?

Something is not adding up. When I wrote my most recent article about the labor shortage, a few people wrote to me and blamed the Biden administration for what we are witnessing. And it is certainly true that actions that the Biden administration has taken have made the labor shortage in the United States even worse.

But the Biden administration is not the reason why there is an extremely severe shortage of workers literally all over the planet. In Vietnam, for example, there are so few workers that the government actually sent the army out to help with the rice harvest… "Across the world, a dearth of workers is shaking up food supply chains. In Vietnam, the army is assisting with the rice harvest. In the U.K., farmers are dumping milk because there are no truckers to collect it. Brazil’s robusta coffee beans took 120 days to reap this year, rather than the usual 90. And American meatpackers are trying to lure new employees with Apple Watches while fast-food chains raise the prices of burgers and burritos."

Why aren’t there enough people to do these jobs? We have never seen anything like this before. Considering the horrendous unemployment crisis that gripped much of the globe during the earlier stages of this pandemic, you would think that there should be colossal pools of desperate workers for large companies to choose from at this point. But instead, it is almost as if untold numbers of low paid workers have simply disappeared.

Of course certain types of workers are far more important to the basic functioning of the global economy than other types of workers. For example, the world would be just fine if there was a severe shortage of actors and actresses. But if there aren’t enough people to grow, process and transport our food, that is a massive problem, and that is precisely what we are currently facing

"Whether it’s fruit pickers, slaughterhouse workers, truckers, warehouse operators, chefs or waiters, the global food ecosystem is buckling due to a shortage of staff. Supplies are getting hit and some employers are forced to raise wages at a double-digit pace. That’s threatening to push food prices – already heated by soaring commodities and freight costs – even higher. Prices in August were up 33% from the same month last year, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization."

Unfortunately, the shortages and price increases are eventually going to get a whole lot worse. I cannot recall another time since the dawn of history when the entire world has ever faced something like this. Please correct me if I am wrong.

All over the globe, we are being told that shortages of food are being caused because there simply is not enough people to do the work… Shortages are hitting farms, processors and restaurants alike. Malaysia, the world’s No.2 palm oil producer, has lost about 30% of potential output of the edible oil used in everything from chocolate to margarine. Shrimp production in southern Vietnam – one of the world’s top exporters – has dropped by 60% to 70% from before the pandemic. And a fifth of tomato production in the south of Italy has been lost this year, due to the scorching heat and transport paralysis, according to the farmers’ association CIA.

Before the pandemic, there was never a time when we didn’t have enough workers to do the basic tasks that needed to get done. In fact, many nations around the globe were persistently facing huge problems with rampant unemployment. But now the pandemic has come along and suddenly all of our unemployment problems have been solved?

I don’t understand why this isn’t raising a red flag for more people. Here in the United States, if you want a job you certainly have many to choose from these days. In response to the article that I posted a few days ago, one of my readers sent me an email describing what conditions are like in one section of Illinois…

"Where have all the people gone? When you drive down the highway in Fairview Heights and Swansea, Illinois, there are signs on both sides, now hiring. Fazoli’s, a fast food Italian restaurant has a sign stating that they pay up to $15 an hour. Domino’s is looking for employees, Sparkle Car Wash, a rental business, and several others within a two or three block area. Panera Bread Company has signs posted outside that they closed early now due to lack of employees. Food items on our grocery shelves are dwindling and they are never replaced. Some of the food is expired. I noticed when trying to purchase butter at Aldi’s, it had the same expiration date as it did months ago. They put out expired butter and left it out to sell in the cooler. Same thing at Schnuck’s, you have to be careful and check the expiration dates. A lot of their food has either expired or is about to expire very soon."

At a time when basic services are breaking down because of a lack of workers, the Biden administration has decided to make things even worse by imposing offensive new mandates on tens of millions of workers. As these new mandates go into effect, we could soon see things we have never seen before in the history of our country.

For instance, it is being projected that close to half of the entire police force in the city of San Diego could soon be forced to quit their jobs…"A rather remarkable situation in San Diego that we could see play out in the rest of the nation. The police union, The San Diego Police Officers Association (SDPOA), asked their members about the vaccination mandate.

65 percent of the respondents said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. However, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate. The SDPOA has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, half of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the entire police department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city of San Diego would be in a really sketchy place."

The path that the Biden administration has decided to take us down is absolutely nuts. As scores of qualified workers leave their posts, the problems that we are facing right now could go to an entirely new level. But the U.S. is only one piece of the overall puzzle. Everywhere in the world there are alarming labor shortages, and we are being told that this is a crisis that isn’t going to be solved any time soon. So once again, there is a very simple question that I must ask. Where did all the people go? This is story of monumental importance, and hardly anyone is taking about it."

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/20/21: "Stock Futures Crater... Stay Calm, Stay Relaxed"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/20/21:
"Stock Futures Crater... Stay Calm, Stay Relaxed"

Sunday, September 19, 2021

"Evergrande Collapse Could Rock Markets; Carfax Warns Of Damaged Cars Flooding Market; No Recovery"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/19/21:
"Evergrande Collapse Could Rock Markets; 
Carfax Warns Of Damaged Cars Flooding Market; No Recovery"

"Housing & Rent Price Bubble Surged To The Highest Level In 45 Years: Get Ready For A Housing Crash"

Full screen recommended.
"Housing & Rent Price Bubble Surged To The Highest 
Level In 45 Years: Get Ready For A Housing Crash"
by Epic Economist

"The US is facing one of the most painful housing crises in history as home prices soar to unprecedented levels and rents have been aggressively rising, putting millions of Americans on the edge of eviction. The massive wave of pain descending upon this nation right now is just hard to comprehend. Mass evictions have begun all across the country, and according to a Census Bureau survey, 8 million households behind on rent could be thrown in the streets by the end of the year. Roughly 3.5 million eviction filings are about to be executed in the coming weeks in months, which may result in a devastating homelessness crisis while new virus variants spread all over the U.S. Thus, the expiration of the moratorium at a time new virus variants continue to emerge is a threat to the health of millions of Americans -- even more than that, it can result in the worsening of the health crisis in the entire country just when things started to stabilize.

To make things worse, the government's response to this crisis is to print, borrow and spend more and more money, despite the fact that these were the same measures that created and inflated the monstrous real estate price bubble that is making housing increasingly unaffordable in the U.S. The federal government announced plans to create and sell about 100,000 homes over the next three years to address the severe housing shortage. However, by that time, millions of people will already be on the streets and financially impaired, which means that they may never actually benefit from this plan.

Data released by housing advocates during a conference in the White House exposed that “one out of every six homes purchased in the second quarter of 2021 was acquired by investors, and reports indicate that in some markets, that number is one in four. Within investor purchases, typically more than 35% of purchases are made by investors that own more than ten properties". That is to say, the expiration of the moratorium wasn't fueled by some concern about mom-and-pop landlord's financial woes, but instead, rooted in the fact that wealthy landlords want to throw out non-paying tenants to replace with paying ones and profit from the enormous rise in rent prices.

In face of the extraordinary increase in home and rent prices, Americans have been worried that we might see a repeat of the financial disaster caused by the housing bubble burst of the 2000s. According to MW, the question "when is the housing market going to crash?” was up 2,450% in August. In July, home prices surged by 18%, compared to a year earlier. But by the end of August, the housing market has seen median home prices soar an unprecedented 24%. This marked the largest 12-month gain in 45 years!

At this point, even if the market halved, the rate of housing inflation would still mean that home price rises would continue far outpacing wage growth and overall inflation, and homes would only get less affordable. In fact, in a recent survey published by Yahoo that interviewed several housing analysts, over 60% of them said affordability would worsen in the next two to three years because even if construction levels improve it would still not be enough. With more and more Americans priced out of the market, their only option is to rent. But 50% of the analysts predicted U.S. residential rents will rise between 2%-5% over the next 12-months and 10 were penciling in a 5%-10% increase.

Asked about the biggest risks that could lead to a housing market crash over the next 12 months, analysts' top three picks were: higher interest rates or tighter monetary policy, the aggravation of the health crisis and a slowdown in the economy. With all things considered, it's safe to say that we can see how the health crisis could potentially spiral out of control again. The economy, for its part, is showing signs that a double-dip recession might be triggered before the end of the year. With slow job growth, a still-high unemployment rate, and rising inflation, the Fed is expected to tighten its monetary policies by the end of the year. And there we have it: the perfect storm for a housing market crash -- or worse, for the burst of the Everything Bubble.

In essence, wherever we look, the prospects do not look good at all. Everything that goes up, must come down at some point, and we have flown too high on borrowed wings. So there's no reason to believe that this time will be different. A housing market crash is a matter of logic because there is simply no way prices will readjust to somewhat normal levels on their own."

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Soul Doors"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Soul Doors"
"This song is from our album, "The Emerald Way". The Emerald Way refers to that moment in life when a pivotal choice must be made – to choose the way that is customary and expected of us – or to head down the overgrown hidden path leading to the unknown."

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant. Some 800,000 light-years across compared to the Milky Way's diameter of 100,000 light-years or so, it has around 1 trillion stars. That's about 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way. 
Part of an investigation to understand how galaxies can grow to such enormous sizes, UGC 2885 was also part of An Interesting Voyage and astronomer Vera Rubin's pioneering study of the rotation of spiral galaxies. Her work was the first to convincingly demonstrate the dominating presence of dark matter in our universe."

Chet Raymo, “The Still Small Voice”

“The Still Small Voice”
by Chet Raymo

"There is a power in nature, restless and terrible- storm, wildfire, earthquake, tidal wave. There is a delicacy too, to which we attend with a more perceptive eye and ear- the woolly bear caterpillar in the grass, the red-tailed hawk circling high and silent above the meadow, the six-dotted shadow of the water strider on the bottom of the pond. I think of lines from a poem of Grace Schulman, a poem called “In Place of Belief”:

“...I would eavesdrop, spy,
and keep watch on the chance, however slight,
that the unseen might dazzle into sight.”

Listening. Watching. Waiting admidst the clamor of strident certainity for the still small voice. Waiting for the unseen to dazzle into sight. Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science, once wrote, "It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it is beyond our reach." Reaching. Groping. Evavesdroping. Four centuries after Galileo, the world is still beset by those who claim access to ultimate sources of knowledge- divine revelation through tradition, holy books, or prophets. If there is a fundamental way to divide people in the world today it is into those who know and those who grope.

In the southern hemisphere summer of 1848, at age twenty-three, Thomas Huxley was sailing Australian waters as Assistant Surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake. He was head-over-heels in love with a remarkable young women he had met Down Under, and drifting into the skepticism about matters of religion he would later dub "agnosticism." Other than young Henrietta "Nettie" Heathorn, the main thing on his mind was jellyfish, of which he had netted hundreds. As the ship sailed up the Australian coast he worked at sorting out the relationships between his many specimens, and between the jellyfish and other marine organisms. Huxley's biographer Adrian Desmond writes: "Nettie, a sensible girl who liked Schiller and penned love poems, must have asked 'Why jellyfish?' And he must have led her self-importantly from these pulsing 'nastinesses' to the great problem of existence, contrasting the tiny truths of creation with the great sandcastle sophistries for which men were willing to die. The tiny truths were real bricks which would build a palatial foundation to Truth. They were stanzas of Nature's great poem; and only by reciting the ultimate sonnet could we gain a rational set of mores and a real meaning to life."

The tiny truths of creation! Huxley was convinced that we have something to learn about the creation and ourselves by studying the lowliest blobs of protoplasm afloat in the sea. The great truths, if they are to be found, will be discovered in the Book of Nature, as a patient accumulation of individually minute observations. For Huxley, the only knowledge worth having was secular, not theological, and "was not to be delegated by episcopal patrons, but seized by plebeian hands." His jellyfish represented common knowledge - groping, partial, tentative - the still small voice, by and for the common man.”

"Real Church Sign"

 
"Oh yeah, we're fine, thanks for asking..."

The Daily "Near You?"

Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear The Mask "

"We Wear The Mask"

 "We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!"

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Attitude..."

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes. "
- Charles Swindoll

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/19/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: Always Have The High Ground! And Expect THIS"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/19/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
Always Have The High Ground! And Expect THIS"

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right; It IS a 'Poison-Death Shot'” (Excerpt)

"The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right; 
It IS a 'Poison-Death Shot'” (Excerpt)
by Mike Whitney

“I’ll do one more mind experiment with you: If everyone on the planet were to get Covid and not get treated, the death-rate globally would be less than half a percent. I’m not advocating for that, because 35 million people would die. However, if we follow the advice of some of the global leaders – like Bill Gates who said last year said “7 billion people need to be vaccinated” – then the death-rate will be over 2 billion people! SO, WAKE UP! THIS IS WORLD WAR 3! We are seeing a level of malevolence that we haven’t seen in the history of humanity!” Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Author of The Zelenko “Early Treatment” Protocol that saved thousands of Covid-19 patients. (“Zelenko schools the Rabbinic Court”, Rumble; start at 11:45 minutes)."
Please view this complete article here:
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