"Get Prepared for 2022"

"Get Prepared for 2022"

by Robert W Malone MD, MS

"Normalcy bias refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations." 

– Wikipedia

"Below, Jill and I offer some very basic advice - some of it we personally are doing now. This is practical stuff that we are thinking about, just as we included in the book that published on Amazon in February 2020 when we anticipated the coming impact of COVID-19. Our intention is to help our friends and neighbors to prepare and protect themselves. For a few of the more extreme measures listed, we are (personally) in a “wait and see” mode.

The thing is to be aware of broad global trends, and to use your own judgement. Do not rely on the legacy media to tell you what to think and how to respond. They are not your friends, and if we have learned one thing from the past two years it is that the legacy media cannot be trusted to tell the truth. They will spin everything in whatever way the government (or the World Economic Forum) wants them to say. We do not want to sound like alarmists, and are not predicting the “end times”, but we suggest that it will just be good home and farm practice to take a little time and invest some resources to prepare in case things take a turn for the worse.

What all of the information that we are seeing predicts is that the historic levels of inflation are likely to continue and may well accelerate. That means that a dollar saved today is going to be worth less tomorrow. And we now know that the Overlords have no problems weaponizing the current fiat currency-based banking and finance system for political purposes. Frankly, here on the farm, we are torn about what to do in terms of financial management. So as usual, we try to think global and act local. In our case, that translates to sinking cash into upgrading farm infrastructure - fences, buildings etc. using local sawmills and skilled labor. We recommend that you do your own diligence and thinking about how you and your family should plan and adapt.

Our “preparedness” list:

● Keep your cars close to filled with gas or diesel. Fuel prices will go up and availability will go down.

● If you keep a diesel tank for your rural farm, keep it filled.

● If you have liquid petroleum, keep the tanks well stocked. Also, if you have a

● Bar-be-que, keep the tanks full or charcoal on hand. That way there is a way to cook and boil water.

● If you have a fireplace, make sure you have a supply of wood or fuel - if it is still cold in your area.

● If you have a generator (for you rural folks), make sure it is working and has fuel.

● Now is the time to spend your money wisely. Despite the inflation, having savings in some form of liquid assets provides security. Our friends that are finance specialists are advising us that a major economic disruption is likely, and that in those situations (wall street crash, for example), cash is king.

● Consider buying used. Particularly for big items.

● Have back-up systems in place. Such as data storage (disk drives, icloud, etc). Be prepared for internet disruptions.

● Do not expect to see the price of cars to come down - availability of new cars will continue to be low.

●Supply chains/availability for computers, machines, electronics, car parts, etc. will be disrupted (even more than they already are).

● Keep a little cash at home.

● Keep your credit up and your card balances low - when the economy gets tough, loans become harder to get.

● Airplane tickets will go up. If you know about upcoming travel, book now.

● Keep the basics well stocked. Make sure you have supplies to live comfortably for at least two weeks, it not more.

● For imported items, be prepared for them to become harder to come by, and adjust accordingly by both stocking up when possible and/or finding substitutions. Just to illustrate in our case, supply chain for tractor parts has become a problem.

● If you are a “prepper”, this may be the time to re-evaluate and re-stock.

● Keep water in the house. We can and should expect electric grid issues - unknown where they will occur and for how long. For me, that means a 3 day supply drinking water for people and animals. Also, a bucket or source of water kept near the house for flushing toilets.

● So just keep the basics on hand, and prepare for black and brown outs. They may or may not happen, but be prepared.

● Work on your metabolic health. That means working on weight and getting more exercise.

●Vitamin D3 (yes, make sure your blood levels are high enough), Zinc and a good multi-vitamin are important. If you need a primer or have been living under a rock, go to the FLCCC website for more information.

● Don’t let your prescriptions and medications run low.

● Use urgent care centers, instead of hospitals. 1) the wait time and cost is generally lower and 2) COVID policies are still in place - hospitals are still not safe places and should be avoided, unless acutely ill. Luckily, we have lots of choices for alternatives in the USA. Staying healthy is the best way to stay out of hospitals.

● Seek alternative news sources. Do not rely on a single source for information.

● The US government will give us a load of propaganda in times of stress. Listen with a “critical ear” and remember that the objectivity of most social media and search engines have been compromised.

●Most main stream media has been infiltrated with government spooks (see Glenn Greenwald’s article on this). Often what the media reports is not accurate or at least is incomplete. I also highly recommend Greenwald’s Substack as a good primary news source, along with Bannon’s war room. As an aside, I just read an interesting piece on US war propaganda here.

● As an aside, in the case of an Internet black-out or brown out, many are building AM and ham radio capabilities. Even now, AM radio - some of which is broadcast from out of country (such as Mexico), is a good place for news in a major emergency, if other sources are down.

●COVID and health related information is still being withheld. The US government has had total regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Do not rely on main stream news sources as your primary information source for COVID.

Be flexible.

Community - keep an eye on how you can help your neighbors and friends. Particularly those who are elderly, frail and/or isolated. Feel free to write what you are doing to prepare for the “worst” while hoping for the best.

For now, unless the government says otherwise, the best thing we can all do is live our lives. Keep yourself busy doing what you love. Whether it be hiking, reading, gardening, going to events, church, volunteering, whatever. Don’t isolate yourself from your family and friends. It is through our connections to others that we remain centered. Remember the teaching of Dr. Matttias Desmet- the root cause of mass formation psychosis is social isolation. Free floating anxiety is not good for our health or mental wellbeing - it is how we fall under the spell of the mass formation hypnosis. So, live your life - just be a bit more prepared to whatever bad may happen.

Be that leader for your family and friends. Stay connected. Stay strong. Stay centered. Be prepared. And please be well, friends."

- https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/

"Massive Price Increases At Family Dollar! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 3/2/22:

"Massive Price Increases At Family Dollar! What's Next?"

"In today's vlog we are at Family Dollar with empty shelves everywhere! We are here to check out a massive increase in prices, and a massive food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Commodities Have Gone PARABOLIC! This Is What You Should Be Doing Now"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/2/22:

"Commodities Have Gone PARABOLIC! 

This Is What You Should Be Doing Now"

- https://traderschoice.net/about-traders-choice/

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen,"Everybody Knows"

Full screen recommended.

Leonard Cohen,"Everybody Knows"

"How It Really Is"

 

"A Mean Reversion"

"A Mean Reversion"

by Bill Bonner

"That's life,

(That's life)

That's what all the people say,

You're riding high in April, shot down in May.

But I know I'm gonna change that tune

When I'm back on top, back on top in June."

~ Frank Sinatra, “That’s Life”

Youghal, Ireland - "Ouch! Our small holdings of Russian stocks are down almost 60% so far this year. But you’re probably wondering: what are we doing investing in Russian stocks in the first place? Ah, dear reader… let us explain.

As we’ve seen, the markets move in great, generational sweeps from high to low and back to high again. The general rule (and we’re not divulging any trade secrets here) is to buy low, and sell high. Many people have tried it the other way around, but the results have been disappointing.

We bought Russian stocks as part of a special program – mostly for fun – in which we invest in the worst-performing markets, counting on ‘reversion to the mean’ and ‘contrarianism’ to turn them around. After all, a single company can go down and never get up again. So can an entire industry. But not a whole country. Often beset by worries, nevertheless, they tend to survive.

Horsesh*t Predictions: In 1900, there was a major industry involved in cleaning the horse manure from city streets. New York, for example, had an estimated 50,000 horses, producing 15 to 35 pounds of manure, each, per day. That was 2.5 million pounds per day. The street cleaners were unable to keep up with it. One ‘expert’ forecast that London’s streets would soon be buried under 9 feet of manure. That was the great climate disaster of 1900… and it was, well, horsesh*t.

So too were the many crises and delusions to come along later. Child labor in the factories was a bugaboo in the early 1900s. Then came a war ‘to end war.’ A “permanent plateau” in the stock market was the forecast of the greatest economic expert of the era, Irving Fisher, in 1929. Bolshevism was seen as a threat to mankind in the 1930s, 1940s… followed by communism in the 1950s. In the 1960s, leading economists were still predicting that the centrally planned Soviet Economy would overtake the US. In the ‘70s, climatologists were concerned about ‘global cooling.’ In the ‘80s, Japan’s model of government-led capitalism seemed unstoppable. Then came the dot.com bubble… in which it was predicted that growth rates would now speed up because the new Internet made the world’s knowledge available to everyone. Why live in darkness, when the light switch was now just a click away?

Then we discovered ‘terrorists’ in our midst… followed by Ben Bernanke’s hallucination: “We may not have an economy on Monday,” said he, in 2008. More recently, Covid was advertised as though it was the Great Plague… and now, the Russians are threatening our western civilization.

But since the advent of the 21st century, US GDP growth rates have been cut in half. War is still in the news. Experts believe the world is heating up. Japan seems to have fallen into a permanent, on-again, off-again, slump. Bolshevism has disappeared almost everywhere, except perhaps on US university campuses. Terrorists, too, have practically disappeared from the headlines. The economy is still in business. Covid has left more people on Planet Earth than it found. And child labor? In the 50 states, we can scarcely find a factory for anyone to labor in.

From these facts, laid down before us like stepping stones across a woodland stream, we could probably take a leap to many different insights. But rather than risk a slip, we will merely conclude that ‘things change.’ ‘Tout casse, tout passe,’ as the French say. Everything keeps moving… the tides ebb and flow, as the ancient rhythms of life continue. You’re riding high in April; shot down in May. That’s life.

Most of the People, Most of the Time: Russian stocks were shot down long ago. But they didn’t die. Rarely does a whole country go out of business. Instead, it goes up and down. When we bought them, Russian stocks were among the most unloved equities on the planet. And yet, they were real companies, operating in a real country… with very sophisticated engineers… a large domestic market and all of Europe just a pipeline away. And now, they are even cheaper.

But wait. Russia is a pariah. Russians are ‘bad guys.’ The world has turned against them. And Russian assets are stranded, doomed. Yesterday, the Russian stock market was closed. In New York, the losses mounted up so high, trading in Russian shares was halted. But a few Russian stocks and ETFs still traded in London… and it was a bloodbath. The two leading Russian stock ETFs dropped 25% each. Russian bonds, too, have collapsed; they are now selling for about 33 cents on the dollar. The Russian ruble is losing value on world markets; in Russia, the physical currency is hard to get, with long lines of people trying to make withdrawals. And Sberbank, whacked by sanctions and thought to be near bankruptcy, lost 75% of its value.

Did investors overreact? Did politicians? In private life, most people get along tolerably well. They pass through intersections without damage. If they earn sixpence, they spend sixpence, not more. They grumble, but render unto Caesar that which he asks.

But in public life, most people are wrong, most of the time, about most everything. Humans take their cues from others, especially their leaders. They go to restaurants that are popular… read the books that others are reading… and wear the clothes they’ve seen on their friends and influencers. They tend to bunch up, unite behind jackass leaders, trample each other in a stampede, and pay too much for their favorite investments.

But there’s always more to the story; eventually, it comes out… In the short run, says Warren Buffett, the stock market is a ‘voting machine.’ The mob votes for stocks like it votes for politicians – electing loudmouth buffoons and slick frauds. The contrarian takes the other side of the trade. He votes for the underdog, and waits for June."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

○

Frank Sinatra, “That’s Life”

Must Watch! Greg Hunter, "Casualties Worse than WWI & WWII Combined"

"Casualties Worse than WWI & WWII Combined"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his analysis shows the world is entering into a huge war cycle that could last for many years. Nenner says, “The war cycle is such that there is great danger for a huge war. What I have been writing about is the big danger that Russia, Iran and China will get together. China is watching how we deal with Ukraine before they start with Taiwan. I think that is the big one. The West is in disarray, and it does not have a line on where to go or what to do. This war cycle is going to be bad, and I’ll tell you why. We do price targets on markets and war cycles, and if you look at the price targets, it tells me that the casualties are going to be much higher than in the First and Second World War. So, it’s not going to be a joke.”

Nenner says his cycles are telling him the casualties in the next war could top 175 million. Nenner also sees that world leaders are not taking this seriously and points out, “What’s going on in this country (America), what are they busy with and what is it compared to a nuclear war? Nothing. Even Biden’s decisions now are based on public relations. If the United States were independent with oil, like it was before with the pipeline and like Trump pushed, we would not be in this situation that oil could go up another $50 per barrel. It looks like now oil can go to $150 per barrel, and it can even get to $250 per barrel.”

War abroad is not the only thing to look out for. Nenner says, “I think there is going to be a lot of civil unrest. When Rome was burning, and we are talking about 2,000 years ago, the Senators were discussing if angels were male or female. This is while Rome was burning. This world is burning, and we are discussing now what kind of a sign you have to put on a public restroom. It’s the same situation. Nobody takes the lead in the big situations. The cycle for civil unrest has just turned up, and it’s going to get much worse. You can imagine if Biden loses to Trump (in 2024), what is going to happen over here? I have never seen people so much on the edge. Look at what going on with masks. People are ready to kill you because you disagree on what you think about masks.”

Nenner thinks the stock market can go down in the next leg to “15,000 on the DOW.” After that, there would be more downside pain in stocks to follow over the next few years. Nenner is still forecasting the Dow to bottom out around 5,000. Nenner thinks the U.S. dollar cycle is headed down, while interest rates are headed up. Meanwhile, Nenner predicts the bond market will tank, but it’s getting a little bounce at the moment. Nenner sees inflation sticking around for some time to come and gold going up in a long-term cycle starting in earnest mid-April. (There is much more in the 30-minute interview.)"

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One

 with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner.

- https://rumble.com/

There is free information and analysis on CharlesNenner.com.

"America’s 'Unipolar' Moment Is Over"

"America’s 'Unipolar' Moment Is Over"

by Byron King

Editor’s note: The world changed forever on Feb. 24, 2022. America’s post-Cold War “unipolar” moment has ended. That’s the argument of former naval officer Byron King, who served as an aide to the Chief of Naval Operations, the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Navy. Today, Byron breaks it all down for you.

"First, a necessary formality: As a retired U.S. Navy officer, I’m obliged to tell you that what follows are personal opinions. I do not speak for the Navy, Department of Defense or U.S. government. Having said that, let’s roll… Last week - Feb. 24, 2022 - marked the end of America’s post-Cold War, so-called “unipolar” era.

That is, American military hegemony is now over. Russia has reasserted its role as a global great power. Russia saw a critical threat embodied in the idea of Ukraine in NATO, and the country acted. Diplomacy failed, and Russia’s President Putin and his generals rolled the tanks. Wise or unwise? Time will tell. It depends on who writes the history books. For now, though, the world has changed. And we have a new war, and not a little one either.

This Ukraine expedition is a major, continental-style European war, underway adjacent to several NATO-aligned nations, all happening in a Texas-sized country with a population of about 44 million.

You Can’t Trust “the News”: Russia is employing a full range of modern combat power. This involves hundreds of thousands of troops; tens of thousands of pieces of mechanized equipment; many thousands of aircraft; incalculable levels of ammunition and all manner of systems in the arenas of electronics, cyber and space.

If you have trouble processing what’s happening, it’s understandable. Whether you’re plain-old Joe or Jane Citizen, or President Biden and his senior staff, this new version of Russia and its application of combat power is unfamiliar, if not unnerving.

Meanwhile, and with this in mind, it’s critical to understand that essentially all “war news” and imagery you see comes at you in a highly filtered manner. Most stories in Western news originate from the Ukraine side and are processed through various U.S./NATO/European government and corporate-level outlets. That is, you are NOT seeing Russian accounts of either the lead-up to or conduct of military operations.

Most initial reports in war are wrong. They tend to be random and based merely on where someone happened to be at a certain time. Basically, the “front-line news” is a collection of sequential anecdotes that cumulatively fail to tell the broad story.

The Broad Story: OK, so what is this “broad story” of which I speak? Well, let’s look at a map from one leading outlet that typically sets the narrative in the U.S. and West in general, The New York Times. “Russian Gains in Ukraine,” per The New York Times:

Here, the Times shows Russian incursions (in red) into Ukraine. To casual observers, unschooled in concepts of military operations, it appears that Russian troops have not moved far, just sporadic advances along borderlands. Meanwhile, other Western news accounts (New York Times and many others) describe how Russian columns are being held up by stiff resistance, or for lack of fuel or supplies, or by effective Ukrainian counterattacks.

Well, no doubt the Russians have taken losses, even serious losses in more than a few locales and engagements. There’s online video of entire supply columns torn to shreds, and wrecked tanks, crashed helicopters and jets and much more.

Plus, accounts of Russian units stalled for lack of fuel, which indicates problems with logistics if not Ukrainian sabotage in rear areas. But anecdotes don’t explain the operational story. Here’s a different map from a Ukrainian source that does a better job to display broad, operational information.

Are the Russians Really Losing? The guy who prepared this map is not a military expert, but his rough drawings are good enough to explain quite a bit. The map reveals Russia’s concept of operation far differently, as compared with The New York Times’ map.

In essence, instead of a hit-or-miss scatter of Russian incursions along the borders, this map clarifies the operational plan: broad movements into Ukraine along wide fronts north, east and south. From the north, Russian combat power moved south toward Kyiv, displayed on the left part of the map. Evidently the Russian army is setting up for an encirclement and eventual surrender or capture. On that, we’ll have to wait and see.

Note that Russian forces have bypassed most large cities (blue circles). Russian forces just surround them and will either accept surrender or capture them later on – shades of Grozny, if you followed that operation in the late 1990s.

Over east, the operational plan is clear. Russian forces have moved south to positions behind Ukrainian forces that have long been arrayed to confront Luhansk and Donetsk. And from the south Russians have moved north from Crimea and via coastal landings on the north side of the Sea of Azov. (Note that the coastal city of Mariupol is surrounded as well.) Here’s the point: Russian forces have effectively encircled the bulk of Ukraine’s army, which is positioned in those eastern regions.

The Russian “Kill Box”: Now, the question is whether or not Ukrainian forces (blue dashes) can exit from this fast-closing Russian pincer movement. And to be militarily frank it may already be too late. There’s a massive Russian encirclement in progress. Even if Russian forces don’t totally close the gap, that north-south stretch west of Ukrainian forces is what we call a “kill box.” Russian artillery and missiles can easily blanket the entire space with firepower.

Looking ahead just a few days, Ukraine’s military power in the east will be totally surrounded and trapped, like in a giant version of Stalingrad. Ukrainian commanders and troops will have the bitter choice to fight and be crushed, or to offer an orderly surrender.

Now, let’s reconsider those feel-good videos of Ukraine citizens mixing Molotov cocktails and practicing with AK-47s back in Kyiv. It doesn’t matter. For them, it’s over because Russia’s plan is to win the war in the east by wrecking Ukraine military power in the field. We can speculate over whether Russia will occupy the entire eastern region of Ukraine, for example all lands east of the Dnieper River. That remains to be seen. Does Russia need the farmland? Or would it make a good buffer zone for Russia proper? Time will tell. For now though, let’s return to larger, geostrategic issues.

It Takes Two to Tango: Again, it’s critical to understand that America’s unipolar moment has just ended. Russia is now able and willing to throw its military weight around, and its conventional forces are immensely powerful despite what you might hear from mainstream media. (They’re all drunk, their equipment stinks, blah, blah. NO!)

From the outset, Russia wanted U.S./European guarantees that Ukraine would never become part of NATO, and assurances not to place powerful weapons near Russian borders. It was a mirror image of the U.S. and Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963. But in a feat of truly idiotic diplomacy, the U.S. and NATO turned Russia down and now we have a war.

In response to the war, the U.S./West have imposed sanctions on Russia, including restrictions on access to SWIFT banking channels. Well, we’ll see how it unfolds because Russia and China have long anticipated this and they have a backdoor system to clear accounts, a Plan B so to speak.

Of course, it’s possible that sanctions will backfire against the West. Russia can curtail airline overflight rights, and thus disrupt travel and commerce with Asia and elsewhere. And Russia can curtail oil and gas exports to the West, driving up energy prices. Or curtail exports of critical materials like aerospace-grade titanium, or even the elemental gas neon which is critical for manufacturing silicon chips.

And what happens if (when?) Russia – and perhaps China – team up to create a new, gold-backed global currency that undercuts dollar hegemony? Jim Rickards has discussed this for well over a decade, and it’s definitely in the cards. So, like the fate of Kyiv and much else, we’ll just have to wait and see. Russia has planned this war for a long time, and the maps reveal deep operational thinking at work. All this while America’s 30-year era of unipolarity is over. There’s a different world unfolding."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Life..."

"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."

- Alysha Speer

"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."

- Scott Turow

"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."

- Andrew Klavan

Gerald Celente, "Unite For Peace Or Die For War"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 3/1/22:

"Unite For Peace Or Die For War"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"Panic Buying Bursts In China: Millions Rush To Hoard As Shortages Hit Food And Medicine Supplies"

Full screen recommended.

"Panic Buying Bursts In China: Millions Rush 

To Hoard As Shortages Hit Food And Medicine Supplies"

by Epic Economist

"A new wave of panic buying is fast spreading around the world as shortages become more extensive amid the worsening global tensions. In China, the threat of another lockdown in the city of Hong Kong is leaving supermarket shelves empty, as residents rush to stock up on food and medicine before they are required to stay confined at home.

In several countries of Europe, including France and the U.K., people have been panic buying gas in anticipation of fuel shortages and rising prices. Meanwhile, in the United States, the supply chain is at risk of further disruptions. Experts say that companies should brace for cyberattacks and a breakdown of domestic supply chains as Eastern nations retaliate against Western sanctions. Already, local reports have revealed that Americans are stocking up daily necessities to prepare for soaring inflation amid a potential escalation of the conflict. This week, consumers from all around the globe started panic buying and hoarding supplies in preparation for challenging days and weeks.

In Hong Kong, residents have wiped out supermarket shelves amid fears of compulsory mass testing and a city-wide lockdown. One resident told the paper that he had spent the last four days trying to get groceries through a popular supermarket’s online delivery service without success. A fresh SCMP report exposed that a wide range of goods, including eggs, pork, vegetables, bread, and shelf-stable items were sold out at most of the city’s stores. SCMP also highlighted that meat was in especially short supply after two local processing plants were forced to shut down for disinfection when workers tested positive at one of them. One local butcher surnamed Lai told SCMP that he has not received any fresh meat for weeks, and consumers are getting increasingly frustrated with the situation. "It's the worst I've ever seen in 20 years of business," the 42-year-old said.

On Monday, the government released a statement saying that food deliveries would not be interrupted and urged people not to start panic buying. But analysts argued that uncertainty and distrust were fuelling consumer habits."We have so many questions but all answers are 'to be confirmed'," Chan Ka-lok, an international politics scholar at Baptist University, wrote on social media. "Rush to buy and stock up, let the people decide how to live their life,” he added.

Tom Grundy, the editor of the Hong Kong Free Press news website, described the latest panic buying as "a massive failure of government communications". "Rules are changing every few days, u-turns, botched stats, poor data disclosure," he wrote on Twitter. Users revealed that exceedingly long lines are being formed at supermarkets all across the city, while others said that there was nothing left in their local stores, so they were resorting to online purchases to stock up on essential items.

Meanwhile, in France and the U.K., drivers are afraid that the worsening global conflict is about to trigger a major jump in gas prices and started panic buying fuel and lining up their cars outside gas stations. In both countries, gasoline prices have recently hit a record high, and regulatory agencies are alerting about yet another spike in the coming days as global oil prices soar to extraordinary levels. One driver wrote on Twitter: “Supply and demand! Please don’t go panic buying fuel because I really can’t afford it as it is.”Several European stations started to impose limits on the amount of fuel each driver could buy. In many countries, there were also reports of people panic-buying for food supplies and cash machines running out of money.

In America, local news is also reporting long lines at gas stations, with many locations completely running out of fuel as panic buying sets in. The most recent memory of a panic buying frenzy for gas in the U.S. amounts to just four weeks ago, when Texans faced snowstorms and freezing temperatures, in an event they called “Icemageddon”. Last year, arctic temperatures led to broken pipelines and interrupted the distribution of water and the supplies of energy all across the state. Both at the pump and stores all across the country, people are stocking up necessities while they still can. On the other hand, supply chain experts are cautioning that Western sanctions are likely to spark Russian retaliation and consequently led to further supply chain bottlenecks, shortages, and higher inflation. Things are getting increasingly turbulent all over the globe, and people are just realizing that things are never going to come back to where they used to be. The worst is yet to come, and we all should prepare accordingly."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Musical Interlude: Paul Mauriat, "Love is Blue" (1968)

Full screen recommended.

Paul Mauriat, "Love is Blue" (1968)

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.

 

Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html

○

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in

 heaven where the love of our lost ones pours 

through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." 

~ Eskimo saying

Chet Raymo, “To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”

“To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”

by Chet Raymo

“What is more gentle than a wind in summer?

What is more soothing than a pretty hummer

That stays one moment in an open flower,

And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing

In a green island, far from all men's knowing?

More healthful than the leafiness of dales?

More secret than a nest of nightingales?”

What indeed? The poet Keats answers his own questions: Sleep. Soft closer of our eyes. I've reached an age when I find myself occasionally nodding off in the middle of the day, an open book flopped on my chest. Also, more lying awake in the dark hours of the night, re-running the tapes of the day. And, in the fragile moments of nighttime unconsciousness, dreaming dreams that reach all the way back to my childhood.

I've read the books about sleep and dreaming. There has been lots of research, but not much consensus about why we sleep or dream. Sleep seems to be pretty universal among animals. Who knows whether animals dream. Do we sleep to restore the soma? To knit the raveled sleeve of care? Process memories? Find safety from predators? After 50 years of work, the sleep researcher William Dement opined: "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."

The Latin poet Martial supposed that sleep "makes darkness brief," a worry-free way to get through the scary hours of the night when wolves howl at the mouth of the cave (and goblins stir under the bed). That hardly explains my dropping off after lunch into a dreamless stupor that I neither desire nor welcome.

“Low murmurer of tender lullabies!

Light hoverer around our happy pillows!

Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!”

Not quite! There are the nightmares too. The tossing and turning. The hoo-has. But enough of this idle speculation. I'm getting sleepy...”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"A Perpetual Illusion..."

"Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart."

- Blaise Pascal

"Reading John Gray In War"

"Reading John Gray In War"

by Andy Owen

"All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s 

inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

- Blaise Pascal (1623-62)

"I first read the English philosopher John Gray while sitting in the silence of the still, mid-afternoon heat of Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia" (2007), Gray showed how the United States’ president George W Bush and the United Kingdom’s prime minister Tony Blair framed the ‘war on terror’ (which I was part of) as an apocalyptic struggle that would forge the new American century of liberal democracy, where personal freedom and free markets were the end goals of human progress. Speaking at the Sydney Writers’ Festival in 2008, Gray highlighted an important caveat to the phrase ‘You can’t have an omelette without breaking eggs,’ which is sometimes used, callously, to justify extreme means to high-value ends. Gray’s caveat was: ‘You can break millions of eggs and still not have a single omelette.’ In my two previous tours of Iraq, I had seen first-hand – as sectarian hatred, insurgency, war fighting, targeted killings and the euphemistically named collateral damage tore apart buildings, bodies, communities and the shallow fabric of the state – just how many eggs had been broken and yet still how far away from the omelette we were.

There was no doubt that Iraq’s underexploited oil reserves were part of the US strategic decision-making, and that the initial mission in Afghanistan was in response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the US, but both invasions had ideological motivations too. I had started the process to join the British military before 9/11. The military I thought I was joining was the one that had successfully completed humanitarian interventions in the Balkans and Sierra Leone. I believed we could use force for good, and indeed had a duty to do so. After the failure to prevent genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the concept of the ‘responsibility to protect’ was developing, which included the idea that when a state was ‘unable or unwilling’ to protect its people, responsibility shifted to the international community and, as a last resort, military intervention would be permissible. It would be endorsed by all member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2005 but, under the framework, the authority to employ the last resort rested with the UN Security Council, who hadn’t endorsed the invasion of Iraq.

Despite the lack of a UN resolution, many of us who deployed to Iraq naively thought we were doing the right thing. When Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins delivered his eve-of-battle speech to the Royal Irish Battle Group in March 2003, he opened by stating: ‘We go to liberate, not to conquer.’ We had convinced ourselves that, as well as making the region safer by seizing the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), we were there to save the people of Iraq from their own government and replace it with the single best way of organizing all societies: liberal democracy. This feeling was so persuasive that it led to many troops feeling that the Iraqis were somehow ungrateful when they started to shoot at us for invading their country.

By my second tour of Iraq in 2005, it was clear that no WMD would be found and the society that was evolving was far from the one envisaged. Morale was at a low ebb as the gap between the mission and what we were achieving widened. We were stuck in a Catch-22. We would hand over to local security forces when the security situation improved enough for us to do so. However, the security situation couldn’t improve while we were still there. It would improve only if we left. The conditions that would allow us to leave were us already having left. Most troops were stuck inside the wire, their only purpose seemingly to be mortared or rocketed for being there. I was asked why we were there, especially when soldiers witnessed their friends being injured or killed, or saw the destruction of the city we’d come to liberate. They needed meaning, it couldn’t all be pointless. Meaning was found in protecting each other. My team of 30 or so men and women found purpose in trying to collect intelligence on those planting deadly improvised explosive devices along the main routes in and out of the city. Members of both the team before and the team after us were blown up trying to do so.

Much of the criticism levelled at the post-invasion failure focused on the mistake of disbanding the Iraqi state, the lack of post-conflict planning and the lack of resources. There was less focus on the utopian aims of the whole project. But it was only through Gray that I saw the similarities between the doctrines of Stalinism, Nazi fascism, Al-Qaeda’s paradoxical medieval, technophile fundamentalism, and Bush’s ‘war on terror’. Gray showed that they are all various forms (however incompatible) of utopian thinking that have at their heart the teleological notion of progress from unenlightened times to a future utopia, and a belief that violence is justified to achieve it (indeed, from the Jacobins onwards, violence has had a pedagogical function in this process). At first, I baulked at the suggested equivalence with the foot soldiers of the other ideologies. There were clearly profound differences! But through Gray’s examples, I went on to reflect on how much violence had been inflicted throughout history by those thinking that they were doing the right thing and doing it for the greater good. 

A message repeated throughout Gray’s work is that, despite the irrefutable material gains, this notion is misguided: scientific knowledge and the technologies at our disposal increase over time, but there’s no reason to think that morality or culture will also progress, nor – if it does progress for a period – that this progress is irreversible. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the flawed nature of our equally creative and destructive species and the cyclical nature of history. Those I spoke to in Basra needed no convincing that the advance of rational enlightened thought was reversible, as the Shia militias roamed the streets enforcing their interpretation of medieval law, harassing women, attacking students and assassinating political opponents. By the time bodies of journalists who spoke out against the death squads started turning up at the side of the road, Basra’s secular society was consigned to history. Gray points to the re-introduction of torture by the world’s premier liberal democracy during the war on terror as an example of the reversibility of progress. The irreversibility idea emerged directly from a utopian style of thinking that’s based on the notion that the end justifies the means. Such thinking is often accompanied by one of the defining characteristics of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns: hubris.

The myth of progress was a key theme of Gray’s bestseller "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" (2002). There he attacks what he believes is the illusory faith that our species is apart and above the rest of nature, uniquely privileged in the Universe with the gifts of self-consciousness and reason. He attacks the idea of ‘humanity’, saying that ‘there are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions’. Due to the plurality of human needs and illusions, it’s utopian to imagine that any one political system or social order could be universally good for all. For Gray, human nature is an inherent obstacle to advancing ethical or political progress. There’s no end of history as was once proclaimed when the Cold War finished and US hegemony was assured. Instead, our ceaseless attempts to try to find some meaning to life invariably drive us into the embrace of religious belief systems and their secular imitations – and, consequently, to continual conflict. Writing in 2020, Gray highlights that, throughout history ‘killing and dying for nonsensical ideas is how many human beings have made sense of their lives’, and notes the irony of attempting immortality through death.

Gray acknowledges the theories of the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, outlined in his book "The Denial of Death" (1973). Becker believed that human activity is largely driven by unconscious efforts to deny the inevitability of our demise. We invest in activities, institutions and belief systems that we think will allow us to transcend our brief time in the world. Becker wrote: ‘We build character and culture in order to shield ourselves from the devastating awareness of underlying helplessness and terror of our inevitable death.’ The stories we create give us a sense that we’re part of something greater than ourselves, which will continue after we die. 

In Collins’s speech, he placed the invasion of Iraq in an epic context, linking our presence on the ground there to the great stories of our shared past, saying: ‘Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham.’ These stories are the result of what the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal says is our ‘inability to sit quietly in a room alone’. Literature is awash with stories that examine this inability. For me, Herman Melville’s novel "Moby-Dick" (1851) is the exemplar. Melville not only captures the desire of young men to search for meaning and purpose in adventure, but also the role of charismatic individuals in developing a sense of belonging and a shared worldview. Motivated by hate, Ahab causes harm to real entities, his crew, in the name of a fictional creation: the vengeful whale, given an agency it didn’t possess.

For Gray, ‘liberal humanism’ – the belief system that led us to Iraq – is a quasi-religious faith in progress, the subjective power of reason, free markets, and the unbounded potential of technology. He identifies the Enlightenment as the point at which the Christian doctrine of salvation was taken over by a secular idealism that has developed into modern-day liberal humanism. (Gray argues that global capitalism has its origins in positivism, the secular cult influenced by the late-18th-century French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, who believed that science would end all human ills.) Interestingly, Gray identifies the Enlightenment as the point where our utopias became located in the future, rather than in the past or in some fantasy realm, where it was clear they were exactly that: fantasies. With the failures of Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, the climate crisis and now the COVID-19 pandemic, faith in the future utopia that liberal humanism once promised is waning. It’s being replaced by beliefs that again look backwards in history, through the distorting lens of nostalgia, to imagined better times to which we hope to return.

Believing the stories we tell ourselves leads us to suppose that we’re far superior to our fellow creatures, but Gray likens our fate to that of the straw dogs of ancient Chinese rituals that were used as offerings to the gods. During such a ritual, these dogs were treated with the utmost reverence. But when it was over, and they were no longer needed, they were tossed aside. Gray quotes Lao Tzu, the 6th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and founder of the Chinese philosophical tradition of Taoism: ‘Heaven and earth are ruthless and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.’ To many, this vision is too bleak. One review of "Straw Dogs" described Gray as possessing ‘extravagant pessimism’ and the book as so ‘remorselessly, monotonously negative that even nihilism implies too much hope’. A further criticism is that Gray preaches a politics of inaction. He has been asked more than once: if he believes what he claims, how can he get out of bed in the morning? Gray has never bought into the idea that his work outlines a philosophy of pessimism and despair. He has proposed antidotes to the ills he identifies at both the political level and at the level of the individual.

At the political level, in the face of our history of violence, Gray counsels that we have to abandon the belief in utopias and instead adopt a form of political realism that accepts that there are moral and political dilemmas for which there are simply no solutions. Building on the work of one of his key influences, the Latvian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Gray proposes that we should aspire to an approach of modus vivendi. This recognizes that there is a plurality of human values that determines many ways of living, and these values – and those that hold them – will inevitably clash. Modus vivendi is the search for a way of living together despite this, embracing the multiple forms of human life as a good thing in itself. While that’s the aim, we must accept that, as many pre-Enlightenment societies did and many non-Western societies still do, the current reality is that war is followed by periods of peace, which are followed by war again. 

Conflict will always play a part in maintaining the uneasy equilibrium in which our competing societies and ideologies find themselves. History makes more sense as a cycle than as a straight line of progress, and there is no right or wrong side of history to be on. This is something that the Afghans I met in Helmand intuitively grasped better than we, the forgetful invaders, did. They saw our arrival as another phase in the ebb and flow of our presence in the region, picking up from the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919. The shifting alliances of tribal and political leaders to meet their own changing needs frustrated our diplomats and military leaders who couldn’t work out whose ‘side’ they were on.

At the individual level, Gray has frequently taken inspiration from our animal cousins, as well as from Taoism, and encouraged us to try to de-attach ourselves from the pressures of feeding our personal narratives and attaining to unreachable overarching purposes. We must renounce the delusion that one’s life is a narrative, that is – an episode in some universal story of progress. Instead, he advocates a more contemplative life, one lived moment to moment, that appreciates the immediate joys of existence in the skin we are in. The last line of "Straw Dogs" asks: ‘Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?’ In his later book "The Silence of Animals" (2013), Gray promises temporary respite from our all-too-human world if, freed of the perpetual need for meaning and transcendence, we become more like other animals. In "Black Mass", Gray writes: ‘Taoists taught that freedom lies in freeing oneself from personal narratives by identifying with cosmic processes of death and renewal.’ The contemplation he advocates isn’t a turning away from the world like those of some Eastern philosophies but one that allows us to turn back to it and embrace its folly.

In his latest book "Feline Philosophy" (2020), Gray goes further than any of his previous work in offering practical advice on how to embrace this folly. As he ponders the essential nature, or soul, of the cat through an examination of the lives of both fictional and historical cats, he compares them to humans and identifies some key lessons we can learn from them. Gray notes that cats live for the sensation of life, not for something they might achieve or not achieve. They have the innocence that Gray believes we would have had before the Fall. They have no concept of striving to become the perfect specimen of their type or attain the good life by approaching the perfection of a divine being (or even a concept of what a divine being would be). The knowledge we received in the Garden of Eden is viewed as unequivocally good by Western liberalism, but it has a downside that religions have always recognized. Without the self-awareness that humankind was gifted by the tree of knowledge, the pressure to find meaning in our life, even in the most desperate circumstances, is removed. The search for meaning is now so hardwired into us that we struggle with the idea that there’s no deeper meaning to find. This explains our desire for conspiracy theories that reveal a hidden order in times of uncertainty, when the precarious and contingent nature of our world is exposed, such as during the current global pandemic.

It is the sensation of life that Gray observes in his feline companions that we lose when we focus on some overarching purpose or commit to ideologies and religions. Gray believes that an acceptance of human limits shouldn’t be seen as a defeat, but rather as a source of wonder and enrichment. He concludes that: ‘The meaning of life is a touch, a scent, which comes by chance and is gone before you know it.’ At the end of the book, Gray offers ‘10 feline hints on how to live well’ that condense the key elements of his thought into pithy maxims, such as ‘Do not look for meaning in your suffering’; ‘Life is not a story’; and ‘Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable.’ The most clearly cat-influenced lesson is perhaps ‘Sleep for the joy of sleeping.’ Yet it’s the penultimate maxim that likely best encapsulates his political philosophy, and the maxim probably least obviously gained from watching cats: ‘Beware of anyone who offers to make you happy.’

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that ‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.’ Gray’s challenge is to bear the how without the why. He concedes that, for many, this task is too much to bear. Gray is sympathetic to those who can’t bear it, and cites the French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne and his recognition that in grief he needed a distraction. The last of Gray’s 10 feline hints states: ‘If you cannot learn to live a little more like a cat, return without regret to the human world of diversion.’ But diversion in the consolations of the ‘mystics, poets and pleasure-lovers’ rather than the utopian thinkers who, as I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, break lives in the name of unobtainable goals.

My need for meaning and purpose, and my desire to be part of something bigger than myself, were likely motivators for joining the military. People assume that it’s the bad experiences soldiers have endured that make it difficult to adjust to life after the military. While this is sometimes true, very often it’s the absence of what soldiers valued that makes the transition difficult – the loss of meaning, sense of purpose and belonging. Those who sign up for service are likely more hard-wired than most to seek these things, making the loss all the keener. Under Gray’s influence, I recognize the difficulty of this loss and have found solace in his advice about how one can aspire to move past these innate human needs. I am not yet living in a way that Gray would approve of, hope for progress is more intoxicating than the dry lessons of history, but I am more selective in my choice of distractions today, and aspire one day to just be able to sit still in a room and live in that scented moment, before it’s gone."

- https://aeon.co/essays/

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! War: Is Russia Going Beyond Ukraine? The Market May Think So"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/1/22:

"Alert! War: Is Russia Going Beyond Ukraine?

 The Market May Think So"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank - Worst Economic Carnage I Have Seen; Banks Prepare For Trouble"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 3/1/22:

"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank - Worst Economic

 Carnage I Have Seen; Banks Prepare For Trouble"

The Daily "Near You?"

Duncan, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"

"Killing Our Dreams"

by Paulo Coelho

"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don't want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what's important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams, we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That's when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat, disappointment and defeat, come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It's death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"How Is This Allowed?"

Full screen recommended. 

"Streets of Philadelphia, True Story What’s Going On"

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"Happening Now: Just hours after a shooting on 3rd Ave in Downtown Seattle, the insanity has returned. This is the stretch between Pike/Pine St. Open air drug use, sales of all kinds of merch, trash everywhere. How is this allowed?"

View video here:

- https://twitter.com/choeshow/

@MayorofSeattle‬; ‪@downtownseattle;‬ @SeattlePD‬

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 "There but for the grace of God, go I." And you...

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Full screen recommended.

"Ex Obscurum"

by Spadecaller

"From emotional turmoil, hatred, and addiction the miracle of recovery begins in this Spadecaller Video entitled "Ex Obscurum" (From Darkness). Featuring original poetry narrated by the author and visual artist, Matthew Schwartz. Composer Samuel Barber's powerful musical score, adopted for the movie Platoon, (Adagio for Strings, Op. 11) sets the background for this spiritual exodus "From Darkness."

"The Sarcastic Realization..."

"Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy

is often the sarcastic realization of inescapable tragedy."

- Bryant H. McGill

"Bank Runs, Bank Closures and Avocado Toast"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly AM 3/1/22:

"Bank Runs, Bank Closures and Avocado Toast"

"There are continued Bank runs, Bank closures and millennials wanting to complain. Life is not fair and we need a trophy, avocado toast and a check. Where does a person get such a break between rest periods? Even airlines are closing."

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical: This Is What You Must Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/1/22:

"Situation Critical: This Is What You Must Know Now"

- https://traderschoice.net

"How It Really Is"

"The State of Our Nation: Things Are Getting Worse, Not Better"

"Never..."

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”

 - Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

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Freely download "The Origins of Totalitarianism" here:

- https://cheirif.files.wordpress.com/