Wednesday, March 23, 2022

"Stupidity, Evil and the Decline of the US"

"Stupidity, Evil and the Decline of the US"
by Doug Casey

"It used to be that America was a country of free thinkers. "Say what you think, and think what you say." That’s an expression you don't hear much anymore. It’s much more like the world of 1984 where everything is "double think." You need to think twice before you say something in public. You think three times before you say something when you're standing in an airport line.

Regrettably, the US is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s become the land of whipped and whimpering dogs that roll over on their backs and wet themselves when confronted with authority. Now, why are Americans this way? Let me give you two reasons - though there are many more.

First, there's a simple absence of virtue. Let’s look at the word virtue. It comes from the Latin vir, which means manly, even heroic. To the Romans, virtues were things like fortitude, nobility and courage. Those virtues are true to the root of the word.

When people think of virtues today they think of faith, hope, charity - which are not related to the word’s root meaning. These may pass as virtues in a religious sense. But, outside a Sunday school, they’re actually actually vices. This deserves a discussion, because I know it will shock many. But I’ll save that for another time.

An absence of virtues and the presence of subtle vices is insinuated throughout society. Worse, overt vices like avarice and especially envy are encouraged. Envy, in particular will become a big vice in the years to come. It’s similar to jealousy, but worse. Jealousy says "You have something I want; I’ll try to take it from you". Envy says "You have something I want. If I can’t take it from you, I’ll destroy it, and hurt you if I can." Jealousy and envy seem to motivate most Democratic Party presidential candidates. No wonder America is in rapid decline.

A second reason is unsound philosophy. The reigning philosophy in the US used to be based on individualism and personal freedom. It's now statism and collectivism. But most people don’t think about philosophy - or even have a consistent worldview. More than ever, they do what seems like a good idea at the time.

The average American has problems. But his rulers are something else again. Most of the people running the US are either knaves or fools. How do we know if we are dealing with a knave or a fool? In other words, are you dealing with somebody who is evil or just stupid? To give a recent, but classic, example, are you dealing with a Dick Cheney or a George W. Bush? Do you prefer the knavish Obama, or the knavish Biden? The foolish Trump, or the foolish Pence. Not much of a real choice anywhere…

At this point, the US resembles the planet Mars, which is circled by two moons, Phobos and Deimos, fear and terror in Greek. The US is also being circled by two moons, Kakos and Chazos, evil and stupidity in Greek. It’s hard to imagine the Founding Fathers having seen that as a possibility.

One of the relatively few laws I believe in is Pareto’s Law. Most people are familiar with it as the 80-20 rule - 20% of the people do 80% of the work, 20% commit 80% of the crime, and so forth. It also applies to character and ethics. Most people - 80% - are basically decent. What about that other 20%? Let's call them potential trouble sources because they can go either way. But 20% of that 20% - 4% - are the sociopaths; they consistently have bad intentions. They’re usually hiding under rocks. But they like to emerge at election time.

In normal times when everything's going along well, they can look normal. They'll deliver the mail, or sell shoes or stocks. They’ll pet the dog, and play softball on weekends. But when circumstances in society get ugly, and reach a certain point, they start evidencing themselves. The rest of the 20% start swinging along with them. That's the place where we are right now in the US. It’s Pareto’s Law in operation.

A lot of people believe in American Exceptionalism. A good argument can be made for America having been exceptional in the past. It’s factually correct that America is the only country founded on the principles of individualism and personal freedom. It was actually different. It was special, even unique. But I don't think it's true anymore.

Of course all the world’s countries like to believe they're special or better than the rest. But they’re only different on the surface, in trivial ways. None - other than America - value individualism and personal freedom as founding virtues. Look at Russia throughout the 20th century. It was a phenomenal nightmarish disaster in Soviet times.

Look at Germany during the ‘30s and ‘40s. China, under Mao for 30 years, was the home of institutionalized, industrial scale mass murder. The same is true in lots of other countries… Cambodia, Rwanda, the Congo. There are dozens of other countries where bloody chaos reigned over the last century. But not the US. It was different.

But what if America has ceased to exist? What if it’s been transformed into just another nation state called the United States, with very different ideals and values? Why should it have a different fate than those other countries? I don't see any reason why that would be the case. But if 80% of Americans are basically decent, well-intentioned people, what is going wrong and why? Let me give you three reasons… although there are many others.

Number one, as I indicated earlier, Americans no longer have any philosophical anchor. They no longer share a national mythos - individualism, personal freedom, free minds, and free markets are now mocked. They may have some nebulous ideas about ethics that they picked up from the Boy Scouts. But they think all political and economic systems - and certainly all cultures - are equally good. The reigning philosophy is a mixture of cultural Marxism, identity politics, anti-male feminism, and anti-white racism. I suppose it was inevitable in a country where a large plurality of people are dumb enough to spend four years and several hundred thousand dollars to be indoctrinated with those values.

The second thing is fear. It’s a reigning emotion in this country among the diminishing middle class. Desperation and apathy characterize the growing lower classes. No wonder they're cemented to the bottom of society. It's a rare person that rises from the lower class because of those attitudes.

How about the upper classes? Their dominant emotions are avarice and arrogance; they think they're superior because they have more money. In many cases they’re rich not because they produce anything. But because they’re cronies, benefiting from the flood of money coming from the Fed, or the avalanche of laws and regulations coming from the Congress and the President.

America is still basically a middle-class country, although becoming less and less that way almost daily. And fear is the dominant emotion of the middle class. Fear of losing everything they have. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear they won’t be able to meet the credit card payments, the car payments, the mortgage payment. Fear they can't afford to send their kids to college - which is a mistake incidentally. But that’s another story. The whole country is driven by fear… and it’s not a good thing. Deimos and Phobos, those two moons circling Mars are now circling the US, along with Kakos and Chazos.

The third, and perhaps most critical reason the US is going downhill - beyond a lack of a philosophical anchor and an atmosphere of fear -is a reflexive belief in government. The United States used to be more like Switzerland, which is by far the most prosperous country in Europe. When you ask the Swiss, "Who's the president of Switzerland?", It's rare that anyone can tell you. It's academic. However, nobody cares. He doesn't do anything. Politics aren’t a big part of their lives.

But today in the US, people have come to view the government as a cornucopia. People expect it to solve all their problems. And that’s a real problem. Government is a genuine growth industry, and it attracts the worst type of people. Government is inevitably where sociopaths - the 4% and the 20% - are drawn. Washington draws sociopaths like a pile of dog droppings draws flies.

It's perfectly predictable. And why is that? Mao said it best, "The power of the state comes out the barrel of a gun." Government is about some people controlling other people. That's what attracts sociopaths, and that's why they go to Washington.

But enough bad news… what is it that makes things better in the world? Well, there are two things.

One is technology. The good news is there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived in all of earth's history previously combined. And they're continually increasing our control of nature. For most people, life is no longer "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", as Hobbes said. Technology is advancing at the rate of Moore’s law. And that improves the standard of living.

The second thing is savings. Individuals, like squirrels, are genetically wired to produce more than they consume. The difference between production and consumption can be saved. That creates capital. And capital enables technology. That creation of wealth should continue, barring a world war. Or most of the world’s governments acting more like Venezuela or Zimbabwe… Which is quite possible. In the looming Greater Depression, most of the real wealth in the world will still exist. It's just going to change ownership. Hopefully, you’ll be among those who aren’t adversely affected."

"Gas Stations Will Run Dry As We Head Into a Depression"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 3/23/22:
"Gas Stations Will Run Dry As We Head Into a Depression"
"We keep talking about raging oil prices. No one is talking about the fact that Russia is a leading exporter of diesel fuel. There are certain areas in the world that are already rationing diesel fuel. This is going to dramatically affect how things are delivered around the world."

The Daily "Near You?"

Fene, Galicia, Spain. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Only Cure..."

"We're all susceptible to it, the dread and anxiety of not knowing what's coming. It's pointless in the end, because all the worrying and the making of plans for things that could or could not happen, it only makes things worse. So walk your dog or take a nap. Just whatever you do, stop worrying. Because the only cure for paranoia is to be here, just as you are."
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

"The Devil’s Work"

"The Devil’s Work"
by The Zman

"There is an old expression that has fallen out of favor in the post-scarcity age, but it may be the key to understanding the current crisis. That expression is, “Idle hands do the Devil’s work.” When people do not have anything productive and useful to do with their time, they are more likely to get involved in trouble and criminality. A variant of this is “The Devil makes work for idle hands.” The idea there is if you want to avoid Old Scratch, then make sure you keep yourself useful to God.

The source of these proverbs is unknown, but variations of them go back to the early middle ages, so it is probable they evolved with Christianity. It is not unreasonable to think the idea is universal to civilization. After all, every human society has had to deal with the idle, lazy, and troublesome. Making sure these people are kept too busy to cause trouble is one of those primary challenges of civilization. Every ruler has known that too many idle young men is bad for his rule.

Even in the smaller context, this is something we instinctively know. In the workplace, people with too much free time get into trouble. If the IT staff has too much free time, they start tinkering around with the stuff that is working and before long that stuff stops working and the system goes down. A big part of what goes on inside the schools is to keep the kids and the teachers busy. Home schoolers have known for years that the learning content is just a few hours a day. The rest is busy work.

The point here is that people of all ages need a purpose, something that occupies their mind and their time. If something useful and productive is not filling that need, then something useless or unproductive will fill the void. For most people this may be a hobby or leisure activity. For others, it often means a useless activity is turned into something important. Elevating the mundane to the level of the critical and then creating drama around the performance of the mundane activity.

This is what we see in our political class. The ruling class of every society has a ceremonial role, a procedural role, and a practical role. Outside of a crisis like a war or natural disaster, the political class is performing its duties in the same way a line worker in a factory preforms his role. In popular government this means the pol shows up at public events. He performs the tasks his office requires like signing papers and casting votes. He helps grease the wheels when they need grease.

Into the 20th century, most of our political offices were part-time jobs. State legislatures met for a short period during the year. Otherwise, the legislators were back home doing their jobs. Executive positions like governor and president were fulltime jobs, as they were in charge of the civil service and in the case of president, commander-in-chief of the military. Within living memory, Washington DC would empty out in the spring and remain empty until the fall when Congress returned.

What we see today is politics at all levels has become a full-time job, but one with less to do when it was considered a part-time job. Congress, for example, is something close to a 24-hour drama now. The politicians and their retinues are now doing politics as a full-time obsession. Yet almost all of what they do is unnecessary. In fact, much of what they do is harmful. Very few things passed by Congress enjoy the support of the majority of the people or even a large plurality.

It is not just that these part-time jobs have been made into full-time obsessions. It is that much of what we used to need from government is now filled by individuals, ad hoc networks, and the private sector. Much of what government does is actually done by private contractors on government contracts. One of the ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the federal workforce has declined relative to the population, while the number of people employed in politics has gone up.

Then there is the fact that much of what government does could be automated or simply eliminated entirely. The services that are required like renewing licenses and paying fees can all be automated. In many cases they have been, but that did not result in fewer people, as we see in the dreaded private sector. Instead, it resulted in more idle hands looking for a purpose. On the political side, much of what Congress does could also be eliminated or automated.

What has happened in the last 30 years is we have grown the idle class at the top of our society and while decreasing their necessity. Much of what goes on in our politics is make work designed to get public attention. Think about it. If the cable news channels were shuttered and the social media platforms run by the oligarchs were closed, what would change in America? Nothing of practical importance. Our world would get quieter and there would be a boom in forgotten hobbies.

American political culture evolved during the Cold War to fight communism and prevent a nuclear war. Those were important tasks that occupied the minds and hands of the political class. Once those things went away, those idle hands searched about for a new crisis. Health care, Gaia worship, Islam and now invisible Nazis have been used to keep the idle hands of the political class busy. In the process, the political class has been driven mad and is threatening the rest of society."

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! What Now?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, AM 3/23/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Take Action Now! Expect Commodity Prices To SURGE Along With Energy And Food Shortages."

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/23/22:
"Take Action Now! Expect Commodity Prices To 
SURGE Along With Energy And Food Shortages."

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Life You Have Left..."

“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.
Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
~ Leo Babauta

"If They Keep Pushing For WW3, They Might Get It"

"If They Keep Pushing For WW3, They Might Get It"
by Martin Armstrong

"One must wonder when Zelensky will stop sacrificing his people for no reason. He has done his best to drag the world into World War III trying to visit devastation upon the entire world. Both China and Russia have hypersonic missiles. The US has admitted that China’s hypersonic missile flew around the world and then hit its target. The US has been unable to create an equivalent and these type of weapons are FIRST STRIKE meaning they cannot be defeated.
This is not about supporting Zelensky v Putin. This is about preventing World War III. For indeed, as Einstein said, he did not know what weapons would exist for World War III. We are witnessing that with supersonic missiles and biological weapons that can terminate specific ethnic groups on a grand scale (see latest James Bond Movie). But Einstein imagined that World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.

Zelensky went on Ukrainian television channels and said he would be willing to discuss a commitment from Ukraine to not seek NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a guarantee of Ukraine’s security. While that complies with the Belgrade Agreement of 1991 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons promising to not join NATO and remain neutral, he is still refusing to comply with the Minsk Agreement of 2014 where he was to honor the democratic right of the Donbas to vote on their own sovereignty since they were Russians and Ukraine was merely created by the Soviet Union in drawing borders.

Zelensky said: “It’s a compromise for everyone: for the West, which doesn’t know what to do with us with regard to NATO, for Ukraine, which wants security guarantees, and for Russia, which doesn’t want further NATO expansion.”

Why he just refuses to comply with the Minsk Agreement seems to be a matter of Ukrainian Nazi pride that they simply hated Russians, Jews, and everyone in Poland? The refusal to allow democratic solutions in Ukraine appears to be instigated by the American Neocons have been pushing for war since they instigated the Cuba Missile Crisis with the failed Bay of Pigs. Cuba then struck a deal with Russia for nuclear weapons to prevent the Neocons from invading Cuba again. It has long been suspected that Kennedy was assassinated for standing up against the Neocons.

The hypocrisy of the Neocons is just in your face. On March 21st, 2022, spokesman Ned Price said in justifying war against Russia: ”the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze. In this case, Ukraine has chosen a democratic path, a path – a Western-looking path, and that is something that, clearly, President Putin was not willing to countenance.”

The Neocons had no problem violating that very principle with the excuse to invade Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, their attempted invasion justification against Syria and Cuba. Allowing Ukraine to join NATO would be no different than Russia supplying nukes to Cuba. Perhaps these Neocons were addicted to Battleship as kids and then want to play that on a real world level. The scary part is that both China and Russia have their versions of Neocons who are all striving to create World War III.
Then Japan wonders why after following the West down this Neocon rat hole imposing sanction on Russia, why would Russia then break off all peace treaty talks with Japan? Do we have the same level of incompetent Japanese politicians as in the rest of the West? Are all of these politicians plain outright stupid? Do they really thing they can punish Russia and there will be no response? I have never in my 40 year career dealing with governments have I EVER witnessed such incompetence."

"Bonfire of the Governments," Part Two

"Bonfire of the Governments," Part Two
by Robert Gore


"Think of an activity that’s essential for a government bent on subjugation: censorship and the suppression of expression. Governments on both sides of the present conflict have further jacked up their efforts to control expression from the plateau reached with Covid. Russia just passed a law imposing a 15-year prison sentence for anyone spreading “fake news” about its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and European governments and lapdog legacy and social media have blanketed populaces with official propaganda. Just as with Covid, questions and deviations from the approved narrative are stifled, censored, and punished.

It was all so much easier back in the post World War II, pre-internet good old days. In the U.S. and Europe, there were several “papers of record” that had been infiltrated by intelligence agencies, and state-licensed radio and television stations. In the Soviet Union there wasn’t even that, just a few official propaganda organs.

Yet even with that degree of control, government repression wasn’t wholly effective. In the U.S. the truth got out about the Vietnam War. The Soviets could stop everything but people talking with each other, albeit in hushed tones. The cynical humor became legendary. (“They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”) Humor always contains an element of truth, which is why statists can’t do humor. The number of citizens red-pilled to Soviet corruption and incompetence and the comparative freedom and wealth of the West reached critical mass and the government fell. It took way too long, but it happened.

Today, there are billions of potential journalists and video producers - anyone with a cell phone and access to the internet - and trillions of text and email communications. People still occasionally engage in face-to-face conversations. The infrastructure needed to monitor all this is complex, gargantuan, and costly. Only algorithms and artificial intelligence can sort through it to identify threats to the state. Once identified, a separate infrastructure is necessary to apprehend, arrest, process, incarcerate and perhaps execute those engaged in wrongthought, wrongspeak, wrongwrite, and wrongact.

Repression’s seen costs are dwarfed by its unseen costs. Neither the jailers or the jailed are doing anything productive. Persecuting people for telling the truth amounts to cutting off a society’s eyes, ears, and tongue. Deliberate ignorance imposes costs of which the ignorant will, to their detriment, remain forever ignorant.

There is a meaningful cost imposed even on those who escape state persecution. Through fear or cupidity they trim their own sails, conforming, flattering, and propagating the party line. There are undoubtedly capable journalists in today’s legacy media, but they’ve smothered themselves as it’s become a purveyor of state propaganda.

The best and brightest have migrated to the alternative media, perhaps the freest endeavor left on the planet. From its cacophony - freedom is never quiet - has emerged 99 percent of disclosed truths and counter-narrative analyses these past few years.

The legacy media is comatose, having lost all credibility and whatever control it had of the narrative. Its dwindling though still sizable audience is simple-minded sheep and predatory wolves. The alternative media will continue to expose mainstream depredations, but it has other concerns as well.

Covid threw a curveball. It posed complex issues of medicine and science and evoked widespread fear - even within the alternative media - amplified by the barrage of propaganda. The alternative media was on its back foot until it became apparent that Covid wasn’t going to be the predicted scourge; most people who got it recovered.

The trickle of articles that questioned and debunked became a flood. Junk science was exposed. More importantly, so was Covid tyranny as alarms sounded about the totalitarian design behind masks, physical distancing, lockdowns, job loss, mandatory vaccinations, quarantine camps, vaccine passports, digital IDs, and digital currencies. In many instances exposure amounted to telling readers what the designers themselves were saying.

Debunking Ukraine propaganda will take some work, but it’s less demanding than Covid and will be punctured in far less time. There’s the historical record that runs counter to the “narrative”: the U.S.-backed 2014 coup, the government’s corruption, payola to American political figures and their children, neo-Nazis, the war on eastern Ukraine’s Russians, the failure of the Minsk accords, and U.S. supported bioresearch labs. These are facts, and while the mainstream media is ignoring them, the alternative media isn’t.

For all its ramifications Ukraine is also easier to understand than Covid’s scientific complexities and unknowns. The Covid commissars hid behind them and peddled fear: You could die! That gave everyone a personal stake in Covid that’s lacking with Ukraine, which most Americans can’t find on a map.

The Russians’ methodical military strategy drains the drama from the Ukraine story. An invasion with indiscriminate attacks on cities and civilians would have been over in a week or two and would have been far more spectacular. The Russian strategy has been the boa constrictor’s slow strangulation, not the viper’s venomous quick kill. The Russians want to break Ukraine and achieve their objectives, but they don’t want to own it.

Skepticism that they can do so is warranted. Invasions are easy, withdrawals difficult. Regardless, the butcher’s bill from laying waste to the country and slaughtering civilians would be far higher than it will be if Russia hews to its present course and the outcome will be the same - Ukraine will capitulate.

By then the West will have grown bored with the story, assuming Western leaders don’t do something stupid - military intervention or nuclear weapons deployment. Provided they don’t (not a sure thing), Ukraine flag emojis will be replaced by ones suitable for the next manufactured crisis, maybe Cyber Polygon.

Meanwhile, the West’s sanctions against Russia will bite... the West. The Russian-Chinese alliance can cut off natural resources, minerals and materials vital for agriculture, industrial production, and high tech, although in Russia’s case the West has - suicidally - already cut itself off. De-dollarization will continue, and perhaps payment in gold will be demanded for whatever trade remains. Rubles, yuan or both could be backed with gold - Russia and China have plenty - instantly making them more attractive money than the West’s fiat crap.

It’s been suggested that Ukraine is merely the opening salvo, and a relatively minor one, in the alliance’s war against the West. The real war, according to this view, is the economic and financial one. With the Belt and Road initiative and related multilateral arrangements Russia and China are consolidating an Eurasian federation encompassing half the world’s population and a substantial share of its natural resources and production. Western sanctions on Russia have received little support from the federation or across the global South. Notwithstanding Western propaganda to the contrary, Russia is hardly “isolated.”

If such a war is in store, economic and financial salvos may be followed by military ones. China could invade Taiwan and consolidate control of its own neighborhood and Russia might do the same, perhaps conducting another “special military operation” in Georgia.

Massively over-indebted Western economies and governments are vulnerable, an avalanche awaiting the one-too-many snowflake. Russia and China have avalanche guns that can leave the West buried in its own debt and ruins, which all the central banks’ horses and central banks’ men won’t put back together again. Their proposed digital currencies will be no panacea. They’re just another mechanism for control and will be the same worthless fiat as what they replace.

If that’s the victory Russia and China seek, it will be Pyrrhic. Western financial and economic collapse will be a black hole that sucks in the entire world. The debt daisy chain is global and will unravel as it did in the last financial crisis. The U.S. and EU economies are the first and third largest in the world. If they are prostrate, where’s the replacement market for Russian natural resources and Chinese manufactured goods? The “Stans” don’t quite cut it.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a better approach to Eurasia than the U.S.’s bullets, bombs, and bribes, but it’s still a debt-funded, top down, state-directed project. It supposedly doesn’t infringe on the sovereignty of member nations, but every one of those nations heavily infringes on the sovereignty of their own people and bear the ever-increasing costs of repression.

In throwing out the bathwater of the West, they also throw out the baby that was the foundation of its advancement: the still radical idea of individual rights protected rather than infringed by the state. The evolution of the British common law’s protection of contract and property, the gradual acceptance of the once heretical notion that the state is to be subordinate to its people, and the ideal of protected, individual, inalienable rights - never fully realized and now abandoned - served as the philosophical springboard for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ innovation and progress.

Progress and the fulfillment of human potential require much more than just population and natural resources. How many people immigrate to Russia or China? Millions did so to the U.S. during its heyday of freedom, drawn by the opportunity to live their lives as they saw fit. Nowadays such opportunity is unavailable in Russia, China, the U.S., or anywhere else. Most of the immigrants now flooding the U.S. are here for the handouts rather than for its residual and dwindling freedom.

It’s been argued that Russia and China are not the counterweights to the New World Order crowd and the Great Reset they appear to be, that they’ll eventually stand revealed as integral components of the nefarious design. It doesn’t matter whether or not that’s the case. For ordinary citizens anywhere on the planet, it’s enough to know that would-be tyrants intend to exercise full control over their expression, actions, and thoughts. Their lives will be state property, regardless of who’s running the state.

The globalist plan is order emerging from the ashes of a world in ruins, built back better per their totalitarian design. By whom? With what? There’s that crucial contradiction: the chaos they will have fomented will destroy the energy, resources, and production necessary to control it.

The globalists’ slaves will neither build much beyond their own barracks nor produce much beyond their own subsistence. Innovation is out of the question. The transhuman fantasy is that they’ll be programmed to be highly productive and innovative, but docile and obedient - Einsteins under a social credit system. Good luck with that. Einstein escaped the social credit system of his day. Our money is on a world where the energy, resources and production needed to monitor, terrify, control, and murder the slaves, even transhuman ones, will be far greater than anything they collectively produce. The totalitarians will never be able to make subjugation and murder paying propositions - nobody ever has - even when, or more correctly, particularly when their power is absolute.

If human energy, thought, creativity, expression, individuality, and freedom are enemies of the state, the state is doomed. If that means every government on the planet is doomed, so be it. Welcome to the bonfire of the governments, history’s greatest conflagration.

Fully incinerated will be the idea that humanity is unfit for freedom but some humans are fit to exercise power over others. Somebody, somewhere is going to get it right, because freedom is the only system that works. It is noisy and dynamic, but it has its own organic and adaptive order, based on enlightened self-interest and private, mutually beneficial cooperation and arrangements. It is the one order that unleashes rather than chains or destroys human potential.

Freedom, not subjugation, will build back better. It will be a beacon for the best and brightest. They’ll be roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the embers from the bonfire of the governments."

Greg Hunter, "Millions Get AIDS From Vax By Fall – Dr. Elizabeth Eads"

"Millions Get AIDS From Vax By Fall – Dr. Elizabeth Eads"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Dr. Elizabeth Eads is on the frontline of medicine, treating patients who have been injected with the experimental CV19 so-called “vaccines.” Dr. Eads is now seeing first-hand Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly referred to as AIDS. Let that sink in. Dr. Eads explains, “Yes, we are seeing vaccine related acquired immunodeficiency in the hospital now from the triple vaxed. It is a vax injury, and we are not really certain how to treat this. We are kind of throwing the kitchen sink at it. We are trying to use everything we can think of to boost up the CD4 and CD8 counts and reverse this collapse or calamity of this immune collapse. It’s very stunning.”

Dr. Eads says it is particularly bad in the double CV19 vaxed and boosted. She calls the third injection “The Kill Shot, the Money Ball or whatever you want to call it. It is just devastating to the immune system, and I’ll tell you why. If you look at the recent Stanford study, and I am just going to read a couple of sentences from the Stanford study: ‘The spike protein in the CV19 vaccines that everyone is talking about is called the Lentivirus. The Lenti contains a combination of HIV, types one through three, SRV/1, which is AIDS, MERS and SARS. In the Stanford study, the best-known Lentivirus is the human immune deficiency pathogen, which causes AIDS. This is why we are seeing autoimmune and neurodegenerative decline after the Covid 19 (Vax) especially the booster. It permanently changes the genome of the cell. That is why this is so terrifying to us in the medical community. We just don’t know how to attack this.”

There is a similar report out last week by the UK government that also points to the triple vaxed getting AIDS. So, the CV19 vaccines are actually injecting people with AIDS? Dr. Eads says, “That is exactly what I am telling you. That is what the Spike Lentivirus is. It is made up of HIV and AIDS along with SARS and MERS. That’s why the vaccinated and boosted are so sick. That’s why they dominate the hospitalizations regarding Covid illness as well.”

Because the immune system is depleted, many kinds of disease such as cancer can spread like wildfire. Dr. Ryan Cole says he’s seeing cancer up as much as 2,000% from the vaccines. Eads says, “I have some stunning numbers from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED). I am just going to read a few cancers: malignant neo-plasma of the esophagus up 794%. malignant neo-plasma of the stomach, colon and pancreas up 524%. Breast cancer up 387%. Ovarian cancer up 537%, Testicular cancer up 269%. These are numbers from 2021. When they found out attorney Thomas Renz and the whistleblower had the data, they scrubbed the data and altered it, which is totally against the law.”

Dr. Eads is treating vaxed and unvaxed in her practice. She will tell you what you can do to help yourself, especially if you have been vaxed. Dr. Eads talks about the ongoing propaganda to get you to take the so-called boosters. Dr. Eads explains why you should stop all CV19 shots now. Dr. Eads also contends there is a huge disinformation campaign going on to make you think the CV19 shots are safe and not causing blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, cancer and a host of other diseases–including AIDS."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to 25-year veteran Dr. Elizabeth Eads as she continues to highlight the real unreported effects of the CV19 bioweapons and the dangerous lies by Big Pharma, the FDA, CDC and mainstream media. (There is much more cutting edge, frontline medical information in the nearly 53-minute interview.)
Related:

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

"Here’s What the 'Experts' Are Missing"

"Here’s What the 'Experts' Are Missing"
by Jim Rickards

"We’ve all followed the cascade of financial and economic sanctions the U.S. and its allies have piled upon Russia in the past few weeks. The assets of the Central Bank of Russia (about $600 billion) have been frozen. Major Russian banks have all been kicked out of the global financial telecommunications system called SWIFT. High-tech and luxury exports to Russia have been banned. Meanwhile, Western banks are not allowed to trade Russian securities. The assets of Russian oligarchs from superyachts to multimillion-dollar townhouses in London are being seized.

The list goes on. That all sounds draconian (it is) and possibly even effective (it isn’t), but it begs the question of who bears the losses. If I’m a debtor and you tell me I’m not allowed to pay my debts, I might say, “Thank you, that’s a relief.” In those circumstances, the loser is not the debtor. It’s the creditor who was expecting to be paid and now he finds that’s impossible.

All of these Russian banks and borrowers were doing business with investors in the West. When you freeze Russian payments, some Western bondholder is not getting paid, and some investor will end up taking the loss. That investor could even be you. If you look inside your 401(k), you might find an emerging-markets ETF or fund that just happens to hold some Russian debt. Russia has about $100–150 billion of dollar-denominated debt, about half of which is owned by investors outside of Russia.

If only part of that defaults, it could be $50 billion or more in direct financial losses to ETFs, mutual funds and even small holders in 401(k)s who may not know what’s inside the products that Wall Street cooks up. Mega-asset manager BlackRock has already lost $17 billion of its investors’ money with bad Russian stock and bond bets.

Still, Russia is trying to pay. The head of the Central Bank of Russia is Elvira Nabiullina, who’s one of the smartest central bankers in the world and perhaps the only one who understands how to do her job. She’s trying to pay the debt in rubles even if she is not allowed to pay in dollars. Despite the sanctions, she still controls Russia’s ruble printing press and could create enough money to pay the debt. Still, if this ruble work-around does not work, we’re looking at massive losses for Western investors.

But it gets worse. In addition to outright bondholders, there are billions of dollars of derivatives linked to the bonds. This means that actual losses can be many times the losses on the bonds themselves.

This is exactly what happened in the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. There were about $1 trillion in subprime mortgages at the time. A 20% default rate, which is sky-high compared with usual default rates of less than 5%, implied $200 billion in losses. That’s a huge loss but manageable in the financial system. What most analysts missed is that there were $6 trillion of derivatives written on the $1 trillion of subprime mortgages. This meant that actual losses were more on the order of $1.2 trillion than $200 billion once derivatives were taken into account.

Something similar is at play with regard to Russian bonds. The exact identities of the holders and the scope of derivatives are almost completely opaque. No one really knows how far the financial distress may spread. The point is that it’s easy to slap on sanctions, but it’s almost impossible to ascertain exactly where the losses will fall and how great they’ll be. This phenomenon is called “contagion.” It works exactly like a virus. One creditor loses money, and that causes him to default to another creditor, and so on. It’s exactly the way a virus spreads from one victim to another.

The most famous case of this also involved a Russian default. That was in 1998. That financial crisis started in Thailand in 1997, spread to Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea before hitting Russia. From there, the next victim was not another country but a hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut, called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). The Fed had to organize a $4 billion bailout to save world markets. I negotiated that bailout on behalf of LTCM.

Now it’s happening again. Russia is on the brink of defaulting on its debt. Then contagion takes over. There will be some initial losers, but those losses could cascade out of control as they did in 1998. Banks, brokers and hedge funds are all at risk. The best advice is to expect the unexpected. You can get ahead of that by reducing equity exposure and increasing allocations to cash and gold now."

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad" (Ben E-dit)

Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad" (Ben E-dit)

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the below stunning mosaic.
 
The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the brightest star to the left of the Horsehead. Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic dark dust lanes. The magnificent emission region, the Orion Nebula (aka M42), lies at the upper right. Immediately to its left is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man. Pervasive tendrils of glowing hydrogen gas are easily traced throughout the region.”

“The Myth of Human Progress”

Full screen recommended.
“The Myth of Human Progress”
By Chris Hedges

“Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.” This obliteration of “false hopes,” he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth – intellectually and emotionally – and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.

The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth – as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury – as well as unrivaled military and economic power – for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.

Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship.

“There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating,” Wright said when I reached him by phone at his home in British Columbia, Canada.

“They tend to collapse quite soon after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity. That pattern holds good for a lot of societies, among them the Romans, the ancient Maya and the Sumerians of what is now southern Iraq. There are many other examples, including smaller-scale societies such as Easter Island. The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in ‘A Short History of Progress’ the ‘progress trap.’ We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature. We have failed to control human numbers. They have tripled in my lifetime. And the problem is made much worse by the widening gap between rich and poor, the upward concentration of wealth, which ensures there can never be enough to go around. The number of people in dire poverty today – about 2 billion – is greater than the world’s entire population in the early 1900s. That’s not progress.

If we continue to refuse to deal with things in an orderly and rational way, we will head into some sort of major catastrophe, sooner or later. If we are lucky it will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out. That is the best we can hope for. We must transcend our evolutionary history. We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Wright, who in his dystopian novel “A Scientific Romance” paints a picture of a future world devastated by human stupidity, cites “entrenched political and economic interests” and a failure of the human imagination as the two biggest impediments to radical change. And all of us who use fossil fuels, who sustain ourselves through the formal economy, he says, are at fault.

Modern capitalist societies, Wright argues in his book “What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order,” derive from European invaders’ plundering of the indigenous cultures in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries, coupled with the use of African slaves as a workforce to replace the natives. The numbers of those natives fell by more than 90 percent because of smallpox and other plagues they hadn’t had before. The Spaniards did not conquer any of the major societies until smallpox had crippled them; in fact the Aztecs beat them the first time around. If Europe had not been able to seize the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, if it had not been able to occupy the land and adopt highly productive New World crops for use on European farms, the growth of industrial society in Europe would have been much slower. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.

Wright explained this further on our call. “The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever. It is an absurd myth. We live on this planet. We can’t leave it and go somewhere else. We have to bring our economies and demands on nature within natural limits, but we have had a 500-year run where Europeans, Euro-Americans and other colonists have overrun the world and taken it over. This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal. We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again. We have to readjust our entire civilization to live in a finite world. But we are not doing it, because we are carrying far too much baggage, too many mythical versions of deliberately distorted history and a deeply ingrained feeling that what being modern is all about is having more. This is what anthropologists call an ideological pathology, a self-destructive belief that causes societies to crash and burn. These societies go on doing things that are really stupid because they can’t change their way of thinking. And that is where we are.

And as the collapse becomes palpable, if human history is any guide, we like past societies in distress will retreat into what anthropologists call “crisis cults.” The powerlessness we will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist belief in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us.”

As Wright told me: “Societies in collapse often fall prey to the belief that if certain rituals are performed all the bad stuff will go away. There are many examples of that throughout history. In the past these crisis cults took hold among people who had been colonized, attacked and slaughtered by outsiders, who had lost control of their lives. They see in these rituals the ability to bring back the past world, which they look at as a kind of paradise. They seek to return to the way things were. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the 19th century, when the buffalo and the Indians were being slaughtered by repeating rifles and finally machine guns. People came to believe, as happened in the Ghost Dance, that if they did the right things the modern world that was intolerable – the barbed wire, the railways, the white man, the machine gun – would disappear.

We all have the same, basic psychological hard wiring. It makes us quite bad at long-range planning and leads us to cling to irrational delusions when faced with a serious threat. Look at the extreme right’s belief that if government got out of the way, the lost paradise of the 1950s would return. Look at the way we let oil and gas exploration rip when we knew that expanding the carbon economy was suicidal for our children and grandchildren. The results can already be felt. When it gets to the point where large parts of the Earth experience crop failure at the same time then we will have mass starvation and a breakdown in order. That is what lies ahead if we do not deal with climate change.

If we fail in this great experiment, this experiment of apes becoming intelligent enough to take charge of their own destiny, nature will shrug and say it was fun for a while to let the apes run the laboratory, but in the end it was a bad idea.”
Related:
"Are We Headed Into Another Ice Age?" (Excerpt)
by Martin Armstrong

"Our model has projected we are entering another “grand-minimum,” which will overtake the sun beginning in 2020 and will last through the 2050s, resulting in diminished magnetism, infrequent sunspot production, and less ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth. This all means we are facing a global cooling period in the planet that may span 31 to 43 years. The last grand-minimum event produced the mini-Ice Age in the mid-17th century. Known as the Maunder Minimum, it occurred between 1645 and 1715, during a longer span of time when parts of the world became so cold that the period was called the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850."
Please view this complete article here:
Source:

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "Roll The Dice"; “Alea Iacta Est”

“Alea Iacta Est”

“Alea iacta est is a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on January 10, 49 B.C. as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy. With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance of the Senate and began his long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase, either in the original Latin or in translation, is used in many languages to indicate that events have passed a point of no return.

The historian Frances Titchener has given a stylized description of the context of Caesar’s pronouncement: “We know from [Caesar's journals] that Caesar is not taking this lightly. He knows that if he marches on Rome with his armies, then he is a public enemy, and that he will either have to win, or die. For a Roman patrician like Julius Caesar there is no life without military service; there is no life without service to the state. He cannot simply ‘go native’ and stay in Gaul, and he does realize that if he goes back to Rome, he would be killed. At this time the northernmost border of the Roman territory in Italy is the River Rubicon. Once someone crosses the River Rubicon, he’s in Roman territory. A general must not cross that boundary with his army – he must do what the Romans call lay down his command, which means surrender his right to order troops, and certainly not be carrying weapons. 

Caesar and his armies hesitate quite a while at this river while Caesar decides what to do, and Caesar tells us that he informs his soldiers that it’s a little tiny bridge across the river, but once they cross it they’ll have to fight their way all the way to Rome, and Caesar is well aware that he’s risking not just his own life, but those of his loyal soldiers, and he might not win. Pompey is a formidable enemy. It’s also impossible to avoid the fact that Caesar was attacking the state, and as a patrician Roman this would have been very difficult for him, equivalent to beating up your father. He wouldn’t have done any of this lightly. Finally he makes a decision, it’s time to go, and he uses a gambling metaphor: he says ‘Roll the dice’, ‘Alea iacta est’. Once the dice start rolling they cannot be controlled, even though we don’t know what the outcome will be as the dice roll and tumble. Julius and his men swiftly cross the river and they march double time toward Rome, where they almost beat the messengers sent to inform the Senate of their arrival.” 
"Life's a gamble. Courage is to roll the dice and go
for the gusto when all odds and bets are against you!"
- Bobby Compton
Charles Bukowski, "Roll The Dice"
Read by Tom O'Bedlam

"Acceptance..."


"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise

"Cash Is Vulnerable In A Bank; FED Playing Dangerous Game; Financial Red Flag; Home Prices To Fall"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 3/22/22:
"Cash Is Vulnerable In A Bank; FED Playing 
Dangerous Game; Financial Red Flag; Home Prices To Fall"

Gregory Mannarino, "A Shocking Admission From The FED! And A Warning From The European Union"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/22/22:
"A Shocking Admission From The FED! 
And A Warning From The European Union"

"Stock Market Crash Nobody Thinks Possible Coming In Weeks Or Months: Prepare For An 80% Crash!"

Full screen recommended.
"Stock Market Crash Nobody Thinks Possible Coming
 In Weeks Or Months: Prepare For An 80% Crash!"
by Epic Economist

"An 80% Stock Market Crash Is Approaching! Although investors are pulling their best efforts to keep propping up the massive bubble, conditions remain extremely risky. And given that stock prices have been stretched to the limit, when the crash finally occurs, it has the potential to wipe out 80% of the market’s value.

The sell-off may have paused for the time being, but the combination of several factors is likely to weigh on market sentiment sooner rather than later. And according to Peter Cecchini, the director of research at the hedge fund Axonic, the threat of a devastating recession in the U.S. and around the globe is growing.

He said that, despite the correction so far this year, major indexes are likely to still see a larger pullback over the coming weeks and months. Just like Cecchini, a number of Wall Street experts – including David Hunter, the chief macro strategist at Contrarian Macro Advisors, - are warning that the current rally is a melt-up that is merely preceding a meltdown, as some traders still hope for a slower pace of policy tightening.

The uncertain environment is precisely why stocks are still going up, according to Hunter. But one of the largest-ever stock-market crashes will follow as inflation runs rampant, he said.Given the amount of leverage in the stock market and the U.S. economy, Hunter warned that the coming stock market crash is going to be monumental. In an interview with Business Insider, the legendary investor said that an 80% pullback was already a real possibility before, but now it is already on the horizon.

At this point, propping up stocks doesn’t mean that indexes are recovering from their losses. In fact, on Monday, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients that stocks remain in a bear market despite last week's rally.“Bear market rallies are the most vicious," wrote Morgan Stanley's chief US strategist Michael Wilson. "While it could go a bit higher, led by the Nasdaq and small caps, we remain convicted it's still a bear market and we would use this strength to position more defensively," Wilson cautioned.

On the same note, David Rosenberg, the founder, and chief economist of Rosenberg Research, sounded the alarm about the end of fiscal stimulus and ultra-easy monetary policy. "Nobody has a clue what the economy or the market's going to look like once those training wheels are taken off the bicycle," Rosenberg said. “So what's going to happen when all of that support is taken away?”

In Rosenberg's view, the stock market is on shaky ground and a recession is coming soon. This is definitely an uncertain time for investors. Risks continue to grow, and traders should brace for a lot more volatility in 2022 as central banks and government leaders around the world react to the worsening situation in Ukraine, its impact on gas prices, the global economy, and inflation.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., as the Fed tries to stop rising prices but risks pushing the economy into a recession, it is safe to say that the sell-off will continue and that the correction will evolve into a full-blown market crash once investors realize that we’ve already reached the point of no return. A global financial meltdown is coming next. The nightmare is far from over."

The Daily "Near You?"

Winner, South Dakota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: Mark Twain, "Letters From the Earth"

"Letters From the Earth"
by Mark Twain

"This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Moreover - if I may put another strain upon you - he thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!"
Mark Twain's "Letters From the Earth"
by Wikipedia

“Letters from the Earth” is one of Mark Twain's posthumously published works. The essays were written during a difficult time in Twain's life; he was deep in debt and had lost his wife and one of his daughters. Initially, his daughter, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939, probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted" view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960. Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant. She was also influenced to release the papers due to her annoyance with Soviet propaganda charges that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States. The papers were edited in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto. The book consists of a series of short stories, many of which deal with God and Christianity. The title story consists of eleven letters written by the archangel Satan to archangels, Gabriel and Michael, about his observations on the curious proceedings of earthly life and the nature of man's religions. Other short stories in the book include a bedtime story about a family of cats Twain wrote for his daughters, and an essay explaining why an anaconda is morally superior to Man.

Textual references make clear that sections, at least, of “Letters from the Earth” were written shortly before his death in April 1910. (For instance, Letter VII, in discussing the ravages of hookworm, refers to the $1,000,000 gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. to help eradicate the disease – a gift that was announced on October 28, 1909, less than six months before Twain's death.)"
Freely download "Letters From the Earth", in PDF format, here: