Monday, April 25, 2022

The Poet: William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

"The Second Coming"

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

- William Butler Yeats, January 1919

"In Three Words..."

 

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith

"Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.

The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions.  People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases.  Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived.  The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil.  And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits.  As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight.  Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth.  They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”

"I Can't Believe This: A Major Event Is Coming - War?"

Canadian Prepper, 4/25/22:
"I Can't Believe This: A Major Event Is Coming - War?"
Related:

The Daily "Near You?"

Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Must Watch! "It's Much Worse Than You Think As Fake Markets Rebound; FED Trapped; Economy Crashing Down"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/25/22:
"It's Much Worse Than You Think As Fake Markets Rebound;
 FED Trapped; Economy Crashing Down"

"Even the Rich Are Getting Worried About the Economy"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/25/22:
"Even the Rich Are Getting Worried About the Economy"
"I’m on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California. This is arguably one of the richest shopping districts in the world, but you can’t help but notice that even the rich can’t keep these retail stores open."

Bill Bonner, "A Casino for Lunatics"

"A Casino for Lunatics"
by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "An advertisement appears on the side of our email. It offers us – in Spanish – ‘fashionable clothes for fat women.’ This appears to be a case of logarithmic disorder. The computer coding that was supposed to identify fat mujeres, seems to have stumbled onto a thin hombre. Another ad served up to us often shows a picture of two gay guys, holding hands. It offers “Insurance Programs for Every Lifestyle.” Another logarithm out of tune. The lifestyle it had in mind was not ours.

The promise of the internet was that it could connect an individual more efficiently with what he wants and needs. But we neither want nor need a plus-size summer dress. The ad for an insurance policy that will pay off to a gay ‘partner’ missed its mark too.

But the glories of the internet/metaverse age were always overrated… and over-funded. Too much cheap credit created a monstrously weird and dysfunctional economy, with wealth destroying companies supposedly worth billions, and debt up the gazoo. “Information” – ubiquitous and free – was supposed to make real savings unnecessary. Growth was supposed to accelerate… leading to untold happiness and prosperity beyond our wildest dreams.

Instead, we got Tik-tok, Shibu-ina, NFTs, de-platforming, uber-eats, and a generation of illiterates. But at least now, we don’t have to think… we just have to see what’s ‘trending on Facebook.’ LOL! As for the much-awaited growth, it never showed up. Instead, GDP rates fell and are averaging only about half of those of the pre-internet days. And now, that monstrosity of an economy, created by the Fed’s absurd interest rates, is in trouble.

A Casino for Lunatics: The Dow sold off nearly 1,000 points on Friday. This morning’s futures point to more losses today. The proximate cause, according to the press: the Fed’s long-lost, but now found, desire for more normal interest rates. But the Fed is ‘hoist on its own petarde,’ so to speak. It pushed interest rates down to ultra-low levels… kept them there for way too long… funded the governments jackass gimmie/stimmie programs… and now finds – what a surprise! – prices are rising.

Jerome Powell, Fed jefe, tried to ignore it, tried to dismiss it, and tried to excuse it; but there was no doubt where inflation came from. The artificially low interest rates twisted and disfigured the entire economy. Investors became credit-crazed gamblers. Businessmen became short-sighted profiteers. Households rushed to refinance their homes… again and again, trading up each time. And the feds used the cheap money to support the fantasies, caprices, and skullduggeries of the whole elite class. Sex change operations for active-duty soldiers… a $1,000 a month of guaranteed income to young, unmarried mothers in Baltimore… $30+ trillion in capital gains to the rich – what else could you want!

Wall Street was turned into a casino for lunatics, where people borrowed at below zero real interest rates, to bid up prices on loss-making companies, using money that didn’t exist.

We remind readers that when a company loses money, it makes the whole world poorer. And America’s Silicon Valley losers destroyed more real wealth than any group of companies in history. Zillow, Uber, Airbnb, WeWork, Snap, Pinterest, Peloton, Dropbox, Amazon – the losses were staggering. Even the companies that were profitable were absorbing and destroying capital far beyond what they were actually worth. Capital was so cheap that billions of dollars were invested in companies that – though ‘profitable’ – could never actually repay the money needed to get there.

It was like borrowing a million dollars – without paying any real interest – and using the money to set up a high-tech lemonade stand. Your customers can sit in special booths and play video games… they can use ultra-high speed broadband to check their email. They can use your 15 unisex bathrooms and showers to clean themselves up… and use your state of the art conference room for business. You pay an interest rate on the million dollars (in real terms) of MINUS 5%. Then, you sell one glass of lemonade and announce that you are profitable. But the “profits” bear no relationship to the money that has gone into the enterprise. You are ‘profitable’ but you are still destroying wealth, not creating more of it.

But now, inflation is making life difficult for the Fed. Energy, resources, labor – everything is getting more expensive. And from the looks of producer prices (which will be passed on to consumers) ‘double-digit’ inflation will be here soon.

Bounce Less: So, it’s ‘inflate or die’ time. Either the Fed continues to let the cheap money pervert the economy… or its monstrosity must die.

Wait… here comes another ad: “Bounce less with a better sports bra.” Whatever jiggle it was meant to alleviate is not a concern for us.

And over on our telephone, some rascals seem to have planted a virus. About 5 times a day it warns us that it is going to reveal our “porn history” unless we do something. We’re still waiting. After all, if we’re going to look at porno, we’re not going to do it on a telephone… we’ll want a big screen!"

"Why"; "We Have Met The Enemy..."

"Why does truth carry such a dreadful face? Why does subjugation carry
such a happy mask? It becomes sad when people understand that they
can lead a better life as long as they bow their heads, ignoring the truth."
- Lionel Suggs

"Chronic Shortages Of A Few Items Now Will Evolve Into Chronic Shortages Of Hundreds Of Products Later In 2022"

"Chronic Shortages Of A Few Items Now Will Evolve 
Into Chronic Shortages Of Hundreds Of Products Later In 2022"
by Michael Snyder

"What we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of the story. The global response to the COVID pandemic during 2020 and 2021 created the most epic supply chain crisis in modern times, and now “black swan events” such as the war in Ukraine and the bird flu pandemic are making that supply chain crisis even worse. Unfortunately, more global difficulties are coming. There will be more war, there will be more pestilences, there will be more natural disasters, and even the United Nations is admitting that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II. So if you think that global supply chain problems are severe now, just wait until you see what is coming next.

If you go into most major retailers today, you will notice that stock levels are lower than usual and there are some empty shelves. But most items are still available most of the time, and that is good news.

Of course there are certain product categories that have been experiencing chronic shortages for an extended period of time. For example, supplies of canned pet food have been extremely tight for months on end… The next time you go to the pet store don’t be surprised to see some empty shelves. Many pet stores are facing a shortage on canned pet food. Right now, there just aren’t enough cheap sources of chicken and turkey due to the bird flu pandemic, there is an ongoing shortage of aluminum, and there is a shortage of factory workers. So the canned pet food shortage is not likely to be fixed any time soon.

Another shortage that is going to affect much of the country as we head into the summer months is the growing chlorine shortage. I was not even aware of this shortage until a reader alerted me. Apparently this shortage was originally caused by the destruction of a manufacturing facility in Louisiana by Hurricane Laura…While the pandemic takes its share of the blame, the even larger reason for the current chlorine shortage is that a major chlorine manufacturing plant in Louisiana was destroyed by Hurricane Laura in late 2020. A fire on the premises leveled the facilities and took nearly 40% of the country’s chlorine tablet supply with it. The manufacturing plant is being rebuilt and is currently under construction; it was due to reopen by mid-to-late 2022, but those plans could be pushed back due to the ongoing construction material shortages.

I find it ironic that the nationwide chlorine shortage could be extended thanks to the nationwide construction material shortage. Anyone that is trying to build a home knows how painful the construction material shortage has become, and I anticipate that it will only become more severe in 2023 and beyond.

Meanwhile, the nationwide baby formula shortage just continues to get even worse…"Janis Burnson is one of many parents having to work around a national baby formula shortage. “Go around in our area, St. George, any stores I can, can’t find anything around here. I have friends in northern Utah, they’re having to send me stuff, so I’m having to pay even more,” she says. One local reporter in southern Utah decided to check this out for herself, and when she visited local stores she discovered “bare shelves where baby formula should be.” What a nightmare.

But at least we can be glad that things are not as bad here as they are in Europe. Over there, widespread rationing of certain products has already begun. For example, it was just announced that Tesco is now limiting each customer to three bottles of cooking oil…"If record-high food prices weren’t enough. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has choked off the world of sunflower oil supply, forcing the largest supermarket in the UK to begin rationing. The Guardian reports that Tesco, with more than 4,000 retail stores, placed buying limits of three cooking oil bottles per customer. It follows Waitrose and Morrisons, other supermarket chains that set limits of just two per customer."

This particular shortage is directly related to the war in Ukraine, and David Einhorn is warning that this war is making a whole host of our ongoing problems even worse… "The common refrain about COVID was that it sped up changes and trends that were already happening. We believe the same is true of the war. Inflation, supply chain problems, and shortages of energy, food, raw materials and labor were already issues that the war has now accelerated."

Sadly, he is quite correct, and at this point there appears to be no hope that this war will end any time soon. Russia and Ukraine normally account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports, and we were already facing an unprecedented global food crisis even before the war erupted.

When U.S. Senator Roger Marshall was recently asked about this, he openly admitted that a “worldwide famine” is definitely going to happen…“Did you just say there will be a famine in Europe in the next two years?” Host Maria Bartiromo asked. “This will be a worldwide famine. I think it will be even worse next year than this year. So if 12, 15% of the wheat comes from Ukraine that’s exported, and they’re having problems getting fertilizer, they’re having tractors in the field, all the diesel fuel is going towards their war efforts, right?” the senator said."

Prior to 2022, can you ever remember a time when a sitting member of the U.S. Senate publicly warned us that a “worldwide famine” was coming?

The good news is that nobody is starving to death in the United States right now. But food prices are certainly going up dramatically, and the mainstream media is doing lots of stories about it. For example, the following originally comes from USA Today…"Kevin Tave stretches a pot of spaghetti for three days of meals. Esmerelda Cortez gets eggs and bread from the food bank so she can afford laundry detergent at the store. Donnie Whitfield buys generic cereal instead of the Kellogg’s he prefers."

Although unemployment continues dropping and wages are on the rise, all across the country, low-income people are struggling to put food on the table as skyrocketing inflation and high gas prices take a bigger bite of their already-small paychecks.

Needless to say, as conditions deteriorate it is not a good thing for Joe Biden’s approval ratings…"During Joe Biden’s fifth quarter in office, which began on January 20 and ended on April 19, an average of 41.3% of U.S. adults approved of the job he was doing as president. The latest average is essentially unchanged from the 41.7% in his fourth quarter but significantly lower than his first three quarterly averages."

But what most Americans don’t understand is that it is too late for a political solution to this crisis. No matter what Joe Biden and his minions decide to do, they are not going to be able to prevent the nightmarish conditions which are rapidly approaching. As Senator Marshall admitted, there will be a worldwide famine. There is no avoiding that now. These are such troubled times, and they are only going to become even more troubled as the months roll along."
Related:

"How It Really Is"


Jim Kunstler, "Shocks to the System"

"Shocks to the System"
by Jim Kunstler

There is something about being detached from reality that makes it hard to go about your everyday business. In the quaint asylums of yore, it was understood that a few shocks to the system could bring lunatics out of a fugue state of derangement - a cold water plunge… an insulin hot-shot to induce convulsions… some electrodes placed artfully on select regions of the brain…. It looks like America is about to be treated to some shocks. Will they break the mass formation psychosis that styles itself unironically as “progressive politics?”

The first shock will be the painful recognition that Ukraine is not prevailing against Russia’s Operation Z, despite the combined efforts of the US news media and the Intel Community to put over that narrative. True, it took Russia more than a few days to overcome Ukraine’s NATO-fortified defenses, but now most of that has been neutralized, and we’re into the final weeks heading towards resolution - which will be a Ukraine that is unable to make any more trouble in that corner of the world.

That’s right, hard as it is to accept, Operation Z came down on Ukraine because it misbehaved badly, egged-on by delusional war-gamers in Washington, who could only pretend to support Ukraine once the real action started. No amount of chanting Putin-Putin-Putin availed to stop the grinding Russian advance. State’s Antony Blinken and DoD’s General Austin were in Kiev over the weekend on a face-saving mission. My guess: they tried to persuade Mr. Zelenskyy to throw in the towel. He may be too desperate and crazy to listen, but it’s truly game-over. The Russians will treat him with kid gloves, perhaps give him leave to settle in Miami and enjoy the American dream with the fortune he has squirreled away. There will be changes in the map. Ukraine will sink back into peaceful obscurity while the US and Europe have to struggle with the impoverishing blowback from wrecking the global trade settlement system.

The next shock will be the utterly predictable crash of global financial markets, which started last Friday and is looking to gain momentum this week. Watch it shove Ukraine clean off the media landing pages and the cable news chyrons. The Hang Seng and Shanghai exchanges closed today down respectively 3.7 and 5.1 percent. Pretty awesome. China unravels with its massive lockdowns, factory shutdowns, and shipping breakdowns. All because of more Covid, really? (I doubt it.) Europe’s markets are red all over this morning, surely fretting over the suicide pact with America to go “green” by energy starvation. The dirty secret is that nobody will be going “green” the way fantasists propose. Rather, we’ll be going medieval.

You can see our nauseating freefall in real time. A friend set forth to shop for a car last week. Her current ride is eight years old and has 110-K on the odo. At two dealerships, there was no inventory of new cars on the lots. The low-mileage used cars were actually priced higher than the new ones (which were not there), and all prices are generally higher than a sinking middle-class can possibly afford. Delivery of a new car could not be promised before September at the earliest, the sales rep said. I will tell you what this means: it means that the car industry’s business model is broken.

Similarly, a conversation I had Saturday with the farm-and-garden store owner in town; supplies of everything are off. Wholesale cost of everything is out-of-sight. He usually has a hundred chain saws in stock this time of year. This April, he’s only got ten. Anything electrical - no replacement parts. They’re short on fertilizer and vegetable seeds. Meanwhile, food processing plants all around the country are mysteriously blowing up and burning down. No supper for you, America!

Next shock to the system: Remember Covid-19? Do you have any idea how much homicidal fraud was committed in its name by the pharmaceutical industry and the public health agencies of the US government? Follow Edward Dowd’s Gettr feed to get a general idea. The former Black Rock investment manager has been collecting the actuarial tables from the life insurance industry. From country-to-country we are seeing a 40 percent increase in all-causes mortality for people in the prime of life. Wall Street has noticed, Mr. Dowd says.

The key to the issue is that fraud obviates the liability shield conferred on Pfizer, Moderna, et al., by the government’s emergency use authorization (EUA). Awaiting in parallel to all that is the criminal culpability of many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of government officials, hospital executives, and doctors who killed their patients while in thrall to the CDC. Dr. Naomi Wolf has engaged over two thousand researchers and hundreds of lawyers in gathering the hard evidence of these frauds. All of this will eventually flip the Covidian catatonics out of their trances (and their stupid masks).

Sometime in May, Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann will be the second RussiaGater to go on trial (following FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith last year). It looks like Special Counsel John Durham does not need to make a plea deal with Mr. Sussmann; Durham’s office already has enough evidence to move up the feeding chain to the bigger fish. Many still doubt that he will actually try. I do not. Indictments of rogue bureaucrats and political celebrities will conclude the seditious mindf**k that sent the country reeling into mass formation.

None of these shocks can be postponed anymore. The Left’s war on America’s psyche is over. America is going to get its mind right, even as we suffer hardship from years of epic mismanagement of our affairs. What remains is separating out the dupes from the perps."

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Getting Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/25/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Getting Crazy!"
"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, "Safety Trade/Fear Trade"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/25/22:
"Safety Trade/Fear Trade"

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/25/22"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Economic Market Snapshot 4/25/22"
Updated as available.
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
Latest Market Analysis, Updated 4/25/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
April 24th to 25th, 2022
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah...
And now... The End Game...

"This Is How Easy It Is..."

 

"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"

"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"
by Umair Haque

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”
- Justice William O. Kennedy

"What does it feel like to live in a time really succumbing to tyranny? Would you know it if you were in such a time? Is it like the "Hunger Games", or a "Mad Max" movie? Spectacular, violent, repellent, and unmistakeable? Or is it something subtler? Something that, for example, you might not even know was happening at the very moment it was happening to you? After all, invisible poisons are the most corrosive and dangerous things of all.

Imagine that you're lying down in a park, on the grass, on a perfect summer day, your eyes closed. And from nowhere, from everywhere, a fog begins rolling in. Gentle and white, oddly out place. It washes across the tips of your feet. You feel pinpricks. Your eyes snap open. Your toes go numb. How strange, you think to yourself, as you think about getting up and running away. What is this fog doing here? Why is giving you pins and needles?

But by the time you are thinking all that, processing what is happening to you, the fog is already up to your knees. 'I really should get up!' you think to yourself. You are a little alarmed now. But as you've paused to even think that far, to register it you realize that while your knees are prickling, your feet, calves, ankles, have gone numb. And it's not entirely unpleasant. It's soothing, even, in the way that letting go is. Confused, puzzled, bewildered, you stop to think again.

Yet by now the fog, still rolling, as quiet as winter, has reached the tips of your fingers, blanketed your torso. Ahhh, you murmur. The pinpricks, you realize, only sting you where the fog's cold, icy edge is. The rest of you? It's numb. Cool. Gone. And there is a strange, disquieting peace in that. Nothing makes sense. The world seems to be vanishing and so do you. But it's not entirely a bad thing.

The fog keeps rolling. As it covers all of you, something in you cries out 'Get up!' But there is another part that is overwhelmed, which wishes to surrender to this pleasing, beautiful, gentle numbness. That longs for it. A few pins and needles, that's not much of a price for letting go, is it? After all, isn't that exactly why you were resting in the park on that perfect summer day, eyes closed? To let the whole world, including yourself, fall away?

Authoritarianism isn't what you think it is. A sudden, violent, visible rupture. That's what Americans, especially, have been led to believe by too many TV shows and movies, which are a kind of especially paranoid American annihilation fantasy (the Rapture, the commies, the immigrants.)

But tyranny isn't like that at all. It doesn't feel like that. These days, if we are a little bit educated about it, we call it creeping. but even that fails to convey the feeling, the sense, the experience. My little parable is a way to begin expressing the strange feeling of collapse, not just anxiety and panic, but also, conflicting with it, a kind of yearning for surrender and submission. We'd be foolish, by now, not to understand the dark roots of our own apathy and resignation, wouldn't we? So let me continue.

The thing we misunderstand most about tyranny is that we suppose life becomes one long exercise in rigid, total certainty. You receive your orders, salute, and snap to business. That is what violent rupture implies: one day democracy, the next, a tyrant is there, precisely ordering everyone's last thought and action. But the truth is precisely the opposite.

Tyranny kills with the grey haze, the white fog, of all-pervading uncertainty. An uncertainty so total, that after a time, people will give up all that they love, and everyone they love, to escape it. The fog kills everything it touches and yet, it can't be touched, held, known, captured. You can't fight fog with fists or words or speeches, can you? If you join hands with someone you love, the fog will laugh, and weave itself right between your fingers. So what can fight it? Who can resist it? First, let me explain it a little.

Who will be dehumanized today? Will there be an election? Is this a President or something more sinister? Is the law still working? Did they raid that town? Why are those camps rising? Whose door will they knock at today? Am I in danger? Are they going to use my words against me? Should I not speak them? Where are the children? Do you see what I mean by all-pervading uncertainty? The grey haze. The white fog. That, my friends, is what tyranny really is. And you are already knee-deep in it. Only perhaps you don't quite know it yet.

After a time, the uncertainty erases everything. Cleanses everything. Kills everything. All. It covers everything it touches, and leaves nothing revealed. It is total and all-encompassing. Is that a person? Am I? Who is a citizen? What about my friends, family, cousins? Are these words mine? Did I speak them? Are those my friends? Can I trust them? Did they get rid of those people? The fog. The haze. That is how it kills everything it touches, by making all things exactly the same thing. An unanswerable question.

Do you have the sense, lately, that things are unreal? Ah, you see. You are already being blanked by the grey haze, the white fog, of uncertainty. Uncertainty is what you are feeling, only you don't know it. It is that uncertainty that has turned everything unreal. Will they really put people in camps? Then why did they build them? Will women really have to go underground to get abortions? What about my kids? Will they really live without healthcare or education or retirement? You go numb, as any sane person would, having to think these terrible thoughts. Your vision goes blurry. Reality has come apart, because nothing is or isn't anymore. Everything is just the fog.

When all is fog, uncertainty, impossibility, unknowability, reality cannot be processed anymore. That is the point. To create a world where everything, being uncertain, becomes unreal. Nothing exists, or doesn't exist, only just maybe exists, but only if it is allowed to. So nothing can be held, contained, known, and therefore, held onto. Nothing. Not the people you love most. Not yourself. Not tomorrow. Not even today.

Have you ever read stories about how in tyrannies, brothers will betray brothers, husbands wives, and mothers sons? You have always thought that could never happen to me! But why do they do it? It isn't because the tyrant commands them to. He doesn't have to. They will do it for just a tiny morsel of certainty. Here, I am a good person. Let me prove it to you. Let me tell you who is a bad person. Will you reward me now, put me in the good books, give me some certainty, instead of keeping me at the edge? No human being can survive more than a few days in a totally uncertain world. So the fog takes everything, not just from us, but also in us. It takes away, at last, our capacity to feel. When that is gone, we are hollow, empty, numb. And when we are numb, what or whom won't we sell, betray, or abuse?

The tyrant has never lifted a finger. He has only produced the fog, with a conjuring trick. By shifting the sands beneath us, and letting the mist pour out of the cracks. The fog rolls over us, little by little, inch by inch, languorous tendrils whispering. We fall and fall slowly, gently into a long, dreamless coma.

In the end, nothing is left. People are erased. Time stands still. History vanishes. The future looks exactly like the present. Nobody is here at all. There is only the fog, the haze, the white. Nothing can be discerned in it. Nothing can be seen through it. But that is alright. There is nobody left to see nothing, anyways. There is just the white fog. And beneath it, the sleepers. Each one the same, none of them there, or not there.

If just one woke up, looked around, shocked, and roused another, and that one another, and so on maybe they might, together, strain, struggle, and lift one another up above the fog. But none of them ever quite understood that. The fog took them too fast, too invisibly, without a bullet, without a word, without a sound, just like that. It took all the fight in them, and turned it to surrender.

That is what tyranny feels like, my friends. And you might not know it, or you might, but the fog is rolling silently across you now, gentle, languorous, with love, with absolution, with death."

"Silk..."

"You're going to meet many people with domineering personalities: the loud, the obnoxious, those that noisily stake their claims in your territory and everywhere else they set foot on. This is the blueprint of a predator. Predators prey on gentleness, peace, calmness, sweetness and any positivity that they sniff out as weakness. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's not your job to change these people, but it's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness do not equate to weakness. I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. 

I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot. There are many people who will want to befriend you if you fit the description of what they think is weak; predators want to have friends that they can dominate over because that makes them feel strong and important. The truth is that predators have no strength and no courage. It is you who are strong, and it is you who has courage. I have lost many a friend over the fact that when they attempt to rip me, they can't. They accuse me of being deceiving; I am not deceiving, I am just made of silk. It is they who are stupid and wrongly take gentleness and fairness for weakness. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk."
- C. JoyBell C

"Does the American Empire Conclude in a Fireball or in the Greatest Depression The World Has Ever Seen?"

"Does the American Empire Conclude in a Fireball 
or in the Greatest Depression The World Has Ever Seen?"
by Thomas Paine


"A planned total economic attack on a nuclear power is the worst of bad ideas. Few Americans realize it but one EMP nuclear bomb exploded 300 miles in altitude over the center of Kansas would fry every computer chip in the US. In less than a year 90% of Americans would be dead. Was bringing Ukraine into Nato really worth risking nuclear destruction of the entire world?

The first story doesn’t tell the most important facts about the mass shooting in Maidan in 2014. Actually Nuland told the very real right wing Nazis to murder people on both sides so international attention would be focused on the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine because he leaned towards Russia. Those same monsters are those the US, EU, Nato, the Swiss and the Pope support today. They are mad dogs that should be put to sleep.

The hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine-Russian conflict-The Maidan massacre:

The idea that Putin just up and attacked Ukraine with no reason is part of an American propaganda campaign that is thirty years old at least. Russia has been attacked for thirty years based on the idea that the US should and can run the world. Anyone who doesn’t see a major flaw in that theory is missing the trees because of the forest in the way. The US just got booted out of Afghanistan after twenty years of fighting against units no larger than a good size Girl Scout troop made up of goat herders. Anyone believing the US can successfully fight a proxy war against the Russians needs to rethink.

James Baker put in writing in 1991 that the US would not oppose the reunification of Germany and would not expand Nato one inch to the east. Since then thirteen countries have been added to Nato. Nato had an expiration date of 1991 and should have died a death thirty years ago. Baker lied. In 2016 Ukraine agreed to the Minsk II agreement that called for Ukraine to stop murdering women and children in the Donbass region and to talk to them directly. Ukraine lied and has refused to comply with their own agreement.

Ukraine is a Pawn on the Grand Chessboard:

This has all been planned. But not by Putin. Actually the Rand report was a plan on how to force Russia into an attack on Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people have died on both sides in a useless war instigated by and for the US. Rand report prescribed US provocations against Russia; predicted Russia might retaliate in Ukraine. That was the entire purpose:

All those atrocities being committed today, they are the product of the Ukrainian government and we support them. That insane support based on opinions and not facts may end the world in a fireball that could have been prevented if people would do some research and learn to think for themselves.

Is Zelensky really some sort of superman fighting for truth and justice on behalf of the entire world? The media used to think differently:
And what of the “so-called” Nazis. How did the MSM write about them long before they started murdering civilians in Bucha because they wore white armbands indicating support of the Russian forces? The murders came days after the Russians withdrew from the city and the Nazis moved in.
Martin Armstrong has done some excellent reporting about what is really going on in Ukraine. Here is an interesting nine minute video about Zelensky from India: "The Real Zelensky from Outside the USA"
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