Friday, June 3, 2022

"Doug Casey on the Rapid Cultural Decline and What Comes Next"

"Doug Casey on the Rapid Cultural 
Decline and What Comes Next"
by International Man

"International Man: Nations in decline often experience cultural degeneracy. We saw that in the Roman Empire and Weimar Germany, for example. Today, in the US, we see increasing signs of cultural degeneracy in Hollywood, advertisements, academia, science, corporations, politics, and other areas of life. What is your take?

Doug Casey: There have been a number of major turning points throughout history. Rome in the third century was one of them. It was a period of economic, political, and military chaos, aggravated by the social chaos accompanying the rise of Christianity. These things set the stage for the complete collapse of the old civilization in the West with the barbarian invasions after Adrianople in 378.

The Renaissance changed the nature of life in Western Europe starting in the 15th century, as did the Enlightenment in the 18th century. And, most important, in many ways, the Industrial Revolution overturned the pre-existing economic order starting in the early 19th century.

Whenever the public was in a frenzy about something or other, my friend Herman Kahn (look him up) liked to quip, "There are only two important things that have happened since the dawn of history - and this isn't one of them." He was referring to the Agricultural Revolution around 5000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution. It's good to keep things in perspective…

Of course, there have been plenty of bloody episodes, great discoveries, and breathtaking inventions along the way. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, WW I, WW II, the collapse of the USSR, and the rise of China are among them. But in the great sweep of history, they're really just footnotes. It bears emphasis, though, that almost everything of any importance that has happened in the last 500 years has been about or because of Western Civilization.

They all had various effects, but none of them really attacked the basis of Western civilization itself. Psychopaths like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were, even in their heydays, really just jackals barking at a lion.

But then things started changing in the 1960s. The 60s were fun at the time, but from a cultural viewpoint, they turned out to be an overture to the collapse of Western Civ. You may recall the motto of many college students at demonstrations was, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has to go." They were yahoos, of course, but it's actually happening now, 60 years later. Thomas Cole's superb series of five paintings, "The Course of Empire," done about 200 years ago, says it all.
Full screen recommended.
The thing to remember is that Western civilization is built on a certain set of values and virtues that have given the world something unique in history. Before the rise of Western Civ, people everywhere in the world survived by piling sticks and stones on top of one another and grubbing for roots and berries, freezing in the winter and starving in the spring, expecting an early and likely violent death.

Western Civ changed the very nature of life. It is, in fact, the only civilization worth talking about. China may have given the world Taoism, martial arts, and General Tso's Chicken. India developed yoga, and curries are tasty. But on the whole, Ayn Rand was right when she said East minus West equals zero.

We're now undergoing our own Great Cultural Revolution. It's much more serious than what the Chinese attempted in the '60s. Why? Because a whole complex of destructive ideas have now captured the apparatus of most governments, academia, media, entertainment, charities, and large corporations. The public has been both subtlety and overtly indoctrinated for generations. It's not easy to reverse a trend this large.

But maybe you think I'm being too inflammatory. Perhaps you don't believe Western civilization in general, and the idea of America in particular, are dying. Fair enough. Let me give you the dozen things that made Western Civilization and America not only unique but vastly better than any other country or civilization in history. I've listed 12 concepts. These things are the essence of Western Civ - and are unique to it. Ask yourself if attitudes towards them haven't changed radically in recent years. Ask yourself if the trend towards collapse of the West hasn't accelerated since then.

1. Free thought has been replaced by Political Correctness, and it's discouraged. We're approaching the stage of Orwellian thought crime.

2. Free speech is subject to cancel culture at universities, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and society in general. In totalitarian societies, free speech is cause for imprisonment or worse. We're headed in that direction.

3. Free markets mean the freedom to act. They're gone as an ideal, replaced by socialism as a goal. Regulation is now considered essential by most people.

4. Limited government has been replaced by State control of almost everything.

5. Individualism is seen as bad, or at least antisocial. Identity politics is preferred. You're not an individual so much as a member of a race or a party.

6. Rationality is white and therefore racist. Science, logic, and fact are replaced by superstition. Group think is the new secular religion.

7. Liberty is seen as a danger. Snowflakes need shelter in safe spaces for fear of being triggered.

8. The concept of Progress is dangerous because it leads to inequality, and no one should be left behind.

9. Privacy has been replaced by Transparency. God forbid you might have a secret. Everything is monitored. The Chinese Social Credit system is becoming a model.

10. Property Rights - Fuhgedaboudit. You'll own nothing and better be happy. On the bright side, your masters may give you food, housing, education, meds, and a Guaranteed Annual Income - if you're obedient.

11. The classic Rule of Law is gone, replaced by thousands of micro rules. Everything that's not obligatory is forbidden.

12. Industry and enterprise are evil since they lead to "greed," inequality, and using the planet's resources.

Statists and collectivists have largely succeeded in corrupting the public's attitudes towards the twelve things which made the West unique. The trend is accelerating, and trends tend to stay in motion until they reach a crisis. Once they reach a crisis - it's called a revolution in the case of a country, or a collapse in the case of a civilization - things usually get even worse, at least for a while.

There's much more to be said about the 12 attitudes and institutions that I've listed. But it's not just a matter of academic or philosophic interest because when these foundations of civilization disappear, the good things they brought us will also wash away. They're essential to everything - art, music, literature, science, and technology. They're the basis of our high standard of living.

Other civilizations, like the Japanese and Chinese, have based their progress on adopting these Western attitudes and principles. But just as they've been accused of copying machines and technologies, it's arguable they've only mimicked some of these values. Africa, most of Asia, and the Third World generally haven't even done that. I doubt these 12 things are in the cultural DNA anywhere outside of the West - and they're being deleted from the West.

If you're looking for a template of what could happen in the US and all over the world in this coming decade, you might look at some news articles on Sri Lanka.
My guess is that for years to come, we're going to see a serious devolution of civilization everywhere. The world has become top-heavy with the fruits of civilization. Hundreds of millions rely on those fruits, with no clue about how they came about. Meanwhile, the roots of the tree that produced them are rotting.

As a result, we could be looking at not just a historic financial meltdown, accompanied by a really serious economic upheaval, with wars and serious shortages. But an overthrow of traditional cultural norms, social chaos, and political totalitarianism. Of course, mankind has survived all that for at least five millennia so far. And I suppose we'll handle this as well. There will just be more unpleasantness and inconveniences than usual in the decade to come..."
Full screen recommended.
"The Course of Empire: Thomas Cole's Warning to America"

"We Are Heading Into An Economic Hurricane"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/3/22:
"We Are Heading Into An Economic Hurricane"
"We are getting more and more economic warnings from the big banks. The latest is Goldman Sachs to step forward and tell us that we are heading for dismal times ahead. We need to prepare and we’ve all had plenty of warning."
And no way to slow down...
Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"

"Is 'Normalcy Bias' Blinding Us To The Looming Economic Storm?"

"Is 'Normalcy Bias' Blinding Us To 
The Looming Economic Storm?"
by Michael Maharrey

"Average people are worried about the economy. Consumer confidence has been falling. People undoubtedly feel the squeeze of inflation. But despite their general discontent, most people don’t seem to think a severe economic downturn is imminent - despite many warning signs. Why not?

Peter Schiff has been warning that a recession is in all likelihood already here. In a recent interview on NTD News, he emphasized that the economic downturn will be much deeper than anybody expects. "I don’t think it’s going to be a mild recession. I think this recession is going to be worse than the Great Recession that started following the 2008 financial crisis.”

But most people remain sanguine about the economy. They may fret a bit about ongoing inflation – as reflected in the consumer sentiment numbers – but they assume the Fed will be able to tame the inflation dragon with some modest monetary tightening. They even concede this might cause a minor recession, but the mainstream believes Jerome Powell when he claims the economy is strong enough to handle higher interest rates and some balance sheet reduction. Virtually nobody besides Schiff and a few other contrarians sees anything major economic problems coming down the pike.

But as Schiff pointed out in that same interview, nobody saw the 2008 recession coming either. "In fact, when we were six or seven months into that recession, the Federal Reserve and other economists still claimed that there was no recession anywhere in sight. So, this recession is going to be much worse than that one.”

In retrospect, the signs of a housing crash were pretty obvious in 2006 and early 2007. It was apparent that there were serious problems in early ’08. But almost nobody in the mainstream saw the financial crisis and Great Recession coming. Like today, there were only a few voices in the wilderness sounding a warning.

Why is it that so few people are prepared for economic crashes when the warning signs are so obvious? There are certainly many factors, but one likely reason people don’t can’t see the train hurtling down the tracks is a psychological phenomenon known as “normalcy bias.” In a nutshell, normalcy bias is a form of denial based on the assumption that everything will continue as normal.

Here’s a more formal definition. "Normalcy bias is a psychological state of denial people enter in the event of a disaster, as a result of which they underestimate the possibility of the disaster actually happening, and its effects on their life and property. Their denial is based on the assumption that if the disaster has not occurred until now, it will never occur.” In simple terms, it’s the “it can’t happen to me (or us)” syndrome.

Normalcy bias leads to inaction. It’s one of the reasons people often ignore hurricane warnings. The assumption is “we haven’t ever had a hurricane yet, and if we do, it probably won’t be that bad.”

According to PsycholoGenie, there may be some evolutionary basis for normalcy bias. "There is a theory that associates normalcy bias with the evolutionary aspect, that suggests that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of survival because predators are less likely to attack and feed on something that isn’t moving.” That’s great if predators are hunting you in the jungle. It’s not so great if an economic disaster is looming.

I think normalcy bias is one of the reasons the Federal Reserve’s transitory inflation narrative gained so much traction. Despite the money printing after the 2008 financial crisis, consumer prices never rose as many predicted. Instead, inflation manifested in asset prices, particularly stocks and real estate. This led Fed policymakers to assume they could do quantitative easing again – and even double down on it – without severely impacting consumer prices. Of course, the dynamics were different during the pandemic. Not only was the Federal Reserve printing trillions of dollars, but the US government was also handing out cash in the form of stimulus checks, even as most Americans were sitting at home producing nothing. This was a recipe for rapidly rising consumer prices.

But normalcy bias kicked in. We were told, “Inflation didn’t happen before, so don’t worry, it won’t happen now.” An assumption set in – things will continue as they always have. And when prices started to spike, these same people assured us that it was transitory. All along, Schiff was warning that inflation wasn’t transitory. But pretty much nobody listened.

Similarly, I think normalcy bias has played a role in gold and silver’s lackluster performance in recent months. As Schiff put it in a video on the recent performance of gold, “Even though we have a lot of inflation today, investors still think we won’t have inflation tomorrow.”

Because the Fed has been able to raise interest rates to keep inflation at bay in the past, the mainstream just assumes it will be able to modestly raise rates and keep inflation at bay this time around. Never mind that there are different dynamics in play and plenty of signs that inflation will likely remain entrenched over the coming months. Normalcy bias has blinded people to the fact that it would require a Paul Volker style hike to push real interest rates into positive territory - the only cure for inflation.

At some point, reality will cut through the normalcy bias. It always does. But when the mainstream wakes up, it’s too late. As you survey the economic landscape, be aware of normalcy bias. There is no reason to assume things will continue as they always have. Keep your eyes on the economic data, analyze it objectively and keep basic economic principles in mind. And then, prepare accordingly."

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

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/3/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Getting Crazy!"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi 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!"

"How It Really Is"

An homage to Stanley Kubrick's brilliant "Dr. Strangelove"
Full screen recommended.
"Dr. Strangelove, Major Kong Rides The Bomb" (1963)
"Through a series of military and political accidents, a pair of psychotic senior military officers - U.S. Air Force Commander Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) and Joint Chiefs of Staff General "Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) - hatch an ingenious, foolproof, and irrevocable plan to unleash a wing of B-52 bombers and their nuclear payloads on strategic targets inside Russia. And when the brains behind the scheme, Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist with bizarre ideas about man's future, accidentally activates the bombing mission, the President of the United States (Peter Sellers) is unable to stop it. 

Although he knows the secret code to stop the mission, the Royal Air Force's Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) isn't much help since he's come under attack at a U.S. Air Force base by a group of U.S. paratroopers who've been accidentally activated, too. So, despite all efforts to recall him, Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) personally sees his bombing mission to its fateful conclusion, even as the Russian Ambassador (Peter Bull) is summoned to the White House in hopes of averting a crisis and preventing the activation of the "Doomsday" machine. But the inevitable comes to pass as the efforts of the Pentagon brass and all the politicians in Moscow and Washington cannot undo the cascading series of cataclysmic events."

Thursday, June 2, 2022

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 6/3/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 6/3/22"
War, Death, Inflation all Rising
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The USA is rushing to spend more money on weapons to send to Ukraine for more war. They are sending drones, hellfire missiles and $700 million more to kill Russians if the money ever even makes it there. The USA is also cutting Russia off from the payment system and will force them into default. What will Russia do to counter this dirty trick? That is the big question, but big bankers like Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Bank is bracing for a “hurricane.” Is this announcement just a coincidence?

More “mysterious” deaths happened this past week where celebrities died, and there is no cause of death listed. What is going on? Why this sudden reporting flaw where it is not reported when someone like a 19-year-old star lacrosse player dies and everybody is mum on the cause? Could this be more death caused by the CV19 experimental injections they try to pass off as some sort of vaccine when it is a fact it does not stop Covid infections? Are there going to be many more mysterious deaths in the future? The answer to both questions, I think, is decidedly–yes.

There has been one record high price in fuel after another, and this week was no exception. The record national average for regular gasoline is now $4.71 a gallon. Will the record hold? Not a chance, and this is very bad news for “We the People.” With rising fuel prices and rising prices in general, the forecast is clearly more inflation, much more."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/3/22:

Robert Gore, "Reckoning With Insanity," Part Two

"Reckoning With Insanity," Part Two
by Robert Gore

"The Russian military doesn’t do shock and awe. It does grind, advance... and win. Contrary to Western propaganda, it is well on its way to achieving its objectives in Ukraine. In what looks like a watershed moment, most of the holdouts at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol recently surrendered. (The New York Times couldn’t bring itself to use the term “surrender” in its account of the capitulation.) This gives Russia a land corridor on the Black Sea from southwestern Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

Left to their own devices the Russians and Ukrainians would eventually reach an agreement that leaves eastern and southern Ukraine in Russia’s hands or closely aligned with it as one or more autonomous states, with pledges from what remained of Ukraine not to join NATO or station nuclear weapons on its territory. Some such resolution was available before the war began. Facts on the ground mean it would now be more far more favorable to Russia than it would have been if war had never started. The war may cost Ukraine direct access to the Black Sea.

The $40 billion war appropriation indicates that the U.S. has no intention of leaving Ukraine and Russia to their own devices. Instead, the U.S. wants to promote a long Ukrainian insurgency that drains Russia politically and economically and in the best of all possible worlds, topples Putin. The concern has been expressed that backed into a corner, madman Putin might then take the conflict nuclear. The more pressing concern: that is the outcome America’s madmen and madwomen want.  A generally unrecognized possibility (in the Western media) is that it could be the American contingent who find themselves backed into a corner.

The U.S. may get its Ukrainian quagmire, but it would be a quagmire for both sides, with all sorts of unintended consequences and ramifications. Is the Biden administration adroit enough to create a tar baby for the Russians without getting itself stuck? Is the Biden administration adroit enough to turn on the White House’s Christmas tree lights? As it became clear that Vietnam was a quagmire, some advocated a nuclear strike on North Vietnam. Finding itself stuck, whoever makes the decisions may decide, unlike the Vietnam experience, that nuclear escalation, either outright or in response to a false flag, is just the answer for the situation.

That danger is heightened by the obvious boomerang of the sanctions imposed on Russia. A leading exporter of grains, oil, natural gas, and minerals, the sanctions and Western fiat debt creation have jacked up the prices Russia receives and left the nation with large current account surpluses. Linking the ruble to gold and insisting on payment in rubles were adroit moves, and the ruble’s exchange value is now higher than it was before Russia invaded Ukraine. By population most of the rest of the world, including China and India, are either actively supporting Russia or refusing to align with the U.S. bloc.

Cutting themselves off from Russian exports, the U.S. and Europe are scrambling for substitutes that in some cases are unavailable at any price and in other cases present problems of quality, reliability of delivery, or suitability for existing infrastructure. For instance, refineries can’t take just any old oil. They are built for certain grades, a fact to which Western policymakers seem oblivious. Rising prices present a host of real economy problems, including compressed margins, that are being reflected in sinking Western stock and bond markets as stagflation looms.

Counterproductive is not a strong enough adjective for Western moves, they’ve been suicidal. If the goal was to force an existential choice on Putin, they may instead force on existential moment on all of us, about which we’ll have no choice. Amidst crashing economies and financial markets, sky-high unemployment, civil unrest, debt funding unavailable or available only at ruinous interest rates, fiat currencies reaching their intrinsic value—zero—and war raging that has leapt its borders in Ukraine and spread out in all directions, can it be said with certainly that our cornered rulers wouldn’t push the nuclear button?

Advocates of nuclear warfare usually talk of “tactical” nuclear weapons - just another bomb in the arsenal. The enemy would supposedly either surrender after their use or limit its counterstrike to similar bombs. The U.S. does have a low-yield nuclear bomb, the B61-3, whose blast can be limited to .3 kilotons, the energy release of 300 tons of TNT. That’s one-fiftieth of the 15-kiloton yield that destroyed Hiroshima.

However, the yield on the B61-3 can be “dialed-up” to 170 kilotons, over 11 times the Hiroshima bomb’s yield, and the U.S.’s highest yielding bomb is 1200 kilotons, 1.2 megatons, 80 times the Hiroshima bomb’s yield. The U.S. tested a 15 megaton bomb, Castle Bravo, in 1954, and the Soviet Union tested bombs in 1961 and 1962 with yields ranging from 20 megatons to the Tsar Bomba’s 50 megatons. That’s over 2,600 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. They don’t need bombs that big now because missiles can carry multiple warheads, which can be independently targeted. Ten 1.2 megaton warheads would be 12 megatons.

No assurances can be offered that conflict wouldn’t escalate after the first nuclear weapon was detonated. Start tossing megaton-yield bombs around and the casualties would range from millions of people, assuming population centers were bombed, to the elimination of the human race. Even if the blasts themselves didn’t wipe us out, fallout, radiation poisoning, nuclear winter, and the destruction of agriculture might. To advocate use of nuclear weapons that could lead to humanity’s extinction is insane.

Insane, but not inexplicable. Why has the Ruling Caste buried the world in debt that is destroying the global economy? Why are they inflicting deadly medical and pharmacological nightmares? Why are we being forced to abandon nuclear and fossil-fuel power for intermittent and less efficient wind and solar power, which require environmentally unsound extraction, production, and energy-storage technologies? Why is the production and processing of food under attack? Why do they openly embrace massive population reduction and the impoverishment and enslavement of those who are left alive? Why are individual rights relentlessly attacked while collectivism, the separation of income from production, equality of outcomes, status dictated by race, ethnicity, and gender rather than merit, the elimination of personal privacy, and perverse sexual propensities and practices promoted and inflicted on children? Why have they started a war that could lead to the annihilation of the human race?

We keep returning to the same answer. "They want to rule you because they want to kill you because they want to kill existence and themselves. Hard as it may be to comprehend, don’t we know them by their works: by the slavery, carnage, and wars they’ve imposed, the freedoms they’ve robbed, the joy they’ve extinguished? Look at the world with eyes wide open. What do you see?" - “The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, 3/24/20

What you see is the only explanation that fits. They are trying to kill themselves and everyone else: suicidal genocide. Don’t choke on this last red pill, although it’s the hardest to swallow. It leaves you standing at the edge of an abyss, a soulless void, but it has the virtue of explanation. And it leaves you with certainty: you must protect yourself and those you love - you’re stronger than you think, and fight them with everything you have - they’re weaker than you, or they, think.

There is no way to prepare for nuclear holocaust and you might not want to be one of the survivors. If humanity stops short of that final destination we must do everything we can to fight our suicidal murderers. Murderous hatred builds nothing, it only destroys. Tax theft, regulatory extortion, and mountains of debt that will never be repaid mark their inability to produce. They need us for that. It’s the linchpin of their schemes for subjugation and our point of attack.

Many people don’t realize that when they deposit the debt-scrip that’s absurdly called money into a financial institution, their only claim on that scrip is as an unsecured creditor of the institution. The institution is free to lend or invest that scrip and their recipients often lend or invest it again. In this way debt pyramids and systemic leverage builds. When the system crashes, as it eventually must, depositors are told to take a number. Perhaps they’ll receive a fraction of the scrip they deposited. Or perhaps not.

"It is a matter of some urgency that the payers apply their leverage while they still have it. Simply put, they need to bankrupt the government before the government bankrupts them. On present course it will go broke, perhaps sooner than most people expect. In its desperate rapacity, it will seize every stream of income and asset it can get its kleptocratic hands on. It is incumbent on those with streams of income and assets to launch a preemptive strike or lose everything, which would surely usher in that dystopian apocalypse."

You don’t have to be David to fight Goliath and you don’t have to be Atlas to shrug. In “Revolution in America,” I made the case that withdrawal of scrip en masse from America’s highly leveraged financial system would undermine the foundation of the Ruling Caste’s tawdry empire. I’m not going to make that case again - interested readers can click the link - but it still stands. In a system as leveraged as ours, mass withdrawal, a preemptive bank run, would be David’s rock and sling.

The situation is more urgent now because Americans will soon be denied yet another freedom - the freedom to withdraw their money from their bank or other financial institution. What’s rarely mentioned in the discussions of central bank digital currencies is that digital scrip will be electronically trapped. Bank withdrawals will be tightly controlled and runs will be no more permitted than disclosures of government criminality or criticisms of the Ruling Caste.

Right now you can withdraw scrip from the system and turn it into Real Money: physical gold or silver. Perhaps you want to keep enough in the system for the transactional convenience of paying your bills. If you take out the rest - your savings - and buy precious metals, with one toss of the rock you’ve increased your personal freedom and autonomy from the government while waging war against it. And it’s legal...for now.

The government is bankrupt. Its only remaining financial strategies are rapacious taxation, endless central bank debt monetization, and consequently, infinite log (99.99999999999⇾ percent) scrip debasement, which leads to the outcome Washington Irving described so well.

Could this delusion always last, the life of a merchant would indeed be a golden dream; but it is as short as it is brilliant. Let but a doubt enter, and the “season of unexampled prosperity” is at end. The coinage of words is suddenly curtailed; the promissory capital begins to vanish into smoke; a panic succeeds, and the whole superstructure, built upon credit and reared by speculation, crumbles to the ground, leaving scarce a wreck behind: “It is such stuff as dreams are made of.” - Washington Irving, “The Crayon Papers,” 1820

As the “promissory capital” vanishes the financial system implodes - it too will be bankrupt because bankrupt governments are its ultimate guarantor. The question is not whether or not it will implode, but whether you choose to be an instigator or a victim of the implosion. You can protect yourself, withdraw your scrip, and exchange it for real-money gold or silver. If enough people do that it’s a run and the rickety edifice collapses. Or you can keep your money within the system. In the dead of night a law or regulation is announced and the next day your scrip is “bailed-in” or converted to central bank digital scrip, which is the same thing. Good luck to you after that.

Collapsed governments won’t have the wherewithal to implement a Great Reset nor, it is to be hoped, wage nuclear war. The collectivist left has long dreamed of collapsing government - Cloward-Piven, Saul Alinsky, and all that - which would be replaced by bigger, supposedly better, but actually more tyrannical government that they control.

The Principled Productive can play Collapse the Government as well, and far better, because government depends on their productivity and amidst the rubble they will be the ones who can actually build back better. Atlases will greet efforts to resurrect and “improve” collapsed welfare-warfare states not with shrugs but with firearms and other weaponry, some of it seized from those collapsed states. In successful enclaves freedom will be the order of the day, simply because freedom works by allowing those who work to work, and there will be much work to be done.

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

I and other bloggers are sometimes criticized as keyboard warriors who only highlight problems without proposing solutions. Okay, here’s a strategy at least, although it’s not a complete solution: attack the Ruling Caste and their governments at their weakest point - indebtedness and inability to produce. I can’t envision a solution that wouldn’t require the commitment and action of a Samuel Adams’ “tireless minority,” which would still have to number in the millions. However, this strategy has the virtues of present legality, no bloodshed, implementation by individuals in whose interests it would clearly be, and compounding effectiveness as more individuals participate. It can be a personal first step, self-protection that takes the initiative against those who would enslave or kill us. These isolated sparks might then become brushfires that merge into a conflagration. If anyone has a better idea, the forum is yours in the comments section."
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"Shipping Container Shortage Push Supply Chains To A Breaking Point As Freight Rates Soar 150%"

Full screen recommended.
"Shipping Container Shortage Push Supply Chains 
To A Breaking Point As Freight Rates Soar 150%"
by Epic Economist

"Supply chain problems are getting dramatically worse, aggravated by persistent port congestion and shipping delays, as well as a growing imbalance between container demand and available capacity. To make things worse, businesses are already facing another spike in shipping and freight rates as peak season approaches. Challenges keep piling on, and executives are warning that more port chaos is on the horizon as fears of fresh supply chain disruptions continue to rise.

Ship operators are scrambling to add millions of new containers to address a severe capacity shortage, but the giant boxes are getting stuck on liners and at ports as the shipping industry moves into its busiest period. “Importers are now bringing in cargo just in case, not just in time, and it makes up for more boxes sitting at the port,” explained Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. Seroka noted that the port of LA will have to handle substantially more cargo in the coming weeks as Shanghai, the world’s biggest port, has opened after a two-month citywide closure to fight a virus outbreak.

According to Simon Heaney, a supply chain researcher at Drewry, a maritime consultancy, there’s going to be a deluge of orders coming out of Shanghai and landing all at the same time in U.S. ports. Since the beginning of March, total dry bulk congestion levels at ports in mainland China have jumped around 40%, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea.

In a recent interview, Christian Roeloffs, the co-founder and CEO at Container xChange, highlighted that container prices have “skyrocketed” by up to 10-fold on U.S.-China routes in the past two years “owing to one disruption after the other”. “By the way, the first half of 2022 has gone, these disruptions will be faced by the industry well into the year 2023,” he alerted.

Roeloffs warned that the end of lockdowns in Shanghai could trigger “panic shipping” in the next few weeks, as the backlog of containers destined for the U.S. West keeps getting bigger and “everyone wants to be on time for the peak season and wants to make sure that the cargo reaches the West coast on time.”

Consequently, this could spark another round of price rises as companies rush to find vessel capacity to transport their products. New data collected by Xeneta shows that May saw the highest ever monthly increase in long-term contracted ocean freight rates. The unprecedented hike means that long-term rates are now 150.6% up year-on-year. In 2022 alone, costs have climbed by 55%.

The lack of reliability and the continuous deterioration in the accuracy of transit and arrival times in global container shipping means the sector is in the worst state it has been in for 50 years, says Philip Damas, Drewry’s managing director. “There has been no improvement globally in the past year and looking forward our review is that you should not expect an unwinding and resolving of port congestion until 2023,” he forecasted.

All of these factors are setting the stage for another nightmarish period for shipping. Supply chains have been broken and have never had the chance to properly rebound from the bottlenecks that emerged over the past two years. Given this context of persistent deterioration and exhaustion, it's understandable why most people in the industry can see that more turbulence is coming, and the next round of supply chain disruptions is going to be unlike anything we've ever witnessed. A lot more stress is ahead, and the American people will become increasingly frustrated as prices just keep getting higher and higher."

Gerald Celente, "Trends in the News"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/2/22: "Trends in the News"

"Stock Market Hoping For FED Miracle; Credit Freeze Warming Up; Buy Food Now"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/2/22:
"Stock Market Hoping For FED Miracle; 
Credit Freeze Warming Up; Buy Food Now"

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch! The "Demonic Ghoul" Of The FED Speaks!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/2/22:
"Must Watch! The "Demonic Ghoul" Of The FED Speaks!"

"Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds"

"Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"Have a look at the shock on people’s faces as they leave the grocery stores these days, or the look as they stand filling up their tanks at the gas station. Their jaws drop and they wonder what is happening to the world. The answer is the policy disasters of the last two years. The bill is coming due and everyone but the masters of the universe is paying it. The value of the dollar is sinking rapidly, more rapidly than in our lifetimes. Nor is it coming back.

The people who hold power today seem completely clueless about why this is happening. Actually, that’s a charitable interpretation. They might just think it is great. High gas prices are pushing a shift to electric cars, presumably to manage global climate (I’m a serious doubter that anything like that is possible by policy). Or maybe there is an impulse here just to redistribute wealth and disorient people to create new levels of dependency. Whatever the reason, I’m seeing absolutely no signs that anyone at the top has any intention to put a stop to this.

Kill the Snake in the Garden! The Biden administration - total geniuses up there! - have been hunting around for the source of price increases, as if there is some single greatest offender out there in the markets. They won’t blame the Fed of course because the Biden administration considers a monetary policy war against inflation to be a potential political disaster. It would drive the economy into a statistical recession. Then they would doom themselves at the midterm. Better to let inflation rip than risk that.

So instead, they are looking to scapegoat market actors. It’s preposterous: Markets are linked in ways that are impossible to trace and understand. You cannot map it. It’s too complex. It cannot be designed. It cannot be gamed. But tell that to the credentialled experts who believe that they have it all going.

So some geek in the White House noted that shipping prices are through the roof. They reasoned that these high costs are putting pressure on all producers, which in turn is being passed on to consumers. What to do? Crack down on the shippers! That’s exactly what they have done by unleashing the Federal Maritime Commission, “an independent agency that polices international ocean transportation on behalf of American companies and consumers,” according to The New York Times.

What the heck is the FMC going to do? Oh, harass people. Send letters. Investigate. Make big demands. But this much is clear during inflation: Everyone, without exception, has a thoroughly valid reason to raise prices. In this sense, they are all telling the truth that it is not their fault. Finding some single or several or many key offenders during a hyperinflation is like hunting for the offending cloud during a hurricane.

Another Stimulus: One of the great independent journalists who has really found his mojo during this crisis has been Jordan Schachtel. His Substack account seems often ahead of the major news. He drew my attention to something so bizarre that I never imagined it would happen. He believes that the politicians are, right now, plotting another stimulus check drop on citizens as a way of helping people deal with inflation. True story! It’s actually a level of policy insanity I’ve not seen in my lifetime. This would be like pushing a drowning man deep underwater:

Far from coming to terms with their mistakes and acknowledging their errors, the rulers of our fiat system, in their infinite wisdom, may soon decide to fight inflation with… you guessed it, more inflation. Sounds crazy? No way they would be that ridiculous, right? Well, I have some news for you. It’s already happening in Canada.

Quebec has announced that they will give a $500 stimulus check to everyone that makes $100,000 or less. This handout, which is expected to reach 6.4 million Canadians, will "help Quebecers cope with the sharp increase in the cost of living that we have seen in recent months,” Finance Minister Eric Girard said Tuesday.

Following Canada’s lead, a group of Democrat congressmen have just introduced a bill to hand out “gas price stimulus checks” to Americans. The timing of this new bill should not go unnoticed, as midterm elections are just around the corner in November. Two congressmen are hyping a bill to give $100 a month to all citizens who live in areas where gas prices are above $4 per gallon. Do the math on this and you end up with an annual bill of $168 billion. This comes after many people in Congress have started to slightly worry about their spending programs.

And of course, once you do this with gas, there is no reason not to do this with food, rent, medical bills or anything else. You end up with a mind-blowing system in which government is forever printing up the currency to compensate people for the consequences of previous money printing.

CNN is helping to drum up support: "The administration should ask Congress to authorize a payment of $1,100 per household to pay for four months of higher prices going forward, and provide an option for the president to provide a second or even third check to low- and moderate-income families for an additional four months in the event that prices remain high. We don’t know when this crisis is going to end or when prices for essential goods and services will return to more affordable levels."

It’s the Interwar Period All Over Again: Here we have a scenario straight out of the history books. We are talking about Weimar-level insanity here. But what’s to stop it? The current political winds all lean in this direction. So long as Democrats are in control and the Republicans are stupid and afraid, even as the Fed is embarrassingly bowing to every political pressure, something like this cannot be stopped.

If this continues, we could be looking at a full-scale monetary crisis of epic proportions as we approach the midterms. Even then, Congress under Republican control simply cannot manage the Fed, which owes its entire allegiance to the executive in the White House and the deep state. That means two more years even after November of utter policy disasters.

Wow, I really do get tired of reporting terrible news! I wouldn’t have to if the major media could cover these topics with any level of intelligence or honestly. But they don’t. And the failure to do so is having a major impact on the standard of living, which is taking a hit much harder than we have seen since the early 1930s. This is both in the U.S. and Europe. Really all over the world. We can hope and pray for policy rationality to return. But we must also be realistic. This is a crisis with no end in sight."

Musical Interlude: Richard Harris, "MacArthur Park"

Richard Harris, "MacArthur Park"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”
" I do not question the presence of intelligent life on other planets;
 but I do question its existence on this one."
- Dr. Ivan Desantis

"That's Why..."

"That's why crazy people are so dangerous.
You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage."
- Michael Buckley

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"
by Chris Floyd

"I think we are living in a world of lies: lies that don't even know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies. One of the hardest things to accept is that the reality of our world is buried under so many layers of official deception and well-cultivated public ignorance about our history and our political system. Even if you break through somehow, momentarily, and hold up a fragment of the truth, most people have no context for dealing with it. It's like a bolt from the blue, they can't process the information. And so the sea of lies closes over us again, and again, and again. And yet the reality of our future appears on the horizon, denial be damned, an irresistible tsunami of destruction, changing all our lives forever.

These are the facts, and they can't be altered. But how to respond to this catastrophe? Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes? Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics? Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the Lost Cause, for vanished glories and broken dreams?

Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives, determine our reality, act in our name? Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin.

Let's fight, let's reject, let's resist - without violence, the weapon of the stupid, the hormonal secretion of evolutionary backsliders in thrall to the chemical soup in their heads, dull primitives dressing up their ape-lust for power with scraps of religion, philosophy and cant. Let's fight these pathetic, malfunctioning wretches who lay their hands on our world and rape it like beasts in a mindless rut. Fight them with the truths we find, exposing their crimes and deadly hypocrisies to the people they've suckered, perverted and betrayed.

This is not an insurmountable task, no matter how impervious the Machine - that monstrous conglomeration of judicial bagmen, Congressional rubber stamps, psychopathic media moguls, dopehead radio ranters, sex-crazed theocrats, war profiteers, think-tank bleaters, Wall Street sharks, oilmen, Moonies, and woman-haters - might appear at the moment.

I don't know what else we can do, except to keep on telling as much of the truth as we can find, to anyone who will listen: reclaiming reality, fragment by fragment, one person at a time. It's an endless task- maybe a hopeless task- but the alternative is a surrender to the worst elements in our society- and in ourselves. It's worth the fight. Let's take it on. In the words of the old spiritual, let us be in no ways tired. The road back to sanity starts now."

"No Power, No Food, No Water, No Gas - Let’s Party"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/2/22:
"No Power, No Food, No Water, No Gas - Let’s Party"
"The news could not be more dismal today. This is tied up as we enter a season where there will be no power, no food, no water and no gas. People need to realize how bad this is going to get globally. I think it’s time to schedule a good party."

Bill Bonner, "Force and Chicanery"

"Force and Chicanery"
How the elite misgovern the world, one sneaky lie at a time...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "A quick word of warning. Yesterday was the day the Fed began “running off” its balance sheet. That means it is no longer buying bonds. MarketWatch: "In a nutshell, “quantitative tightening” is the opposite of “quantitative easing”: It’s basically a way to reduce the money supply floating around in the economy. It’s seen as likely to drive up real or inflation-adjusted yields, which in turn makes stocks somewhat less attractive. And it should put upward pressure on Treasury term premia, or the compensation investors need for bearing interest-rate risks over the life of a bond."

It was the Fed’s quantitative easing that ballooned its balance sheet and set the stock market to dancing. Now, colleague Tom Dyson believes quantitative tightening – not the Fed’s baby step rate hikes – will bring the party to an end. Most likely, we’ll see some scary and exciting days on Wall Street as tipsy revelers find their cars, head out onto the highway, and end up in a ditch.

But we left you hanging yesterday, didn’t we? You wanted to know how ‘the law’ could end up on the wrong side of ‘the people,’ didn’t you? You probably also wondered what damned difference it makes. We’re not interested in political philosophy either. We’re just connecting the dots to get a clearer idea of what’s ahead. We look at one… and then another. Gradually… then suddenly… a picture appears.

Decree and Flimflam: For example, yesterday came word of a new “law” – actually, a whole set of regulations, edicts, and proclamations. Reuters: "The Biden administration will announce on Wednesday more than $2.1 billion in funding to shore up weaknesses in the country's food supply system exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will unveil the new funding, designed to enhance competition in food processing and distribution, increase access to healthy food, and expand markets for farmers, during a speech at Georgetown University."

Translation: Mr. Vilsack, whose department grows no grains, delivers no milk, and neither sows nor reaps, will take $2.1 billion from ‘the people’ who do and distribute it to his pet projects, friends, favored clients… and other well-lobbied insiders. The result: farmers and the public will be poorer… and less able to buy food.

That is how the ruling elite rolls – by decree and flimflam. And it’s why their new ‘laws’ are almost always on the wrong side of the people they’re supposed to serve. Unlike the consensual ‘rules of the road,’ the new laws do not make it easier for ‘the people’ to get where they want to go. Instead, they force them to detour in a different direction.

Jumping to a conclusion, here’s what we see: the entire, global ruling caste, led by the upper 0.001% who gather at Davos, Switzerland, is like a group heirs to a vast fortune who have no idea how the money was made. Just look at America’s jefes. Most have spent their whole lives in politics. Now they appear to be almost preternaturally dumb, with a stupidity that is somewhere between sublime and miraculous. Ms. Yellen didn’t see the price increases coming – even though she is a Ph.D. economist; she thought inflation was too low. How was that possible?

The president’s ‘sanctions war’ against Russia is undermining the dollar-based world financial system, raising prices of food and energy, risking nuclear war and threatening millions with famine. (Admittedly, Joe “the Big Guy” Biden knows much more about the Ukraine than we do; his family earned big money from Ukrainian payoffs.)

“The People”: And the US Congress voted overwhelmingly – with no debate! – to give $40 billion to the Ukraine, even though it has no dog in the fight and no money to give to anyone. Didn’t Congress know that ‘the people’ have no interest in who misgoverns the Donbass? And didn’t Ms. Yellen tell them that the money is needed at home? Washington Examiner: "New budget numbers show the US careening toward calamity. The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a respected nonpartisan group, reminded us yet again Tuesday that federal spending plans and debt levels are unsustainable. Lawmakers should get serious about debt reduction now - before it’s too late.

Counting only debt held by the public - which is some 20% lower than total government debt, including intra-governmental transfers - CRFB says that absent strong corrective action, the federal debt is likely to reach 125% of gross domestic product within a decade. Most nations are in a serious danger zone for economic collapse when debt exceeds 100% of GDP."

Where did all that debt come from? Since 1999, the feds have made $25 trillion in new “investments” (the increase in Federal debt); nearly every penny has been lost.

They promised that debt and money-printing would stimulate the economy; instead, real wages are falling… and the economy staggers from one crisis to the next.

They promised more equality; instead, the rich are richer than ever and the gap between rich and poor has grown much wider.

They promised peace and security; instead, they’ve entered one pointless war after another… including risking a nuclear war with Russia.

And now their inflation tax makes almost everyone poorer and brings millions more of the world’s poorest people to the edge of starvation.

So, what do they do? Admit failure and retire? Send out a confessional tweet? “Alas, you can’t make people better off by tricking-up an economy with phony money and fake interest rates. Or by bossing them around with laws and edicts. Sorry.” Nah… they never do that.

Instead, they double down. They get tough. They find new enemies. Russians! White Supremacists! Climate change deniers! They use propaganda and censorship to build support… and advertise their own corruption as virtue. After all, they’re fighting for democracy, for equality, for zero carbon emissions and a virus-free world! And when B.S. fails, they turn to brute force to stay in control.

But force and chicanery are enemies of wealth. The more the elite tries to control ‘the people,’ the less real wealth they produce. Hold onto your hat. Tomorrow as we connect more dots… and look ahead to poverty, chaos, crime and the decline of western civilization. Whee!"
"Joel’s Note: As for that $40 billion of money the US government didn’t have to give… but gave anyway, here’s Dan Denning with an unfashionably traditionalist adherence to legislative due process… “The [$40 billion Ukraine] bill was introduced and passed in the House all in one day. Bills are normally referred to a committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter. There they are debated, amended, modified, and voted on and passed to the full House for further consideration.

That didn't happen here. It's doubtful most Members even read the bill. And they certainly didn't debate it. The Rules Committee is one of those committees few people know about. But it decides how long and in what way each Bill can be debated when it reaches the floor of the House. You can't offer amendments from the floor. And this bill was debated for exactly one hour.

Obviously the gears of the Executive Branch and the Federal government grind exceedingly fine. They had no trouble itemizing how to spend $40 billion in taxpayer money on connecting Ukraine's electric grid with Europe’s. Or just on all the oversight jobs required to make sure all that money goes into the right hands/pockets.

It's hard to believe we pay people to go to Congress and make laws like this. The old adage is that it would be better to randomly pick people out of the phone book (if they still have those) and send them to Washington instead. Remember that story where Caligula planned to make his horse a Consul? We've got 435 horses asses (more or less) running the House. And 100 jackasses in the Senate.”

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, “Be Angry at the Sun”

“Be Angry at the Sun”

“That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept,
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. 
Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate Man plays his part; 
the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.”

- Robinson Jeffers, 1941

"I Assure You..."

"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."
- Stephen King

“Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake”

“Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake”
by Jim Rickards

“One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.

A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes – technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.

In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibility of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. – CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.

Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down.”