Thursday, June 22, 2023

Bill Bonner, "Brain Development Issues"

"Brain Development Issues"
The real world consequences of sub-intelligence committees...
By Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Normandy, France - "A young man was taken out of school because he was, well, retarded. His father reported: “He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” Ventura said. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.”

There were never many terrorists on the streets of Wakefield, Massachusetts. Still, the poor kid thought he might want to join up. And it must have been thrilling to be in touch, via the internet, with a real live one. Only, the terrorist wasn’t a terrorist at all. He was a G-Man…with his own issues. He even pretended to be a foreigner, with this corny dialog:

The kid: I reached out to brother [A.D.] for hijrah [migration] I dont know if it is still possible but if it is I know it will take sometime.

FBI agent masquerading as a terrorist: Ahh.. Inshallah [if Allah wills it] I help u, but before talk have rule my brother…U must no talk about what said here or intention to anyone. No tell family. No tell friend. No tell ikhwan [brothers] at masjid [mosque]. No one. This for both are safety.

Brain Dead: When you don’t have any real terrorists in your area, and you are an ambitious FBI agent, you have to create them yourself. So, the agent continued to phish for the boy for years. And to make sure he could be nabbed on a ‘supporting terrorists’ charge, he got the kid to send him small amounts of money – like $25 – via gift cards. The agent encouraged the boy to get on a plane to travel to ‘the Islamic State;’ the youngster balked. He preferred Wakefield. So, the agent tried again…and again, the kid had the good sense to stay home. When the young man turned 18, the FBI showed up at his house and arrested him. Who had the brain development issues?

Turns out, there are undeveloped brains all around us. Yesterday, the French celebrated ‘La Nuit de St. Jean’ with bands in public parks and street corners all over the country…or at least in Paris. It was also the day, five years ago, that Greta Thunberg, the child saint of the Green Transition, claimed that “all of humanity” would be wiped out unless we humans “stopped using fossil fuels” by June 21st, 2023.

We don’t know about the rest of the world. But we drove to the pharmacy yesterday, in a diesel powered Nissan. We cooked dinner on a gas-fired stove. And we took a shower in water that was also heated with gas. So far, so good. The world uses more fossil fuel today than it did in 2018; still no sign of extinction.

Sub-Intelligence: Ms. Thunberg celebrated her birthday by getting arrested for trying to force people to do what she wanted. MSN: "Greta Thunberg Arrested From Oil Port Protest In Malmo, Sweden." "Around 20 climate activists including Greta Thunberg took part in a protest outside an entrance to the port in the Swedish city of Malmo…briefly blocking road traffic to the oil port."

This is why we have councils of elders, not councils of adolescents, to guide us. Teenagers often suffer from development issues. But so do adults. "This morning, rescue teams are still trying to find a mini-submarine that disappeared in the deep, dark waters near Newfoundland. The guy who ran the tourist sub operation made a point of hiring a young, diverse crew. He wanted people who were good at ‘inspiration,’ he said…not a lot of “50-year-old white guys” (aka ‘skilled engineers’)."

Joel’s Note: "Speaking of sub-intelligence, there’s a generation of denialism lurking beneath the surface in many developed, highly-indebted countries. Recall the old saying: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

Where do you reckon we are in this cycle? Do strong men suffer micro-agressions? Do they need trigger warnings? Do they preference “diversity, equity and inclusion” over core competence? No. We’re somewhere between weak men and hard times. And, as BPR investment director, Tom Dyson, mentioned in yesterday’s paid research note to members, that has financial consequences, too…

Many people in America are still not convinced that a massive decline in their living standards and quality of life could happen. But the point is, it's already happening. That's inflation. And the way debt dynamics work in countries that don’t have the exorbitant privilege of printing dollars, it happens faster. You need to prepare for this financially for sure. But also psychologically as well. It's one big advantage you'll have over everyone else. You'll have a realistic understanding of what's happening, and what's going to happen. You'll be better prepared mentally to do what you need to do now.

Of course, there’s a “lot of ruin in a nation,” as Adam Smith had it. “The USA is a very rich country,” continued Tom. “Decades of accumulated capital stock. Inherited wealth. Businesses (big and small). Functioning and sophisticated legal, insurance, and banking systems. Those have allowed centuries of wealth to build up. A lot of the physical wealth—real estate, factories, transportation, power, and communication infrastructure—isn't going anywhere. “But inflation can ravage financial wealth and asset values. That's what people underestimate about the danger of debt. It's a lesson some generations are unlucky enough to learn the hard way. There's a lot of learning to be done.”

"How It Really Is"

 

"It's Coming - Are You Ready?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/22/23
"It's Coming - Are You Ready?"
"A financial expert who predicted the banking crisis is calling for a recession. Do you buy this? Now Wells Fargo is sending people money to “re-dress“ what they have done wrong. Did you get your money?"
Comments here:

"Stock Up Now At Kroger! Great Prepping Options! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/22/23
"Stock Up Now At Kroger! 
Great Prepping Options! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are looking at foods that have a long shelf life. With prices in the grocery stores skyrocketing, we are also looking for the best deals on food to add to our prepper pantry!"
Comments here:

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

"We're Going To War! Russia Counters; Media Crackdown; Crimea Nuclear Countdown Begins"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/21/23
"We're Going To War! Russia Counters;
 Media Crackdown; Crimea Nuclear Countdown Begins"
Comments here:

"You Spent Too Much For Your Car; Car Buyers Financing Big Payments; Car Market Is Crazy"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 6/21/23
"You Spent Too Much For Your Car; 
Car Buyers Financing Big Payments; Car Market Is Crazy"
Comments here:

"Gas Stations Will Run Out Of Fuel And Prices Will Explode This Summer As Supplies Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
"Gas Stations Will Run Out Of Fuel And Prices 
Will Explode This Summer As Supplies Collapse"
by Epic Economist

"How would your budget be affected by a $2 increase in the cost of a gallon of gas? That’s the prospect millions of Americans are facing without even knowing. With the administration boycotting projects to ramp up domestic gasoline production at a time inventories are falling in the US and around the world, expensive prices at the pump will become our new reality, and our stations will face even higher risks of outages and prolonged shortages as fuel supplies continue to get hit from all sides. That’s what we’re going to expose in today’s video.

There has never been another period in the 21st century where global and domestic fuel production faced so many cuts and disruptions as they do in 2023. Not only in America, but all over the world, inventories are rapidly falling, and there isn’t enough capacity to rebuild supplies and stabilize prices for consumers in the long run, a new report shows.

In other words, we are going to be forced to cope with much higher gasoline prices due to a global shortage of fuels. But the bigger and most worrying threat is at home – with the administration planning to enforce regulations that ban gasoline-powered cars, prohibiting drilling in key areas, and canceling leases that would allow us to develop our own resources. That is pushing US fuel reserves to the limit, and those decisions are being made at a time when demand is expected to continue rising, adding further pressure on the cost of a gallon of gas.

At the same time, a big gasoline stockpile drop is making analysts sound the alarm about potential outages and shortages, especially after one single disruption caused by a heavy storm in Oklahoma this week left many stations without fuel, a scene that can be repeated in several other states that are prone to extreme weather events and are running low on fuel supplies.

To make things worse, the administration is restricting gasoline production in a number of ways, and that will have major consequences in our lives in the short and long term. According to a new analysis published by the Foundation for Economic Education, the US government has single-handedly made the gas crisis worse by closing the domestic supply chain, prohibiting drilling in key areas, and now canceling leases that would allow us to become completely independent from international suppliers.

This action will halt the potential to drill for oil on over 1 million acres on the Cook Inlet in Alaska, which will be a devastating loss for those trying to increase the oil supply in the country. Not only did the government cut this lease, but they also stopped two other pending leases in the Gulf of Mexico claiming there were “conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales.”

Our government is willing to throw our citizens under the bus so they can reach a false, net-zero emissions utopia. And the reality is that they want to give us smaller wages and be forced to pay over $5 for a gallon of gas in order to reach their goal. But we shouldn’t have to sacrifice lives to save the planet, and it’s time our politicians finally wake up to that."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Logos, "Cheminement"

Full screen recommended.
Logos, "Cheminement"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

"Perhaps..."

"One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will."
- Rachel Carson

“Are People Really Stupid?”

“Are People Really Stupid?”
by Fred Russell

“On the face of things – judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race – one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds – what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers. 

The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren’t, who or what has held them back?

Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.

It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church – the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking – is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain. 

The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of “experts” and “analysts” who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a “credo” of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.

Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.

Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today’s man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing.”

"Nuclear War Escalation Alert"

"Nuclear War Escalation Alert"
by Mike Adams

"Russian president Vladimir Putin is now warning the West about military escalations that could lead to nuclear war. As reported by the UK Daily Mail, Putin warns that a Third World War would be catastrophic for the world. “There will be no winners,” he says, “including America.” Writing at SHTFplan.com, Michael Snyder posts additional comments from Putin that speak directly about the possibility of nuclear strikes against American cities or military bases: “We were forced to try to end the war that the West started in 2014 by force of arms. And Russia will end this war by force of arms, freeing the entire territory of the former Ukraine from the United States and Ukrainian Nazis. There are no other options,” Putin said.

“The Ukrainian army of the US and NATO will be defeated, no matter what new types of weapons it receives from the West. The more weapons there are, the fewer Ukrainians and what used to be Ukraine will remain.” And importantly, he emphasized that “Direct intervention by NATO’s European armies will not change the outcome. But in this case, the fire of war will engulf the whole of Europe. It looks like the US is ready for that too.” This “fire of war” refers to nuclear weapons, and Russia has the world’s most advanced assortment of nuclear missiles, including nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles for which the West has no effective defense.

America keeps poking the bear and begging to be nuked: The issue at hand is that the United States of America — led by raging, hate-filled tyrants and historically illiterate “woke” idiots like Victoria Nuland at the State Dept. — keeps provoking Russia on purpose. The latest provocation is the promise of providing nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. These combat aircraft would be deployed from military bases outside of Ukraine (Poland, for example) and would attempt to engage Russian forces or launch nuclear missiles against military or infrastructure targets inside Russia.

Putin clearly explains that if the West deploys F-16s from military bases outside of Ukraine, Russia will consider those military bases to be legitimate targets for annihilation, most likely using nuclear weapons. Yet launching nuclear weapons at European military bases would likely lead to European countries launching their own nuclear missiles aimed at Russia. As those are launched, Russia would almost certainly launch its entire nuclear arsenal at targets in Europe and the United States, resulting in the near-total nuclear annihilation of the West.

Russia itself, meanwhile, has air defense systems that can bring down some portion of incoming ICBMs. In addition, Russia has nuclear fallout bunkers spread across its cities, allowing a high survival rate even if nuclear detonations occur. America, on the other hand, has virtually no nuclear preparedness and would be instantly plunged into anarchy and collapse in the aftermath of nuclear strikes.

Additionally, thanks to stimulus money and the welfare state, the American masses are fat, lazy and stupid. In contrast, thanks to years of economic sanctions, the Russian people are adaptive, resilient and resourceful. Which population do you think will fare better in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange?

On top of all this, Russia has its Poseidon nuclear-armed underwater drones parked off the coastlines of both the USA and Britain. With a single command, these drones will detonate 100 megaton nuclear warheads, unleashing a tidal wave of radioactive ocean water that inundates the coast and wipes out ports, cities and naval bases. There is no defense against that. None whatsoever. And America’s most important cities, ports and naval bases are, of course, located near the East Coast.

Yet, astonishingly, the USA doesn’t want to negotiate peace with Russia. Nor does Zelensky, a tyrannical puppet of the Biden regime. Besides, Russia has already learned that it’s pointless trying to negotiate with people who are insane and stupid, which is exactly what now characterizes the “leadership” of both the USA and NATO countries. They are all steeped in child mutilations, election rigging and the trans cult, proving to be completely dissociated from reality and utterly oblivious to the real laws of cause and effect, economics, war, nuclear weapons, currencies, supply chains and more. Sadly, the leaders currently running the show were never elected by the American people. They achieved their positions of power through fraud, psyops, propaganda and cheating. Yet those tactics won’t work against Russia, even though the West knows nothing else to try.

Russian influencers call for deploying nuclear weapons to save the world from the West: Making matters even more dangerous, multiple influencers in Russia are calling for nuclear strikes against NATO and the USA in order to save the world. Here’s an article authored by Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow: "Sergey Karaganov: By using its nuclear weapons, Russia could save humanity from a global catastrophe. (RT.com)" The article argues that leaders of the USA and NATO countries have lost their minds (which is true) and must be shocked back to their senses using nuclear weapons (which would be catastrophic for the world). From the article by Karaganov:

"But what if the present Western leaders refuse to back down? Perhaps they have lost all sense of self-preservation? Then we will have to hit a group of targets in a number of countries to bring those who have lost their senses back to their senses." Failure to nuke the USA and NATO, argues Karaganov, will lead to the end of human civilization on planet Earth: "It’s a morally frightening choice – we would be using God’s weapon and condemning ourselves to great spiritual loss. But if this is not done, not only may Russia perish, but most likely the whole of human civilization will end."

Given the suicidal tendencies of Western European globalists who are running a bioweapons depopulation agenda on the planet, Karaganov may have a point, even if his conclusions point to a dangerous end game. But the fact that he is arguing for a limited number of nuclear strikes on numerous western cities as a kind of “warning shot” should be alarming to anyone paying attention. If Putin shares this view, then he may indeed launch such weapons with the justification that doing so is the only effective way to defend Russia against the West.

Prepare for U.S. cities to burn."
Full video here:

The Daily 'Near You?"

Vail, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”

“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”
by Steve Candidus

“One of the great things about ancient Greek Mythology is that the stories all teach a lesson. They don’t end with – and the moral of the story is – though. They leave it to the reader to figure them out. So in addition to being just plain fun to read they are wonderful teachers about life. Perhaps the best thing about this one is that we still use the expression it contains exactly the same way that the ancient Greeks intended it almost 3,000 years ago. That almost never happens. Language is fluid and the meanings of words and expressions changes from one generation to another, but this one is an exception. The everyday expression it contains is one that we often refer to without really knowing where it came from.

This is one of the tales of Odysseus who was the heroic king of Ithaca and of whose ten-year journey back to Greece after the Trojan War was immortalized in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’. There was a point in his journey when his ship had to enter a narrow straight. It was a passage so narrow that it could only be made under special conditions. They had to have both the wind at their backs and the current in their direction. However, once committed it was impossible to turn back.

Unknown to the sailors the straight was guarded by two deadly perils. On the one side, it was guarded by Scylla. Scylla was a six-headed monster that disguised itself as a rock. On the other side, it was guarded by Charybdis, a terrible deadly whirlpool born of the sea god Poseidon.

In olden times, it was common to refer to any place that a ship came to rest on land as being in a hard place. It didn’t matter if it was blown on shore by a storm, grounded on a reef or brought up intentionally for repair. If it was on shore, it was on a hard place as opposed to the soft place – water.

It also applied to a ship that had foundered. A ship that sinks will eventually rest on the bottom. The land at the bottom of the ocean is therefore called a hard place. It used to be a common term, but it has since pretty much fallen out of practice in common language today. A deadly whirlpool such as Charybdis could take a ship and send it straight to the bottom – a hard place.

So, now as we return to the story of Odysseus we see that their ship had entered a narrow straight and that straight was guarded by two evil perils with hardly enough room for a ship to pass between them. They were forced to choose between the six headed monster ‘Scylla’ disguised as a rock or the dreaded whirlpool ‘Charybdis’ that would surely send them to a hard place and they could not turn back.

There is a Latin proverb from this story, “Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim” which translates to, “He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis.” In modern day English, we simply say, “They were between a rock and a hard place”. And now you know…”

"Russia To Strike Ukraine With Nuclear Missiles? Putin Declares 'Sarmat To Join Combat Soon'"

Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times 6/21/23
"Russia To Strike Ukraine With Nuclear Missiles? 
Putin Declares 'Sarmat To Join Combat Soon'"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Sarmat missile system would soon be ready for combat duty. The Sarmat system is Russia's new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of carrying more than 10 nuclear warheads. The Russian President further added that the development of the nuclear triad is the 'most important task'. The development comes as Ukrainian forces' counteroffensive is underway against Russian troops."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, PM 4/18/22:
"Oh S#!%... "SATAN" Nuclear Missile is Being Prepared"
"We are so close to the brink... Russia is reported to have conducted a test launch of the RS-28 (15A28) Sarmat ICBM, which will replace the Soviet R-36M2 Voyevoda missile. This is the worlds largest nuclear missile that includes 15 warheads each with high nuclear yield. According to Russian information, on April 24, a Sarmat ICBM test launch took place from Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region with the final destination being the Kura training field in Kamchatka. It is worth noting that this information was leaked to the Russian media immediately after the loss of the Moskva cruiser. The Russians note that there is no reason to follow the example of the US, which canceled the test launches of Minuteman III twice in March and April of this year under the fictitious pretext of "non-escalation" of the situation. Launch is only necessary for a complete re-equipment."
RS-28 Sarmat

15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.
Do we really want to do this?
o
And for good measure...
Full screen recommended.
o
Full screen recommended.
Sub Brief, "Russia's Status-6"
"Russia's strange love of nuclear weapons takes a dark turn. The Status-6 Poseidon nuclear torpedo is designed to render entire coastal regions uninhabitable for 100's of years. This new threat is unlike anything we've seen since the Cold War."
Comments here:
Do we really want to do this?

"The Stigma Is Over"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/21/23
"The Stigma Is Over"
"I have been shopping at the dollar stores for decades. Now, we learned that rich people are going there in droves. Two reasons, they want to save money and they see the real value. The stigma is over."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Schools Are Now Allowing Children To Identify As Cats, Horses, Dinosaurs And All Sorts Of Other Things"

"Schools Are Now Allowing Children To Identify As
 Cats, Horses, Dinosaurs And All Sorts Of Other Things"
By Michael Snyder

"I seriously should have thought of this when I was a kid. If I could have answered every question a teacher asked by meowing like a cat or roaring like a dinosaur, there is no way they could have ever accused me of getting an answer wrong. And when it was time for a quiz or a test, I could have just responded to every question with a paw print. Of course nobody would have actually been able to get away with such a thing decades ago. When I was a kid, anyone that tried to pull this kind of a stunt would have been immediately marched down to the principal’s office. But now we live at a time when we are supposed to allow people to identify as anything that they want.

Things have gotten particularly absurd in the United Kingdom. According to an investigation that was conducted by the Telegraph, schools in the UK are now allowing children to identify as all sorts of things…"At a state secondary school in Wales, one student is said to ‘meow’ when asked questions by a teacher, rather than answering in English, the Telegraph reports. In other schools, one apparently insists on being addressed as a dinosaur, one claims to identify as a horse while another is said to wear a cape and demands to be acknowledged as a moon."

In the old days, teachers knew how to deal with this kind of nonsense. But today they are instructed not to correct the children because that would be “discriminatory”…"Pupils claim teachers are ‘not allowed to get annoyed’ about such behavior in case it is seen as being discriminatory. However, lessons are reportedly becoming completely derailed by these interactions, impacting the quality of their classmates’ education. So these teachers in the UK literally have to sit there and make the best of it when students respond to their questions with “animal noises”…"In some reported instances, classes have faced severe disruption as pupils insist on answering teacher’s questions and communicating via animal noises."

I couldn’t take that. If I was told that I had to allow students to make animal noises all day, I would just quit. Apparently one student that identifies as “a cat” has been doing this for three years…"In a particularly disruptive case, the newspaper spoke to a student in Wales who claimed a classmate had identified as a cat for three years. The pupil complained: “When they answer questions, they meow rather than answer a question in English."

Are you kidding me? In the old days, that kid would have been corrected on day one. But these days you are not allowed to say anything. That just wouldn’t be proper.

In fact, a 13-year-old girl was recently called “despicable” by her teacher when she confronted a classmate that identifies as “a cat”…"A 13-year-old girl was called “despicable” by her teacher at a Church of England school in the United Kingdom on Friday after asking a classmate how she identifies as a cat. The schoolgirl and her friend were reprimanded by their teacher at Rye College in East Sussex at the end of an eighth-grade “life education” class, where they were told that they could “be who you want to be and how you identify is up to you,” The Telegraph reported."

Here in the United States, we are moving very rapidly in the same direction. In fact, we just learned that public school teachers in New York are now being instructed to keep “children’s gender transitions a secret from parents in some cases”…"The New York State Education Department (NYSED) released 42 pages of new guidance for public schools Monday that includes a section about keeping children’s gender transitions a secret from parents in some cases. The report, titled “Creating a Safe, Supportive, and Affirming School Environment for Transgender and Gender Expansive Students,” maintains that a student’s gender identity should be based on the student’s own assertion and that administrators should keep such information from families if they deem it necessary."

Can you believe that? How do you think parents that have been purposely deceived by teachers will react once they find out the truth? The stage is being set for some very messy lawsuits. And sometimes allowing students to identify as whatever they want can have some really tragic consequences.

For example, earlier today I read about a 12-year-old girl that was brutally raped at a middle school in New Mexico… "The diary entry referred back to an incident in October 2021, when her daughter Ray*, a 6th grader at ASK Academy charter school in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, was allegedly raped inside the girls’ bathroom by an older biological male student. When the male student first entered the girls’ restroom, Ray said she was washing her hands and didn’t take particular notice of the student’s sex, nor was she aware of his “gender identity.” But before she knew it, the male student walked over to her, pinned her against the counter, and wrestled her to the floor. After hitting her head, he allegedly held her down, ripped her pants, and raped her."

I’m sorry, but if I see a man try to follow a young lady into a restroom there is going to be a problem. As a society, we have lost all common sense. If I say that I am a chicken, that does not make me a chicken. But now we are teaching our children that they can “identify” as anything that they want.

When I say that time is short, I am not exaggerating one bit. The social cohesiveness of our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us. The inmates are running the asylum at this point, and we are raising an entire generation of children that are going to be completely and totally messed up if they ever get the opportunity to become adults."

"Our Moral Compass..."

"The Holocaust teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason."
- Samuel Pisar

"I think we need to be human. Nobody is objective. We need to go in and be human - especially today, especially given everything that's happening around us, especially given the divides between populations that are growing and what's at stake in terms of our collective humanity, and the fact that our moral compass is broken."
- Arwa Damon
"Moral compass?" Surely you jest! This is 'Murica, fool!

"Preparedness Items At Dollar Tree We Should Be Adding To Our Stockpile!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/21/23
"Preparedness Items At Dollar Tree 
We Should Be Adding To Our Stockpile!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are shopping for affordable prepper options that we can all stock up on for our storage. It's always good to be prepared for any kind of situation, and we are seeking out cheaper options for necessary survival items!"
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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

"It's Only Getting Worse, Wake Up! Credit Card Rates Are Out Of Control; Auto Loan Disaster Inevitable"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/20/23
"It's Only Getting Worse, Wake Up! Credit Card Rates 
Are Out Of Control; Auto Loan Disaster Inevitable"
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Scott Ritter, "Examining the Current Geopolitical Landscape"

Scott Ritter, 6/20/23
"Examining the Current Geopolitical Landscape"
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Fascinating insights about Russia, Ukraine and America...
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Scott Ritter, 6/20/23
"Russia Greatest Concentration of Artillery Fires"
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Musical Interlude: Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The photographer had this shot in mind for some time. He knew that objects overhead are the brightest - since their light is scattered the least by atmospheric air. He also that knew the core of our Milky Way Galaxy was just about straight up near midnight around this time of year in South Australia. Chasing his mental picture, he ventured deep inside the Kuipto Forest where tall radiata pines blocked out much of the sky - but not in this clearing. There, through a window framed by trees, he captured his envisioned combination of local and distant nature. Sixteen exposures of both trees and the Milky Way Galaxy were recorded.
Antares is the bright orange star to left of our Galaxy's central plane, while Alpha Centauri is the bright star just to the right of the image center. The direction toward our Galaxy's center is below Antares. Although in a few hours the Earth's rotation moved the Galactic plane up and to the left - soon invisible behind the timber, his mental image was secured forever - and is featured here."

"We Are All Of Us..."

 

"We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow
of a giant question mark that refers to three questions:
Where do we come from?
Why?
And where, oh where, are we going?"
- Tennessee Williams

"For Whom..."

“Life passes like a flash of lightning, whose blaze barely lasts long enough to see. While the earth and sky stand still forever, how swiftly changing time flies across man’s face. O you who sit over your full cup and do not drink, tell me – for whom are you still waiting?”
- Hermann Hesse

"Amazon CEO Warns About Perfect Storm As Retail Business Collapses"

Full screen recommended.
"Amazon CEO Warns About Perfect Storm 
As Retail Business Collapses"
by Epic Economist

"The nightmare in the retail sector never seems to end, and now Amazon, the second largest online and physical retailer in the world, is giving up on its brick-and-mortar operations, according to a new report and warnings issued by the company’s CEO Andy Jassy. Its stores continue to disappear amid the most dramatic shift the industry has ever experienced, and the problems faced by the retail giant are scaring the living daylights out of its rivals, which have a smaller market share and bigger liabilities that could rapidly throw them over the edge. At this point, some of America’s largest brands have already started taking extreme measures to protect their businesses as they get ready for a perfect storm that is threatening to spark the most devastating wave of bankruptcies recorded since 2017. For many of our beloved retailers, this is the beginning of the end.

Amazon recently published an annual letter to its shareholders saying that its service division, a huge part of its business that generates roughly $62 billion in revenue every year, is facing a series of headwinds that are forcing the company to cut costs on other divisions, including brick-and-mortar retail, in order to focus on profitability as executives prepare for a prolonged recession.

Since Jassy took over as CEO, Amazon's stock crashed by 44%. On Friday, the company’s shares fell again wiping out gains from the previous week after the gloomy forecast about future growth and tighter spending was shared by the executive.

He launched one of the deepest austerity plans the retailer has ever known, ending several projects, killing certain services and products, and on top of all else, cutting almost 30,000 jobs in just a few months. According to a report by The Street, Amazon is now giving up on the majority of its brick-and-mortar businesses after years of trying to expand its physical operations across the country and the world.

With the exception of Whole Foods stores, all of its grocery stores are in the process of being shut down in 2023, a trend that started last year, with the closure of several underperforming Fresh and Go stores.

Although these cuts may help Amazon's bottom line in the next few quarters, the overall financial losses caused by the shutdowns will ultimately hurt the retailer in the long run. In addition, all of its remaining physical bookstores, gadget, and electronic stores are being shuttered, not only in America, but all over the globe, including 68 locations in the U.K.

The demise of Amazon’s physical stores comes at a time when other major retailers are coping with lagging sales, changing consumer habits, and rolling out their recession playbook to weather the perfect storm that is on the horizon.

Deteriorating conditions for businesses mean that even some of the biggest players out there are endangered. Sadly, we may lose our favorite stores and we may have to say goodbye to several of the brands that stayed with us for decades. This is just the start of a much bigger crisis that will force more and more retailers to rethink their entire operations. And by the end of this process, America’s retail landscape will be vastly different than what it looks like right now."
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"This Is Going Nowhere"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/20/23
"This Is Going Nowhere"
"Interest rates are not going to go down. This slight pause is nothing but a breather before things head north. Credit card rates are sky high. Student loan debt is about to start collecting payments again."
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The Daily "Near You?"

Lewistown, Pennsylvania, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Get Your Stuff Together..."

“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.”
- Quincy Jones

Robert Gore, "Ants at the Picnic, Part Two"

Deplorable ants will make the picnic a living hell.
"Ants at the Picnic, Part Two"
by Robert Gore


"What scares the powerful are those willing to die in defense of principle. Our rulers are cowards, and they can’t begin to understand devotion to any principle beyond self-aggrandizement, if that can be called a principle. The very existence of such devotion is a moral rebuke. It fills the powerful with one of humanity’s most loathsome emotions: the hatred of the virtuous for their virtue.

Guns are the endpoint in a chain of practical precepts straight from the American Revolution. The biggest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is government, whose force can only be met with counter-force. The powerful have no respect for your rights, but they do for your firearms - you might fight back. Those firearms are the last bulwark against the planet’s most dangerous institutions and psychopaths. If you let them take your guns, it will allow them to take everything else. Both sides know it. Only one will acknowledge it.

The Corruptocracy’s credibility is gone and its narrative has crumbled. People so smitten with themselves and so enamored with their own propaganda never realize the danger posed by those who are neither smitten nor enamored. They are trying to sell a top-down remaking of the entire world, not by selling a purported better life for the masses, but a worse one. It’s overweening, historically unprecedented hubris: hand us total control and we’ll make you miserable. They gave us a preview of coming attractions with Covid totalitarianism, now reprised as Climate Change totalitarianism.

Just slap on a little propaganda and people will be lining up to eat bugs, live in 15-minute urban hellholes, be surveilled 24/7, receive the pharmaceutical overlords’ flavor-of-the-month, embrace serfdom, own nothing, be happy, and obey. We don’t even have the alternative media to thank for revealing this dystopia. The corruptocrats, in their cocksure delusion, have revealed it themselves.

If you’re peddling less than nothing for the future, don’t be too surprised if some of the benighted “beneficiaries” reach for the firearms before it arrives. The corruptocrats know that any straightforward attempt to confiscate guns will be violently resisted, and such resistance will feed on itself. It could be the beginning of a guerrilla war, and governments, particularly the U.S. government, have not fared well in guerrilla wars the last sixty years or so. To forestall a guerrilla war, the totalitarians will try confiscation via a workaround.

The plan is universal identification linked to health records, social credit scoring, and central bank digital currencies. Once these are instituted they’ll have us by the short hairs. They’ll have a digital record of our purchases and receipts, which would include buying and selling firearms. Even for people who have owned their guns for many years, they’d have artificial intelligence (AI) checking for correlations. You refused to vaccinate, you donated to the NRA, you’ve bought physical gold or silver, and you’re a registered Republican? You probably own a gun. With AI the ability to cross-check correlations is virtually limitless.

Because they’ll have full control of the digital currency, they won’t need to confiscate your gun. They’ll simply make it impossible to transact business - to buy anything or to collect your paycheck (if they haven’t cut you out of the job market) - until you surrender the weapons that gun registration or their AI system says you have.

Those who would fight the impending totalitarianism can’t wait until the knock on their door from the stooge sent to collect their firearms. Guerrilla war has to commence well before we’re herded into the Panopticon. If it does, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the guerrillas. This, you see, is the main contradiction behind all the Globalist’s twisted ambitions to control everything, including you. They are working against the current tide of human history which is pushing everything toward down-scaling, re-localization, and re-assertion of the sovereign individual person.

The centralizing trend that began with the formation of nation-state governments at the tail end of the Medieval Age is giving way to decentralized markets, technology, productive capacity, and weaponry. Centralized governments are expensive anachronisms, far too large and bloated to serve any useful purpose. An increasing number of their subjugated realize it. Those who have tied their incomes and status to them will be the last to know.

Guerrillas, terrorists, revolutionaries, or insurgents (what you call them depends on whose side you’re on - insurgents is the most neutral term) are the ultimate ants at the picnic. Not only do they go after the baskets, they attack the picnickers. Throughout history, insurgents have bedeviled governments and their military forces, intelligence agencies, and allied institutions.

The biggest advantage insurgents have is that they are committed to their cause. No one pledges their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on a whim, knowing that death is their almost certain fate if they fail. Insurgents are fighting for their land, way of life, honor, religion, families, friends, and themselves. Agents of government lack these powerful wellsprings of commitment. When it’s trying to quell an insurrection, the government is asking (or ordering) its praetorians to shoot their families, friends, and countrymen. There are always some who refuse to do so or switch to the rebels’ side.

Insurgents are usually aided by noncombatants sympathetic to the cause. Noncombatants can be invaluable as informers, spies, saboteurs, propagandists, keepers of safe houses, and providers of refuge and provisions. Governments have their informers and spies as well, but again they lack the motivation of their insurgent counterparts. They’re currying favor or working for payment or other reward, not because they have a deep allegiance to the government.

The government often becomes the insurgents’ best recruiter. Insurgents who are captured, imprisoned, tortured or executed have friends and family. As the U.S. government has discovered in every guerrilla conflict it’s fought since World War II, killing insurgents invariably creates more insurgents - blowback.

In many ways, Washington is a foreign district within the country from which it siphons its sustenance. The ruling caste’s understanding of much of the population goes no further than crude stereotypes. They find their picture of the typical gun owner - semiliterate, rural deplorables clinging to their guns - frightening enough to forestall attempts at direct firearms confiscation. What they don’t realize is that the realities of gun ownership are far more complicated and dangerous to them than their caricature.

The urban criminal class is armed to the teeth. It has top notch communication and organizational capabilities - think smart phones and flash mobs - and resources - the drug trade - and is highly mobile. It enjoys widespread support among the population. The George Floyd riots kicked off urban guerrilla war. From what’s happened to our cities since, the guerrillas are either winning or have already won.

In response to surging crime and violence, mayors and governors have thrown up their hands and said, “we give up.” Stringent gun control laws in Democrat-run cities have been as effective as a law against ants at picnics. They won’t arrest shoplifters, much less mount any kind of serious campaign against the worst criminals. Take away their guns? Forget about it!

The Democrats running most of our cities are as much figureheads fronting for criminals as Joe Biden is at the national level. Look at the laws and policies they’ve promulgated the last few years: defunding police, decriminalizing crime, eliminating bail, and refusing to prosecute all but the most heinous crimes. Cui bono? They’ve ceded the cities to the criminal class.

In a lawless race to the bottom, the most ruthlessly violent win. Major portions of our cities are already no-go for decent people (much the same situation exists in many European cities). The good flee or foolishly sequester themselves in what they regard as sanctuary enclaves. The bad fight for territory and control. The ugly is the extortionate, parasitical order imposed by the winners.

It would take multiple military divisions to even attempt dislodging such a configuration from say, Los Angeles. Beverly Hills and Malibu are not sanctuary enclaves. The de facto rulers—warlords—leave the de jure government in place, to make speeches and lead parades, but everyone knows who the real powers are. Those who don’t defer to them—nominal leaders or regular citizens—enjoy minimal life expectancy.

Right now, the prototypical “dangerous gun nut” is an urban gang member, not a rural or suburban Trump-loving deplorable. The former are waging and winning guerrilla war in the cities. They have no stake in the existing order, so they have no compunction about destroying it. The latter generally do have a stake—jobs, families, and communities—which makes them much more reluctant to upset the apple cart. That’s not to say they’ll never reach a breaking point—they will—but they’re going to have to be pushed to it, a last straw sort of thing.

The ruling class is pushing as hard as it can, an egregious miscalculation. Cultural and political marginalization has gone on since the Vietnam War (see “Much More Than Trump”). Over the last seven years there has been a Long Train of Abuses, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson. Russiagate, two impeachments, stolen elections, January 6 kangaroo court verdicts and draconian sentences, the Covid fraud, lockdowns, closing businesses, deadly vaccines, the Great Reset. inflation, woke dogma taught in schools and embraced by major corporations, cancel culture, censorship, a war against Russia, indictments against Trump, and no indictments against the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, and the FBI camarilla, to name a few.

What may well be the final straw is economic and financial collapse, which will wipe out much of what has kept deplorables plugged into this country and tolerant enough of its corrupt government to not wage overt insurrection. Chaos will mount as much of the population is rendered destitute. The so-called safety net will be torn to shreds. A bankrupt government will be unable to meet its debt obligations, unfunded pension and medical care liabilities, contingent liabilities such as pension and bank deposit guarantees, and mandated transfer payments with anything other than its increasingly worthless fiat debt and currency. As the paper tiger empire collapses, even heretofore sacrosanct military spending will be curtailed.

Once the breaking point is reached, deplorable ants will make the picnic a living hell. Organic systems adapt to ever changing environments; they are resilient. Governments’ command and control systems are not. There are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations on the books. This interference in all facets of life has been responsible for public-private Rube Goldberg systems of staggering complexity and no resiliency. They are sitting ducks for all manner of sabotage.

In many cases deplorables - potential guerrillas - run these systems. How hard would it be to take out some or all of the electric or transportation grids, supply chains, pipelines, ports, grain elevators, feedlots, hospitals, computer systems, factories, and so on, especially by the people who operate them? It may already be happening; there’s been a lot of suspicious accidents lately. The bull market in chaos is off and running, but what we’re seeing now is just a preview of coming attractions. It will be child’s play to compound the intensifying chaos.

All those Cloward-Piven and Alinsky acolytes inside the government will get the societal breakdown they’ve pined for and fomented, and they’ll wish they hadn’t. Their plan to destroy society and enslave or eliminate the people who would know how to rebuild it was always problematic. How many people in the government and its orbit know how to do anything useful?

The government will be able to muster three million or so military and police personnel, many of whom are administrative, against a deplorable guerrilla force that could also number in the millions, plus sympathetic noncombatants. Not only do deplorables operate many of the systems, but they can build sophisticated weapons, steal them from the government, or buy them on the thriving international black market. And there’s that differential in commitment between the two sides.

Anything the government does in response to guerrillas is only likely to increase the chaos, which increases the difficulty of instituting order. It could shut down the Internet, but there goes a huge part of the nation’s commerce, and the government itself depends on the Internet. It can unleash all the military firepower (Bring on the F-15s!) that hasn’t defeated far less formidable opposition for six decades. Much of that firepower can be stolen, sabotaged, or destroyed. Fighting your own people is a tricky thing indeed.

Bet on the deplorable guerrillas to control the hinterland. Urban guerrillas will control the cities, and the two sides may find it in their mutual interest to live and let live. De jure Balkanization may follow this de facto one, and the United States will be no more. Few will mourn the passing of the incompetent, corrupt, imperialistic, bankrupt, and tyrannical U.S government.

Balkanization will mean both decentralization and smaller political units in those areas in which the reestablishment of order overcomes the chaos. Some of the deplorable guerrillas may become Founding Fathers or Mothers to polities based on freedom, individual rights, and government subordinated to the protection of those rights. We can hope.

The ants are overrunning the picnic. Anthills and their intricate subterranean tunnels are reminders that ants are pretty good at order, but their order is not top-down, command and control order, which is now on the wrong side of history. Theirs is an order based on industriousness and cooperation, an organically adaptive order, elusive for humans but not unattainable.

We, the ants, can sting our oppressors six ways from Sunday and build a much better world than the one they have in store for us. Be an ant and join with other ants."

"How It Really Is"

"Fentanyl and other opioids are fueling the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States. More than 1,500 people per week die from taking some type of opioid, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, making opioids by far the leading cause of fatal overdoses in the country."

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?