Tuesday, January 2, 2024

"Are You Sane?"

“Are You Sane?”
by Charles Hugh Smith
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”

“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?

The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:

“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays

The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.

Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.

Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.

This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Garden Valley, Idaho, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"If..."

"We’ll Meet Again" (Excerpt)

"We’ll Meet Again"
The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife.
In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why.
by Alexander T. Englert

Excerpt: "As the foremost logician of the 20th century, Kurt Gödel is well known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, the publications of which changed the course of mathematics, logic and computer science. When he was awarded the Albert Einstein Prize to recognize these achievements in 1951, the mathematician John von Neumann gave a speech in which he described Gödel’s achievements in logic and mathematics as so momentous that they will ‘remain visible far in space and time’. By contrast, his philosophical and religious views remain all but hidden from view. Gödel was private about these, publishing nothing on this subject during his lifetime. And while scholars have grappled with his ontological proof of God’s existence, which he circulated among friends towards the end of his life, other tenets of his belief system have received no significant discussion. One of these is Gödel’s belief that we survive death.

Why did he believe in an afterlife? What argument did he find persuasive? It turns out that a relatively full answer to these questions is buried in four lengthy letters written to his mother, Marianne Gödel, in 1961, to whom he makes the case that they are destined to meet again in the hereafter.

Before exploring Gödel’s views on the afterlife, I want to recognize his mother as the silent heroine of the story. Although most of Gödel’s letters are publicly accessible via the digital archives of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library), none of his mother’s letters are known to have survived. We possess only his side of their conversation, left to infer what she said from his replies. This creates a mystique when reading his letters, as if one were provided a Platonic dialogue with all the lines removed, except for those uttered by Socrates. Although we lack her own words, we owe a debt of gratitude to Marianne Gödel. For, without her curiosity and independence of thought, we would have one less resource in understanding her famous son’s philosophy.

Thanks to Marianne’s direct question about Gödel’s belief in an afterlife, we get his mature views on the matter. She asked him for this in 1961, a time when he was in top intellectual form and thinking extensively about philosophical topics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had been a full professor since 1953 and a permanent member since 1946. The nature of the exchange compelled Gödel to detail his views in a thorough and accessible manner. As a result, we have (with some supplementation) the equivalent of Gödel’s full argument for belief in an afterlife, intentionally aimed at comprehensively satisfying his mother’s questions, which appear in the series of letters to Marianne from July through to October 1961. While Gödel’s unpublished philosophical notebooks present a space in which he actively worked out views and experimented through often gnomic aphorisms and remarks, Gödel wanted these letters to be understandable and to provide a definitive answer to an earnest enquiry. And because the correspondence was private, he did not feel the need to hide his true views, which he might have done in more formal academic settings and among his colleagues at the IAS.

In a letter dated 23 July 1961, Gödel writes: ‘In your previous letter you pose the challenging question of whether I believe in a Wiedersehen.’ Wiedersehen means ‘to see again’. Rather than the more philosophically formal terms of ‘immortality’ or ‘afterlife’, this term lends the exchange an intimate quality. After emigrating from Austria to the United States in 1940, Gödel never returned to Europe, forcing his mother and brother to take the initiative to visit him, which they first did in 1958. As a result, one can intuit here what must have been a deep longing for lasting reunification on his mother’s behalf, wondering if she would ever have a meaningful amount of time with her son again. Gödel’s answer to her question is unwaveringly affirmative. His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: "If the world is rationally organized and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it?"

He deepens the rhetorical question at the end with the metaphor of someone who lays the foundation for a house only to walk away from the project and let it waste away. Gödel thinks such waste is impossible since the world, he insists, gives us good reason to consider it to be shot through with order and meaning. Hence, a human being who can achieve only partial fulfilment in a lifetime must seek rational validation for this deficiency in a future world, one in which our potential manifests."
Full article in here:

"We All Know..."

“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars… everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
- Thornton Wilder
o
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts.
That hope always triumphs over experience.
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
- Robert Fulghum
o
“For Those Who Have Died”
“Eleh Ezkerah” (“These We Remember”)

“Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.
For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love
What death can touch.”
- Chaim Stern
Graphic: “Into The Silent Land”, 
by Henry Pegram, 1905
o
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”
- Paulo Coelho
o

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

- Dr. Seuss


And we shall meet again…
Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, “The Day We Meet Again”

"How It Really Is"

If only we could...
"Democracy is also a form of worship. 
It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
- H. L. Mencken

"World War III Prelude: Wars And Rumors Of Wars"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/2/24
"Emergency Update! NATO Panics! Russia's 
Largest Attack To Date, Kyiv Blackout, Decapitation Strike!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Al Jazeera English, 1/2/24
"Hamas Deputy Leader Saleh al-Arouri 
Killed In Beirut Attack"
"On Tuesday evening, an Israeli drone targeted the Hamas office in Beirut's southern suburb of Dahiyeh, resulting in the reported death of senior Hamas official Salah al-Arouri. Al-Arouri served as the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau and one of the founders of the Palestinian group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. He was born in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in 1966. Additional casualties occurred in the attack, At least four people died in the strike. Footage from the aftermath depicted a heavily damaged apartment building and burning cars near the drone strike site. This incident marks the first time since the 2006 war that Israel has targeted Beirut, Lebanon's capital. The assassination of Salah al-Arouri signals a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, previously confined to the border regions of both countries."
Comments here:

Doug Macgregor advises that Hezbollah has 140,000 missiles capable of hitting anywhere in Israel, as well as 100,000 extremely well armed and trained professional soldiers, battle hardened from being in the Syrian conflict.
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/2/24
"Syria Officially Starts Attacking Israel"
Comments here:
o
"There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powder-kegs and little kids with matches are on the loose. I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powder-keg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose. It could happen at any time. One military miscue. One assassination. One violent act that stirs the world. And the dominoes will topple, setting off fireworks not seen on this planet since 1939 – 1945. I can see it all very clearly." - Jim Quinn

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Recall On 2 Popular Items!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 1/2/24
"Massive Recall On 2 Popular Items!"
"Recalls are getting overwhelming as there seems to be one every
 couple of days. We are discussing the two latest in today's coffee rant!"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Something Is Wrong, Bond Market Is Selling Off!

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/2/24
"Something Is Wrong, Bond Market Is Selling Off!
Stocks Set To Drop At Open"
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Banks are Not Ok"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 1/2/24
"The Banks are Not Ok"
"We have to look at this. The banks are not OK. We’ve lost over 1500 bank branches in 2023 and banks are losing money. What’s next for the banks?"
Comments here:

Monday, January 1, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Los Angeles Road Rage 90210"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/1/24
"Los Angeles Road Rage 90210
People Will Suffer Consequences in 2024; Earthquakes Rock The Globe"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Full screen recommended.
Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars.
Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."

"Because..."

"There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: "WHY?" And here is the best answer I can give: Because. Because sometimes, life is damned unfair. Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply. Because sometimes there aren't really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time. Because acceptance is yet another of life's "here's a side of hurt" lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there. Why, you ask? Because, I answer. Inadequate yet true."
- Libba Bray

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Evidence”

“Evidence”

“Where do I live?

If I had no address, as many people do not,
 
I could nevertheless say that I lived in the 
same town as the lilies of the field,
 
and the still waters.


Spring, and all through the neighborhood 
now there are
 strong men tending flowers.
Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.

But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -

to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.

Glory to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none 
called the least,
 or the greatest.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
 
Also in singing, 
especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

As for the body, 
it is solid and strong and curious and full of detail;
 
it wants to polish itself; it wants to love another body;

it is the only vessel in the world that can hold,
 
in a mix of power and sweetness:

words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, 
devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

- Mary Oliver
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for! To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless - of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer: That you are here - that life exists, and that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
- “Dead Poets Society”

The Daily "Near You?"

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"This Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio

"Gaza War Update, 1/1/24"

Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/1/24
"Massive Explosions Shake Israel; Tel Aviv, 
Ashkelon, Kyrat Shimona Hit; This is Huge!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/1/24
"'Tel Aviv Will Be Burned': 
Hamas' Chilling Threat To Israel; Qassam Unveils M90 Rockets"
"Hamas militants have issued a chilling threat, warning they will burn Tel Aviv with rockets and pledged to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem, according to a new video released from Al Qassam Brigades. The group unveiled M90 rockets and shared an undated video of them positioned towards Tel Aviv, hours after bombing Israeli city from Gaza strip."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/1/24
"Yemeni Underwater Drones Chase US Ship 
Out Of Red Sea; This is Total Blockade!"
Comments here:
o

Except the Palestinians are there.
o
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 1/1/24
Ex-CIA Larry Johnson: "Israel's Military Superiority 
is a Complete Myth! Israel is a Weak Nation!"
Comments here:

"Fasten Your Seat Belt"

"Fasten Your Seat Belt"
by Jeff Thomas

"Imagine you’re in mid-flight on a passenger jet, and the captain flies directly into a Category Five hurricane. The flight attendant calmly says, "The captain has turned on the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign, as we may be expecting some turbulence." Of course, the above situation is absurd, as no passenger jet pilot would ever put his passengers in such danger. But, tragically, governments sometimes do exactly that.

Sometimes, they do it on a small scale, such as when a small country adopts collectivism, only to discover, decades later, that collectivism doesn’t actually work and, eventually, as Maggie Thatcher said, "You run out of other people’s money." Then, there’s a period of depression, followed by a rebuilding period, during which the electorate decides whether to be sensible and dump collectivism or whether they choose to be foolish and begin the collectivist conundrum anew. (As absurd as this latter choice might seem, it is all too common. Argentina, in particular, has been doing it for nearly eighty years.)

But the larger the country, the greater the catastrophe when it all falls apart. And it, therefore, stands to reason that when it’s the world’s foremost empire that’s passed its sell-by date, the damage will be catastrophic. The damage from the hurricane will be centred on the empire itself and those within the empire will be most directly impacted, but the effects will be felt well outside its borders. The more closely a country is connected to the empire economically, the greater, the lesser country will feel the damage. For example, at the present time, if the US is a country’s major trading partner, that country will experience damage significant enough that its economy might well collapse along with that of the US.

But why should we be talking about this now? Yes, the US is indeed troubled, both internally and externally. Still, the news media have regularly presented national leaders and other pundits who assure us that the storm that’s being flown into will only result in temporary turbulence and that "Category Five" is a gross exaggeration. Well, let’s have a look at that for a moment.

In the last half-century, the US has gone from being the foremost creditor nation to the foremost debtor nation. At that same time, its wage level has risen so high that the US can no longer sell American-made goods, even to Americans, and its factories, predominantly in China and Mexico, are producing the vast majority of goods. Unfortunately, relations are on a steady decline between the US and these countries. The US has even been engaged in sabre-rattling with regard to China. But the US empire has always had an ace in the hole with Europe. Although it’s self-destructively on a campaign to end fossil fuel production domestically, it has for decades provided liquified gas to Europe, shipping primarily into Hamburg harbor and distributing from there.

In the meantime, Germany formed an alliance with Russia, from whom it also receives gas to power the German industry. In recent years, Russia has been building a direct pipeline from Russia to Germany to provide gas more cheaply than any other country can provide (at roughly 11% of what US gas can be provided for). With the understanding that this gas line would come on stream in 2022, Germany foolishly shut down all of its nuclear power plants, thus painting itself into a corner.

Clearly, the opening of the Nord Steam II valve would have been a major, major event, as it would not just mean cheaper gas for Europe, but an end of US hegemony over Europe and a shift in the balance of trade to Russia. But the pipeline was sabotaged before this could happen. It would seem that US hegemony would be saved, as Europe would fall back on US gas, even though it was cripplingly expensive.

But an unexpected wrinkle occurred. Germany went shopping and found that they could buy gas from China, India, and Saudi Arabia. It was more expensive than the Nord Steam gas, but still cheaper than the American gas. Odd, though, as neither China, nor India are gas producers. So, where was this gas coming from? Well, as China, India, and Russia are BRICS countries, the gas was the very gas that Germany was to have received through Nord Stream, but now quite a bit pricier, as it had to be piped quite a lot further and there were also now middlemen to be paid.

So, how did the situation play out? Well, the US gas is still the most expensive and, therefore, least desirable, and Russia, instead of being economically crippled, was now selling more gas than before and experiencing a boom at a time when much of the world was sliding into economic turmoil. And, in the ensuing eighteen months, Germany would find that it could no longer sell its products internationally, as the cost to produce them was now even higher than before. Recently, there have been rumblings in the Bundestag that one out of three German industrial companies is hoping to leave the country, with the majority choosing China as their destination. Unless the US could salvage the situation, its hegemony over Europe (and its claim to empire) was soon to end.

It was, however, true that there were significant oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. If they could be taken hold of, the US might stand a chance. But the rights to those fields were held by Palestine, and the US was known to staunchly support Palestine’s arch-enemy, Israel. What to do?

Well, although the Gaza/Israel border is the one of the most protected in the world, Hamas somehow breached it in multiple locations and went on a killing spree in which, it is claimed, horrendous inhumane acts were committed. Proof of such acts have not been provided, but they’ve been well-publicised and have led to a "self-defense" retaliation by Israel in which Gaza is being systematically destroyed and its people being decimated. In spite of worldwide objection to this retaliation, and repeated warnings from the UN and others that Israel must not take over Gaza, Israel’s President insists that if Israel does not complete the destruction of Gaza and take over the control of its rubble, Israel will never be safe from Hamas.

In the bargain, the oil and gas fields will have a new owner. At this point, it would be advisable for the world, particularly Americans, to sit back and observe such events from a distance. Although Israel is charging ahead, the majority of the world is dividing into BRICS vs. First World Globalists camps. The former is already in the majority and growing rapidly.

In describing his Israel/Palestine position, the US president appears to be changing from a black hat to a white one and back again, repeatedly. While this makes the White House appear to be both hypocritical and untrustworthy in the extreme, there’s little else the President can do. He’s squeezed between a rock and a time bomb.

I rarely write on current events, preferring to focus on the overview – the Big Picture – but this may be a moment when it’s important for the reader to sit far back from the present noise from the media and assess the degree to which his own future is dependent upon the outcome of these events. The jet pilot has turned into a Category Five hurricane, and, for those who are on the flight, this would indeed be the time to fasten seat belts."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Otherwise..."

'If you want to tell people the truth, 
make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.'
- Oscar Wilde

"Credit Card Companies Are Shutting Down Lending in Less Than A Week"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/1/24
"Credit Card Companies Are Shutting Down 
Lending in Less Than A Week"
"In a startling turn of events, credit card companies are facing a crisis as they prepare for a significant policy change that could potentially cripple a substantial portion of their revenue. This impending shift, set to take effect in just a week, revolves around the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule proposal aimed at curbing exorbitant credit card late fees, which currently constitute a lucrative $14.5 billion dollar income stream for these financial giants."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/1/24
"250 - 500 Banks Will Fall In 2024"
"In the ever-evolving financial sector landscape, a foreboding prediction looms over the horizon as analysts and experts foresee the potential downfall of a substantial number of banks in the year 2024. 250 to 500 banks are facing the risk of failure. The implications of such a scenario extend beyond mere numerical statistics, signaling a potential shift in the banking industry's stability."
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "New Year, Same Problems!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 1/1/24
"New Year, Same Problems!"
"Discussing the troubles of 2023 and what we can expect moving into 2024. From food shortages to massive price increases on food at the grocery stores, we're covering everything going on now and what to expect in the future!"
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Who is Going to Pay for This?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/1/24
"Who is Going to Pay for This?"
"We are now hearing from cities that are telling landlords that they must pay for the utilities for their own units. Tenants cannot pay for their own utilities. Plus, we are seeing cities that want to know the name address, and all the pertinent information of every tenant inside the building."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "The Worst Is Yet To Come"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/1/24
"The Worst Is Yet To Come; Major Collisions 
Across The Globe Coming; Get Emergency Food Now"
Comments here:

WTF?! "Confirmed: Israel Planning to Dislocate ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip"

WTF?! "Confirmed: Israel Planning to Dislocate
ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip"
by Hal Turner

"Advertisements are now appearing in Israeli publications touting "Gaza 2030" showing the entire Gaza Strip as a luxury beach front Resort... and no Palestinians. One such ad, shown above, shows what is said to be the actual planning for the Gaza Strip once the Palestinians are forcibly dislocated from their homes.

While rumors of this forced displacement of civilians (a War Crime) have floated for weeks, for the very first time on Christmas Day, the world got confirmation: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud Party conference, that Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that "work is underway to find countries that want to "absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees."

🚨🇮🇱 BIG - Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that work is underway to find countries that want to absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees. The Macro Story (@themacrostory) December 25, 2023

So apparently, there it is: Confirmation that ousting the Palestinian civilian population by dropping 2,000 pound bombs on them from fighter jets, is now (and likely has always been) the actual plan."
o
"2023: The Year Humanity Died"
By Seraj Assi

"As a Palestinian who was born two generations apart from the Nakba, I have never imagined that one day I would witness the genocide of my people unfold before my eyes in broad daylight. While I always feared the prospect of a Second Nakba, as many Palestinians do, I have never dreamed, not even in my worst nightmares, that I would live it, witness it, and write about it.

In my happy Palestinian innocence, I believed that even if Israel was keen on repeating the Nakba, or attempting to “finish the job of 1948,” as many Israeli officials have threatened over the years, the Free World would not allow it to happen. In my wishful thinking, I believed that the world had learned its lesson since the Nakba. Yes, the world failed the Palestinian people in 1948. Yes, it allowed Israel to carry out its ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Yes, it abandoned the Palestinian refugees, and rewarded Israel with a United Nations recognition and membership. But that was 75 years ago, the age of genocides and holocausts. A lot of progress had been made since, I told myself. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The U.N. evolved. Human rights groups mushroomed. Mandela won the Nobel Peace. True, genocide would occur so often and so uncontested in the decades since, but after the horrific genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the leaders of the Free World seemed to have had enough! They seemed adamant not to allow another genocide to happen—Never Again! Not in Palestine, not again!

Summit after summit, they vowed that such atrocities had no place in the new century. Even when the new century in Palestine ushered in the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Oslo Accords, I still believed that the horrors of the past were in check. Even when Israel mushroomed in size, and the settlements tripled, and the apartheid system was closing in on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the merciless siege suffocating those in Gaza, where one million children were born and raised in captivity, I still believed that that was the peak of our suffering and nothing remotely close the terrors of Rwanda or Bosnia, or indeed the First Nakba, would happen to us, because the world was watching, and it was ready to dispatch its postwar moral arsenal to stop it!

As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war.

I was dead wrong. For three bloody months since the Gaza Genocide first unfolded, the Free World has sat there watching, and cheering, and mocking us to death. During the first weeks, I still held onto my naïve optimism. True, the Free World betrayed Palestinians in Gaza; it allowed Israel to act with impunity; it tolerated its war crimes and mass atrocities; it denied the children of Gaza even the pretense of humanity. But ultimately it was bound to come to its senses and unleash its moral diplomacy to end this horror. So I persisted in my optimism. Perhaps the world needed more time to fathom what was happening. Perhaps it was waiting for a few more thousands of Palestinians to be killed before making its drastic move. Yet week after week, the world remained silent, blind to our deaths, deaf to our sufferings.

One month into the bloodshed, after Israel had killed 1,000 children, I said that’s it; the world would make its move now, if only to save the children! But the U.S. responded by vetoing a humanitarian cease-fire that could have saved thousands of innocent lives! A month after, when the death toll of children reached 10,000, I said enough is enough; it’s high time the world acted NOW, because humanity itself is at stake! U.N. officials had already sounded the alarm that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children,” so no one could pretend they did not know. The time to act was now or never! Yet there was another U.S. veto; another cold hand was raised to issue a new death sentence for Palestinians. Another spit in the face of humanity!

Now I’m lost for words. I have lost faith in humanity. The staggering death toll in Gaza is humanly impossible to fathom or accept without losing our sense of shared humanity. As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war. I know for certain that I will not emerge from this tragedy the same person I was before. None of us will.

Gaza may be annihilated, but it’s not going anywhere. When the dust of war settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come. It will be a permanent stain on our humanity. The children of Gaza will not forget, if they survive. The living will remember, and the dead will haunt us forever. Gaza will be remembered not only as the crime of the century, but also as the site of our greatest shame, where humanity failed. 2023 will go down in history as the darkest in Palestine - the year humanity died." 
o
"Gaza Health Ministry: 21,110 Palestinians have been killed, and 55,243 
wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7."

Now 21,110 innocent men, old people, women and 11,000 children killed by US supplied 2,000 lb bombs, which WE to our eternal shame and disgrace allow and support! The monsters doing this are NOT human beings! They're a bloodthirsty, psychopathically genocidal sub-species of humanity! And, except for the Houthis and Hezbollah somewhat, the world sits silently watching this horror and does nothing! Shakespeare wrote, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Sartre said, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just enough to keep us from escaping." I believe them... - CP
o

"Middle East War, Palestine - Israel"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 1/1/24
"Hezbollah Will Shock The World By 
Completely Destroying Israel"
Comments here:
Semper Fi, Scott!
- CP, Veteran, US Marine Corps, MOS 0311
If you weren't there you'd never understand...
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/1/24
"IDF Toothless Without U.S.? Israeli Expert Says
 'Will Have To Fight With Sticks And Stones Without U.S. Support"'
"A stunning claim has been made about Israel's might amid fear of war with Hezbollah. "IDF would be forced to fight Hezbollah with sticks and stones without U.S. support," said an Israeli expert. Amnon Abramovich, a political analyst for Israeli Channel 12, made this claim. The statement comes as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Hezbollah of a response they can't even dream of."
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "The Great Clarification"

"The Great Clarification"
by Jim Kunstler

“Time for The Great Uprising to defeat The Great Reset. 
This isn’t just an R vs. D question in 2023. It’s a 1776 moment.”
- Vivek Ramaswamy

"I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back.

After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you...the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.

We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality. What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness.

It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because...she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.

All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions - a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown.

The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities. There is so much to do.

I keep hearing figures in the public arena say they have a creepy feeling that something big is going to happen. Well, sure, something’s got to give. So much hyper-complexity has been heaped onto the apparatus of shakedown that just about nothing works in America anymore. The Internet is obviously a major part of that. We’ve allowed digital magic to invade every scrap of territory in our daily doings, to the degree that there is no longer enough for humans to do - but, alas, digital magic is only a pale simulacrum of real human magic. The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Why do you think there are so many people barely alive in a haze of opiate drugs splayed on the sidewalks of San Francisco, the epicenter of Internet wealth and power?

The “something big” could well be the Web-down crisis that is nervously tweeted about. If it went on for more than couple of weeks, most everything we depend on would cease to work, from food supplies to clean water to communications to what has been lately operating as “money.” That would be a clarifying interlude for sure. Among the few things that would still work in the event of a massive attack on the Internet are human brains, human bodies, and firearms. That combo could be as much a recipe for order as for chaos. I believe in the fairly short term, most of us would opt for order. As far as I’m concerned, there’s already been enough chaos, just about every bit of it unnecessary.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 2024 is on. It’s the time many of us have been waiting for. We’re in it. Stay alert. Make the right choices. Exercise situational awareness. Get ready to walk with consequence. It’s here, and it’s not “queer.”