Monday, April 1, 2024

"I Asked For, I Was Given"

“In my youth I respected the world and life,
I needed nothing but peace of heart;
And yet I changed despite myself and believed in Iktomi's lies.
He seemed to know all the truth,
he promised to make me happy.

He made me ask Wakan Tanka for wealth, that I might have power;
I was given poverty, that I might find my inner strength.

I asked for fame, so others would know me;
I was given obscurity, that I might know myself.

I asked for a person to love that I might never be alone;
I was given a life of a hermit, that I might learn to accept myself.

I asked for power, that I might achieve;
I was given weakness, that I might learn to obey.

I asked for health, that I might lead a long life;
I was given infirmity, that I might appreciate each minute.

I asked Mother Earth for strength, that I might have my way;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for Her.

I asked to live happily, that I might enjoy life;
I was given life, that I might live happily.

I received nothing I asked for, yet all my wishes came true.
Despite myself and Iktomi, my dreams were fulfilled,
I am richly blessed more than I ever hoped,
I thank you, Wakan Tanka, for what you've given me.”

- Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota (1938-)
"In Lakota mythology, Iktomi is a spider-trickster spirit, and a culture hero for the Lakota people. Alternate names for Iktomi include Ikto, Ictinike, Inktomi, Unktome, and Unktomi. These names are due to the differences in tribal languages, as this spider deity was known throughout many of North America's tribes. Iktomi can be compared to the African trickster figure Anansi, and to some extent, the transculturated Yoruba Ellegua, also depicted as a trickster disguised in red. Due to his nature as a Trickster as well as patronage of communication, Iktomi is also comparable to the Greco-Roman Hermes/Mercurius (Mercury)."
"In Native American mythology, Wakan Tanka (great mystery) is the supreme being and creator of the Lakota Sioux. Sometimes called Great Spirit, he is similar to the supreme beings found in the myths of many other North American peoples. According to Lakota myth, before creation Wakan Tanka existed in a great emptiness called Han (darkness). Feeling lonely, he decided to create companions for himself. First, Great Spirit focused his energy into a powerful force to form Inyan (rock), the first god. Next, he used Inyan to create Maka (earth) and then mated with that god to produce Skan (sky). Skan brought forth Wi (the sun) from Inyan, Maka, and himself. These four gods were separate and powerful, but they were all part of Wakan Tanka.

The first four gods produced four companions - Moon, Wind, Falling Star, and Thunderbird - to help with the process of creation. In turn, these companions created various gods and spirits, including Whirlwind, Four Winds, Buffalo, Two-Legged Creatures (humans and bears), Sicun (thought), Nagi (spirit of death), Niya (breath of life), and Nagila (shadow). All of these beings were aspects of Wakan Tanka. Together, they created and oversee everything that exists."

"Life, Eh?"

"We said together, wistfully, 'Life, eh?' It says everything without having to say anything: that we all experience moments of joyful or painful reflection, sometimes alone, sometimes sharing laughs and tears with others; that we all know and appreciate that however wonderful and precious life is, it can equally be a terribly confusing and mysterious beast. 'Life, eh?"
- Miranda Hart

The Daily "Near You?"

Billings, Montana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Truth..."

 

Bill Bonner, "Fooled by Bidenomics"

"Fooled by Bidenomics"
Deficits are especially important. If the government takes in $100 in tax revenues, and 
spends it, it removes that money from the consumer economy. No net increase to GDP.
by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "April Fool! The inflation and GDP numbers are just ‘made up.’ Last week, the economic news, coming from inside the Beltway, was swell. MarketWatch: "GDP update boosts U.S. fourth-quarter economic growth rate to 3.4%. The final reading of U.S. growth in the 2023 fourth quarter was raised a few notches to a 3.4% annual pace, reflecting strong consumer spending and a surprisingly resilient economy. The government previously said gross domestic product had expanded at a 3.2% rate in the final three months of last year. The figure is adjusted for inflation."

‘Adjusted for inflation’ is one of those expressions like, ‘we were only following orders;’ it can hide a mountain of mischief. Over the last two years, we have often seen the inflation of the ’22-’23 period compared to the inflation of the 1970s. We have been told that today’s inflation rate peaked at 9% in 2022 and then came down quickly. But if you measured today’s price increases the way they did in the ‘70s, you’d see that our current inflation is much worse today than it was then.

Marc Faber reports: "Former Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Lawrence H. Summers, recently published a figure which showed that inflation had been and still was far higher than what the BLS had calculated…. Using the CPI as calculated before 1983, Summers estimated last year’s peak inflation at 18%. According to his methodology, interest rates would still be far too low. In other words, Bidenomics, with large fiscal deficits and negative real interest rates, would still be inflationary."

Are you thinking what we’re thinking? If the inflation reading is false, so is the GDP rate. And so is the whole financial picture.

Let us begin with the measure of inflation itself. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), food rose (at an annual rate) of 2.7% last year; services went up 3.5%, and shelter rose 4.8%. Already, we are deeply suspicious. Charlie Bilello reports: "The monthly mortgage payment needed to buy the median-priced home in the US has increased 80% over the last 4 years, moving from $1,500 per month to $2,700.

Between higher mortgage payments and higher house prices, an increase of only 4.8% for the cost of shelter seems almost impossible. But even taking the BLS numbers, it is hard to see how they could apply a ‘deflator’ of just 1.66%. Which is just proof that although numbers may not lie intentionally, if you torture them enough they will say whatever you want them to say.

And if you use the 1980 method of calculation, the whole picture of the US economy suddenly turns dark. Summers’ numbers show price increases through the end of last year running in the 10% to 12% range. Deflating the nominal GDP number, then, would give us a NEGATIVE growth rate of at least MINUS 7% - a huge loss in real GDP."

And what about the stock market? When you get a ‘gain’ or a ‘profit’ from your stocks, you think you are better off. And now, everyone thinks the stock market has ‘recovered’ from its 2022 sell-off. But has it? A fair guess is that consumer prices are 25% higher than they were at the Dow peak in 2021. If so, the Dow would have to go to 45,000... just to breakeven.

Down in gold terms: We turn to gold to try to keep our story straight. From its peak at the end of 2021, to today, the Dow is up almost 4,000 points. But adjusted for the price of gold, it is still down nearly 10%. Backwards? Forwards? Which way are we going?

Another curiosity of the GDP growth story is the role of fiscal deficits. If the government spends another billion dollars – even if it is frittered away on weapons – the amount is included as a plus in GDP. So, the more the feds spend, the higher GDP goes... at least in the short-run.

Deficits are especially important. If the government takes in $100 in tax revenues, and spends it, it removes that money from the consumer economy. No net increase to GDP. But if it borrows the money, the extra spending it comes as if ‘out of nowhere’, and is added to the total. There is no offsetting draw-down in the consumer economy, so GDP goes up.

Last year, federal deficits were 6% of GDP. That was money that the feds spent, but didn’t raise from taxes. It must have gone somewhere. So, here’s a simple question: How could the feds pump an additional 6% (of GDP) into the economy, with almost $3 trillion added to the national debt, but only get an increase of 3.4% (annualized from the fourth quarter) in GDP? What happened to the other 2.6%? Where’s the missing $1.2 trillion? Where did the money go?

Does this mean that the real - non-government - economy is actually shrinking at such an alarming rate that it wipes out much of the feds’ new-money inputs? Or are these numbers just so ‘made up’ that they are meaningless? More tomorrow..."

Mark Manson, "The Uncomfortable Truth of Life"

Strong language alert! Manson, like Kunstler, Celente and some others, 
frequently uses the "F" word in his material for emphasis. I usually edit it 
in written articles but can't in a video. If that bothers you don't watch this. - CP
Full screen recommended.
Mark Manson,
 "The Uncomfortable Truth of Life"
Comments here:

"I Urge All Of You..."

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
- Jim Valvano

"How It Really Is"

 

"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
- H. L. Mencken
Several generations, actually...

World War III Prelude: Geopolitics 4/1/24"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 4/1/24
"Alastair Crooke: 
Crocus Concert Attack Is a Turning Point"
Comments here:
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Ray McGovern, 4/1/24
"NATO's Gloomy Future As Ukraine
 Is On The Verge Of Collapse"
"Ray came to Washington from his native Bronx in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985."
Comments here:
"Why Is NATO And The Kiev Regime Terrified 
Of Russia's 'Zircon' Hypersonic Missile?
Excerpt: "Even before the horrendous Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, the Russian military's long-range strike capabilities were sending shivers down the spines of NATO aggressors and their Neo-Nazi junta puppets. Weapons such as the 3M22 "Zircon", a scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile, have been inducted into service in recent years and are now also being transferred to land-based platforms, specifically the K300P "Bastion-P" coastal defense system. With a 1500 km range (perhaps even more) and Mach 9 speed, the "Zircon" is over 3 times faster and its range is at least double that of the P-800 "Oniks" supersonic missiles originally used by the aforementioned platform, further enhancing Russia's already unprecedented long-range strike capabilities (to both the Neo-Nazi junta's and NATO's horror, as previously mentioned)."
Full article here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 4/1/24
"Larry Johnson: 
NATO Waits In Vain For a Russian Offensive"
Comments here:

"Always Two Voices..."

“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”
- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”
“All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper,
and the next – who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.”
- Sophoclese, “Philoctetes”
Free Download:
A little light reading from Tolstoy…
Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:

Jim Kunstler, "This Is Not An April Fool’s Gag"

"This Is Not An April Fool’s Gag"
by Jim Kunstler

“I’m sorry for the harsh message, 
but somebody needs to tell the truth,” 
- virologist Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

"Did you have a fabulous Transgender Visibility Day, uncluttered with any loose talk about one Jesus Christ and his travails in the Roman Levant some 2000 years ago? The Easter Bunny desisted from twerking on the White House lawn this time around, but the Party of Chaos still nailed down the vote of the .000429 percent of the population that identifies as opposite the clerical error made upon their sexual assignment at birth. All in all, this may be the last grotesque frivolity the political class indulges in for a long time to come, and I’ll tell you why.

I had the honor of interviewing the Belgian virologist Geert Vanden Bossche on Friday for my podcast, and he had quite a sobering message. “What I am predicting,” he said, “is a massive, massive tsunami” of illness and death among highly-vaccinated populations with dysregulated immune systems.

“You commit errors or even crimes at the very small scale, you can hide them,” he said (at around 47:00 minutes into the hour-long discussion). “I have seen this happen with the Ebola vaccination with Africa a number of years ago. However, if you do this at the very large scale, like what has happened with this mass [Covid] vaccination campaign, the truth will surface. And those who have committed these crimes who have been lying to the people, who have not been taking care of the health and safety of the people, will be severely, severely punished. If these people would now go out and say, ‘Yeah, wait a minute, we have been making some mistakes, it wasn’t all right, we have to correct them, we have to revise our opinion,’ these people will be stoned in the streets. They can only hope that something will happen that will distract from this issue, but it won’t. The truth will surface: this has been a large-scale experiment of gain-of-function on the very human population. This will be something that will be reported in history for many many generations to come.”

A bit further on (around 55:20 minutes) he says, “You will see what will happen, for example, in the next coming weeks is more and more cases of more serious long Covid. They will start to replace the surge of the cancers, now we have a more chronic phase. It will end with a hyper-acute phase, a huge, huge wave. I’ve been studying this now for four years. I know what I’m talking about. I’m probably the only person, in all modesty, who understands the immunology behind this. (At 1:00:12) The thing I want your audience to understand, what we will be facing in the hyper-acute Covid crisis that is imminent, is that we will have to build a completely new world. It is very very clear that when this starts, our hospitals will collapse. And that means the chaos in all kinds of layers of society - financial, economic, social, you name it - will be complete. And that is what I’m very clearly predicting. It’s very strange for me to make such statements, but I’m not hiding it because I’m two hundred percent convinced that it will happen.”

Now that you’ve had an ice-cold shower, consider some further implications of this scenario. One is that the government and its public health officials may try to attribute the blame for this to the “Disease X” story they’ve been peddling for about a year, the “next pandemic,” something entirely new. That will not be true. They will be trying to cover their asses. Rather, this next episode will be the result of the epic blunders they already made, beginning in 2020, with the emergence of Covid-19. The variant that causes the coming hyper-acute crisis will be quite different from the original “Wuhan” strain, but it will be a direct descendent of it, having mutated in the bodies of the vaccinated. It was, after all, Dr. Vanden Bossche who declared at the outset of the Covid melodrama in 2021 that vaccinating into the teeth of an ongoing pandemic disease was absolutely the wrong strategy from an immunological point-of-view, and sure to produce a grievous outcome.

What, if anything, can you do to prepare for this? Dr. Vanden Bossche is also very clear: “What I can advise to all these vaccinated people: they need to avoid reinfection. It is the reinfection of vaccinated people that is responsible for this situation. Well, the only thing they can do - it’s very simple - is take anti-virals, of course. The only difference is, you will not be able to wait to take anti-virals until you have symptoms. As soon as people see that in one of the other countries, or one of the other states in the United States, when this starts with hospitalizations going up very rapidly, they need to take anti-virals prophylactically, not wait until they have any symptoms. I’m in Belgium. If it starts in the US, or starts in Israel, or starts in the UK, I bet you that within a few days, you will see the same scenario in many of the highly-vaccinated countries.”

By “anti-virals,” Dr. Vanden Bossche means specifically Ivermectin, the Nobel Prize-winning drug that the FDA and the CDC demonized brutally in order to distract the public from knowing that there was a safe and effective treatment for Covid. To acknowledge that would have vacated Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Emergency Use Authorization, which allowed them to make tens of billions of dollars on a very poorly tested pharma product while enjoying blanket protection against lawsuits.

“I have been predicting already a half a year ago, that the public health authorities are finally going to have mandates for ivermectin.” Dr. Vanden Bossche said. “The results with ivermectin are fabulous. It is very safe. It is the only anti-viral that is cost-effective, that is widely available, that can be supplemented in sufficient quantities. There is simply no alternative.”

Note that just last week, as a result of a lawsuit brought in the Texas Southern District federal court, the FDA agreed to finally take down the social media messages it had put up to lawlessly block the use of ivermectin. Remember the mocking tweet: “You’re not a horse, you’re not a cow, come on y’all.” The truth was that the FDA had no authority to tell doctors how to practice medicine; nor to block FDA-approved drugs (including ivermectin), even for off-label treatments. Off-label treatment with approved drugs is routine in medicine. Instead of ivermectin, US public health officials pushed the use of unsafe remdesivir with intubation, resulting in many thousands of avoidable deaths. This is only one of the crimes they will have to answer for.

If Dr. Vanden Bossche’s scenario comes to pass, the “hyper-acute Covid crisis” will intersect with the elections of 2024, and not just in the USA. You would naturally expect some extreme despotic hysterics out of the “Joe Biden” government. They will surely try to run their “Disease X” ruse. But they have already lost the trust of the people they made war against in their own country. In which case, expect resistance among the un-sick. No more trips will be laid on us."
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Related:
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"Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing
 the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."
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God have mercy on you if you've taken this shot...

Gregory Mannarino, "Get Ready, The FED Is About To Do Something Big!"

Gregory Mannarino, 4/1/24
"Get Ready, The FED Is About To Do Something Big!"
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "This Is The End For Dollar Tree & Many Value Stores!"

Adventures With Danno, 4/1/24
"This Is The End For Dollar Tree & 
Many Value Stores!"
"With Dollar Tree and other value stores closing everywhere, we are discussing why this may be the end for most of them! What you need to know, and how we need to prepare accordingly."
Comments here:

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Another Answer Came"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Another Answer Came"
"Savitri"
"In "Savitri" by Sri Aurobindo, Savitri discovers that her love, Satyavan has only one year left to live. She must decide whether or not she will stay with him in the emerald forest or search for a new love. But another answer came, and she outwitted death itself." 

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce.
The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and spans about 2.5 light-years. The above picture was taken three colors on infrared light by the 4.1-meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.”

Dan, I Allegedly, "Doomsday for Shoppers"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 3/31/24
"Doomsday for Shoppers"
"Now we hear that mall owners are not paying the electric bill and stores are closing. We also hear that mall owners are not paying the property taxes and they are absolutely in foreclosure right now. What’s next for all of us? Are we going to survive this economy?"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Havre de Grace, Maryland, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Maya Angelou, "When You Know Better, Do Better"

Full screen recommended.
Maya Angelou,
 "When You Know Better, Do Better"

"Cipolla’s 5 Laws of Human Stupidity"

Full screen recommended.
"Cipolla’s 5 Laws of Human Stupidity"
"Carlo Cipolla's Law of Stupidity states that 'always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.' Even though Cipolla originally wrote about the principle and its consequences for society in the form of an amusing letter to his friends, it gained wide attention. Today Cipolla's law is often used to highlight the importance of critical thinking and careful decision making in order to counteract the potential effects of endemic ignorance."
Comments here:

"Luminarium"

"Luminarium"

“I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world, and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: it's life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart's delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.” - Gottfried Von Strassburg


"Luminarium has grown to over 5,000 pages, and is a comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration and Eighteenth Century. This site combines several sites first created in 1996 to provide a starting point for students and enthusiasts of English Literature. Nothing replaces a quality library, but hopefully this site will help fill the needs of those who have not access to one.

Luminarium is the labor of love of Anniina Jokinen. The site is not affiliated with any institution nor is it sponsored by anyone other than its maintainer and the contributions of its visitors through revenues from book sales via Amazon.com, poster sales via All Posters, and advertising via Google AdSense.

For all materials, authorities in a given subject are consulted. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English are some of the general reference works consulted for accuracy of dates and details. Many of the materials collected here reside elsewhere. Quality and accuracy are concerns, and all materials are checked regularly. However, "Luminarium" cannot be held responsible for materials residing on other sites. Corrections and suggestions for improvements are encouraged from the visitors.

The site started in early 1996. I remember looking for essays to spark an idea for a survey class I was taking at the time. It seemed that finding study materials online was prohibitively difficult and time-consuming - there was no all-encompassing site which could have assisted me in my search. I started the site as a public service, because I myself had to waste so much time as a student, trying to find anything useful or interesting. There were only a handful of sites back then (read: Internet Dark Ages) and I could spend hours on search engines, looking for just a few things. I realized I must not be the only one in the predicament and started a simple one-page site of links to Middle English Literature. That page was soon followed by a Renaissance site.

Gradually it became obvious that the number of resources was ungainly for such a simple design. It was then that the multi-page "Medlit" and "Renlit" pages were created, around July 1996. That structure is still the same today. In September 1996, I started creating the "Sevenlit" site, launched in November. I realized the need to somehow unite all three sites, and that led to the creation of Luminarium. I chose the name, which is Latin for "lantern," because I wanted the site to be a beacon of light in the darkness. It was also befitting for a site containing authors considered "luminaries" of English literature."
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Great selection of modern and classic books waiting to 
be discovered. All free and available in most ereader formats.
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“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book,
 for there would be no one who wanted to read one...

"From Enlightenment To Ignorance: Society's Dangerous Embrace Of Stupidity"

"From Enlightenment To Ignorance:
Society's Dangerous Embrace Of Stupidity"
by Anthony Esolen

What would be the state of a society in which a will to stupidity were united with a will to power? When I first decided to study and teach literature as my life’s vocation, I foresaw the work ahead of me - to learn as much as I could about English letters. Was I still unread in the Victorian novel? That would have to change. Had I a blank area in early American? It would have to be filled. The idea, though, was not simply to cover this and check off that. It was to gain a broad view of the whole, to see the relations of one area to another, to hear Melville in conversation with Milton, to set Jay Gatsby off against Tom Jones, to hear the American strains of confidence and rule-breaking in Walt Whitman, and the no less American strains of reserve and fence-setting in Robert Frost.

But to study English literature is to open yourself to the literature of other nations, because English authors were never reading only English. You cannot have Chaucer without the three great Florentines: Dante, Petrarch, and, especially, Boccaccio. You cannot have the English romantics without the German romantics. If you want to best appreciate what is characteristic of Tudor and Stuart drama, with its boisterous violation of the “unities” of space and time as it whisks you from Rome to Alexandria and back, or lets pass sixteen years as Time himself comes on stage to tell you of it, you should become acquainted with the near contemporary drama of Racine and Corneille just across the water, with its classical concentration of action within a single day.

This, of course, is the work of a lifetime. I continue to learn languages and read literature I have never encountered before. But to call most of it “work” is to mistake its nature. It would be as if a self-described lover of art should drag himself from bed and mutter to his valet, “Dear me, I suppose I must go to the Sistine today. Paintings and paintings, nothing but paintings. Michelangelo, you know. Creation of man all the way to the what’s-it, with devils and bankers going one way and angels and decent sorts going the other. Molesworth, where is your mind wandering? Kindly hold the mirror so I can see myself.”

Yet that, as I see now, is the aim of our schools: to produce spoiled, self-satisfied graduates with the stolidity but not the innocence (and usually not the income) of an upper-class twit - a Bertie Wooster, if Bertie were sullen, debauched, and always in a state of political water-boiling. That is not the same as ignorance. I do not read Sanskrit, so I am largely ignorant of Sanskrit poetry. Had I more years ahead of me than I do, I might learn Sanskrit. I know something of the language, and I am piqued by the theology of Shankara, the greatest of commentators on the Rig-Vega. But I don’t have the years. Meanwhile, I have a Russian Bible that will provide my next re-introduction to the word of God, because when you know a language as poorly as I know Russian, you have to take things very slowly, and when you do that, you often see things that ease and fluency often miss, and these things can be small objects of wonder. It is like having to cross the woods afoot rather than driving along a road that cuts it in half. You might hear the ovenbird that way.

No, ignorance is one thing; we’re all going to be ignorant of most of the things there are to know. It used to be that a titan in mathematics, a Leonhard Euler, could be expert in all the areas of that subject; those days are gone. The topologist may be ignorant of Milton; that depends on his reading. But he is certainly going to be ignorant of most of the other branches of mathematics, simply because he has not got the time for them. Ignorance is one thing. Stupidity is another.

By stupidity, I do not mean mere dullness or sluggishness in the organ of understanding. I mean what the etymology suggests. You are stupid when you gape. The emperor Frederick II was called “Stupor Mundi,” “The Wonder of the World,” and to be stupefied still, in English, might suggest that you are overcome with astonishment. But stupidity has come to denote a gaping that is as far removed from wonder as possible. You are stupid when you gape indifferently at something excellent that you have the power to understand but without understanding it and without caring to, when you are unmoved by a beauty that you have the power to apprehend but you make sure you will not apprehend, when you shut the eyes of your soul against the goodness they might otherwise see.

Suppose you are trying to introduce a savage to a system of writing. He is ignorant of what the scratches and squiggles are supposed to say. Once you show him that they do speak, he should be interested, and if he has a lively mind, he will be like Sequoyah, who brought writing to the Cherokees. But if he has decided beforehand that nothing you have to show him is worth his time, he will be resolutely stupid: gaping on the thing and thinking that it is mere chicanery or foolishness or whatnot.

That sort of stupidity is what our schools are about. They do not teach young people about the glory of Melville, if they teach Melville at all, but about how Melville does or does not fit into some gridwork of identity politics, so that the work of art and intelligence itself, Moby-Dick, is left on the shore like a beached whale, dead and stinking, while onlookers in their stupidity hold their noses and pass by.

Nor is Melville an exceptional case. Consider what Milton thought the most beautiful thing in all of creation: the human form, male or female, as expressed most powerfully in the human face. Now consider how far we have gone to deny that such beauty, male or female in its characteristic manifestations, even exists. Suppose I say that ballet dancing or certain kinds of gymnastics most beautifully conform to the willowy beauty of the female body, while such things as weightlifting and football do not. I do not know which will cause me to be reviled more: my sense that the latter is awkward or my sense that the former is graceful and lovely. In this matter, I am required to be stupid and to gape in indifference at the one and the other.

It is the same with marriage and family life. Suppose I see a large family at a reunion. There are three or four generations, about fifty or sixty people in all. That’s by no means a lot, or at least it wasn’t when I was a boy, not when I had twenty-eight aunts and uncles and thirty-nine first cousins, and neighbor children had the like. I should be struck by the sheer human vitality. But if my first thought is that there are too many, that the women must have been pregnant too often, and that birth control would have solved the problem, I am stupid. I am like a savage who would rather dig under bark for grubs than learn how to plant seeds.

Now suppose that this will to stupidity is both the engine and the object of political power. When Sequoyah completed his syllabary of the Cherokee language, it took his people only a couple of years to see what a great gift he had given them. But if I were to say that Americans should learn to honor the religion without which their nation would never have been born and to be grateful for the gifts it conferred, even if they do not themselves believe in its teachings, I might as well hang a sign around my neck, inviting everyone, especially teachers, politicians, professional entertainers, and journalists, to spit on me and to make my name a byword from coast to coast. You must be stupid to be safe.

Readers may think of similar cases. Stupidity, apparently, is no obstacle to success in Google’s AI department; it is the royal road. Stupidity sells; stupidity is all the rage. Only someone stupid before the beauty of man and woman could suppose that a lopping-off here and a pin-the-tail there could turn one into the other, but dare to call out the stupidity, even in private, and you risk your career. I am not to honor my country; I am to be stupid before the contributions it has made to the world. I am not to be enthralled by the wonder of the cell and its intricate design: stupidity must reduce it to random jelly, as stupidity reduces the miraculous human being in the womb, with all its latent powers unfolding, to a wart, a tumor, or a parasite.

Hear, O America, the powers that be, the powers that be are united, and you must be stupid with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, or else."

"Putin Issues Devastating Warning To NATO And U.S., Don't Even Try It"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/31/24
"Putin Issues Devastating Warning To
 NATO And U.S., Don't Even Try It"
"Russia says the U.S. and U.K. were directly involved in a terror attack on Moscow, and at the same time, France is agitating for war against Putin. The West is on the verge of being devastated in a regional war."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Jeremiah Babe, "Happy Easter, Now Get Ready For All Hell To Break Loose"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/30/24
"Happy Easter, Now Get Ready For 
All Hell To Break Loose; April 8 Eclipse"
Prepare for anything to happen as all hell is about to break loose,
does the solar eclipse on April 8 mean more than most think?"
Comments here:

"Alert! Country Preps For Nuclear Event; NATO Article 5 Rule Change!; Bunkers Built; Iran WW3 Threat"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/31/24
"Alert! Country Preps For Nuclear Event; 
NATO Article 5 Rule Change!; Bunkers Built; Iran WW3 Threat"
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "FDA & CDC Destroyed Ivermectin to Inject CV19 Bioweapon Vax"

"FDA & CDC Destroyed Ivermectin 
to Inject CV19 Bioweapon Vax"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"World renowned CV19 critical care and pulmonary expert Dr. Pierre Kory was one of the first to call for Ivermectin to treat Covid in the early days of the pandemic. Instead of using Ivermectin, the FDA and CDC vilified the drug and questioned its effectiveness even though Ivermectin won a Nobel Prize for safety and efficacy in 2015. Because of these actions from the FDA and CDC, people died in the hundreds of thousands in America alone for lack of treatment from a cheap and effective drug to treat Covid. Dr. Kory thinks he knows what happened and explains, “The FDA kicked it off with a tweet, you know the one that said, ‘You are not a horse, you are not a cow. Stop it y’all.” That horse dewormer campaign is my strongly held belief that was a professional public relations campaign to denigrate Ivermectin. That campaign was around August 21, 2021. That tweet (“stop it, y’all”) was released after a report that showed 90,000 prescriptions of Ivermectin were being filled every week in the US. I think Big Pharma saw Ivermectin was being used heavily, and they were afraid of the direct experience with physicians and patients such as word of mouth like ‘Hey, my doc gave me Ivermectin, and I was better in 24 hours.’ So, they had to put a stop to the use of it. They loaded up the bazookas and started a war. ”As a result of the assassination of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), Dr. Kory says, “Hundreds of thousands died for lack of early treatment of Covid in the US, and millions died worldwide.” The FDA was sued by Kory and other doctors and the FDA recently agreed to retract all the untrue negative information it put out trashing Ivermectin.

Why kill Ivermectin and then later HCQ? Dr. Kory says, “It’s so simple. Number one, it would have threatened the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the CV19 vaccine. You cannot do an EUA for a vaccine if there is a safe and effective treatment for Covid. I think Ivermectin threatened the global market for the CV19 vaccines. If Ivermectin was effective (and it was very effective on Covid), what would be the uptake for these vaccines? They would plummet, and they knew it would destroy the market. Over a few years, it’s north of $100 billion. Then comes little old Ivermectin, and it costs 6 cents a pill to make. It was one of the solutions to the pandemic. The pandemic would have been over if everybody was on Ivermectin, and that is why they had to destroy it.”

What we got was a CV19 “vaccine” that Dr. Kory says, “It did not help a single person.” Dr. Kory goes on to say, “It did the opposite of helping get people well. It was sold to the world’s population on a campaign of fear. They said ‘get vaccinated or you are going to die from Covid.’ The medical establishment conditioned everyone’s brain to believe that the most important thing for their life is that they don’t die of Covid.”

Instead, people died of the CV19 bioweapon vax. Dr. Kory says, “All kinds of excess mortality is occurring in this country and all around the world, all timed with the CV19 vaccine roll-out. .We can see the carnage, and the excess cancer rates are far higher than 2020. We know that the vaccines made everything worse.”

Dr. Kory has been running a cutting edge CV19 vax injury practice for two years. He has been treating what he calls “Long Covid injuries” and “vax injuries.” Dr. Kory says, “This is the first time I have had to treat bioweapon injuries.” This includes the phenomenon called CV19 vax “shedding.” His practice is growing dramatically as the injuries pile up from the CV19 vax.

Dr. Kory has been able to get some very good treatment results, but there are no cures for these vax injuries – yet. Guess what Dr. Kory’s number one treatment drug is? It’s Ivermectin. Ivermectin gets results in about 70% percent of his patients. He uses many other treatment options as well. Dr. Kory still says, “Don’t look at this problem as vaxed and unvaxed. Look at it as treated and untreated.” The people getting regular treatment do much better that those who remain untreated. There in much more in the 56-minute interview. Dr. Kory goes into detail about the treatments he is using for CV19 vax injuries.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the top pulmonary and CV 19 vax injury experts on the planet. Dr. Kory is co-founder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (flccc.net) and author of the new book “The War on Ivermectin.”

Click here to read Dr. Kory’s Substack called “Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings.”

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Civil War 2.0, You Should Be Very Concerned; US Economy Death By A Thousand Cuts"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/30/24
"Civil War 2.0, You Should Be Very Concerned; 
US Economy Death By A Thousand Cuts"
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Dollar Tree Just Made A Huge Mistake!"

Adventures With Danno, 3/30/24
"Dollar Tree Just Made A Huge Mistake!"
"Dollar Tree has just made a huge mistake as they are raising prices again. This will affect all customers, and many are speaking out their frustration."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, “Life”

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, “Life”
ͦ
"What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs 
across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
- Crowfoot, Blackfoot Warrior and Orator

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Two stars within our own Milky Way galaxy anchor the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Beyond them lie the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are over 100 million light-years away.
Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 is just above and left of NGC 3312. Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way. In the nearby universe, galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters that in turn are seen to align over even larger scales. At a distance of 100 million light-years this picture would be about 1.3 million light-years across."
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"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of 3 billion Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, 2 trillion galaxies like this. And in all of that...and perhaps more, only one of each of us."
- "Dr. Leonard McCoy"

"Humanity Today..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson

The Difference..."

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."
- Robert Fulghum