Wednesday, June 12, 2024

"​This Is What You Belong To"

"​This Is What You Belong To"
By Ryann Holiday

"In 1950, a man grieving his young son who had just died of polio got a letter from Albert Einstein. Now, one might think that as a man of science, Einstein would have had a rather resigned view of the tragic nature of the human condition. We’re born. We’re buffeted by forces beyond our control, beyond our comprehension, and then we die. Often for no reason, leaving profound suffering in its wake.

Given the immensity of the events of the middle of the twentieth century - the Holocaust and the violence of the atomic age - it was quite reasonable that Einstein might be inured to the loss of a single child to whom he had no relation.

Instead, Einstein’s letter was one of profound and philosophic condolence. “A human being,” he wrote, “is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

Einstein was expressing one of the few things that physics and philosophers and priests seem to agree on: That everything and everyone is far more connected than we are prone to think. We share an animating force, an energy, a unity that no matter what happens or how different things seem is always there. Even in our suffering, in our grief, we are tapping into something eternal and vast, something that makes us realize we are very much not alone.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world,” James Baldwin wrote, “and then you read.” It was books, history, philosophy, Baldwin said, that taught him that “the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

We are all one. It’s so easy to forget it, but it’s true.

The virtue of justice - what my new book "Right Thing, Right Now" is all about - is this idea that because of interconnectedness and interrelatedness, we have an obligation. Stoicism is not lone-wolfness. It’s the understanding that we are one single organism and that the fate of one is the fate of all.

As I wrote in "Stillness is the Key," no one has felt this more profoundly than the astronauts who had the unique experience of seeing the Earth from space. Whether they were American or Russian or Chinese, they were all overwhelmed by what has been called the “overview effect,” an instantaneous global consciousness, an inescapable sense that everyone is in the same boat, no matter where they live or what they believe.

What they experienced looking at the “Blue Marble” that is our planet was the exact thing that Hierocles, the 2nd century Stoic, was trying to teach people about two thousand years ago. Yes, we naturally think of ourselves and the people we love first, but with work, we can expand that circle of concern larger and larger until we see everything that is alive as one enormous organism. Astronauts experience the exact same thing that Gandhi, who never even flew in a plane, never saw humanity from above more than a few stories up in a building, called the great oneness.

Realizing this, letting it wash over us, sitting in awe of it - it’s more than just humbling. It also makes us more generous, more courageous, more committed to what’s right. It makes us less concerned with petty nonsense, with meaningless distinctions, with grudges or our own pain. It’s euphoric. It can also be existentially devastating.

The actor William Shatner, after a lifetime of exploring space on film, finally visited the cosmos at age ninety. He thought he’d marvel at the beauty of all that he beheld. Instead, looking at the Earth from afar, all he felt was sadness. Because, he realized, everything that mattered was down there on Earth and everyone was taking it for granted. They were destroying this thing of beauty, abusing it, stealing it from generations unborn.

The garment of interdependence, the great bundle of humanity that Frances Ellen Watkins Harper spoke of, it’s real. But what kind of shape is it in these days? The environment is reeling. Billions live in poverty. Millions perish of totally preventable causes. Injustice tears at the fabric that binds us together. How long can it go unchecked before everything comes apart?

I am convinced that people are much better off when their whole city is flourishing than when certain citizens prosper but the community has gone off course. When a man is doing well for himself but his country is falling to pieces, he goes to pieces along with it, but a struggling individual has much better hopes if his country is thriving. Is that the lament of a modern politician? The manifesto of some early-twentieth-century socialist revolutionary? No, it’s Pericles in 431 BC.

The whole point of government and the social contract is built around this idea. All government, it was said by one of the Founders, have as its sole goal the common welfare. What good is our success if it comes at the expense of others? How safe are we if our safety leaves others vulnerable? What good are we if we can’t help others? We are all bound up in this thing called life together. We share this planet together. When we forget that or lose track of how our actions affect others, that’s when injustice flourishes.

Marcus Aurelius’s line that “what’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee” could just as easily be a quip in an upcoming political debate as it could be a New York Times op-ed. It’s something that he needed constant reminders of, just as we do. He strove to see the world “as a living being - one nature and soul... [where] everything feeds into that single experience, moves with a single motion. And how everything helps produce everything else. Spun and woven together.” Did his policies and decisions always reflect that? No. And his biggest failings - the persecution of the Christians by the Romans at that time - are a reflection of what happens when we lose track of that ultimate north star.

“I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three month stay in England and Europe,” Gandhi observed after one of his visits, “that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter what clime it flourishes.”

This was why he couldn’t hate. Why he couldn’t turn his back. Why he dreamed of a better world with fewer divisions, where problems were never solved by violence or domination. “Life will not be a pyramid with an apex sustained by the bottom,” he explained, sounding like Hierocles. “But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.”

This is what the last years of his life were dedicated to, why he was willing to die not just for independence but for equality for the untouchables and for Muslim and Hindu peace. “I am a Muslim,” he said, “a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Christian, a Jew, a Parsi.”

And so are you. We all are. We are one and the same. All mortal. All flawed. All gifted with incredible potential. All deserving of justice and respect and dignity. All unique individuals and yet an inseparable part of humanity, of the past, present, and future. Truman kept a line from a Milton poem in his wallet that read simply: "The parliament of Man, the federation of the world." That’s what we belong to. That’s what we must protect."
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“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

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith

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

"The Dispersion of Moral Energies"

"The Dispersion of Moral Energies"
by Paul Rosenberg

"Humans have long been, and remain, deeply attached to morality. Even confirmed criminals will routinely say things like “That ain’t right,” which is purely a moral judgment. This focus on morality holds firm across the panorama of human of life. Examine any workplace and you’ll find a long stream of moral judgments: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on.

This moral focus of ours is a good thing, and says a great deal good about us. That said, we’ve allowed our moral energies to be wasted. And the crucial aspect of this isn’t that our moral energies have been suppressed (though that sometimes happens), but that they’ve been dispersed; so widely dispersed that they are often of no use at all.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: Humans have limited amounts of energy, and that includes energy for willpower and moral concerns. Disperse them and there’s insufficient energy for the important uses. This is precisely what has been happening to us, and especially to people who spend their time on TV and social media.

There are many systems in this world which can only endure if insulated from moral scrutiny. That’s something of a frightening fact, but it remains a fact. And so, this is a natural consequence: Systems that would lose legitimacy if held to clear moral standards (like the Golden Rule) must redirect the moral energies of the populace into non-threatening directions. If what you want requires that people don’t turn a moral eye toward you, it’s best to spread their moral energies every which way, so that they don’t have much left in reserve. (Naked suppression backfires over time.)

The internal energies of a mainstream couple, for example, are almost fully directed away from serious moral issues. This couple likely devotes their emotional and moral strength toward whatever terror is in the news that day, to sports teams, to hating one or the other political party, to complaints about all the small moral failures they saw that day, and so on. After all that, they’re simply tired; it easier to spit out a slogan and roll into bed. And so the morally questionable entities of this planet have learned to disperse moral energies, leaving people too depleted to focus.

Finally… It’s important to understand that we (all normal humans, as best I can tell) were born vulnerable to this. We are easy marks for anyone who uses our attachment to morality as a tool. We need to recognize this. Our moral energies are precious; we must direct them to where they matter, and not be tricked into throwing them every which way."
And then there's us...

"All Earthly Empires Die"

"All Earthly Empires Die"
by Bill Bonner

"'Amor fati' was Nietzsche’s famous expression. It is a Latin phrase with connections to the Stoic writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Literally translated, it means “love of fate.” It is a white shoe yearning for mud. It is a turkey looking forward to Thanksgiving. Or an investor stoically preparing for a bear market.

We use the term to describe the grace and courage you need to meet a complex, unknowable, and uncontrollable future. You don’t know whether the Earth is warming or cooling… whether it is good or bad… or whether you can do anything about it. You don’t know who’s doing “equal work.” You don’t know what equality is… how to measure it… or what to do about it. You don’t know who the bad guy is. It may even be you. It recognizes that we are all God’s fools, living in a world of ignorance, headed towards we don’t know where. Using our brains, we can make progress in our physical, material world. Technical thinking yields pyramids and Eiffel Towers.

Ignorance Everywhere: But there is another part of life, which has a mind of its own. It does not bend readily to our desires or yield to our intelligence. It is the part of life whose purposes are unknown. The first and most important Commandment, according to Jesus, was not to fight it, but to love it.

But ignorance can be a charm. You just have to take it seriously. And appreciate it. Recognizing your own ignorance will inform your newfound modesty. You will be aware of it. And fiercely proud. Nobody will be humbler than you are! And since you are so chummy with ignorance, you will see it everywhere – in every headline, every public announcement, every speech on the floor of the Senate… and every crackpot comment from every dummy voter in the empire.

In private affairs, you reduce uncertainty by getting as close to the subject as possible. That is, you avoid secondhand “news” and try to find out for yourself. The more you know about a company, for example, the more confident you can be about investing in it. That’s why the insiders always have the inside track, an advantage that is increased by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s phony “level playing field” propaganda. In public affairs – policy discussions, economics, politics – as you get closer, you become less cocksure. That is, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

In an interesting university study, people were asked to pick out Ukraine on a map… and whether they approved of military intervention in that country. Curiously, the further off they were on the geography (the average guess was 1,800 miles off), the more they favored forceful intervention. In public affairs, ignorance and confidence vary inversely.

Moral Certainty: When we first moved to Baltimore in the 1980s, we noticed this phenomenon in another context. Baltimore was a disaster. Crime, drugs, poverty, venereal disease, broken homes, unwed mothers, corruption – name a social problem; Baltimore had it. And while its leaders had been noticeably unable to solve any of these problems right in their own back yard, the city’s politically correct politicians were loud and clear on one issue: apartheid had to end… in South Africa. Had they ever visited South Africa? Could they find it on a map? Probably not. But they were sure they knew how to make it a better place.

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority,” wrote Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken. “The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’”

“I am not too sure,” would eliminate many of the world’s myth-driven, self-inflicted ills – pointless wars, dumb arguments, pogroms, persecutions, and lynchings. And reckless spending of other people’s money.

Imagine a wise Hitler entertaining the idea of building Auschwitz as a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” “Hmmm… I’m not too sure that would solve it… In fact, I’m not too sure there is a problem!”

Imagine Simon de Montfort readying to attack the town of Albi to exterminate the “heretics.” When told that half the people in the town were good Catholics, de Montfort replied: “Kill them all. God will recognize His own.” Suppose he had thought twice… “Hmmm… Maybe this is not such a good idea… Maybe killing people is not what Christianity is all about… Maybe the heretics aren’t so bad… Maybe I’ll take the afternoon off.”

Unwarranted Confidence: The barroom blowhard… so sure he is right about everything… is generally the dumbest guy in the place. And the most dangerous. He’s the one who will stir up a mob… and get himself elected president. The whole system of modern public policy is built on false knowledge and unwarranted confidence. The elite claims to know what is best for you. That is how every politician can claim his proposals would “benefit the American people.” But the only program that would benefit the American people would be to let them decide for themselves what would benefit them. Give them back their money. Stop bossing them around. End the wars. Stop the empire. But who would suggest such a thing?

A book that appeared in 2018, "Psychology of a Superpower: Security and Dominance in U.S. Foreign Policy", by political scientist Christopher Fettweis, argued that power really does corrupt, and that when a nation or an empire gets too much power, its elite develops new opinions.

Rather than seeing itself as one of many nations that must get along with each other, its elites begin to see that they have a special role to play. They become the one, “indispensable” nation, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it. They are the world’s only hope in combatting evil, which they do, as then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo elaborated, with “the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.”

Thus endowed with a special mission and special powers, and subject to the special rules of the only nation with a trillion-dollar-per-year military/empire budget, the elite develop, in Fettweis’s judgment, a fatal combination of unrestrained hubris, unrealistic paranoia, and unrepentant ignorance. They see danger everywhere, without undertaking any serious study (they assume knowledge comes automatically with raw power). And they think they have not only the right, but the means, to do something about it, even if the danger is largely fantasy.

Damned to Hell: But people always come to think what they need to think when they need to think it. “All earthly empires die,” wrote St. Augustine in 413, a few years before the Vandals destroyed his city and finally brought down the Roman Empire in the West.

The elite contribute, by taking up the myths that help it die. Certainty and ignorance vary proportionally, both on the individual and on a national level. The surer a nation is of its myths… its exceptionalism… its manifest destiny… its policies… and its position at the right hand of God… the more it is damned to Hell."

"How It Really Is"

 

"What Are The Facts?"

"What are the facts? Again and again and againwhat are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the stars foretell, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable verdict of history - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
- Robert A. Heinlein

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

And always remember...
"When a learned man argues with an idiot two fools debate."
- Fu-shi

Travelling with Russell, "Russian Typical (Luxury) Supermarket: Would You Shop Here?"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 6/12/24
"Russian Typical (Luxury) Supermarket: 
Would You Shop Here?"
"Take a tour with me of a Russian luxury supermarket in Moscow, Russia. Azbuka Vkusa has more than 150 stores in Russia, all of which sell luxury, imported and locally made products. Would you shop here based the quality or the price?"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can’t Afford Insurance"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/12/24
"You Can’t Afford Insurance"
"We're diving into a topic that's hitting us all hard: the hidden costs making it impossible to afford living. From skyrocketing car insurance premiums to inflation driving everyday expenses through the roof, it's a financial nightmare out there. Ever wondered why your auto insurance is suddenly 21% higher? Or how modern cars are spying on our driving habits and jacking up our rates? You're not alone, and it's time we shine a light on these issues."
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Bill Bonner, "Immigration, Conquest, Reparations"

King Harold the Second swears fealty to William 
the Conqueror as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry
"Immigration, Conquest, Reparations"
by Bill Bonner

London - "Today, in a very roundabout way, we continue looking at America’s missing wealth. The more we look, the more ‘nothing’ we see.

We began our annual migration on Sunday. Like caribou aiming for Arctic pastures, we headed to France for the summer. The trip means driving to the car ferry at Rosslare, Ireland, and then getting off in Wales. We spent the night in Narberth and continued on to London yesterday. Today, we’re ‘takin’ care of business’ in London, before continuing to Calais, via the Chunnel, tomorrow.

To us, the English seem very similar to the Irish. They look the same. They dress the same. Their weather is the same. They drive on the same side of the road. And they share an interlocked, blood-soaked history.

One of the most curious public policy ideas in America today is providing compensation to groups of people for injuries suffered by their ancestors. It sounds reasonable until you realize that the ‘reparation’ payments must come from the living, who had no part in the wrongdoing, and go to other living people, who did not suffer from them.

A ‘reparations’ payment would raise GDP…as a part of government spending…but actually reduce real wealth, like a swindle, by taking money from the people who earned it and giving it to people who didn’t. And then you have the challenge of deciding which groups, historically, suffered the most…and which other groups, today, should pay for it.

Horrible Torments - Britain and Ireland both appear to be peaceful, pleasant places. But both have endured horrible torments. Both islands were inhabited by unknown peoples who were then “replaced” by Celtic invaders around 1,000 BC. Britain was conquered by Romans in the first century AD. The Celtic tribes put up a fight, led notably by Queen Boudica. But the Romans were better organized and supplied. The local people submitted. Or they were killed.

It was the colonization of Britain that led to the famous remark by Roman historian, Tacitus. “They make a desert and call it peace.” Much of the native population of southern Britain was exterminated, leaving large areas of the island to go back to nature.

Ireland was not invaded by the Romans. Instead, when the Romans left, Irish tribes invaded the west of Britain. The Scoti tribe, for example, gave Scotland its name.

While the Irish came from the West, Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) tribes settled (peacefully, it appears) in the East of Britain. Then both islands were invaded, repeatedly – by Norwegians, Danes, and Normans. The last of these attacks, by the Normans, began with the arrival of Duke William at Pevensey, England, in 1066.

Again, it was a bloody conquest in which a substantial part of the population was killed or starved to death. The Normans were fierce and ruthless fighters, often inflicting tortures and mutilations on their prisoners. But in this regard, they were little different from their enemies. Murder, mayhem, massacres – all in a day’s work.

Bogtrotters - It took six years of fighting before William was comfortably seated on the English throne. About 100 years later, Anglo-Normans landed in Ireland. This time, it took 600 years of on-again, off-again slaughter, but Ireland was finally subdued by England. Then, the invasion went in the other direction as waves of hungry immigrants from Ireland soon showed up in Britain, looking for work.

The English considered the Irish an inferior race. They were dirty, poor, and lawless; “bogtrotters” they called them. That reputation stuck with the Irish as they came to America, too. The ‘wild Irish slums’ were not for decent people. Irish workers were thought to be undisciplined and difficult; victims of popery, poverty and alcohol. Often, they didn’t even speak English.

Before 1865, Black slaves in the US at least had a capital value – of about $900 (or about $30,000 in today’s money). No slave owner wanted his slaves to die. So, they turned to the Irish to do the most dangerous work. For example, in 1832, the City of New Orleans undertook to dig a canal through the mosquito-infested swampland, which later became known as the New Basin Canal. Mary Helen Lagasse reports: "The builders of the city's New Basin Canal expressed a preference for Irish over slave labor for the reason that a dead Irishman could be replaced in minutes at no cost, while a dead slave resulted in the loss of more than one thousand dollars." Irish workers had no owners. And no capital value. So, they were expendable. Eight thousand Irish immigrants died of malaria, cholera, and other diseases digging the canal.

But now, the Irish diaspora is well established in both countries…often in commanding positions. And now the interests of the Irish in America and England are identical to those of the rest of the voters. And one of the main hot buttons for them all – in America, Ireland, and England -- is immigration. They generally don’t like it.

We leave the social and political problems to others. But immigration plays a role in our story, too. While immigrants boost GDP and employment numbers, they may actually lower the real wealth of the average American. Tune in tomorrow for more…"

Gregory Mannarino, "Shocker! Inflation Continues To Rise, World Debt Ballooning Faster"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/12/24
"Shocker! Inflation Continues To Rise,
World Debt Ballooning Faster"
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Tuesday, June 11, 2024

"Alert! '100 Nukes In Kaliningrad'; Russia On USA Coast; F-16s Enter Skies; The Media Is FKN Lying!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/11/24
"Alert! '100 Nukes In Kaliningrad'; Russia On USA Coast;
 F-16s Enter Skies; The Media Is FKN Lying!"
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "U.S.S.A.: United Soviet States Of America; Freedom? FU! Political Parasites In Charge"

Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/11/24
"U.S.S.A.: United Soviet States Of America;
 Freedom? FU! Political Parasites In Charge"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Jeremiah Babe, "Warning: Saudi Arabia Dumps Petrodollar, Danger Lurking For US Dollar"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/11/24
"Warning: Saudi Arabia Dumps Petrodollar,
 Danger Lurking For US Dollar"
Comments here:

Musical. Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Be kind to yourself, forget all the troubles for a little 
while and enjoy this beautiful video in full screen...
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"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?" 

"Never, Ever Forget..."

"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "

Dan, I Allegedly, "Banks Don’t Want to Pay for Stupid"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/11/24
"Banks Don’t Want to Pay for Stupid"
Banks are paying less and less when you get scammed. 
Now they basically call it a stupid tax. You fell for it, you pay."
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"The American Empire at Sunset"

"The American Empire at Sunset"
by Brian Maher

"The year is 1991… Contrary to Mr. Khrushchev’s boast decades prior, the United States had buried the Soviet Union. Its forces had just trounced the world’s fourth-largest army - Iraq’s - within weeks. America bestrode the world like a new colossus… and put all potential rivals in its shade. Its armies bossed the four corners of the globe. Its fleets commanded the Seven Seas. Declared India’s former Army Chief of Staff: “The lesson of Desert Storm is, don’t fight with the United States without a nuclear weapon.” It was the Pax Americana… the “end of history.”

American capitalism, American democracy represented civilization’s apex, its zenith, its perfection. Yet the gods are a jealous lot. They are hot to put down any mortal who has outgrown its britches. Hubris they will not abide...

The Worst Thing the Russians Ever Did To America: Perhaps Russian political scientist Georgi Arbatov divined their wicked intentions at the end of Soviet rule… As he sneered - with a sort of purring relish - “We are going to do the worst thing we can do to you.” Which was what precisely? “We are going to take your enemy away from you.”

We fear he was correct. A superpower needs an enemy as the policeman needs criminals… as the psychiatrist needs madmen… as the Church needs the devil. Absent an enemy it loses its direction. Its vigor. Its éllan vital. It flounders, adrift, aimless and rudderless. Between world wars, berserker Winston Churchill lamented "the bland skies of peace" that stretched above Earth. Those same bland skies of peace overhung Earth at the Cold War’s conclusion.

Now jump ahead 33 years… after heavy weather has rolled on through… after the gods have worked their mischievous will…

A Changed World: America has had another go at Iraq - to liberate it from its own ruler and introduce it to Thomas Jefferson. The result may represent its greatest foreign policy blunder yet - greater even than Vietnam.

And if Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires… the flags had come down to half-mast… and the pallbearers loaded America’s empire into the hearse. “You Americans have the watches,” said the Taliban. “But we have the time.” And they did - have the time.

Americans are a restless, fitful people. We are eternally on the jump, forever hunting the next opportunity, perpetually peeking over the next hill. That is, Americans are poor imperialists. We simply lack the requisite patience. We have the watches, yes. But not the time. The American founders studied their history… and knew the pitfalls of empire…

Destroying Monsters Abroad: America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” said Adams (John Quincy). But the once modest American Republic took up the hunt at the end of the 20th century. It found its first monster in fiendish Spain… Americans remembered the Maine. And forgot their Adams. They have been forgetting their Adams ever since...

America has gone buccaneering around the globe, chasing down monsters during WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. For every one it scotched, another rose in its place. Hitler took over from the Kaiser. Stalin from Hitler. Osama bin Laden from Stalin. Perhaps Chairman Xi will take over from Osama bin Laden?
 
We do not know. But if not him, we hazard another monster will. There is always another. And another. What of American democracy and capitalism - the world’s envy three decades prior?

The Glory of American Democracy: The high glories of American democracy are presently displayed before a watching world… Americans are at each other’s throats, red-state America and blue-state America. American cities have been scenes of riot, of mayhem, of chaos. Statues of old heroes are down. The nation’s founding myths are called into contempt and ridicule. Millions and millions believe the election was rigged and thieved, fraudulent and illegitimate.

Are they right? Are they wrong? We refuse to wade into the bog. We take no official stance. Yet if masses of American voters no longer trust the electoral process… what does it speak for American democracy?

Is this the alabaster city shining on the hill, glistening in the mists? Is this the model the world would mimic? Is this the cause American soldiers have killed and died for? As an American patriot in whose veins course the reddest blood, we hope it is not. Yet we begin to harbor grave doubts. China has ventured so far as to label American democracy a “joke.” But few appreciate the jest.

The Long, Withdrawing Roar of American Capitalism: Covid reduced American capitalism to a sad, sad caricature. But scroll the calendar backward, before the pandemic. The economy appeared healthy enough on the surface. But if you scratched the paint… and looked deeper… you would find: Gutted industries, stagnating growth, flat wages and a stock market that is captive of the central bank.

The entire system, meantime, is rotten through with unpayable debt — some $100 trillion and running. It is not sustainable.

When did the American economy go wrong? And why? Our own Charles Hugh Smith gives his answer: "In broad-brush, the post-World War II era ended around 1970. The legitimate prosperity of 1946-1970 was based on cheap oil controlled by the U.S. and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Everything else was merely decoration.

The Original Sin to hard-money advocates was America's abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, but this was the only way to maintain hegemony. Maintaining the reserve currency is tricky, as the nation issuing the reserve currency has to supply the global economy with enough of the currency to grease commerce and stock central bank reserves around the world.

As the global economy expanded, the only way the U.S. could send enough dollars overseas was to run trade deficits, which in a gold standard meant the gold reserves would go to zero as trading partners holding dollars would exchange the currency for gold.

So the choice was: give up the reserve currency and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by jacking up the dollar's value so high that imports would collapse, or accept that hegemony was no longer compatible with the gold standard. It wasn't a difficult decision: who would give up global hegemony, and for what?

The elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there's nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The hyper-centralized global money control has run out of rope as the cheap oil is gone, debts have ballooned to the point there is no way they'll ever be paid down, and the only thing staving off collapse is money-printing, which holds the seeds of its own demise." Charles tells a woeful tale. Yet we believe there is good, hard sense in it. It is a competent autopsy.

“Empires have a logic of their own,” Bill Bonner and our intrepid leader Addison Wiggin wrote in "Empire of Debt", concluding: “That they will end in grief is a foregone conclusion.” It seems so. But if the American empire is ending in grief, we hope for a quiet grief, a whimpering grief - not a banging grief. Meantime, the gods watch the unfolding spectacle... munching popcorn… as the will of Zeus moves toward its ultimate end."

The Daily "Near You?"

Rock Port, Missouri, USA. Thanks or stopping by!

"The Story Of Man"

“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
Vangelis, "Alpha"
This song always suggested the image of our relentless, idealized, noble, glorious March of Mankind through the ages. Despite it all, despite ourselves, we survive and march onward towards our unknown destiny.

Still, some wonder about our true nature as a species, as the Apex Predator of this planet, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did when he asked,“What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.”
Indeed, Angelic aspirations regardless, the historical record suggests a less benevolent but far more accurate and truthful view of the instincts of beasts within Humanity...
Steve Cutts, "MAN"
“What a chimera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”
- Blaise Pascal

"Pride and refuse," indeed...

"It May Be Then..."

"Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum."
- W. Somerset Maugham

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; 
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." 
- Sydney J. Harris 

"So, You Take This Things..."

"That life. This life. It looks as if you can have both. I mean, they're both right there, one on top of the other, and it looks as if they'll blend. But they never will. So, you take this thing. You take this thing you want, and you put it in a box and you close the lid. You can let your fingers trace the cracks, the places where the light gets in, the dark gets out, but the lid stays on. You don't look inside. You don't look at this thing you want so much, because you Can. Not. Have. It. So there's this box, you know, with the thing inside, and you could throw it away or shoot it into space; you could set it on fire and watch it burn to ashes, but really, none of that would make a difference, because you cannot destroy what you want. It only makes you want it more. So. You take this thing you want and you put it in a box and you close the lid. And you hold the box close to your heart, which is where it wants to go, and you pretend it doesn't kill you every time you feel yourself breathe."
- Megan Hart

"And In That Very Way..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford

"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"
I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
- Sydney Harris

"How It Really, Insanely, Is"

 

"I'd Still Swim..."

"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told
the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim.
And I'd despise the one who gave up."
- Abraham Maslow

And don't you ever give up...

"Sometimes..."

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"World War III Prelude"

Full screen recommended.
Danny Haiphong, 6/11/24
"Pepe Escobar: 
Russia Readies For War With NATO"
Comments here:
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Scott Ritter, 6/11/24
"Russia's Unstoppable Strategic Advance
 Puts Nato In Unprecedented Fear"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 6/11/24
"Putin's Masterplan For War With NATO Ready;
 'Will Arm Countries To Hit Western Targets'"
o
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/11/24
"Scott Ritter:
 'Russia Could Wipe The US East Coast Off The Map'"
Comments here:
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A Comment: @AizelSenobio, "My father, a US Army, WWII Purple Heart recipient, career US aerospace defense engineer and programs manager used to always say to me: "God help the USA if we're ever stupid enough to go to war with the Russians. We play checkers while they play chess. They'd eat us alive." And dad was a diehard American patriot."

Judge Napolitano, "Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: American And Israeli War Crimes And Genocide; Government War Debt"

Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/11/24
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: American And Israeli War 
Crimes And Genocide; Government War Debt"
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Wealth Chimera"

A Chimera from Greek mythology, with a goat’s head 
and a serpent’s tail attached to a lion’s body.

"Wealth Chimera"
We have a GDP that is largely fraudulent... with as much as half of it directed, 
controlled or be-muddled by government, rendering it unfit for human consumption.
by Bill Bonner

London - "The subject is nothing. Zero. The thing that isn’t a thing. If you have a little of it, you accept it for what it is. Like an empty wallet, you know it won’t take you very far. But what if you have a lot of it? Fifty trillion dollars’ worth, for example. Then, you must feel a little like Donald Trump when he was down on his luck in the early ‘90s. He was reportedly in the hole by $100 million. But he was proud of it. The banks would never lend so much to a poor guy. Only a very rich man could be that poor.

America’s great wealth is a source of pride too. But as we discovered, much of its proud tower is rickety, hollow or simply missing. Often, there is nothing where there should be something. And since a third of Americans live ‘hand to mouth,’ we’re going to see what happens when the mouth realizes that the hand is empty.

We have stocks that are not worth a fraction of their prices. We have ‘meme’ and ‘zombie’ companies that are not worth anything at all. They may have negative value, in fact, since they take valuable resources and waste them.

Money Good Goes Poof: We have a mountain of debt... nearly $100 trillion of it... every penny of which is counted as an “asset” on the creditors’ balance sheets. Probably only about half of it is ‘money good.’ The rest may go ‘poof’ in the credit cycle’s downturn.

The safest part of this pile is US Treasury bonds. And yet, in gold terms, we’ve seen that they lost 30% of their value in the last four years... and 75% since 1999.

And we have a GDP that is largely fraudulent... with as much as half of it directed, controlled or be-muddled by government, rendering it unfit for human consumption.

Today, we’re going to look at more ‘wealth’ that isn’t there — including $3 trillion of ‘ghost money,’ the strangest kind of nothing. But we’ll begin with something simpler...

It’s not just Treasury bonds that pretend to have value they don’t actually have. All across the fixed-return world, there are unrecognized losses and make-believe wealth. Here’s the FDIC notice: "Unrealized losses on available-for-sale and held-to-maturity securities increased by $39 billion to $517 billion in the first quarter. Higher unrealized losses on residential mortgage-backed securities, resulting from higher mortgage rates in the first quarter, drove the overall increase. This is the ninth straight quarter of unusually high unrealized losses since the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates in first quarter 2022."

Banks were required to hold US Treasury bonds as ‘reserves.’ That, they were told, would make them more antifragile. But it did just the opposite. Treasury bonds proved to be a terrible form of ‘reserve.’ They went down, in nominal terms, by about 20% since 2020. In gold terms, they lost half again as much.

The banks also had plenty of private debt that went bad. They lent heavily to real estate developers and speculators, for example. But now, commercial real estate is not worth what it was a few years ago. People don’t go to the office as much. Employers need less space. And many speculators in commercial property deals are unable to repay. In addition to the loan losses, there are the losses on the collateral itself. Green Street reports that the ‘all-property commercial index’ is down more than 20% since 2021.

And here’s yet another big category of fake money - crypto. The total market value of crypto is now approaching its all-time high, at about $3 trillion. That is $3 trillion worth of ‘money,’ about the same value as Nvidia. But Nvidia makes something... and earns a profit. What does crypto produce? It boasts $3 trillion worth of new purchasing power... but where does it come from? How can you discount a stream of earnings when there are no earnings at all?

‘It’s hard to wrap your head around,’ say the English. Crypto may be valuable. Or not. In a few years, it could even be more valuable than it is now. But where is the ‘there’ that should be there? Or is crypto just a ‘ghost’ of real wealth?

It is illegal to counterfeit dollars. But not to create your own crypto currency. Nobody knows who really started Bitcoin. But now, the theory and the algorithmic formula are freely available. And as far as we can tell it costs little or nothing to create a billion new units of an entirely new crypto. Then, what will you have? Another ‘asset’ with no corresponding real world wealth? Fiction... fraud... or fantasy?

Who knows? Crypto brought no new real wealth to the party with it. So, every dollar’s worth of it can only be valuable if it can take a dollar’s worth of something away from other assets. Or, to put it another way, the more ‘real’ the crypto wealth becomes, the more of an illusion other forms of wealth must be; if there is $3 trillion of crypto wealth, $3 trillion of other wealth must vanish.

Everywhere we look - stocks, bonds, property, crypto - much of the wealth we see is a chimera. Stay tuned..."

Investment Note, by Tom Dyson: Bill spoke of private debt going bad above. Below you’ll see the delinquency rate on commercial real estate loans rising to a new high for this cycle.

Last month was notable because we saw the first loss on AAA-tranche of real estate debt since the 2008 banking melt-down. The notes were backed by a mortgage on a Manhattan skyscraper. Note holders took a 25% loss. The five lower-ranking tranches in this loan all got totally wiped out. And just yesterday, a landlord agreed to sell a 10-story office building in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood for a loss of $103 million, or 67%."
Click image for larger size.
o
Down the rabbit hole of absolutely total psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!

Adventures With Danno, "Is Family Dollar Worth Shopping Anymore?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/11/24
"Is Family Dollar Worth Shopping Anymore?"
Comments here:
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Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended. 
Travelling with Russell, 3/11/24
"Russian Typical (German Owned) Supermarket: Globus"
"Join me as I take a walk inside Globus Supermarket in Moscow, Russia. Globus, is a German retail chain of hypermarkets that operates 19 hypermarkets in Russia with 9,900 total employees."
Comments here:

Incredible...

Monday, June 10, 2024

"15 Shocking Facts Burger King Doesn't Want You To Know"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 6/10/24
"15 Shocking Facts Burger King 
Doesn't Want You To Know"

"Burger King, a fast-food giant known for its flame-grilled burgers and iconic Whopper, has found itself embroiled in controversies and scandals over the years. From allegations of environmental damage to health concerns related to its menu offerings, the chain has faced intense scrutiny from consumers, activists, and regulatory bodies alike. As we delve into 15 disturbing facts about Burger King, we uncover a deeper narrative surrounding its practices and impact on society, shedding light on issues that go beyond the realm of fast-food cravings.

Amidst the allure of convenience and affordability, Burger King's operations have raised questions about its commitment to ethical practices and consumer welfare. Join us as we explore the darker side of this fast-food empire, confronting uncomfortable truths and challenging the status quo in the pursuit of transparency and accountability."
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "'3 Months Until WW3'- Vucic; F-16s To Launch From Romania; Russian Sub Near Florida"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/10/24
"'3 Months Until WW3'- Vucic; 
F-16s To Launch From Romania; Russian Sub Near Florida"
Comments here:
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"Serbia's President Vucic predicts World War 3 in Europe! “We are months away from a full scale war between NATO vs Russia!! All signs point to a major war in Europe! We are heading for a major catastrophe and it seems that the train has already left the station and can no longer be stopped. No one in the West is talking about peace anymore - only more war. The West thinks it can win and take out Russia. I think the West is wrong. Both sides now believe it is existential for them, so I don't think they will find a solution other than war and everything, everything is at stake. In Europe, the leaders act as the big heroes, but they are not honest and do not tell their citizens that they will all pay a big price if it comes to war!”

Jeremiah Babe, "Will I Lose My Job Tomorrow? Brace For Impact, US Economy Crumbling"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/10/24
"Will I Lose My Job Tomorrow? Brace For Impact, 
US Economy Crumbling; More Walmarts Closing"
Comments here:

Adventures with Danno, "Walmart Can't Hide This Anymore: Major Food Shortages!"

Adventures with Danno, 6/10/24
"Walmart Can't Hide This Anymore: 
Major Food Shortages!"
Comments here: