"JFK's Executive Order 11100 Abolishing the Federal Reserve"

"JFK's Executive Order 11100 Abolishing the Federal Reserve"

by John P. Curran

“Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution specifically says that Congress is the only body that can "coin money and regulate the value thereof." The US Constitution has never been amended to allow anyone other than Congress to coin and regulate currency. So what’s the Federal Reserve?

In 1910 Senator Nelson Aldrich, then Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, in collusion with representatives of the European central banks, devised a plan to pressure and deceive Congress into enacting legislation that would covertly establish a private central bank. This bank would assume control over the American economy by controlling the issuance of its money. After a huge public relations campaign, engineered by the foreign central banks, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was slipped through Congress during the Christmas recess, with many members of the Congress absent. President Woodrow Wilson, pressured by his political and financial backers, signed it on December 23, 1913. The act created the Federal Reserve System, a name carefully selected and designed to deceive. "Federal" would lead one to believe that this is a government organization. "Reserve" would lead one to believe that the currency is being backed by gold and silver. "System" was used in lieu of the word "bank" so that one would not conclude that a new central bank had been created.

In reality, the act created a private, for profit, central banking corporation owned by a cartel of private banks. The Federal Reserve Bank, a.k.a Federal Reserve System, is a Private Corporation. Black's Law Dictionary defines the "Federal Reserve System" as: "A Network of twelve central banks to which most national banks belong and to which state chartered banks may belong. Membership rules require investment of stock and minimum reserves." Privately-owned banks own the stock of the FED. Who owns the FED? The Rothschilds of London and Berlin; Lazard Brothers of Paris; Israel Moses Seif of Italy; Kuhn, Loeb and Warburg of Germany; and the Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs and the Rockefeller families of New York. Did you know that the FED is the only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from both federal and state taxes? The FED takes in trillions of dollars per year tax free! The banking families listed above get all that money.

The FED basically works like this: The government granted its power to create money to the FED banks. They create money, then loan it back to the government charging interest. The government levies income taxes to pay the interest on the debt. On this point, it's interesting to note that the Federal Reserve Act and the sixteenth amendment, which gave Congress the power to collect income taxes, were both passed in 1913. The incredible power of the FED over the economy is universally admitted. Any one person or any closely knit group who has a lot of money has a lot of power. Now imagine a group of people who have the power to create money. Imagine the power these people would have. This is exactly what the privately owned FED is!

An often overlooked aspect of John F. Kennedy's attempt to reform American society involves money. Kennedy apparently reasoned that by returning to the Constitution, which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the Federal Reserve System, who print paper money then loan it to the government at interest. He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order 11110 which called for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in United States Notes through the U.S. Treasury rather than the traditional Federal Reserve System. That same day, Kennedy signed a bill changing the backing of one and two dollar bills from silver to gold, adding strength to the weakened U.S. currency.

When Kennedy signed this Order, it returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency- money - without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This means that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held there. As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. $10 and $20 United States Notes were never circulated but were being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated.

It appears obvious that President Kennedy knew the Federal Reserve Notes being used as the purported legal currency were contrary to the Constitution of the United States of America. Kennedy knew that if the silver-backed United States Notes were widely circulated, they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve Notes. This is a very simple matter of economics. The USN was backed by silver and the FRN was not backed by anything of intrinsic value. Executive Order 11110 should have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level (virtually all of the $35 trillion in federal debt has been created since 1963) if LBJ or any subsequent President were to enforce it. It would have almost immediately given the U.S. Government the ability to repay its debt without going to the private Federal Reserve Banks and being charged interest to create new "money". Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S.A. the ability to, once again, create its own money backed by silver and realm value worth something.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation. Federal Reserve Notes continued to serve as the legal currency of the nation. According to the United States Secret Service, 99% of all U.S. paper "currency" circulating in 1999 are Federal Reserve Notes. It seems very apparent that President Kennedy challenged the "powers that exist behind U.S. and world finance."

Perhaps the assassination of JFK was a warning to all future presidents not to interfere with the private Federal Reserve's control over the creation of money. The Latin phrase, “Cui bono” ("To whose benefit?," literally "as a benefit to whom?”), is frequently applied in determining motive for a crime. Ask yourself, who had the most to lose if Kennedy had lived, and who benefited the most from Kennedy’s assassination? The answer is the same to both questions."

- http://rense.com/general76/jfkvs.htm

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"No man did more to expose the power of the FED than Louis T. McFadden, who was the Chairman of the House Banking Committee back in the 1930s. In describing the FED, he remarked in the Congressional Record, House pages 1295 and 1296 on June 10, 1932: "Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government Board, has cheated the Government of the United States and he people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the maladministration of that law by which the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it."

Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions, departments, or agencies. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. Those 12 private credit monopolies were deceitfully placed upon this country by bankers who came here from Europe and who repaid us for our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.

The FED basically works like this: The government granted its power to create money to the FED banks. They create money, then loan it back to the government charging interest. The government levies income taxes to pay the interest on the debt. On this point, it's interesting to note that the Federal Reserve Act and the sixteenth amendment, which gave congress the power to collect income taxes, were both passed in 1913. The incredible power of the FED over the economy is universally admitted. Some people, especially in the banking and academic communities, even support it. On the other hand, there are those, such as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, that have spoken out against it. His efforts were spoken about in Jim Marrs' 1990 book "Crossfire":

"Another overlooked aspect of Kennedy's attempt to reform American society involves money. Kennedy apparently reasoned that by returning to the constitution, which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the Federal Reserve System, who print paper money then loan it to the government at interest. He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order 11110 which called for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in United States Notes through the U.S. Treasury rather than the traditional Federal Reserve System. That same day, Kennedy signed a bill changing the backing of one and two dollar bills from silver to gold, adding strength to the weakened U.S. currency.

Kennedy's comptroller of the currency, James J. Saxon, had been at odds with the powerful Federal Reserve Board for some time, encouraging broader investment and lending powers for banks that were not part of the Federal Reserve system. Saxon also had decided that non-Reserve banks could underwrite state and local general obligation bonds, again weakening the dominant Federal Reserve banks. In a comment made to a Columbia University class on Nov. 12, 1963, ten days before his assassination, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy allegedly said: "The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight." In this matter, John Fitzgerald Kennedy appears to be the subject of his own book... a true "Profile of Courage."

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Executive Order 11110

AMENDMENT OF EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 10289 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE PERFORMANCE OF CERTAIN FUNCTIONS AFFECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY. By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code, it is ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended — (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j): "(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821 (b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of any outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption," and (b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof. 

SECTION 2. The amendment made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made."

JOHN F. KENNEDY

THE WHITE HOUSE

June 4, 1963

○

Once again, Executive Order 11110 is still valid. According to Title 3, United States Code, Section 301 dated January 26, 1998: The 1974 and 1987 amendments, added after Kennedy's 1963 amendment, did not change or alter any part of Kennedy's EO 11110. A search of Presidential Directives has shown no reference to any alterations, suspensions, or changes to EO 11110."

- http://www.lust-for-life.org/

Jim Quinn, "'They' Will Do Anything To Win" (Excerpt)

"'They' Will Do Anything To Win"

by Jim Quinn

Excerpt: ""The always mysterious question when trying to figure out what is happening in this insane world and why it is happening is who are “they”? In the current chaotic atmosphere, “they” are in the process of throwing their senile child sniffing pedophile Trojan horse president overboard because his dementia ridden brain has been laid bare for all the world to see. It isn’t just the Democratic Party throwing him to the wolves.

When you witness the party, supposedly loyal politicians, the regime media, surveillance state spooks, Hollywood celebrities, and globalist billionaires all simultaneously turn on the person they installed in 2020 through a rigged election, you realize the voting public have no say in how this country is run. Whether you refer to “they” as the Deep State, invisible government, ruling elite, globalist oligarchs, or shadowy men in smoke filled backrooms, we are just bit players in this surreal horror movie.

It is no longer a conspiracy theory that we are ruled by unelected men using their wealth to pull the levers of society to benefit themselves and the apparatchiks who do their dirty work. At some level, this type of control has existed since the inception of our country. Andrew Jackson’s tirade in the 1830s revealed there were deceitful men operating in the shadows, with their greedy agendas prevailing over what was best for the people.

“Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!”

The capture of our government, media and financial system accelerated during the last century as described by Edward Bernays in his 1928 book – "Propaganda." Of course, he wrote this fifteen years after the capture of our financial system, with the "Creature from Jekyll Island" – the Federal Reserve being created by a cabal of bankers and politicians intent on lining their pockets.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”– Edward Bernays – "Propaganda" (1928) pp. 9–10

The traitorous president who signed the bill creating the Federal Reserve, in the same year he signed into existence the loathsome income tax, and later promised to keep the U.S. out of World War I, before taking us into that war, supposedly regretted handing over control of the government to a small cabal of dishonorable men. Politicians and Wall Street bankers have been using the debasement of our currency to enrich themselves at our expense, ever since.

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson – 1919"

Full, a must-read article, is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"This Is 1929 On Steroids, The Greatest Financial Crash Is Yet To Come"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/16/24

"This Is 1929 On Steroids,

 The Greatest Financial Crash Is Yet To Come"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Napolean And Hitler Couldn't Beat Russia, But Penis-Piano Player Zelensky Will Wipe Them Out?"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 7/16/24

"Napolean And Hitler Couldn't Beat Russia, 

But Penis-Piano Player Zelensky Will Wipe Them Out?"

"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."

- https://trendsjournal.com/subscribe

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Pretoria, South Africa. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Lives They Lead..."

 

"The Times They Are A-Changin’"

"The Times They Are A-Changin’"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Recently a friend sent me a snippet of a conversation he saw in an online community. It read, "Public school attendance is indoctrination in obedience." That’s a stark statement, but what struck me was not its bluntness, but that it has become common. Not many decades ago, people dared not say such things, even if they thought them. Now there are probably millions of people who feel free to say this. The times, they are a-changin’.

Major changes (which we tend to call “revolutions”) arise from barely-visible changes that began decades earlier. One new thought begins and spreads, another does likewise, then another. Eventually they overlap and form a set of attitudes that millions of people share. Last of all the world changes, with the lords of the old way expressing their shock and horror.

This is the same pattern that created the modern world, over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Alan Charles Kors in "The Birth of The Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries," explained it this way: "If we stopped the clock at any moment between 1685 and 1715, and you looked at the universities, looked at the educated and looked at the learned journals, it certainly would not have been obvious what was emerging that would so dominate and shape the 18th century. For this period between the 17th and 18th centuries is still very much a mixed intellectual world. But the new philosophers are emerging. They are increasingly setting the terms of debate."

During this thirty year passage when things really began to turn (driven by forces than began earlier), all things authorized, esteemed and revered were blind to it… either that or in disbelief. And that’s the way things have always gone: The lords of Rome were fully convinced that they and their system were eternal, the Pharaohs would have killed anyone suggesting fundamental change, and the overlords of our time see no further than the authorized veneer that reflects their glory back to themselves. And so rulers and newsreaders are blind to what’s coming. Intel agencies see a good deal of it but can’t envision actual change. The old way sees the old way, and treats all else as absurd.

But a new way of thinking is already changing the terms of the debate. Consider that almost no one still believes in the virtues of the dominant political systems: A few well-meaning people are trying to repair them, but they freely admit they are broken. That’s fundamentally different from the way people thought during my youth.

Technologies of mass distraction have certainly delayed changes, but the forces bringing revolution forward are gaining power, no matter that all things large and loud promote the status quo as that which is, was, and ever shall be.

Consider that Bitcoin has created a new model of money and is presently spawning a new model of commerce. It may still be small in comparison to the the old way, but Bitcoiners are clearly moving the terms of the debate.

Likewise homeschoolers have created a new model of education. In the US, where the persecution of homeschoolers was local rather than national, some 11 percent of American kids are now homeschooled. And these people have very certainly changed the terms of the debate. (In Europe national persecutions of homeschoolers continue. But even those barbarisms will have light shed upon their deeds.)

And so we’ve been living through a period of change that is not talked about in elite company. But these changes are known quite well among the young and the serious. The future will soon enough be impinging upon us. I can’t say when it all becomes clear, but I can say that the forces driving it have continued, even through the blind panic of the past few years.

Finally, since I borrowed my title from Bob Dylan, I’ll give him the last word:

"The line, it is drawn,

the curse, it is cast,

The slow one now will later be fast,

As the present now will later be past.

The order is rapidly fading,

And the first one now will later be last,

For the times, they are a-changin'."

- https://freemansperspective.com

"A Strange Honey..."

"Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don't try and press it down. Don't hide from it. Don't escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That's the way life goes."

- Ben Okri

Bill Bonner, "Cruisin' for a Bruisin'"

"Cruisin' for a Bruisin'"

Like a big, lazy river, deficits just keep rollin’ along, adding more and more to America’s $35 trillion delta of debt. US interest payments go up. Sooner or later, asset holders get stuck in the mud.

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Things tend to go back to ‘normal.’ If not, there would be no ‘normal.’ Hallelujah! The economy is weakening! In the perverse world of finance, circa 2024, bad news is good news. Up is down. And lies are as good as truth. Investors don’t need us to connect the dots. When the economy weakens…they look for the Fed to react by lowering interest rates. A lower Fed rate means more borrowing…and more speculating…and more money for Wall Street.

Reported a week ago: Nasdaq, S&P hit record highs…New data show labor market weakness and raise rate cut hopes.

And then, a few days later…Dow closes above 40,000 for first time ever. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 40,000 mark Friday for the first time in its 139-year history.

Wall Street has been boosted in recent days by renewed hopes of rate cuts from the Federal Reserve that would loosen monetary conditions for consumers and businesses. Consumers don’t consume more when the labor market weakens. Businesses don’t sell much to people without jobs. Sales go down, not up. Corporate profits go down too. Enterprises become less valuable, not more valuable.

But so what? Stock prices often have little to do with the real value of the underlying company. Over the last 10 years, for example, stock prices have gone up more than three times faster than sales. This is called ‘multiple expansion.’ It is typically a prelude to ‘multiple contraction.’ Today, the S&P 500/sales ratio is twice the normal level…and near a record high. As in March of 2000, stocks seem to be ‘cruisin’ for a bruisin’. But investors are sure a rate cut is coming. And they know what that means – higher stock market prices.

For now, bad news is good news, since it increases the likelihood of a rate cut. So, imagine the fulsome joy of a thermo-nuclear war….or a Kamala Harris victory in November—either one might send stock prices ‘to the moon.’ Short of that, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate coming our way.

Dan mentioned in his weekend report: "Services and manufacturing–the two pillars of the economy–are in contraction. The last three times that's happened, we've been either in the middle of or at the very start of a recession. My money is that we're already in one."

Marketwatch elaborates: "Businesses show biggest contraction since pandemic, ISM finds. ISM services index sinks to 48.8% in June — the lowest reading since 2020."

David Rosenberg: "The labor market is cracking, a slowdown in services activity is dragging on real-time growth, and forward-looking financial signals still point to a coming slowdown."

Amid all this hullabaloo of ‘bad news is good news,’ almost no one mentions the bad news that stays bad: The US is going broke. Like a big, lazy river, deficits just keep rollin’ along…adding more and more to America’s $35 trillion delta of debt. US interest payments go up. And sooner or later, asset holders get stuck in the mud.

Tom explained: "We have one core insight that informs our strategy’s construction. That is, the biggest single bubble of all time – the government bond bubble – is bursting. A government default is coming. And a run on western currencies has started."

Yeah…yeah…’the US government can never go broke because it can always print more money.’ That’s what everyone says. But it’s not true. In order to prevent an outright default…the feds choose a devious default. They ‘print’ more dollars. The US still goes broke, but in another way. Nominal prices go up, but real (after inflation) prices crash. Bloomberg, on the case: "The Bank for International Settlements cautioned that governments are vulnerable to a precipitous loss of confidence. In S&P’s report on Thursday, it suggested the prospect that the US, Italy and France will manage to keep debt at already elevated current levels is remote."

Our guiding assumption, here at Bonner Private Research, is that water eventually finds its level, prices eventually reflect real values, and people eventually get what’s coming to them. Sooner or later, things go back to ‘normal.’ Just how and when that will happen, we don’t know any more than anyone else. But the likelihood of preventing it, as the S&P report suggests, is ‘remote.’"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"How It Really Disgracefully Is"

But there's $150 BILLION for Ukraine,

$16 BILLION for the Israelis to kill more Palestinians...

Dan, I Allegedly, "It’s Time to Tone It Down - Jamie Dimon Issues Strong Warning"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/16/24

"It’s Time to Tone It Down - 

Jamie Dimon Issues Strong Warning"

"Jamie Dimon's recent memo to his employees stressed the importance of standing against hate and violence - and I couldn't agree more. Our society's current state of division is alarming, and it's time we all took a step back to be kinder and more civil. We need to be civil."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Looking For Cheap Food Options at Meijer!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 7/16/24

"Looking For Cheap Food Options at Meijer!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Pretender's Dilemma"

"The Pretender's Dilemma"

by The Zman

"Critics of modern liberal democracy often repeat Juvenal's line about the populace being pacified with bread and circuses. In the modern usage it means the public is easily bought off with free stuff and mindless entertainment. While the average guy is watching television sports and adding to his waistline, he does not care that the political class is looting the country. Just as long as he has a steady stream of new products, he is happy to abandon his duties as a citizen.

Juvenal had a different meaning, as he was writing in the second century. He was criticizing the Roman political class for their lack of heroism and virtue. They cared more for holding office than tackling the challenges of the day. They would corrupt the people with free grain and elaborate public spectacles, if that is what it took to win favor and gain power. The ruling class was mortgaging the civic virtue of Rome in order to get short term profit from the political system.

Of course, the culture of liberal democracy forbids the idea of a ruling class, so the blame must always fall on the people for the problems with the rulers. After all, the people picked the office holders. If they are unhappy with the choices, they should find new ones that they prefer. The civic religion of liberal democracy is like a spell cast on even the most jaded. It prevents them from accepting that there is not a democratic solution to the inherent defects of liberal democracy.

The irony is the cynical will often quote de Maistre and say that the people get the government they deserve. This is ironic in several ways. One is that de Maistre was no fan of democracy or popular government. He also meant that a people, as in a biologically connected people, will get the ruling class that reflects their temperament and talents, regardless of the system. This is something that no modern liberal democratic could possibly accept and remain a liberal democrat.

Putting that aside, the problem with the Juvenal quote is that bread and circuses is the only peaceful and predictable solution to the large society problem. Bringing large numbers of people together under a single ruler, whether it is the farce of democracy or the force of a despot, goes against man's nature. Humans can only know and trust about 150 people at one time. Once a group breaks what is called the Dunbar number, no one person can know everyone well enough to trust them.

The solution long ago was a code, a set of rules for the group. A set of rules to govern relations between all people within the group solved this problem. The members did not have to trust one another or even know one another very well. They just had to trust that the rules made sense for the group and that the people enforcing the rules could be trusted to predictably enforce the rules. The proof of these two pillars of society would be the peace and prosperity of the group.

Of course, once you get to very large groups, like city-states and countries, you end up with lots of dissimilar people in the same society. A large group of related people will come with the habits of mind to make cooperation natural. Have a large diverse group of people and those habits of mind will inevitably conflict. This is the large society problem and we have just two solutions. One is a great mission to focus the public's attention and the other is bread and circuses.

The great mission or crusade, like a war, comes with an expiry date. You can rally the most diverse and uncooperating people against some crisis. In a war, for example, people put aside their grievances to fight the common enemy. Yankee New England dropped their secession drive, for example, because of the War of 1812. The trouble is, people tire of war and every crisis losses its sense of urgency. Even the communists figured this out eventually.

This is the fork in the road the American ruling class faces now. The pretender Biden also added the complication of being seen as illegitimate by most people. Many of those people may be glad Trump is gone, at least for now, but they also know that Biden has no business on the throne. He is just a shuffling corpse, animated by players operating in the shadows. Like all pretenders, Biden was limited by the fact that the rest of the ruling class is looking to exploit him, rather than support him.

Compounding his dilemma is that the people who engineered his ascent to the throne started a proxy war with Russia and and want to start a war with Iran. They also sought to impose the Chinese social model on Americans. Speech and movement would be sharply curtailed with the help of the corporate oligarchs. In other words, the new regime tilted heavily toward a holy crusade to rally the people, like a war against the virus and a war against Iran, rather than a new round of bread and circuses.

This is something that was overlooked in the Trump years. After eight years of the dreary preaching of Obama, Trump's antics were a relief. His style was not everyone's cup of tea, but he kept things lively. He also focused on the economy, which did rather well until the Covid panic. The stock market doubled in value during his time in office, which is something that matters a lot to people. In other words, Trump gave the people four years of bread and circuses.

Finally, the other dilemma for the Pretender Biden and now Harris is that he has had Trump out there reminding people of how Biden got on the throne. In the old days, Biden's first order of business would be to have Trump assassinated. By removing the old ruler, there was no chance for him to return to power, and they tried precisely. Biden has had to operate in the shadow of what many will view as the rightful President.

This was the dilemma facing the Pretender Biden. He could not go for the bread and circuses route, as that would be a concession to the hated Trump. That meant going along with the warmongers and scaremongers. The trouble there is that requires trust and exactly no one trusts a pretender. The only solution may be to forge ahead with a manufactured crisis like a war with Iran and the proxy war with Russia and hope the people are gullible enough to fall for it like they did in the Bush years."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"No More Important Agenda..."

"Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. 

But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important

 agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other."

- Jacqueline Novogratz

Free Download: Alan Paton, "Cry, the Beloved Country"

“We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.”

Freely download "Cry, the Beloved Country", by Alan Paton, here:

- https://oxvard.wordpress.com/

"I Fear for Our Nation"

"I Fear for Our Nation"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"I fear for our nation, and I am not alone. The echoes of the past are becoming louder, and I recall the decades between 1961 and 1981 with trepidation, for that era was marked by crisis, tumult, discord, civil violence, war, a near miss of nuclear war, extreme polarization and assassinations.

Many Americans sense the country never really recovered from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, or from the assassinations of presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. five years later in 1968. An attempt on the life of President Gerald Ford was narrowly thwarted in 1975, and an attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan very nearly succeeded in 1981.

A terrible madness swept the land, as dozens of bombings and the bizarre kidnaping of media heiress Patty Hearst by a domestic terror cell pockmarked the 1970s, a decade marked by a failed presidency, revelations of domestic spying by federal security agencies and runaway inflation.

It was a very long night before morning dawned in America again. From the longer view, the twenty years of tumult can be understood as the political and social reaction to what changed in America in the previous twenty years of 1941 to 1960: America had been roused from isolationism to fight a world war, forced to protect allies in Europe and Asia from the threat posed by an expansionist totalitarian Soviet Union, and a century-old reckoning with the racial divide that made a mockery of our nation's principle that "all men are created equal" and should be treated equally before the law. The promises made by the founding documents of the nation had yet to be fulfilled.

The very success of our protection of war-devastated allies created an economic crisis of our own, as the old, less efficient industrial plant of America was outpaced by the new industries that arose in Germany and Japan with modern technologies, industries aided by America's open door to exports and the strong dollar.

The 1970s was a decade of economic adjustment with high costs to both capital and labor as the Energy Crisis and the need to tackle industrial pollution drove a multi-trillion dollar (in today's dollars) rebuilding of American industry, a process punctuated by recessions that caused great misery for those laid off and struggling with high inflation.

These sacrifices and conflicts eventually paid dividends. Inequality eased, high interest rates crushed the inflationary spiral and the investments in higher efficiencies and new technologies started paying off.

My fear is that we've entered another 20 years of tumult, chaotic conflict, infectious madness and discord, but without the resilience we possessed in the 1960s and 1970s, the resilience generated by low debt, strong domestic industries and supply chains, low levels of regulation, low-cost healthcare and education and much higher levels of civic virtue, community, national purpose, moral legitimacy and self-reliance than are visible today.

Whether we admit it or not, we are riven by rising inequality in wealth and opportunity, high debt loads and little consensus on how to get through the night in one piece and emerge better from facing the challenges head on. I fear the siren-song appeal of denial and magical thinking, as if a rocket to Mars or a new phone app or another AI chatbot will fix what's broken in America.

I fear our buffers have been thinned, and our ability to make sacrifices for the future has been lost. Our moral foundations are in such tatters that getting rich by whatever means are within reach is now the "solution" to the coming storm, as if greed bled dry of ethics isn't a proximate cause of the coming storm.

My hope is that we gain the wisdom to see there are no easy solutions, no one-size-fits-all fixes, that solutions will be localized, partial, contingent on continual adaptation to changing conditions, and that this continual experimentation and evolution requires an acceptance of continual failures and a keen sense of humility about our limits.

I hope we gain the wisdom that we need each other, not as enemies but as colleagues, not always in agreement but respectful nonetheless."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

Jeremiah Babe, "Maximum Red Alert: America Just Got A Reality Check"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/15/24

"Maximum Red Alert: 

America Just Got A Reality Check"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Why Did It Take The Secret Service

 So Long To Protect Trump?"

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant. 

Click image for larger size.

It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"

"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"

by Maria Popova

"We make things and seed them into the world, never fully knowing - often never knowing at all - whom they will reach and how they will blossom in other hearts, how their meaning will unfold in contexts we never imagined. (W.S. Merwin captured this poignantly in the final lines of his gorgeous poem “Berryman.”)

Today I offer something a little apart from the usual, or sidelong rather, amid these unusual times: A couple of days ago, I received a moving note from a woman who had read "Figuring" and found herself revisiting the final page - it was helping her, she said, live through the terror and confusion of these uncertain times. I figured I’d share that page - which comes after 544 others (here are the first), tracing centuries of human loves and losses, trials and triumphs, that gave us some of the crowning achievements of our civilization - in case it helps anyone else.

Click image for larger size.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known - an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.

But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die - in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.

I will die.

You will die.

The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"1930s - Street Scenes New York"

Full screen recommended.

NASS, "1930s - Street Scenes New York"

"I colorized, restored and created a sound design for this video of New York in the 1930s. We start on Manhattan's West Side, at 12th Avenue and 42nd Street, at the ferry terminal of the West Shore Railroad, the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, and the Weehawken Ferry. After we have a Crowd Scene street where we can see the beautiful fashion in the 30s."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Once upon a time. Fascinating...

"At A Time Like This..."

"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."

- Frederick Douglass

The Daily "Near You?"

Rocky Mount, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Scott Ritter: Israel is Being Destroyed and IDF Humiliation in Lebanon Will Finish It"

Danny Haiphong, 7/15/24

"Scott Ritter: Israel is Being Destroyed 

and IDF Humiliation in Lebanon Will Finish It"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Bamboozeled..."

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." - Carl Sagan

Always fully and truthfully informed by their government
and mass media, deeply concerned Americans
react as expected to disastrous economic and social news...

"Because..."

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

- Libba Bray

"The Writing on the Wall"

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"

"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."

- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged"

"The Writing on the Wall"

by Jeff Thomas

"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

Ayn Rand; "Atlas Shrugged," 1957

"Pretty strong words… the last four, in particular. Ayn Rand knew whereof she spoke. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, she became politically conscious while still a child and did not favor the existing concept of constitutional monarchy. So, it would not have been surprising if, when the Russian revolution broke out when she was twelve, she bought into the proselytizing of Vladimir Lenin, as so many did at that time.

Instead, she quickly surmised that the Bolsheviks’ claim to improve life for the average man was, in reality, a plan to diminish the quality of life for all of the people. In doing so, the Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s business and displaced her family. At one point they were nearly starving, but in 1925, she received permission to emigrate to the US. (She later attempted to get her parents and sisters out, but it proved to be too late.)

A Lesson Hard-Learned: In establishing her now well-known beliefs in governmental systems, Ayn Rand had the benefit of having observed the entire progression from a relatively benign monarchical system to totalitarianism. As a result, she not only learned that political leaders can be deceitful in their claims for social improvement, she also learned, first hand, that those leaders (and/or hopeful leaders) who promise that they are going to change the system in such a way that everyone will "have all they need," are the most deceitful of all.

In my opinion, the greatest possible threat from the fanciful claims by politicians lies in the willingness of the populace to actually believe such claims. Sadly, it does seem as though the majority of people in any country tend to be extraordinarily gullible in this regard.

The very idea that some method can be found that would make it possible to equalize all people is patently ludicrous. There will always be differences in intellect, talent, and ambition from one individual to the next. The idea that any government should somehow enforce the more gifted or more motivated to continually give up the fruits of their efforts, whilst giving those fruits to others who are less gifted and less motivated is, by definition, unworkable.

The Obvious Choice: Such an idea, whether we consider it laudable or not, cannot ultimately succeed. The most that can be expected is that the idea could successfully be enforced, which would result, eventually, in the gifted and motivated ceasing to make the necessary effort to excel. And, of course, in socialist countries, this is what, over time, we see take place. There is a direct relationship between the degree of "redistribution" by the government and the decline in effort by the gifted or motivated.

Still, there will always exist those who are less gifted or less motivated who will want to believe that political leaders can somehow make this impossible concept a reality. And of course, these people can fully be expected to vote for, or otherwise support, those who make such empty promises.

Therefore, the realization that should be taken away from this discussion is that, over time, it is perfectly predictable that a given government might ultimately go in a direction of self-destruction, as it will be likely to pander to the majority, who seek such largesse at the expense of others.

What then, of the minority? What of those who are in that group of more gifted or more motivated people - the ones that do, historically, tend to push a society forward with their abilities and efforts? They have a choice. They can "go with the flow," should the country in question go into social and political decline; they can accept it and try to muddle through, as did Ayn Rand’s parents after the revolution. Or they can vote with their feet, as did Rand herself.

The results of these choices are plain: Zinovy and Anna Rosenbaum disappeared into Soviet obscurity, whilst daughter Ayn escaped to become a novelist in a freer and more inspiring country: the US. This scenario repeated itself in Germany and Austria in the 1930s, when such notables as Albert Einstein, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig Von Mises made their exits to the US, England, and Switzerland, respectively.

The Writing Is on the Wall: And so it has gone, throughout history. When the writing is on the wall that "the society is doomed," most people invariably stick it out where they are, hoping either that "things will get better," or at least, that "it won’t get too much worse."

In George Orwell’s 1945 book, "Animal Farm," the pigs convinced the other animals to revolt against the farmer, whom the pigs claimed was oppressing them. When the revolution succeeded, the animals proudly painted the words, "All animals are equal" on the barn. Later, under cover of darkness, the pigs changed the wording to, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This was literally the writing on the wall - the signal that the moment had arrived when the animals should have either overthrown the pigs or, if that was not possible, hopped the fence and skedaddled.

In real life, making this decision is quite a bit more difficult. However, it can be said that Ayn Rand made the task simpler for us. In the quote above, she offers the "writing on the wall." It only remains to us to decide whether the point she describes has been reached. We can assume that, if we are presently living in a country that matches her description, and it remains possible at present to make an exit, as she did in 1926, we would be well advised to do so. Certainly, her parents mistakenly waited longer, and young Ayn was the only one who escaped the Soviet Union.

We cannot control the obsessive behaviour of tyrants. They will forever be amongst us, and the majority of people do tend to "go along" in the end, either through ignorance or in the false belief that they will somehow benefit from such tyranny. Our one choice, therefore, is the one that was faced by Ayn Rand and her parents. They chose differently and their fates could not have diverged more as a result."

- https://internationalman.com/

o

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed." An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.

Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:

- https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/

Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:

- https://archive.org/

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "Is Buying a Home Still Worth It?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/15/24

"Is Buying a Home Still Worth It?"

It is amazing that people are going to buy a home. 

Is it still worth it? Should you just rent?

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/