"How It Really Is"

 

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore 

where the lighthouse was abandoned 

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees,

and see the stars flaring out, one by one, 

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray, 

but let me inscribe my name 

in the book of waves,

and then stare into the dome 

of a sky that never ends, 

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"Are People Really Stupid?"

“All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about

 as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo.” 
- Morris Berman

"Are People Really Stupid?"

by Fred Russell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- https://www.counterpunch.org/

Apologies to armadillos for this comparison.

"The Worst Part..."

 

"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 

"The 'Global Reset' Scam"

"The 'Global Reset' Scam"

by Alasdair Macleod 

"This article takes a tilt at increasing speculation about statist global resets, and why plans such as those promoted by the World Economic Forum will fail. Central bank digital currencies will simply run out of time.

Instead, the collapse of unbacked fiat currencies will end all supra-national government solutions to their policy failures. Already, there is mounting evidence of money beginning to flee bank accounts into stocks, commodities and even bitcoin. This is an early warning of a rapidly developing monetary collapse.

Moreover, nothing can now stop the collapse of fiat currencies, and with it schemes to control humanity for the convenience and ambitions of government planners. There can only be one statist solution and that is to mobilize gold reserves to back and save their currencies, which in order to succeed will have to be fully convertible into circulating gold coinage. It will also require the role of governments to be reset into a non-welfare, non-interventionist minimalist role, which can only be achieved after a complete collapse of the current fiat-financed system.

Anything less will fail."

Please view this complete and highly recommended article here:

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"The Many Layers of Travail"

"The Many Layers of Travail"

by Jim Kunstler

"One thing you could say about the three Trump campaign lawyers’ joint press conference at high noon, Thursday: it sure wasn’t slick. But then, are we now such a nation of lobotomized chumps that our chief criteria for any public acting-out of an acute national melodrama is slickness of presentation? I guess we like our crises fluffed, like a Caitlin Jenner spot on The View. This one, though, is raw and savage.

And so there stood Rudy Giuliani in that cramped briefing room, with dark rivulets running down both temples as if he were sweating blood (more likely, hair dye), cracking jokes at times, and laying out some rather harsh predicates for pending election fraud lawsuits. Next up, the usually demure Sidney Powell appeared boiling over with grief and rage at the hijacking of American democracy, and the Deep State’s long-running connivance with all that, yielding nearly to tears at moments as she sketched out the sinister history and associations of the Dominion and Smartmatic vote systems — and the utter failure of public officialdom to monitor any of it for many years. Then Jenna Ellis, much in command of herself, emphasized perhaps half a dozen times, and quite sternly for the obdurately seditious news media, that the actual evidence would be revealed in court and that the day’s presentation was a mere overview. Got that? In court.

The news media didn’t get the message — on purpose, as usual — and so the stories flew all over the Internet’s gaslit echo chambers that the three lawyers failed to make a case. Later that night, Tucker Carlson piled on Sidney Powell for not sharing what she intends to present in a court of law. Apparently, she hung up the phone on him. Let’s face it, the lady has had a hard month, and a hard year, having to battle the malevolent and depraved Judge Emmet Sullivan over the dismissal of the case against General Flynn (as ordered by the DOJ), and now this colossal hairball of a momentous and historic election fraud case. (If I were her, I’d be deep into the George Dickel No. 12 Sour Mash by eight o’clock that night, Tucker Time.)

All right then, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have set the table for this epic political food-fight with just a few weeks to file and proceed, and we’ll have to stand by like grownups and see how it all plays out in the courts. There may be other sideshows and shenanigans in the various state legislatures over electoral college slates and such, along the way, but meanwhile I want to remind you that there are many other layers in this burgeoning mega-crisis worth being mindful of.

One, of course, is the train of tyranny that would follow the crooked and demented Ol’ White Joe Biden into power, should he manage to be sworn in (more on that below). From the actions so far of his, ahem, transition team, Mr. Biden (or the shadowy gang behind him) is aiming to bring on an official regime of speech suppression, news suppression, cancel culture, race hustling, gender warfare, and other portfolios of Wokesterism to the federal agencies. Do you have any idea how much anger and opposition that will provoke? Do you suppose that half the population will sit still for struggle sessions over white privilege?

Another layer is the Deep State itself. This evil empire is close to prevailing in a final act of sedition after four years of contemptible, serial intrigues. The Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA and all the other spook agencies will have a free hand in surveilling US citizens and attempting to control whatever they do. The whole RussiaGate case (such as it might be under John Durham) will get towed out to sea and dropped overboard in cement slippers. Comey, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Strzok, Gina Haspel, Andrew Weissmann, and the rest of the gang will all skate — some of them possibly pirouetting back into federal offices.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google will be enlisted as social controllers (this has already happened, of course) to guard against the sharing of undesirable information. Gawd knows what sort of misadventures in foreign lands this gang will blunder into. I won’t even bother to outline the possible economic perversities and experiments the new regime might attempt to try because of the following…

which is the king-hell financial fiasco that will attend a Joe Biden presidency and the monumental unwind of activity that will present as implacable depression. The global banking system is ten-months pregnant with Rosemary’s Baby. The Covid-19 winter lockdowns will put a bullet in the brain of any remaining small businesses, and the giant zombie companies are next to fall. Rent, mortgage, and loan forbearances run out in December. If they are not renewed, many families stand to lose their homes; if they are extended, many creditors and landlords will be screwed, unable to meet their own obligations.

Few in the media or in officialdom seem to comprehend that unpaid debts thunder through the system, and eventually undermine the whole system, especially the currencies that circulate like the system’s blood supply. Not only will there be no money for Progressive economic experiments, there will not be enough money to arrest the fast-sinking standard of living in America. Biden & Company, so triumphal in these days of dwindling daylight, are in for shock with 2021.

In the looking-less-likely event that Mr. Trump prevails in this election quarrel, he and his people will be subject to exactly the same thing, which is the onset of the epic crisis or “fourth turning” that I call the long emergency. It will include an additional layer of Antifa/BLM anarchy in the streets on top of epochal economic hard times. How America manages to emerge from that will be the $64-trillion question of the ages. Neo-feudalism, a dark age, a new stone age… who knows?

As a kind of PS, and per what I mentioned above, there are the lingering questions as to whether Ol’ White Joe Biden can manage to make it to the inaugural podium in any case. Apart from his failing mental faculties, there are the matters around his and his family’s shady business dealings in foreign lands over recent years, especially the money garnered from ventures in China linked to China’s intel services. There are legitimate concerns about Mr. Biden being a security risk as president. They are not going away.

Finally, a few words of encouragement to those of you almost terminally disgusted with the dishonesty and bad faith of the people who have been running things in our country: this is not a place like Russia in 1989. The Soviet overlords had a captive press, of course, but the Internet was barely a larval presence in world culture then. All the Russian people had to fight the immersive milieu of lies they lived in was the mimeograph machine and the verbal grapevine. We have much better resources for distributing information in America today, despite our tribulations with the corporate news media and their Silicon Valley cadres. We have a pretty sturdy alt-news network and many diligent entrepreneurial reporters who are able to get the news out. It will get out, and it pays to remember that truth has Godly powers of its own."

- https://kunstler.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

Be kind to yourself, relax...

Full screen mode recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.

Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130116.html

"How, Then..."

"How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful..."

- Soren Kierkegaard

"Oh Beautiful..."

"Philadelphia: America's Worst Looking Ghettos"

"Baltimore Worst Hoods VS Detroit Worst Hoods"

"Top 10 Worst Housing Projects in The United States"

"Top 10 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods for 2020"

Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.”

- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"

○

Oh beautiful indeed, for Wall St. and the 1%:

December 2011: "$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bailout by Funding Facility and Recipient"

Apr 9, 2019: "$8.2 Trillion to Bail Out These Banks"

October 2020: "The New York Fed, Pumping Out More than $9 Trillion in Bailouts Since September, Gets Market Advice from Giant Hedge Funds"

November 17, 2020: "The Global Economic Bailout is Running at $19.5 Trillion. It Will Go Higher"

And you, Good Citizen, how are you doing?

The Daily "Near You?"

 
San Rafael, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"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 30 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 are coming down to half-mast… and the pallbearers are loading America’s empire into the hearse. “You Americans have the watches,” says the Taliban. “But we have the time.” And they do - 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 recent presidential 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: The virus has 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 $80 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."

- dailyreckoning.com

"I Remember..."

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself."

- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, English writer, "Youth"

"Dazed Lemmings Can't Bridge The Reality Gap"

"Dazed Lemmings Can't Bridge The Reality Gap"

by Zen Gardner

"Ever wonder why people can't make the leap to real awareness of what's going on? Why do so few people seem to care about the dangers of the unreported Fukushima radiation levels and toxic debris washing across the Pacific? As the Orwellian American police state swept into place, the economy crumbled Americans celebrated their entry into a brave new 2020 with minimal awareness of the true dangers already dissolving their health, wealth and chances for survival in an engineered conflagration of mythic proportions that was already descending on their heads.

As the gap between reality and manipulated public perception grows, it may just be too big a leap for many at this point. Having been dumbed-down and unresponsive for so long, it's too much for them to take in. Sad, but again, that's reality. Hey, why wake up when everything's such a bummer? That's the underlying mentality. The thing is, this is a conditioned response. Overload and recoil. And it's been going on a long, long time.

Why? Like the dumbing down effect of fluoride and chemtrails and adulterated food, it eventually suppresses natural responses. When the real alert presents itself, the subject will not be able to react and protect himself. Why all the dramatic end of the world sci-fi movies? Why the emphasis on violence and horror movies and graphic, destructive wars? Why does the news major on the bad events of the day? Why the combative gladiator sports, emphasis on technology instead of humanity, and mind-numbing crass consumerism and sexualization of society? This is deliberate social engineering, and that's the biggie. It's all engineered..and that's the last thing most people want to realize. And it usually is.

The Power of Cognitive Dissonance: The world has become essentially schizophrenic in outlook. Being told one thing while the exact opposite is happening before their eyes for so long, the "dissonance" created by this conflict causes humanity to shut down. America is the perfect example. Ostensibly fighting for "freedom and liberty" we commit genocide and destroy nation after nation. To protect our liberties the government has overturned the Bill of Rights and made the Constitution a mockery. Yet the populace sits and takes it. Why? Too big of a leap. If it turned out they've been completely conned by a massive manipulated agenda they may just completely break down. And subconsciously the horror of that reality is therefore a "no". Even if it were true they're at the point they'd rather not know.

I'll Take Conscious Reality. "Why all the negativity?" is what you'll hear a lot of the time when you bring these things up. The answer, as David Icke often says, is that ignorance is negative. Truth is empowering, no matter how awful it may be sometimes. And at this point in history the more you learn the more negative it may seem, with the Controllers' agenda in full final-phase swing. But so what. Things haven't changed all that much. The purpose of life is to rediscover who you truly are, and that wonderful awakening makes everything else pale in comparison. Our mission then becomes to inform and empower, share and encourage. The same one it always has been. That it's taking this kind of extreme devastation to awaken the slumbering masses is really no surprise, and ultimately a gift from the Universe to help people back into the real world..that of conscious loving awareness."

"Awaken from slumber, one and all..."

- http://beforeitsnews.com/

"Eventually You Understand..."

"That's where it all begins. That's where we all get screwed big time as we grow up. They tell us to think, but they don't really mean it. They only want us to think within the boundaries they define. The moment you start thinking for yourself - really thinking - so many things stop making any sense. And if you keep thinking, the whole world just falls apart. Nothing makes sense anymore. All rules, traditions, expectations - they all start looking so fake, so made up. You want to just get rid of all this stuff and make things right. But the moment you say it, they tell you to shut up and be respectful. And eventually you understand that nobody wants you to really think for yourself.” 

- Ray N. Kuili, “Awakening"

"Raising the Cross"

"Raising the Cross"

By Bill Bonner

"When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter 

believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything."

– Belgian author Émile Cammaerts

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – "Last night, we got on a plane bound for Buenos Aires… As you know, Argentina has gone all-out in its war against the coronavirus. First, we had our temperatures checked. Then, our papers. We needed to show our special permission to fly to Buenos Aires. We also needed to show our special permission to leave Argentina (long after our visa had expired). Plus, we needed a declaration proving that we brought our cellphones into the country when we arrived. And then, they checked our temperatures again – 35,2 – and noted it on a form that gave us police approval to get on the airplane.

Will all this delay and inconvenience save one person from dying? Will this homage to “science” pay off? We doubt it. Argentina’s death rate is a bit higher than in the U.S.

Not Tempting Fate: But here in the capital, things seem almost normal. People wear the “holy rag” – covering their mouths in deference to the new religion… desperately hoping this act of faith, like holding up a crucifix to ward off the devil, will protect them. But the latest studies – one done on Marine Corps recruits on Parris Island, the other, a much broader study in Denmark – strongly suggest that face masks are useless.

Not that we know, one way or another. But so far, they are worn as an act of faith, not science. People want to believe… in a vaccine… in a leader… in “science” – in anything that will save them…

We are not really very “religious.” But we are not foolish enough to think we know how the world works or that we can bend it to our own desires. And we’re not reckless enough to want to diss the gods. Jehovah, Pachamama, Zeus, Kali… we bow to them all. We go to church. We pick up pennies on the sidewalk. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference… But why take chances?

Fallen Cross: So it was that on Saturday morning, we found ourselves laboring up Mount Calvary… cross on our back… For there, on the top of the hill, in the intense wind, the cross had fallen down. It lay on the ground, like a dead crusader.

Salva tu Alma

We didn’t want to leave it that way. And the “cross” we bore up the hill was in the form of a Stihl chainsaw. The stem of the cross had broken. We were going to fix it. The altitude makes work harder than usual. So we paused at each cross along the camino de la cruz (the stations of the cross) for profuse prayer… and deep breathing. Finally arriving at the top, we cut off the broken wood (a very hard algarroba) and notched the remaining pieces so they could be fitted together (roughly) by the cowboys and secured with bolts.

Ready to go back up.

Our work done, we walked down the hill more easily than we had labored up it… and were ready to leave.

False God: Now, here we are in Buenos Aires. The restaurants are mostly open… and life seems (mostly) normal. When we rolled into town last night – at about 11 p.m. – people were still sitting in sidewalk cafes. Almost everyone respects the rules of the new faith. They cover their faces. Entering a restaurant, they hold out their hands, palms up – as if they were to receive the consecrated host – so they can be disinfected. But not all the gods are equal. Some are imposters.

So far, the god of “science,” called upon to protect us from COVID-19, has been a flop. A Fauci god. He may or may not be able to part the Red Sea… but he hasn’t been able to stop the virus.

Harmful Fantasies: And what about the god of “economics”? There is a rascal, if ever we saw one. The tenets of the faith are plainly preposterous:

• That they (the economists who run the Federal Reserve) can inflate the money supply – by printing more and more money – without causing domestic consumer prices to rise…

• That the world is suffering from an excess of savings, when savings rates are near all-time lows…

• That they can do a better job of price-fixing than the free market…

• That they know what interest rates the economy needs… and what inflation rate it should have…

• That they can shut down an economy and replace real output (real wealth) with fake money.

These fantasies are not harmless. They encourage the world’s central bankers to print more and more money… until inflation finally explodes like a bottle of champagne. Then, who’s going to put the cork back in? No one.

China Effect: But wait… There’s more… Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) argue that inflation rates would soon head up, even if central bankers weren’t imbeciles. They claim the declining inflation rates of the 21st century were caused by globalization, not by the feds’ policies.

What really happened, they say, was that China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. It brought with it hundreds of millions of people who were ready to work their tails off for peanuts. And despite the “communist” party rhetoric, Chinese entrepreneurs and businessmen were actually freer to innovate and create wealth than their competitors in the U.S. This – and output increases in other parts of the world – led to a big increase in the supply of goods, which depressed prices.

Inevitable Inflation: But guess what? There is only one China. The China effect was yesterday. And guess what else? All over the world, the working class is getting older… and retiring. Birth rates are falling. Fewer workers… More retirees. Inevitably, output per person will fall, too. Demand remains high, while supplies slump. Prices will rise. Governments – mostly elected by old people – will need to print money to keep up with their commitments (entitlements).

What does that sound like? Messrs. Goodhart and Pradhan believe it will mean a major shift… from the low-interest-rate, low-inflation trend of the last 40 years… to a high-interest-rate, high-inflation trend for the next 40. Four decades of fairly low inflation has produced a race of know-it-alls who believe incredible things and bow down before crackpots. They think they can do what no one has ever been able to do – create real prosperity with fake money. Whatever else happens, their faith is likely to be tested."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/20/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/20/20"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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"What Is 'The Great Reset?'”

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/20/20:

"The Market, And Some People, Are A Total Freak Show"

 - https://traderschoice.net/

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Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (Nov. 19h to 23rd)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

"The Greatest Swindle in American History... And How They'll Try It Again Soon"

"The Greatest Swindle in American History... 

And How They'll Try It Again Soon"

by Jeff Thomas

"International Man: Before 1913 there was no income tax, and the United States was a much freer country. Initially, the government sold the federal income tax to the American people as something only the rich would have to pay.

Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly. It always begins this way. The average person is always happy to see the rich taken down a peg, so this makes the introduction of the concept of theft by the government more palatable. Once people have gotten used to the concept and accept it as being perfectly reasonable, then it’s time to begin to drop the bar as to who "the rich" are. Ultimately, the middle class are always the real target.

International Man: The top bracket in 1913 kicked in at $500,000 (equivalent to around $12 million today), and the tax rate for it was only 7%. The government taxed those making up to $20,000 (equivalent to around $475,000 today) at only 1% – that’s one percent.

Jeff Thomas: Any good politician understands that you begin with the thin end of the wedge, then expand upon that as soon as you feel you can get away with it. The speed at which the tax rises is commensurate with the level of tolerance of the people. And in different eras, the same nation may have a different mindset. The more domination a people have come to accept from their government, the faster the pillaging can be expanded.

As an example, the Stamp Tax that King George III placed upon the American colonies in the eighteenth century was very small indeed – less than two percent – but the colonists were very independent people, asking little from the king in the way of assistance, and instead, relying upon themselves for their well-being. Such self-reliant people tend to be very touchy as regards confiscations by governments, and even two percent was more than they would tolerate.

By comparison, if today, say, Texas were to eliminate all state taxation and allow only two percent in federal taxation, Washington would come down on them like a ton of bricks, saying they were attempting to become a "tax haven." They’d be accused of money laundering and aiding terrorism and might well be cut out of the SWIFT system. The federal government would shut down the state government if necessary, but diminished tax would not be tolerated.

International Man: Of course, once the American people conceded the principle of an income tax in 1913, the politicians naturally couldn’t resist ramping it up. Just look at the monstrosity that exists today in the US tax code, which most Americans passively accept as "normal." It’s a typical example of giving an inch and taking a mile.

Jeff Thomas: Yes – the key to it is twofold: First, you have to be sensitive as to how quickly you can ramp up taxation, and second, that rate is directly proportional to the level that the public receive largesse from the government. They have to have become highly dependent upon a nanny state and thereby willing to take their whipping from nanny. The greater the dependency, the greater the whipping.

International Man: Homeowners in the US – and most countries – must regularly pay property taxes, which are taxes on property that you supposedly own. Depending on where you live, they can be quite high and never seem to go down. What are your thoughts on the concept of property taxes?

Jeff Thomas: Well, my view would be biased, as my country of citizenship has never, in its 500-year history, had any direct taxation of any kind. The entire concept of direct taxation is therefore anathema to me. It’s easy for me to see, simply by looking around me, that a society operates best when it’s free of taxation and regulation and people have the opportunity to thrive within a free market.

Years ago, I built my first home from my savings alone, which had been sufficient, because my earnings were not purloined by my government. I never paid a penny on a mortgage and I never paid a penny on property tax. So, following the construction of my home, I was able to advance economically very quickly. And of course, I additionally had the knowledge that, unlike most people in the world, I actually owned my own home – I wasn’t in the process of buying it from my bank and/or government. So, not surprisingly, I regard property tax as being as immoral and as insidious as any other form of direct taxation.

International Man: Not all countries have a property tax. How do they manage?

Jeff Thomas: I think it’s safe to say that political leaders don’t really have any particular concern over whether a tax is applied to income, property, capital gains, inheritance, or any other trumped-up excuse. Their sole concern is to tax.

Taxation is the lifeblood of any government. Once that’s understood, it becomes easier to understand that government is merely a parasite. It takes from the population but doesn’t give back anything that the population couldn’t have provided for itself, generally more efficiently and cheaply.

So, as to how a government can manage without a property tax, we can go back to your comment that the US actually had no permanent income tax until 1913. That means that they accomplished the entire western expansion and the creation of the industrial revolution without such taxation.

So, how was this possible? Well, the government was much smaller. Without major taxes, it could become only so large and dominant. The rest was left to private enterprise. And private enterprise is always more productive than any government can be. Smaller government is inherently better for any nation. Governments must be kept anemic.

International Man: The Cayman Islands doesn’t have any form of direct taxation. What does that mean exactly?

Jeff Thomas: It means that the driving force behind the country is the private sector. We tend to be very involved in government decisions and, in fact, generate many of the decisions. Laws that I’ve written privately for the Cayman Islands have been adopted by the legislature with no change whatsoever to benefit government. As regards property tax, there are only three countries in the western hemisphere that have no property tax, and not surprisingly, all of them are island nations: The Turks and Caicos Islands, Dominica and the Cayman Islands.

I should mention that the very concept of property ownership without taxation goes beyond the concern for paying an annual fee to a government. Additionally, in times of economic crisis, governments have been known to dramatically increase property taxes. Further, they sometimes announce that your tax was not paid for the year (even if it was) and they confiscate your property as a penalty. This has been done in several countries.

What’s important here is that, with no tax obligation, the government in question is unable to simply raise an existing tax. If you have no reporting obligation, you truly own your property. And you can’t be the victim of a "legal" land-grab. Instituting a new tax is more difficult than raising an existing one, and instituting any tax in a country where direct taxation has never existed is next to impossible.

International Man: How do Cayman’s tax policies relate to its position as a business-friendly jurisdiction?

Jeff Thomas: Well there are two answers to that. The first is that the Cayman Islands operates under English Common Law, as opposed to Civil Law. That means that as a non-Caymanian, you’re virtually my equal under the law. Your rights of property ownership are equal to mine. Therefore, an overseas investor, even if he never sets foot on Cayman, cannot have his property there taken from him by government, squatters, or any other entity such as can legally do so in many other countries.

The second answer is that, since we’re a small island group, the great majority of business revenue comes from overseas investors. Therefore, our politicians, even if they’re of no better character than politicians in other countries, understand that, if they change a law or create a tax that’s detrimental to foreign investors and depositors, wealth can be removed from Cayman in a keystroke of the computer. Before the ink is dried on the new legislation, billions of dollars can exit, on the knowledge that the legislation is taking place.

Now, our political leaders may not be any more compassionate than those of any other country. Thier one concern is that their own bread gets buttered. But should they pass any legislation that’s significantly detrimental to overseas investors, their careers are over. They understand that and recognize that their future depends upon making sure that they understand and cater to investors’ needs.

International Man: Governments everywhere are squeezing their citizens through higher taxes and new taxes. And don’t forget that printing money, which debases the currency, is also a real, but somewhat hidden, tax too. What do you suggest people do to protect themselves?

Jeff Thomas: Well, the first thing to understand is that many nations of the world grabbed onto the post-war coattails of the United States. The US was going to lead the world, and Europe, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., all got on board for the big ride to prosperity. They followed all the moves the US made over the decades.

Unfortunately, once they were on board the train, they couldn’t get off. When the US went from being the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation, those same countries also got onto the debt heroin. That big party is coming to an end, and when it does, all countries that are on the train will go over the cliff. So, what that means is that you, as an individual, do not want to be on that train. If you’re a resident of an at-risk country, you want to, first and foremost, liquidate your assets in that country and get the proceeds out. You may leave behind some spending money in a bank account – so that you have the convenience of checking, ATMs, etc. – and that money should be regarded as sacrificial.

You then would want to move the proceeds to a jurisdiction that’s likely to not only survive the train wreck but prosper as a result of it. Once it’s there, you want to keep it outside of banks and in forms that are difficult to take from you – cash, real estate and precious metals. After that, if you’re able to do so, it would be wise to also get yourself out before a crash, as the day will come when migration controls will be imposed and it will no longer be legal to exit.

It does take some doing, but if faced with a dramatic change in life, I’d want to be proactive in selecting what was best for me and my family, before the changing socio-economic landscape made that choice for me.

Governments everywhere are squeezing their citizens through increased taxation and money printing–which is a hidden tax. This trend will only gain momentum as governments go broke and need more cash. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. At the same time, the world is facing a severe crisis on multiple fronts. The good news is it will likely cause a panic into gold and gold mining stocks. Gold tends to do well during periods of turmoil."

- internationalman.com

"Trade-Offs"

"Trade-Offs"

by The Zman

"Back in the Cold War, one of the unanswered questions that came up from time to time was why did the people in the Soviet Union put up with it? American propaganda said that the living conditions were terrible. They had to stand in line for essentials like toilet paper and meat. The secret police regularly hauled people away, sending them into exile in Siberia or worse. Despite it all, the people, including those in the captive nations never revolted against the state or the communist party.

It is a useful question to ponder now as America and the West slip into the abyss of soft totalitarianism. We don’t have cops busting down doors and hauling away dissidents, at least not yet. We do have ideologues armed with the power of the state pushing people around because they can. The Covid hassles are the result of petty pipsqueaks in government offices dreaming up new ways to torment us. Curfews and bans on alcohol are punitive measures, not palliative ones.

It brings up that old question. Why are people tolerating this? There were some flickers of resistance during the early stages of the lock downs, but governments sent out the cops to harass dissenters and the media revved up the fear campaign. Here we are in a second wave of pointless lock downs, more petty and stupid than the first, but no one is raising hell about it. Back in the Cold War, stories like this elicited oaths about how the tree of liberty needed to be fertilized with the blood of tyrants.

A popular answer, for why people willingly allow themselves to be stripped of their liberty and dignity, is our material prosperity. The Boomers care more about their stock portfolios and their kids care more about the game consoles. The reason everyone goes along with this stuff, according to popular thinking, is everyone feels like they have too much to lose. That material prosperity has made everyone lazy and cautious, so they are easily pushed around by the petty tyrants.

While there is some truth to it, that can’t be the answer for why the people living under communism never revolted. The stories about people waiting in line for bread were no doubt exaggerated by Western media, but there is no doubting that the people in the Soviet Union lived well below Western standards. The Soviets may have had great military gear, but their consumer goods were terrible. Only party members had access to the small luxuries taken for granted in the West at the time.

In retrospect, we now know that life for most people in the Soviet Empire was not the dystopian nightmare portrayed in the West. Once Stalin died, there was a brief period of reform and then communism fell into a long period of conservatism. That is, it was more about maintaining a set of rules and enforcing them. Ideological experimentation came to an end and the focus was on the basics of life. For most people this meant a predictable life, where they had the necessities.

There’s no doubt that material standards of living for people in communism were far below that of the West, but this was not something they saw everyday. They just knew that life was better under communism than in the past. They were also free of crime, disorder and the great uncertainty of the first half of the 20th century. In other words, lacking a plausible alternative that was clearly better, most people were willing to knuckle under to the ideologues in order to get on with life.

We see that in America now. An under appreciated subplot to the Trump phenomenon is that Trump represented disorder and uncertainty, while his establishment opponents became stability and order. They selected the Pretender Biden because no one could possibly see him as a revolutionary. To use the old movie concept, the election was about the blue bill of Biden or the red pill of Trump. Note that the old alt-right greedily gobbled down the blue pill of Biden.

Another historical parallel is important. The captive people of the Soviet Empire were not all willing to go along to get along. The Hungarians revolted in October of 1956 against the party and the Soviet occupation. In November the Soviets sent in the Red Army to crush the revolt. The Politburo was initially open to dealing with the leaders of the rebellion, but changed their mind and crushed the revolt. The reason was they did not want to encourage more rebellions.

In January 1968, the reformer, Alexander Dubček, was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. This set off what is known as the Prague Spring, which was an effort to liberalize Czech politics and economics. This reform effort did not go over well with the Soviets who sent in half a million Warsaw Pact troops to suppress the reform movement and restore the old order. The scenes from Freedom Plaza last Saturday had a Prague Spring vibe to them.

What the Hungarian Revolt and the Prague Spring showed is that raw power has an appeal that can never be underestimated. There is no question that the people of the captive nations were in support of their independence, but the raw power of the Soviet Empire was more than enough to counter popular support. When the rebels had no answer for the Soviet tanks, the people did what Osama bin Laden observed many years ago. They chose the strong horse.

This is a lesson the Poles learned and put to good use in the 1980’s. The Solidarity Movement was as much about making the Polish communist party look weak as it was about organizing the people. Instead of hoping the party would yield to popular will, they played a game of chess with the party, putting them in positions where they looked weak and indecisive. This allowed the people to trust that the cure for communism was not worse than the disease of communism.

This brings us back to the current time. One obvious failing of the populist movement that put Trump in the White House is it was never able to create a plausible alternative in the mind of the people. Was the goal a return to the past or was the goal the present with specific modifications? Was it some undefined future? Trump was not skilled enough to grasp this and lacked the imagination to articulate a plausible alternative, even if he recognized the historical moment.

This is something that the reformers and rebels in the late Soviet Empire did not fail to grasp when their time came. When the party tried to oust Yeltsin, for example, the public rallied to his side because he represented a clear alternative. The Solidarity movement in Poland had a clear set of goals, rather than a list of complaints. When the party tried to muscle them, they were opposing more than just a rebellious rabble, but a set of specific reforms popular with the people.

Getting back to the central question as to why people throughout the ages have been wiling to submit to the most terrible crimes against their liberty and dignity, the answer is that life is about trade-offs. Instinctively, people make their choices based on the options put before them. They do not rebel against the present arrangements because they fall short of some ideal. They rebel, either because the alternative is misery and death or they see some better option on the table.

This has been the magic of the two-party democracy, which is explicit in America and implicit in Europe. The options before the people are always the two faces of the establishment, Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Conservative. Unless and until that dynamic is broken, either with a third option or the discrediting of the two option system, the status quo remains the strong horse. Nothing will change until the trade-offs presented to the people change."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal at the website.

Musical Interlude: Justin Hayward, "I Dreamed Last Night"; "Celtic Heart"

Full screen recommended.

Justin Hayward, "I Dreamed Last Night"

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Justin Hayward, "Celtic Heart"

"Do You Want..."

"Do you want to live life, or do you want to escape life?"

- Macklemore

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/20/2020"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/20/2020"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"The President’s election legal team put on a 90 minute press conference on Thursday that laid out their plan to overturn the election by exposing “massive voter fraud.” The President’s point man on the effort, Rudy Giuliani, says he can “overturn the election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona with more than double the votes needed.”

Sidney Powell, another top former federal prosecutor on the President’s team, says Dominion voter machines were also used in electronic voter fraud on a nationwide scale. Powell said the Dominion voting system was used, and it was imported from Venezuela and owned by people who are friends of the communist government. Powell also charged, “There was massive money influence of communist Venezuela and China” in effort to get a Biden win.

Meanwhile, the lying propaganda media is continuing its psyop and disinformation campaign. It claims, without proof, that President Trump’s “voter fraud claims are baseless” and “voter fraud claims are thoroughly discredited” when, in fact, they are nowhere near discredited."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks about this 

hugely important story that will guide the future of America and liberty.

Must Watch! "Job Massacre Continues; 12 Million To Lose Unemployment; Businesses Close Forever; Reset Has Begun"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Job Massacre Continues; 12 Million To Lose Unemployment; 

Businesses Close Forever; Reset Has Begun"

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Full screen mode recommended,

"25,000 LINED UP FOR FOOD - GREAT DEPRESSION 2.0 - 

Are You Ready For It?"