"Time To Heel – Or Fight"

"Time To Heel – Or Fight"

by Jim Quinn

"In Part 1 of this article I discussed how our country has devolved from Huxley’s Brave New World of distraction and irrelevancy into Orwell’s world of Big Brother surveillance and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Now I will make the case for joining the fight against the Great Reset. As more than half the country sleep-walks into the clutches of Marxism and tyranny, they fail to heed the wisdom of those who experienced the cruelty, oppression, and degradation after a similar revolution in the last century.

“A revolution never brings prosperity to a nation, but benefits only a few shameless opportunists, while to the country as a whole it heralds countless deaths, widespread impoverishment, and, in the gravest cases, a long-lasting degeneration of the people.” 

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Dangerous Chuck Schumer: "Now we take Georgia then we change the world!" – Shore News Network. Schumer’s slip of the tongue about changing the world and then putting on his mask (to push the masks work narrative) and declaring he will change the country when they win the two Georgia Senate seats reveals the global nature of this ongoing coup attempt by the global elites and the Deep State. I was highly suspicious of the engineered hysteria for this China flu back in March when I wrote "P for Pandemic" and stand by my conclusions reached nine months ago:

“As this incomprehensible national shutdown extends into April, tens of thousands of small businesses will be forced to close their doors for good. Local restaurants, hair salons, delis, hardware stores, and thousands of other small businesses will be involuntarily shuttered for good. The national chains will collect their government largess, produce PR campaigns to pat themselves on the back, and abscond with the profits of the now deceased small businesses. The corporate fascists will become ever more powerful. Why are we letting this happen?”

I’m infuriated every time I see an Applebees, Wal-Mart, or Amazon commercial touting their bravery and fortitude during these troubled times. These mega-corporations, with powerful lobbying departments and unlimited financial resources, have reaped tremendous profits and seen their stock prices soar to all-time highs, while hundreds of thousands of small restaurants and retailers have closed for good. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of all small businesses in America have closed or will close permanently.

The bullshit slogan “We are all in this together” has been beaten to death by the propaganda media, while our wealthy elite overlords work remotely in their multi-million-dollar mansions, doing their daily Peleton workouts, sending their kids to expensive private schools and dining on white truffles and caviar at the French Laundry for $1,200. We are not in this together.

It’s us and THEM. You know who THEY are. The millions of formerly middle class and poor are lining up at foodbanks because authoritarian governors like Newsom, Cuomo, Whitmer, Murphy, and Wolf have shutdown small businesses without any science to back up their dictatorial actions, while allowing Wal-Mart, Costco, Lowes, and other favored companies to remain open. Political donations appreciated.

As the months of idiotic government tyranny have gotten worse, I couldn’t help but experience an Inspector Finch moment while pondering the confluence of events surrounding this pandemic/plandemic/scamdemic. “I felt like I could see everything that happened, and everything that is going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me. And I realized we’re all part of it, and all trapped by it.” – Finch – "V for Vendetta"

The purposeful destruction of the US and EU economies through unnecessary, unwarranted and un-Constitutional lockdowns of citizens and small businesses; mandatory masking for a virus that can easily penetrate a mask, with a survival rate of 99.5% for those under 70 years old; using the virus to steal a presidential election though mail-in ballot fraud, social media manipulation, and Dominion software vote switching; and now the rollout of a vaccine in nine months that is supposedly 95% effective, when the regular flu vaccine is only 40% effective after decades of study, and no one has a clue regarding any long-term consequences of the vaccine, is all part of the plan.

We also know the drug companies have legal immunity from whatever terrible side effects might arise. Whenever confronted with a confusing sequence of events and baffling governmental measures, it is always a safe bet to just follow the money. Leftist ideology is only a means for evildoers to justify the destruction of our society.

“Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If you drive 50% of small businesses into insolvency, all those sales and profits must gravitate to the connected mega-corporations, as we have already seen. They then payoff politicians to enforce regulations and mandates to keep the profits flowing and small businesses from competing. By stealing the presidential election and accomplishing the same result in the Georgia Senate races, the Marxist loving global elite will change the world.

By packing the Supreme Court with four leftists, abolishing the filibuster rule and making Washington DC and Puerto Rico states, the coup will be complete. America as we know it will cease to exist and those not connected to the oligarchs will sink into impoverishment and slave-hood status. The oligarchs will reap the riches, while they retain control through an iron fist and sophisticated technological surveillance.

The “miraculous” Gates/Fauci Covid vaccine, which is currently being marketed by the MSM talking heads, will become mandatory to work, travel, shop, or enter sports venues. Big Pharma is already reaping billions in profits, while being shielded from liability when it goes wrong – as designed. By acquiescing to the demands of these evil totalitarians we are sentencing future generations to a digital gulag – with the threat of a real gulag for dissenters.

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Big Brother is home. He is installed in the item you just dragged home from the Apple store.” ― Julian Assange

Even though all “scientific” studies, prior to the pandemic, by the CDC, WHO, prestigious universities, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the recently published Danish mask study all concluded masks do not protect anyone from viruses, our totalitarian overlords saw the opportunity to impose their will upon the masses as a test to see how far they could go before meeting resistance.

Fauci, the Surgeon General, and the head of the CDC weren’t lying in March when they all told the public, masks didn’t protect them. They have been lying since then. The scientific proof can be easily observed by looking at a chart of cases in states with mandatory masking. The cases have skyrocketed (due to the purposely faulty PCR test) despite mask mandates and lockdowns. I guess the manufacturers of these masks are telling the truth.

The masks have not been about health, they’ve been about control and conditioning the population for further restrictions of liberties and rights – in the name of safety and security. Knowing the ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills of at least half the population, those in control of the pandemic narrative are weaponizing that ignorance to invoke fear and loathing among the pliable populace.

By dehumanizing us as nothing more than germ carrying super spreaders, their plan is to drastically reduce interaction by like minded people who might resist and create suspicion and distrust among neighbors and families. And it is working beyond their wildest expectations, as a nation of Karens are on the lookout, reporting non-compliance to the authorities. Big Brother now wears a mask, along with recording every electronic communication you make and tracking your every movement. This isn’t Orwellian fiction. It is a modern-day version of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.” – George Orwell, "1984"

“A network of informants saturated the population. Secrecy and distrust permeated the people, so much so that any overt activity was perceived as a provocation. How many denunciations there were against one’s own close relatives or against friends who had fallen under the sword!” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our world is descending into darkness, but it is not the Dark Winter narrative being spewed by the vacuous bimbo faux journalists on the boob tube at the behest of their corporate chieftains. The ramping up of fear using fraudulent statistics, while withholding the truth regarding the minuscule danger to healthy people under the age of 70, is essential for the global elite to successfully achieve their Great Reset, where you will own nothing and be happy.

For decades they have been slowly chipping away at the foundations of our society: family, faith, personal responsibility, honesty, hard work, community standards, good will towards your fellow man, the freedom to make your own choices, and adherence to agreed upon societal rules. Today we have drag queen story hour at the library for five year olds, Epstein and his cadre of rich celebrity elites practicing pedophilia, and men pretending to be women as health experts and women athletes. Now they are ready for the final destruction of our foundational values.

You will eat bugs and fake meat, to preserve the planet. You will be denied fossil fuels, for the planet. You will be provided just enough digital currency to survive. You will do menial jobs and be thankful to your overlords. You will dutifully take your vaccination boosters without question or face the gulag. You will gladly agree to being chipped and electronically monitored. You will only consume government messaging and will not be allowed to contemplate contrary views.

You will no longer hide behind the safety of the U.S. Constitution, as a new world order supplants that outdated scrap of parchment. They want billions of obedient automatons with the same face and thoughts, adhering to their mandates and proclamations. Once these Marxists seize power of our government, they will never relinquish it. This battle is for all the marbles. If we lose, we will be subjugated and punished. Orwell understood the mindset of totalitarians.

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” – George Orwell – 1984

It is time to fight. Not time to heel. The enemy and their tactics have been laid bare to all who choose to acknowledge reality and realize a battle for the soul of our civilization is underway. Being trapped in a normalcy bias bubble is not a viable strategy. You can’t sit out a Fourth Turning. This Fourth Turning has followed the expected path, as the initial financial crisis has now entered the violent upheaval stage, where the future of our country hangs in the balance.

Trump’s team seems to have exhausted all legal means to reverse this travesty of an election. The Deep State is powerful and ingrained at all levels of the government bureaucracy. Hoping for the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time to save the day is naïve and dangerous wishful thinking. The future will be determined by individual acts of bravery and courage. Setting an example for others by courageously speaking the truth and standing up to those intent on enslaving us through lies, in their Great Reset dystopian future, is how this war will be won.

If you think we have time to fight at a future date, you are badly mistaken. As we have seen during the four-year attempted coup against a non-cooperative president and this stolen election, these Marxist globalists will resort to anything to prevail. And once they gain complete control, they will not relinquish their power. That is when retribution against Trump supporters will commence. If we do not take the fight to these evildoers now, we will burn in the camps later. Heel or fight. The time has arrived.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"An Expert Military Analysis of War with China"

"An Expert Military Analysis of War with China"

by Fred Reed

"The Correlation of Armed Forces: U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $634.8 billion in 2019. Exports were $163.0 billion; imports were $471.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $308.8 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $76.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were $56.5 billion; services imports were $20.1 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with China was $36.4 billion in 2019.

There is talk within the Washingtoniat of a possible war with China. Steve Bannon, who apparently was dropped on his head as a child, actually favors such a war. We hear the usual shoo-the-boobs alarm about how the Chinese are doing something terrible and we must gird our loins and American values and show them what for, bow wow, woof. The danger is that the current game of who-blinks-first in Asian waters might actually provoke a shooting war. You know the kind of thing: One warship refuses to get out of the way of another, a collision ensues, some retard lieutenant who signed up on waivers opens fire, and we’re off and running. It is not a good idea to let children play with matches.

The said war is discussed either in emotional terms by idiots or in purely naval terms by those familiar with such things, so we hear of the First Island Chain and the Second Island Chain and whose missiles against the other’s missiles and so on. This would be appropriate if we were fighting World War Two again. Which we aren’t. Let’s take a quick-and-dirty look at how such a war might go.

To begin the war, America would overestimate itself and underestimate China. This is doctrine in the Pentagon. There is probably a manual on it. Inside the DC Bubble, fern-bar Napoleons would assure us that it would be a short war, a cakewalk, a matter of days, not weeks. You know, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. When it turned out that the Chinese had other ideas, among which surrendering was not, and the months dragged on, various fascinating things would happen.

Rand, a think tank wholly owned by the Pentagon, at least mentally, has wargamed both the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, concluding that the war could be both very long and a loss for America. We no longer live in 1960.

OK, the war: On day one, all the multitudinous American factories in China shut down. Example: Apple loses its factories, products from those factories, and the Chinese market of 1.4 billion consumers. Its stores close. Tim Cook’s gratitude will know no bounds. American auto manufacturers sell googolplexes of cars in China (or at least lots), mostly made in China. Overnight they will lose factories, cars, and Chinese customers. Overall, China buys many more cars than does the US. This analysis, if anything so obvious may be called analysis, can be repeated for industry after industry after industry. Goodbye, business vote.

Within weeks, Walmart’s shelves go bare. Walk down the aisles and read the “Made in” labels. We are not talking only plastic buckets and mops but chain saws, pharmaceuticals, motorcycles, and blood-pressure cuffs. So much for the blue-collar vote. The US buys 472 billion in goods annually from China, high-tech, low-tech, consumer goods, manufacturing components. No more.

China buys over $163 billion annually in American goods: petroleum, semiconductors, airline engines, soybeans, airliners, on and on. No more. It is hard to underestimate the joy this will cause in influential boardrooms. And of course the American workers who would have produced these things for China will be laid off. As electoral politics, this will prove suboptimal.

China produces a great majority of the rare earth elements crucial to the manufacture of electronics, such as semiconductors. No quick substitute is in sight. Just about everything in America uses these, to include the computers that run the electrical systems of cars. Though I haven’t checked, it is quite possible that the computers themselves are made in China. If you want a new and deeper understanding of the word “hostile,” check the influential CEOs of businesses on their second chipless day.

In a real war, it is likely that China, having thought of the foregoing, would (intelligently) destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, notably those of TSMC, as well as other factories of electronics. This would hardly be difficult since the Taiwan Strait is only a hundred or so miles wide. Losing these industries would be exceedingly painful for the US since its high-end chips come from Taiwan. It would take America years to replace this capacity domestically. Some of the necessary equipment, extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, is not made in America and in any event cannot be stamped out like beer cans.

In America it would quickly be discovered that the country is rather more dependent on China than some might think. If I may make up an example: The automotive industry finds that its sparkplugs come from China. While America could certainly make spark plugs, it turns out that a decade back the industry found that China could make them for forty percent less. In the cooperative commercial world pre-Trump, this was no problem. Not now. So much for sales of cars. And for the jobs of the workers who make them.

I will bet you all my diamond mines in South Africa and cattle lands in Argentina, that if you went through a parts list for, say, Boeing’s airliners, you would find lots of them made in China. Sure, the US could manufacture most of them, eventually. But companies need parts now, not eventually.

The effects on other countries of a large war against China would be catastrophic if not worse. Other countries also get many things, from China or Taiwan, such as semiconductors. Google on “country x largest trading partner.” A strong pattern quickly becomes clear: China is huge in trading with practically everybody. “Everybody” includes Germany, Japan, Australia, Russia, and South America as a whole. The world economy in its entirety would collapse.

How smart would this be? The United States is already in serious trouble, what with a currency rapidly being debased, a sinking middle class, businesses dying of Covid, jobs disappearing abroad, people living paycheck to paycheck, and social unhappiness resulting in continent-wide riots. Do you suppose the public will gladly support an unfathomably stupid war causing an instant, profound, and murderous economic depression? If so, you probably already have a collection of bridges.

This can be inflicted on the entire earth by a half-dozen loons in or circling around the White House unhindered by a worthless Congress. Six loons. Yes, I know, Trump is unlikely deliberately to start a Third world War, even as a publicity stunt. No, the generals in the Pentagon are not nearly stupid enough. (They might even refuse, pointing out that starting a war requires a declaration by Congress.) The problem is that for years America has been, if not actually looking for a fight, at least daring other countries to start one. For example, murdering Iranian officials, pulling out of arms-control treaties, pushing NATO ever closer to Russia, sanctioning countries far beyond anything that can be called a trade war, and playing chicken with China in the South China Sea. Under these circumstances you can get a fight without quite looking for one."

- https://www.unz.com/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/14/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/14/20"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 14, 2020 - 15:59: "Boston Tightens COVID Restrictions As US Deaths Top 300K, First Health-Care Workers Vaccinated: Live Updates"

DEC 14, 2020 AT 10:12 AM: "UK Warns Of Highly Infectious New Coronavirus Strain Discovered In Southern England" 

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Dec. 14, 2020 

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Dec. 14, 2020 2:30 PM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 72,645,100 

people, according to official counts, including 16,477,271 Americans.

At least 1,616,700 have died.

  Dec. 14, 2020 2:30 PM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"

Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 

hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

- https://covidtracking.com/

Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

"A Look to the Namibian Heavens

“Namibia has some of the darkest nights visible from any continent. It is therefore home to some of the more spectacular skyscapes, a few of which have been captured in the below time-lapse video. The night sky of Namibia is one of the best in the world, about the same quality of the deserts of Chile and Australia.

 We recommend watching this video at 

FULL SCREEN (1080p), with audio on.

Visible at the movie start are unusual quiver trees perched before a deep starfield highlighted by the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This bright band of stars and gas appears to pivot around the celestial south pole as our Earth rotates. The remains of camel thorn trees are then seen against a sky that includes a fuzzy patch on the far right that is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. A bright sunlight-reflecting satellite passes quickly overhead. Quiver trees appear again, now showing their unusual trunks, while the Small Magellanic Cloud becomes clearly visible in the background. Artificial lights illuminate a mist that surround camel thorn trees in Deadvlei. In the final sequence, natural Namibian stone arches are captured against the advancing shadows of the setting moon. This video incorporates over 16,000 images shot over two years, and won top honors among the 2012 Travel Photographer of the Year awards.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130204.html

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "And Yet"

"And Yet"

"And yet, though we strain

against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting inside them,

like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers

interweaving their fragrances

or streets, as they wind through time?"

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"I Asked For, I Was Given..."

“In my youth I respected the world and life,

I needed nothing but peace of heart;

And yet I changed despite myself and believed in Iktomi's lies.

He seemed to know all the truth, he promised to make me happy.

He made me ask Wakan Tanka for wealth, that I might have power;

I was given poverty, that I might find my inner strength.

I asked for fame, so others would know me;

I was given obscurity, that I might know myself.

I asked for a person to love that I might never be alone;

I was given a life of a hermit, that I might learn to accept myself.

I asked for power, that I might achieve;

I was given weakness, that I might learn to obey.

I asked for health, that I might lead a long life;

I was given infirmity, that I might appreciate each minute.

I asked Mother Earth for strength, that I might have my way;

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for Her.

I asked to live happily, that I might enjoy life;

I was given life, that I might live happily.

I received nothing I asked for, yet all my wishes came true.

Despite myself and Iktomi, my dreams were fulfilled,

I am richly blessed more than I ever hoped,

I thank you, Wakan Tanka, for what you've given me.”

- Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota (1938-)

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"In Lakota mythology, Iktomi is a spider-trickster spirit, and a culture hero for the Lakota people. Alternate names for Iktomi include Ikto, Ictinike, Inktomi, Unktome, and Unktomi. These names are due to the differences in tribal languages, as this spider deity was known throughout many of North America's tribes. Iktomi can be compared to the African trickster figure Anansi, and to some extent, the transculturated Yoruba Ellegua, also depicted as a trickster disguised in red. Due to his nature as a Trickster as well as patronage of communication, Iktomi is also comparable to the Greco-Roman Hermes/Mercurius (Mercury)."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iktomi

"In Native American mythology, Wakan Tanka (great mystery) is the supreme being and creator of the Lakota Sioux. Sometimes called Great Spirit, he is similar to the supreme beings found in the myths of many other North American peoples. According to Lakota myth, before creation Wakan Tanka existed in a great emptiness called Han (darkness). Feeling lonely, he decided to create companions for himself. First, Great Spirit focused his energy into a powerful force to form Inyan (rock), the first god. Next, he used Inyan to create Maka (earth) and then mated with that god to produce Skan (sky). Skan brought forth Wi (the sun) from Inyan, Maka, and himself. These four gods were separate and powerful, but they were all part of Wakan Tanka.

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

- http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Tr-Wa/Wakan-Tanka.html

Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, "The Book of Life "

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. 

That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, 

that is why you must sing and dance, 

and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti, "The Book of Life"

Freely download "The Book of Life" and many other works

 by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:

- https://selfdefinition.org/krishnamurti/

"Three Things..."

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

- Jim Valvano

The Daily "Near You?"

Magee, Mississippi, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Must Watch! “Economic Crisis Is Worse Than You Think; Dollar Collapse; Hotel Crisis; Wall St Takeover”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Economic Crisis Is Worse Than You Think; 

Dollar Collapse; Hotel Crisis; Wall St Takeover”

"In All Seriousness..."

"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking"- if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think- and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts- the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five - or maybe five hundred!"

- Dale Carnegie

"Looking at Both Sides Now"

"Looking at Both Sides Now"

by Bill Bonner

"Bows and flows of angel hair,

And ice cream castles in the air..."

– "Both Sides, Now," by Joni Mitchell

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "In the news this morning comes word that this is “make or break” week for the checks. Said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Sunday: "I am very hopeful that, next week, we will be able to act on substantial relief." Added Donald Trump: "Right now, I want to see checks – for more money than they’re talking about – going to people."

America has become a divided country, with the two parts separated by which castles they see in the air… and how much “relief” they get here on the ground. Billionaires have added $1 trillion to their wealth – a 25% increase – thanks to the feds’ relief measures this year. Others have gotten much more modest sums. Over the weekend, we saw both sides.

Old-Timer Talk: Back on the family farm… we return to our roots… This area was settled by farmers coming up from the Virginia colony early in the 1600s. Some of their descendants are still here… including your editor. Some still speak the way they did 300 years ago, a dialect derived from 17th-century England. We don’t hear it very often; there aren’t many people who still have the old tidewater accent. We lost it many years ago, when we went away to college. But we can retrieve it when we need to. To talk to the old-timers, for example. Talk like that with anyone else, and they just think you are stupid. But a cousin, a logger, came to visit on Saturday. It was a pleasure to chat with him.

(We try to reproduce the local dialect here, simply because it is vanishing fast. Considered by linguists to be a “southern” accent, it has its own peculiar cadence, rhythm, and vocabulary.)

“Yeah […] idn doin’ so good. He’s got so fat. He bin drivin’ that truck fo’ the las’ fify yeahrs. Iz the onliest thing he does. Now, the truck move right well… but he kin bahrely move hiself.”

“That’s a shame. But I guess it happens… sittin’ in a truck all day.”

“And [… ] He sold that fahrm on Route 2… moved back to his fahtha’s place. Think he’s livin’ in a trailer deyah.”

“Yeyah… thas what I huhrd, too. But he was getting’ a li’ul strange… you know, with a long, white beard.”

“Yeah… but I haven’t seen ‘im in a wile. I don’t see much of anybody. Iowno what happened to them. Guess, they eeva retired and moved off somewaya… or they died…

“I bin here all my life, but I doan know anybody any moah. All these people wuhk in Washnton. Or they preten to wuhk.

“I can’t find anybody to help cut the trees. They say theya’s all this unemployment… but I’m not seein’ it. Nobody wahnz to wuhk heeya anymo.

“And I can’t blame ‘em. This kind a wuhk is the most dangrous wuhk there is. Ever maunin, I tell the crew… ‘We got six men goin’ out… I want six men comin’ home.’”

He laughed… “And we doan wanna leave no body pahts in the woods, neeva.

“You know, I used to bring up some crews of the Amish from Chahrles county. They hahrd wuhkas. But they get careless, like evubody else. They get in a hurry to finish a patch of trees and doan pay attention. They loss three men – killed – last yea’ah.

“Always somethin’ goes wrong. You think you got it all figured out. You cut your notch [to make the tree fall in a given direction]… then you cut on the uhva side. And nuthin’ happens. An then you look up… and it’s fallin’ on you.

“I’ve had boys volunteer to go to Iraq… they thought they’d be safer. An they earned more money. Reckon they wuhr right. But at lease in the woods, you doan get that sickness.

“Wuddy you think about that? I figure iz all nonsense. You watch the TV and you think the wurld is comin’ to an end. But I figure iz no wurse than the flu. Iz prolly gonna kill us… but somethin’s gotta kill us.”

“An now, theya gonna give ehvabody that vaccine. An ehvabody gonna think they bin cured. An the sickness gonna go away, just like it always does. I’m not gonna take no damned vaccine created by the guvmint.”

Later that day, we went over to have dinner with old friends in “Washnton.” This was a whole different world. Driving around the beltway, through Northern Virginia, we saw sleek new office buildings, new apartment houses, new highways, and new malls. And different angel hair. But we’ll let our friends tell the story.

“This town is crazy. There was never any recession here. House prices just kept going up. Shops were always full. People just kept getting their checks. The government didn’t lay anyone off. But they didn’t have to go to work. So they went to Home Depot. No kidding. I’ve been over there a couple times in the last few months. It’s packed. I was trying to get a new refrigerator. But you can’t get a refrigerator… they’re all on back order.

Everybody is fixing up their houses. They’re at home all day and they notice improvements that they want to make. And in addition to their regular salaries, they got that extra $1,200… and some of them thought they didn’t have to pay their rent. There’s just so much money around. Everything is back-ordered.

I know my stocks are doing great. When the crash came in March, I just stuck with what I have. I knew there was no way the Federal Reserve was going to allow investors to lose so much money. And it didn’t. It just printed up the money it needed. And my stocks are up some 400%. It’s unbelievable. But the feds were right to intervene. Can you imagine what a mess the economy – and the whole country – would be in if they hadn’t? I know you don’t approve. But in the modern world, you can’t have millions of people without jobs. It would be a disaster.

But I’m so glad the election is over. And I’m so glad Trump lost. Can you imagine another four years with him in the White House? One good thing he did, though, was to get that Operation Warp Speed going. You could say that the government caused the economy to collapse by shutting everything down. But what choice did it have? And it looks like the feds are now going to save the economy, too. I know I’m going to take the vaccine as soon as I can. Then, I think we’ll start to get back to normal.”

"Regards,"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

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Since you insist...

Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides, Now"

"How It Really Is"

 

"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they'll figure it out. They don't always do that." 

 - Michael Lewis, "Boomerang"

"Sometimes I Wonder..."

 

"The 'Hannibal Trap' Will Crush Global Wealth"

"The 'Hannibal Trap' Will Crush Global Wealth"

by Egon von Greyerz

"Hannibal was considered as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals in history. He was a master of strategy and regularly led his enemies into excruciating defeats. The trap that investors are now being led into has many similarities with Hannibal’s strategy in his victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC. Hannibal was a general and statesman from Carthage (now Tunisia) who successfully fought against the Romans in the Second Punic War.

The Battle At Lake Trasimene: In 218 BC Hannibal took his troops, with cavalry and elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. Hannibal enticed the Roman Consul Flaminius, and his troops, in 217 BC to follow him to Lake Trasimene in Umbria. The Romans followed Hannibal’s troops into a narrow valley on the northern shores of the lake. When the Roman troops were inside the valley, they were trapped. They had the Carthaginians ahead of them, the lake on their right and hills on their left.

What the Romans didn’t know was that Hannibal had hidden his light cavalry and part of his army up in the hills. So once the Romans were locked into the valley, they were attacked from both ends with nowhere to escape. Over 15,000 Romans were killed and 10,000 captured in a catastrophic defeat. So what has Hannibal got to do with the present world? Well, it is pretty obvious. It is all about being led into a fatal trap without even being aware.

Covid Attacked An Already Weakened World: As we are approaching the end of an economic era in the world, anything that can go wrong will. The Coronavirus certainly fits that picture, since it could not have hit the world at a worse moment. Whether Covid-19 was accidentally or deliberately created by humans or just a product of nature, we will never learn.

What we do know is that Covid was like putting a match to a time bomb. The time bomb being a global financial system which is about to explode. Major businesses in retail, leisure, travel, airlines are closing by the day and most won’t open again. Globally, 100´s of thousands of small businesses have closed with devastating effects for their owners. The coming depression will affect all levels of society.

Billionaires Wealth Up 70% In Three Years: At the top of the global wealth pyramid, we have the biggest wealth trap in history. These are the 2,200 billionaires in the world. In the last three years their fortunes have swelled by a staggering 70% or $4.2 trillion. Their total wealth is now $10.2t. These billionaires are likely to lose at least 90% of their wealth, in real terms, in the next 5-10 years. But not a single one of them expects this to happen or prepares for it. As regards the number of millionaires in the world, the estimates vary between 13 and 46 million. Escalating house prices have clearly created a lot of extra millionaires.

Global Debt Fuels Global Wealth: Total global financial wealth is up almost 3x since 1990 from $80 trillion to $225t. But this massive wealth accumulation is resting on a very weak foundation of debt. It was only possible to treble wealth by, at the same time, more than trebling global debt from $80t in 1990 to $277t today.

Biggest Wealth Trap In History: So there we have it. The world hasn’t created any net wealth. Instead wealth has just been inflated artificially by credit creation and money printing of the same magnitude. I do realize that total global debt and global personal wealth is not quite like for like. Still it gives a very good indication how this additional wealth is created since 1990. Yes, it was created by just simply printing money to the extent of $200 trillion in the last 20 years!

This is clearly the biggest wealth trap in history. Hannibal couldn’t have done it better. Billionaires, millionaires and ordinary investors have all been sucked into a honeypot believing that they have real wealth based on sound foundations. What they don’t realize is that they will in the next few years be ambushed by what to them is an invisible enemy.

This will initially involve total debasement of the currency, whether it is dollars, euros, pounds or yen. No they can’t all go down together against each other. But they will all go down in real terms. Real terms means measured in the only money which has survived in history – gold.

The route there will not be straight forward. As currencies collapse, we will most likely first see hyperinflation. That could temporarily boost asset prices in nominal terms but certainly not in real terms. There will also be an implosion of both the debt bubble and the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.

Robber Barons: Robber barons were feudal lords in medieval Europe who robbed travellers and merchant ships. The term Robber Barons was used from the 1860s for some of the entrepreneurs at the time. They used unscrupulous methods to acquire wealth, thus the term. Most of them started new industries that became dominant in their field. They included Rockefeller (oil), Vanderbilt (railroads), Carnegie (steel), Ford (cars), Morgan (banking), and Astor (real estate).

Major fortunes were created by these Entrepreneurs and Rockefeller is still considered the wealthiest man in the world ever, adjusted for inflation. Interestingly, the sectors these millionaires were in are all major industries today except for railways. The modern “Robber Barons” – Bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg and Buffet are in diversified areas like online retail, technology, car manufacturing and investments/finance.

Fantasy Valuations: The big difference between the Robber Barrons in the late 19th century and today is how their wealth is measured. 150 years ago valuations were conservative and price earnings ratios for public companies were normally below 10! Quick jump to today. Amazon has a p/e over 90, Microsoft & Facebook “only” in the 30s, and Tesla has a staggering p/e of 1,100! So on a historical basis, all of the biggest companies in the world today are grossly overvalued at p/e’s of 32 to 1,100 !!

This is what happens when governments and central banks primary economic strategy consists of creating money out of thin air and then these funds are used to support the stock market. A major part of the $150 trillion debt created since the Great Financial Crisis started in 2006 has stayed with the banks and not gone to consumers or industry. Conveniently the money has reached investors and been invested in asset markets. 

Stocks Are Driven By Liquidity – Not Value Investing: Thus it is debt based liquidity which is primarily driving up asset markets. This is creating fantasy p/e’s and valuations which has very little to do with the growth of industry and finance 150 years ago.

So back to Hannibal although he has been dead for 2200 years. We have major and potentially terminal problems in the financial system since September 2019. And we have a virus which has led to major parts of the world economy collapsing due to governments handling of this virus, But in spite of these massive problems, stock markets around the world are booming.

Hannibal Trap: We have probably not seen the end of the stock market explosion as I explained in a recent article on the coming Liftoff & Collapse. But at some point in the next few weeks or months, the market will burst. Before this burst every investor, big or small, who has any spare liquidity must be sucked into the market just before the top.

This is the Hannibal trap. Everybody must be hauled into the stocks at the top of the market. And then BANG! Just like Hannibal totally took the Romans by surprise, so will a violent stock market crash. But this time it won’t be like in March 2020 with a quick recovery. Yes, of course most investors will buy the dips. That will only increase the pain. Because the coming collapse will be the start of a secular bear market that could last 10 years or more. And just like Hannibal slaughtered the Romans, the coming bear market will slaughter investors. Investors could easily see all the bubble assets, stocks bonds and property decline by more than 90% in real terms. Again, real terms mean constant and stable purchasing power.

The Dow Will Lose 97% In Real Terms – Gold: The Dow/Gold ratio is today 15. In 1980 it was 1 to 1. The ratio topped in 1999 and the long term trend is now down as the chart below shows. The target for the ratio is 0.5 to 1. This means that the Dow will lose 97% against Gold in coming years. Few people believe this magnitude of decline is possible.

But remember the Dow in itself went down 90% from 1929 to 1932 and that it took 25 years before it recovered. This time the situation is drastically worse both from a debt point of view and overvaluation of stocks. So 95%+ is not unrealistic.

History Proves That Only Gold Preserves Wealth In Real Terms: Only gold fulfills the role of always holding its value in real terms. Again history proves it. One ounce of gold bought a good costume for a man in Hannibal’s days, 2200 years ago, just as it does today. Since investors have been saved by central banks for decades, they expect the same today. This is why they will stay invested and also buy every dip until they run out of money. Sadly very few investors will get out before the bottom.

Biggest Wealth Destruction: That is why we will see the biggest wealth destruction in history. Instead of the 2,200 billionaires currently, the world might have as little as 200 in 5-10 years time (in today’s money). All businesses will of course not disappear. But earnings will decline dramatically and p/e’s will collapse.

Let’s take a business with a share price of $300 today and earnings per share of $10. Thus the p/e is 30 (30x$10=$300).

If profits decline by 70% in a recession/depression and the p/e goes to 5 it will look as follows: Eps $3 x 5 p/e = $15 share price. So this company is still making a profit, albeit smaller. Still, the share price is down from $100 to $15 or by 95%.

P/e’s of 5 or less are not unusual during depressions/recessions. I experienced this in the 1970s. The same happened in the 1930s.

History, History, History: Again, as I often stress, the best lessons we learn are from history. Everyone thinks “It is different today” but I promise it isn’t. Almost everything we experience today has happened before. So vast fortunes will be wiped out in coming years. And other fortunes will be made in areas like hard assets and the resource industry. Precious metals will be an obvious major beneficiary.

Some of the shrewd Swiss private banks like Lombard Odier advised their clients to hedge their portfolios with gold earlier this year. Very few wealth managers are as clever as 200 year old Swiss banks. Precious metals mining stocks are likely to do spectacularly well in the coming currency collapse and so will gold and silver. But the ultimate wealth preservation in the next 10 years is physical gold and silver held outside the banking system as history confirms.

Remember that markets can always go higher even though they are massively overvalued. But when risk is at a maximum, investment is not about squeezing the last bit of profit out of your portfolio. Instead, it is all about protecting your profits. And you can’t do that by staying fully invested in overvalued assets. Remember that in a secular bear market everyone is a loser. The trick is to lose as little as possible."

- https://goldswitzerland.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/14/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/14/20"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/14/20:

"The US Dollar Is Cratering AGAIN! 

Plus Important Updates"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

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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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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 (Dec. 13th to 15th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

"Offstage Noises"

"Offstage Noises"

by Jim Kunstler

"Friday night, the US Supreme Court booted the Texas case against the swing state election janksters, the citation of “standing” likely a cover story for another reason that isn’t strictly legal doctrine but rather a sentiment, namely, that a presidential election dispute belongs more properly in the elected House of Representatives than in the unelected SCOTUS - at least for now, with more cases probably coming at them. The justices didn’t explain their decision.

This wasn’t so with Bush v. Gore in 2000, by the way, but we are a different country now, one mired in institutional paralysis and failure, thanks to the bureaucratic “resistance.” Anyway, the Supremes wouldn’t hear the evidence of ballot fraud, nor has any state court yet, so ignore the plaintive cries from the seditionist news media that claims of gross election irregularities are “baseless.”

Today, Dec 14, the fifty state electoral college slates meet to cast their votes. This used to be significant back when a discernable consensus about reality existed across this land. But now that E pluribus unum has been replaced by anything goes and nothing matters, the more consequential action will be shifting offstage and backstage.

For instance, President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order 13848 requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, to report forty-five days after the election on foreign election interference. That’s this Friday. What might Mr. Ratcliffe know? Well, supposedly everything. Except both the CIA and the FBI must be considered undependable now, with RussiaGate prankster Gina Haspel in charge of the CIA, and Christopher Wray slow-walking every requested declassified FBI document for years. So, Mr. Ratcliffe must be receiving more dependable intelligence from others, most likely Defense Intelligence.

Many readers may have heard about a supposed raid on the CIA cyber-warfare station in Frankfurt, Germany, and the seizure there of the Dominion computer servers by US Army special ops personnel. Forty-five days was probably enough time for Defense Intelligence to run forensic analysis on those servers, if, in fact, they existed and the raid actually happened. Standing by on that. We just don’t know. But if so, then Mr. Ratcliffe must have some results by now.

What nobody has asked is: in the first place, what on earth would the Dominion servers be doing in Frankfurt, outside the USA, in possession of the CIA? Is the CIA monitoring the vote tabulation… or assisting in it? This raises another question no one has addressed: Servers serve computer networks, which operate via the Internet. If Dominion vote tabulation machines all over America are not allowed to be hooked up to the Internet, how can they be a network? And why would they need a server? If I’m missing something there, please discuss in the comments section.

Which raises another question: Is there not sufficient evidence to see that the use of computers has completely screwed up our election process? Is this not a classic Joseph Tainter style quandary of overinvestments in complexity producing diminishing returns — which, when enough of them pile up, gets you to the collapse of civilizations? Are we going to allow further screw-ups by letting the State of Georgia conduct their January 5 senate run-off election on the same Dominion machines that they used on November 3? Apparently, that’s exactly what Georgia intends to do.

All right, let’s return to next Friday’s report by DNI Ratcliffe. There’s a lot of talk of strange intersections between the Dominion company and foreign countries, starting with Dominion’s ownership being based in Canada (on the same floor of a Toronto office building as a George Soros-linked non-profit, the Make Way Foundation). Attorney Sidney Powell has current court cases alleging nefarious connections between Dominion, Venezuela, and China. (Note: nearly all of Venezuela’s oil exports go to China, and Iran has helped Venezuela develop capacity of its difficult-to-produce Orinoco oil sands.) Does Mr. Ratcliffe have the same information that Miz Powell has, and perhaps a whole lot more. Might China have any interest in favoring the election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump?

Well, plenty of evidence has already been made public that Joe Biden is a bought-and-paid-for asset of China - for example, a 2017 $5-milion unsecured, interest-free, forgivable loan from China’s intel service managed CEFC energy company advanced to son Hunter Biden’s Hudson West III front company, and emails stating how the split worked between Biden family members and a few outside partners. I would suppose that Mr. Ratcliffe knows a whole lot more detail about this and other Biden family business ventures in foreign lands, and that we may hear more about that on Friday - perhaps even a declaration that Joe Biden is a security threat to the USA and as such disqualified from holding high office. That would kind of throw a monkey wrench into America’s election proceedings, don’tcha think? I can’t imagine that investigators have not been tracing the money trail through the various shell companies and laundromat banks that lead to Joe Biden’s own accounts.

What if the news media refuses to report on DNI Ratcliffe’s Friday report? I have an idea: We have an asset called National Public Radio, NPR. Lately, it has been a hostage to Democratic Wokesters who refuse to report news that is unfavorable to the Woke Democratic cause of destroying the republic. In fact, when the Biden family crime story broke in late October, NPR’s managing editor, Terrance Samuels, tweeted out: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” In a national emergency, perhaps President Trump might fire Terrance Samuels’s ass, along with the rest of NPRs top management, and use the network to bypass the seditious media and social networks to get actual news out to the American people? Just an idea."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Time To Heel" (Excerpt)

"Time To Heel" (Excerpt)

by Jim Quinn

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell, 1949

Huxley’s vision of the future held sway for the next five decades, as generation after generation underwent government social indoctrination in public schools; medicating those who didn’t conform reduced dissent; incessant propaganda from government-controlled media convinced the masses to consume, obey and feel (no thinking allowed); and learned to love their debt servitude.

Orwell’s vision has taken precedence since September 11, 2001, slowly at first, but rapidly in the last year. A population drowning in cultural irrelevancy, ego enhancing distractions, and technological gadgetry making them dumber, are now being corralled using electronic surveillance, totalitarian dictates by government lackeys, the shredding of the Constitution, intense propaganda, Soviet style censorship of speech, and 3rd world style fraudulent elections to install the Deep State chosen puppet leader. The age of Huxley’s Brave New World has degenerated into Orwell’s 1984 and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

“Violence does not always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

President – Select, Trojan dementia patient, Joe Biden, has been attempting to utter the words his handlers put on his teleprompter on the rare occasions when they let him out of the basement. “Time to Heal” has been the slogan his PR flunkies have told him to yammer about regarding their fake plan to reunite the country after surviving four years of bad orange man. The propaganda machine media gush with praise for all Biden’s Deep State apparatchik cabinet selections as Biden’s handlers attempt to engineer a 3rd Obama term.

Biden is the clueless “nice guy” dupe who mouths words of reconciliation, unity and healing, while his fabricating financier fascist controllers implement their Great Reset plan in conjunction with their global elite co-conspirators. CNN conducts an “interview” with 3rd grade level questions, designed to comfort the ignorant masses.

Not one challenging question about his bagman Hunter or how he got 80 million votes without campaigning, putting forth his agenda or leaving his basement. CNN and the rest of the propaganda corporate media are just a division of the Democrat party, along with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Soros, Bloomberg, CIA, FBI, and the rest of the Deep State empire.

Our descent into darkness is being built upon the lies of our government, lies of medical experts, lies of the media and journalists paid to perpetuate falsehoods, and a globalist manufactured hysteria over a flu – designed to initiate the Great Reset. The majority of Americans are fearfully following the dictatorial mandates of their authoritarian governors and mayors to lockdown harder and mask more because “science”, even though the current “surge” in cases is happening in states, counties, and cities that have been locked down and masked for months. The lack of independent thought being exhibited by the average American is a sickening display of willful ignorance."

Please view this complete, most highly recommended article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Any questions?

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen mode recommended.