South Jordan, Utah, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
"On Your Own Terms..."
“If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning – a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”
- Jeanette Winterson
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“‘A Life of One’s Own’: A Penetrating 1930s Field Guide to Self-Possession,
Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want”
by Maria Popova
“One must know what one wants to be,” the eighteenth-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet wrote in weighing the nature of genius. “In the latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.” And yet that inner knowing is the work of a lifetime, for our confusions are ample and our missteps constant amid a world that is constantly telling us who we are and who we ought to be – a world which, in the sobering words of E.E. Cummings, “is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.” Try as we might not to be blinded by society’s prescriptions for happiness, we are still social creatures porous to the values of our peers – creatures surprisingly and often maddeningly myopic about the things we believe furnish our completeness as human beings, habitually aspiring to the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
In 1926, more than a decade before a team of Harvard psychologists commenced history’s longest and most revelatory study of human happiness and half a century before the humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm penned his classic on the art of living, the British psychoanalyst and writer Marion Milner (February 1, 1900–May 29, 1998) undertook a seven-year experiment in living, aimed at unpeeling the existential rind of all we chronically mistake for fulfillment – prestige, pleasure, popularity – to reveal the succulent, pulsating core of what makes for genuine happiness. Along her journey of “doubts, delays, and expeditions on false trails,” which she chronicled in a diary with a field scientist’s rigor of observation, Milner ultimately discovered that we are beings profoundly different from what we imagine ourselves to be – that the things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment, but there are other, truer things that we can train ourselves to attend to in the elusive pursuit of happiness.
In 1934, under the pen name Joanna Field, Milner released the results of her inquiry in “A Life of One’s Own” – a small, enormously insightful book, beloved by W.H. Auden and titled in homage to Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” published three years after Milner began her existential experiment. Milner would go on to fill her ninety-eight years with life of uncommon contentment, informed by her learnings from this intensive seven-year self-examination.
In the preface to the original edition, Milner admonishes: “Let no one think it is an easy way because it is concerned with moments of happiness rather than with stern duty or high moral endeavour. For what is really easy, as I found, is to blind one’s eyes to what one really likes, to drift into accepting one’s wants ready-made from other people, and to evade the continual day to day sifting of values. And finally, let no one undertake such an experiment who is not prepared to find himself more of a fool than he thought.”
This disorienting yet illuminating task of turning the mind’s eye inward requires a practice of recalibrating our conditioned perception. Drawing on Descartes’s tenets of critical thinking, she set out to doubt her most fundamental assumptions about what made her happy, trying to learn not from reason alone but from the life of the senses. Half a century before Annie Dillard offered her beautiful lens on the two ways of seeing, Milner writes: “As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience, I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw. And I found that the narrow focus way was the way of reason. If one was in the habit of arguing about life it was very difficult not to approach sensation with the same concentrated attention and so shut out its width and depth and height. But it was the wide focus way that made me happy.”
She reflects on the sense of extreme alienation and the terror of missing out she felt at the outset of the experiment, at twenty-six: “Although I could not have told about it at the time, I can now remember the feeling of being cut off from other people, separate, shut away from whatever might be real in living. I was so dependent on other people’s opinion of me that I lived in a constant dread of offending, and if it occurred to me that something I had done was not approved of I was full of uneasiness until I had put it right. I always seemed to be looking for something, always a little distracted because there was something more important to be attended to just ahead of the moment.”
Throughout the book, Milner illustrates the trajectory of her growth with the living record that led to her insights, punctuating her narrative with passages from her diary penned during the seven years. One, evocative of eighteen-year-old Sylvia Plath’s journal, captures the disquieting restlessness she felt: “I want to feel myself part of things, of the great drift and swirl: not cut off, missing things, like being sent to bed early as a child, the blinds being drawn while the sun and cheerful voices came through the chink from the garden.”
In another, she distills the interior experience of that achingly longed-for sense of belonging to with world: “I want… the patterns and colorings on the vase on my table took on a new and intense vitality – I want to be so harmonious in myself that I can think of others and share their experiences.”
Looking back on the young self who penned those journal entires at the outset of the experiment, Milner reflects: “I had felt my life to be of a dull dead-level mediocrity, with the sense of real and vital things going on round the corner, out in the streets, in other people’s lives. For I had taken the surface ripples for all there was, when actually happenings of vital importance to me had been going on, not somewhere away from me, but just underneath the calm surface of my own mind. Though some of these discoveries were not entirely pleasant, bringing with them echoes of terror and despair, at least they gave me a sense of being alive.”
Much of that aliveness, she notes, came from the very act of chronicling the process of self-examination, for attention is what confers interest and vitality upon life. Joining the ranks of celebrated authors who championed the benefits of keeping a diary, Milner writes: “Not only did I find that trying to describe my experience enhanced the quality of it, but also this effort to describe had made me more observant of the small movements of the mind. So now I began to discover that there were a multitude of ways of perceiving, ways that were controllable by what I can only describe as an internal gesture of the mind. It was as if one’s self-awareness had a central point of interest being, the very core of one’s I-ness. And this core of being could, I now discovered, be moved about at will; but to explain just how it is done to someone who has never felt it for himself is like trying to explain how to move one’s ears.”
This inarticulable internal gesture, Milner found, was a matter of recalibrating her habits of perceiving, looking not directly at an object of attention but taking in a fuller picture with a diffuse awareness that is “more like a spreading of invisible sentient feelers, as a sea anemone spreads wide its feathery fingers.” One morning, she found herself in the forest, mesmerized by the play of sunlight and shadow through the glistening leaves of the trees, which left her awash in “wave after wave of delight” – an experience not cerebral but sensorial, animating every cell of her body. Wondering whether such full-body surrender to dimensional delight could provide an antidote to her feelings of anger and self-pity, she considers the trap of busyness by which we so often flee from the living reality of our being: “If just looking could be so satisfying, why was I always striving to have things or to get things done? Certainly I had never suspected that the key to my private reality might lie in so apparently simple a skill as the ability to let the senses roam unfettered by purposes. I began to wonder whether eyes and ears might not have a wisdom of their own.”
That tuning into one’s most elemental being, she came to realize, was the mightiest conduit to inhabiting one’s own life with truthfulness and integrity undiluted by borrowed standards of self-actualization. Nearly half a century before the poet Robert Penn Warren contemplated the trouble with “finding yourself,” Milner writes: “I had been continually exhorted to define my purpose in life, but I was now beginning to doubt whether life might not be too complex a thing to be kept within the bounds of a single formulated purpose, whether it would not burst its way out, or if the purpose were too strong, perhaps grow distorted like an oak whose trunk has been encircled with an iron band. I began to guess that my self’s need was for an equilibrium, for sun, but not too much, for rain, but not always… So I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know. I wrote: “It will mean walking in a fog for a bit, but it’s the only way which is not a presumption, forcing the self into a theory.”
Distilling the essence of this reorientation of being, she adds: “I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.”
Several decades later, Jeanette Winterson would write beautifully of “the paradox of active surrender” essential to our experience of art. As in art, so in life – Milner writes: “Here then was a deadlock. I wanted to get the most out of life, but the more I tried to grasp, the more I felt that I was ever outside, missing things. At that time I could not understand at all that my real purpose might be to learn to have no purposes.”
Half a century after Nietzsche proclaimed that “no one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Milner considers the difficulty – and the triumph – of recognizing that you are crossing life on someone else’s bridge: ”I had at least begun to guess that my greatest need might be to let go and be free from the drive after achievement – if only I dared. I had also guessed that perhaps when I had let these go, then I might be free to become aware of some other purpose that was more fundamental, not self-imposed private ambitions but some thing which grew out of the essence of one’s own nature. People said: ‘Oh, be yourself at all costs’. But I had found that it was not so easy to know just what one’s self was. It was far easier to want what other people seemed to want and then imagine that the choice was one’s own.”
“One can’t write directly about the soul,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her own diary in the same era. “Looked at, it vanishes.” Happiness, Milner found, was similarly elusive to direct pursuit. Rather, its attainment required a wide-open attentiveness to reality, a benevolent curiosity about all that life has to offer, and a commitment not to argue with its offerings but to accept them as they come, congruous or incongruous as they may be with our desires.
Looking back on the diary entires from the final stretch of her seven-year experiment, she reflects on the hard-earned mastery of this unarguing surrender: “It struck me as odd that it had taken me so long to reach a feeling of sureness that there was something in me that would get on with the job of living without my continual tampering. I suppose I did not really reach it until I had discovered how to sink down beneath the level of chattering thoughts and simply feel what it meant to be alive.”
- https://www.dailygood.org/
○Freely download “A Life Of Ones Own”, by Marion Milner, here:
"Gridlock on the Economic Highway"
"Gridlock on the Economic Highway"
by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The question we have been flirting with… coquettishly… shyly… is this: Why is the U.S. struggling to make progress? It is slipping in almost all global rankings. Its growth rate is barely half what it was in the last century. And its government is more corrupt, degenerate, and incompetent than at any time in history. What gives? The answers fall into two major categories. Either it is the fault of God or of God’s creature, man. Today, we look at man’s role.
No Resistance: One of the weaknesses of man is that he tends to greatly overestimate his abilities… and underestimate his own capacity to lie, cheat, and steal. In its epic battle in Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. elite thought it could turn the local tribes into model Democrats. Even after squandering $2.3 trillion… and killing thousands of resisters over a 20-year period… the Afghanis stubbornly clung to their primitive ways and the U.S. was forced to withdraw.
In the fight against COVID-19, too, man’s ability to control the situation was greatly exaggerated. He believed he could contain the illness with lockdowns, mask-ups, incessant handwashing, and social distancing… and then defeat it altogether with a miracle vaccine. Former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell died earlier this week, even though he was fully vaccinated. Had more people been vaccinated, explained the media, maybe he’d still be alive. But after 20 months… countless indignities… white-hot arguments… jackass finger-pointing… and trillions in collateral damage, COVID-19 still goes around pretty much unchecked.
No Difference: And now, it turns out that more vaccines would probably not have saved Powell… because they make no difference in controlling the spread of the disease. In a study of 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the U.S., the “Public Health Emergency COVID-19 Initiative” found that:
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days. In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel, with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated, had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days."
The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa, that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.
No Surprise: Our beat is neither war nor public health. But if the authorities are so wrong about matters of life and death, mightn’t they also err in matters of money…maybe especially so when the error makes them rich?
The elites control the government. The government controls the printing press. Is it any surprise where the printing-press money goes? Business Insider reports that the wealthiest Americans now own most of the stock market: The top 10% of Americans now hold 89% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, a record high. The top 1% alone hold over half of stocks owned by households, according to the Federal Reserve. That means the wealthiest Americans disproportionately profited from the stock market’s strong performance over the last year.
Here’s more evidence from OpenSecrets.org that the corruption is deep… and bipartisan: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has seen her wealth increase to nearly $115 million from $41 million in 2004, the first year OpenSecrets began tracking personal finances. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saw his net worth increase from $3 million to over $34 million during that time."
And here’s the chief of the money-printers himself, Jerome Powell. The Federal Reserve head attended Georgetown Law Center at the same time we did (though we don’t recall him). Now, after years of apparently trading on the Fed’s “inside information,” he is worth up to $55 million. Truthout has the lowdown: "Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock just before a large stock market crash last year, according to new disclosure filings reviewed by The American Prospect. Powell’s massive sale came on October 1, 2020."
Distorted Traffic Signals: You’ll recall the analogy from earlier this week – that the rules of a productive, prosperous, and progressive society are like “traffic signals.” They don’t tell anyone where to go or how to get there… They just regulate the flow, keeping drivers from running into one another. When the light is green, you think you can go through the intersection safely.
What are the “traffic signals” of an honest economy? They are very simple: Honest money, free markets, and protected property rights. You think your money is dependable. You expect prices to be honest, reflecting real supply and demand. And you count on the “law of the land” to protect what’s yours. But what if the authorities falsified the signals in order to help themselves get rich… while snarling traffic for everyone else? Wouldn’t progress slow down? We’ll answer that question: Yes. Stay tuned…"
"We Are in a Recession - It Will Only Get Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 10/20/21:
"We Are in a Recession - It Will Only Get Worse"
"Experts are saying we are already in a recession. All signs point to this and it will only get worse from here. All of the unemployment, inflation and supply chain issues are contributing to this."
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave Story, 10/19/21"
Full screen recommended.
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave Story, 10/19/21"
"Most dangerous street in Philadelphia. Violent crime and drug abuse in Philadelphia as a whole is a major problem. The city’s violent crime rate is higher than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. Also alarming is Philadelphia’s drug overdose rate. The number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50% from 2013 to 2015, with more than twice as many deaths from drug overdoses as deaths from homicides in 2015. A big part of Philadelphia’s problems stem from the crime rate and drug abuse in Kensington.
Because of the high number of drugs in Kensington, the neighborhood has a drug crime rate of 3.57, the third-highest rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. Like a lot of the country, a big part of this issue is a result of the opioid epidemic. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed over the last two decades in the United States and Philadelphia is no exception. Along with having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% percent of Philadelphia’s overdose deaths involved opioids and Kensington is a big contributor to this number. This Philly neighborhood is purportedly the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast with many neighboring residents flocking to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high number of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have zoned in on this area to try and tackle Philadelphia’s problem."
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Full screen recommended.
Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Philadelphia"
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 10/20/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/20/21:
"Persistent And Sustained Inflation;
The Truth You Are Not Supposed To Know!"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/20/21:
"FED Will Investigate Itself! Important Updates"
"Alea Iacta Est"
"Alea Iacta Est"
by Alexander Macris
"In the closing days of 50 BC, the Roman Senate declared that Julius Caesar’s term as a provincial governor was finished. Roman law afforded its magistrates immunity to prosecution, but this immunity would end with Caesar’s term. As the leader of the populares faction, Caesar had many enemies among the elite optimates, and as soon as he left office, these enemies planned to bury him in litigation. Caesar knew he would lose everything: property, liberty, even his life.
Caesar decided it was better to fight for victory than accept certain defeat. In January 49 BC, he crossed the Rubicon River with his army, in violation of sacred Roman law, and began a civil war. “Alea iacta est,” said Caesar: The die is cast."
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Full screen recommended.
Charles Bukowoski, "Roll the Dice"
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
"They Insist Everything Will Be Fine As We Face Shortages Of Chicken, Coffee, Diapers, Fish Sticks, Frozen Meals, Carbonated Drinks"
"They Insist Everything Will Be Fine As We Face
Shortages Of Chicken, Coffee, Diapers, Fish Sticks,
Frozen Meals, Carbonated Drinks"
by Michael Snyder
"Officials in Washington continue to assure us that we don’t have anything to be concerned about, but meanwhile the shelves just continue to get even emptier. On Friday, #BareShelvesBiden was the number one trending topic on Twitter, and I am sure that the Biden administration must have been thrilled by that. Biden insists that he and his team are on top of things, but so far nothing that they have done has worked. In fact, this crisis just seems to keep getting worse and worse. And because we are facing such a “hydra of bottlenecks”, there aren’t going to be any easy solutions…
"When you look closely at all of the small fractures that have contributed to the world’s supply chain crackup, it really can begin to look maddeningly complex. As the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson put it, global commerce is currently being choked by “a veritable hydra of bottlenecks.” China’s “zero tolerance” policy for the coronavirus led it to shut down a major shipping terminal after a single infection and has slowed traffic at other ports. Lately, rolling power outages in the country have closed factories. Vietnam’s clothing and shoe plants, which companies like Nike rely on, were paralyzed by COVID lockdowns earlier this year. The world has also been bedeviled by shipping container shortages, made worse by bizarre pricing incentives that have led companies to send the boxes back from the U.S. to Asia empty, leaving American agricultural exporters in the lurch. Meanwhile, the world’s semiconductor shortage has lingered on, stalling car and electronics production; earlier this week, it was reported than Apple is expected to cut iPhone production by 10 million because it simply can’t get enough chips."
We can’t control what is going on in other nations, but we can certainly do something about what is happening within our own borders. On the west coast, it appears that part of the problem is simply sheer laziness… “In 15 years of doing this job, I’ve never seen them work slower,” said Antonio, who has spent hours waiting at Los Angeles County ports for cargo to be loaded. “The crane operators take their time, like three to four hours to get just one container. You can’t say anything to them, or they will just go [help] someone else.”
The Washington Examiner spoke to six truck drivers near the Long Beach/Terminal Island entry route, and each described crane operators as lazy, prone to long lunches, and quick to retaliate against complaints. The allegations were backed up by a labor consultant who has worked on the waterfront for 40 years. None of the truckers interviewed for this story wanted to provide a last name because they fear reprisals at the ports.
As one of my friends pointed out to me the other day, we have gone from being a “can do” nation to a “can’t do” nation. Over the course of my lifetime, our culture has been totally transformed, and the national work ethic that helped make America into an economic superpower is disappearing a little bit more with each passing day. Our society has become a festival of sloth, inactivity and incompetence, and at this point things have gotten so bad that our supply chains are breaking down on a very basic level.
The shortages continue to intensify, and we are being told that they will be even worse by the time the end of December rolls around. According to USA Today, the following are in particularly short supply right now…
● Ben & Jerry flavors
● Carbonated drinks
● Chicken
● Coffee
● Diapers
● Fish sticks
● Frozen Meals
● Heinz ketchup packets
● Marie Callender’s pot pies
● McCormick Gourmet spices
● Rice Krispie Treats
● Sour Patch Kids
● Toilet paper
How hard is it to make toilet paper, put it in a truck and drive it to stores around the country? It seems like we have been talking about toilet paper shortages for nearly two years now. When is it going to end?
To me, the food shortages are particularly alarming. Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that one school district in Alabama says that it can’t feed the students because it can’t get enough food delivered… "How bad are the shortages across the country getting? One Alabama school district is literally running out of food.
Alexander City Schools have started asking parents to feed their children breakfast at home or to send them to school with snacks because the district hasn’t received its normal food deliveries from vendors, according to AL.com. “Alexander City Schools, like many schools across the nation, is experiencing supply chain issues with our food vendors,” the district wrote on Facebook."
This is the United States of America. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen here. But it is happening. And virtually every industry is being affected. In the old days, getting vehicle parts was never a problem, but now some Americans are having to wait two or three months to have their vehicles fixed… "In the Seattle suburbs, garage owner Bryan Kelley waited on parts for 60 to 90 days on two separate occasions while fixing pick-up trucks. One of the parts, a crankshaft position sensor, used to take a half hour to get from the distribution center, said Kelley, owner of Valley Automotive Repair and Electric. The wait got so long that the customer was ready to give up on his Dodge Ram 1500, he said."
Even more alarming is the fact that so many farmers are having such difficulty getting their farm equipment fixed. As Ethan Huff has pointed out, this potentially threatens their ability to plant and harvest crops… “You try to baby your equipment, but we’re all at the mercy of luck right now,” says Cordt Holub, a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Buckingham, Ia, who now locks his machinery up inside his barn every night after thieves robbed hard-to-find tractor parts from a local Deere & Co. dealership."
Tractor tires, semiconductors and other vital components needed in the industrial farming sector are just not available like they once were, which threatens the ability of farmers to not only continue planting food but also harvesting it. If the shortages get a lot worse, and I believe that eventually they will, we will be facing things in this nation that we have never faced before.
But don’t worry, because Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has finally returned from paternity leave and he says that he will get things fixed. However, he is also admitting that supply chain disruptions “will continue into next year”…"Also on Sunday, Buttigieg warned that the supply chain disruption will continue into 2022. ‘Certainly a lot of the challenges that we have been experiencing this year will continue into next year,’ Buttigieg told State of the Union host Jake Tapper."
Do you have confidence that Biden, Buttigieg and the rest of the bureaucrats in Washington will turn things around in 2022? We shall see what happens. But meanwhile the shortages continue to intensify, and the American people are starting to get quite restless."
“Beware Of The Hustle Culture; Hyperinflation Is Here As Economy Contracts; Zillow Can’t Buy Homes”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 10/19/21:
“Beware Of The Hustle Culture; Hyperinflation Is Here
As Economy Contracts; Zillow Can’t Buy Homes”
Gerald Celente, "God & Nature vs. Man & Science, Who's Your God?"
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal:
"God & Nature vs. Man & Science, Who's Your God?"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Lies, Lies, Lies!"
"Lies, Lies, Lies!"
by Jim Rickards
"Politicians may be morons when it comes to public policy, but they’re geniuses when it comes to inventing new ways to control your life and steal your money. Tax increases seem old-fashioned compared with new 21st-century ways to take over the financial system to your detriment and make you pay for their pet projects. Take climate, for example...
We’re all familiar with how climate alarm has been used to dictate changes in transportation, energy generation and construction codes. Of course, these efforts have been massive failures, as witnessed by the ongoing supply chain disruptions and energy shortages. Large parts of Europe, Japan and China may freeze in the dark this winter thanks to efforts to close down nuclear and natural gas-fired electricity generation. The U.S. will be only slightly better off. We won’t freeze in the dark, but we will face much higher prices for home heating and gas at the pump.
The irony is that the U.S. will burn 23% more coal this year because of the shutdowns in nuclear and natural gas and the inability of wind turbines and solar to make up the difference. Nice job by the climate alarmists! Will they be held to account? Will they see the error of their ways and abandon their delusions? Don’t hold your breath for either. They’ll only dig in harder.
Climate Alarmism Influencing Financial Decisions: Now the elites have a new way to use climate alarm to their advantage. They will use their existing control of the banks to force their climate agenda by dictating how banks lend and how you are allowed to spend.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will be required to factor climate alarm into decisions on federally insured or guaranteed mortgages. The Labor Department will evaluate retirement plan managers, including 401(k) and IRA advisers, based on how they factor climate alarm into their investment decisions.
Banks will be told they cannot lend to the oil and natural gas sectors (or will face higher capital charges if they do). Risk managers at institutional investment funds and hedge funds will be required to include climate alarm models in their portfolio allocation decisions. At a more granular level, you might be denied a line of credit or business loan if your activities do not conform to those deemed acceptable by the climate alarm crowd.
The bottom line is climate alarm is no longer limited to discussions about the power grid and electricity generation. The elites are coming for your 401(k)s, IRAs and bank accounts if you don’t conform to their deluded climate wish list. We all end up paying for the lies of these elites through higher taxes, damaging regulations and massive economic pain. Just look at the COVID pandemic…
A Long List of Lies: The public policy response to the pandemic has been one long list of lies. In January 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci said there was little danger of the coronavirus making its way to the United States. In March 2020, Fauci said Americans should not wear masks. Later in the pandemic, Fauci said Americans should wear masks and later said they should wear two masks. He was then photographed in public not wearing a mask. Off the record, he has said privately that masks don’t work (which is true). But it gets worse.
They told us to lock down for two weeks to “stop the spread.” Two weeks turned into six months or more. And lockdowns didn’t stop the spread, as multiple studies have demonstrated. They only succeeded at destroying economies and driving people into despair. The public was then led to believe that the vaccines would stop the spread of the virus. Get your jab and you’ll be free, they said. But then they told you that you needed a second shot. Now they want you to take a third (a booster). Oh, and sorry, you still need to wear a mask in many places even if you’ve been fully vaccinated.
Vaccines do reduce severe symptoms and deaths (at least for a few months), but they don’t stop the spread. In fact, the vaccinated can become super-spreaders because they can build up large viral loads of the infection without being symptomatic themselves. Fauci and other public health officials have claimed that the most recent wave is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” That’s another lie, based on highly misleading statistics.
Damned Lying Statistics: They were including the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths going back to February, when the majority of Americans were not yet vaccinated. Of course most of the hospitalizations and deaths were among the unvaccinated since only a small percentage had been vaccinated by that point. To give a more accurate picture, they would have only used data taken after the majority of people had been vaccinated. If they had done that, the numbers would have looked far different.
In Vermont, nearly 90% of the state is vaccinated. But hospitalizations are soaring. Overseas, data from the British government shows that the infection rate among fully vaccinated people in their 40s was 100% higher than among the unvaccinated. The Irish counties of Waterford and Carlow, where 99.7% and 98% (respectively) of all adults are vaccinated, cases are exploding. They’re seeing the greatest case load since March.
In Taiwan, evidence indicates more people are dying from the vaccine than from COVID. COVID cases have also exploded in Israel, which boasts some of the highest vaccination rates in the world. The European Journal of Epidemiology finds that increases in COVID cases are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the U.S. One Yale University researcher has even argued that the vaccinated represent a real threat to the unvaccinated, rather than the other way around.
Social Media Liars: Meanwhile, the major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter amplified the official lies by deplatforming voices who challenged the lies or offered valuable information that was at odds with official propaganda.
For example, early in the pandemic when developed economies were suffering badly, many experts said that developing countries in Africa would be devastated by the disease because their public health facilities were deficient compared to ours. That never happened, because Africans routinely use hydroxychloroquine to prevent malaria. It turns out that hydroxychloroquine has powerful prophylactic properties for reducing the effects of COVID. If you even mentioned hydroxychloroquine on Twitter or Facebook, your account would be shut down for spreading “misinformation” when in fact you were sending highly valuable information.
Of all the official lies, the worst may have been the discussion of ivermectin. This is a drug that has been in safe use for a long time. It comes in many forms, including for human consumption and a variation used in veterinary medicine.
How Many People Have Lies and Propaganda Killed? Many individuals have reported favorable results in the treatment of COVID using ivermectin. The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh practically eliminated a severe COVID outbreak by using ivermectin on a broad scale. Still, in their obsession to force vaccinations with gene-modification therapies (mRNA) from Moderna and Pfizer, the government and mainstream media have trashed ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” and something used only by veterinarians.
This type of lying and propaganda has cost many lives, maybe hundreds of thousands. The comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan had the opportunity to call out these lies from Big Media. Rogan told CNN’s medical expert Sanjay Gupta, “They’re lying at your network about people taking human drugs versus drugs for veterinary...” Rogan went on to say, “It’s a lie on a news network… and that’s a lie that they’re conscious of. It’s not a mistake.” Gupta even admitted it.
Think for Yourself: Rogan’s attack on media lies is commendable. This is more than a policy debate. The media lies cost lives. The entire episode is a good reminder that when the next pandemic or natural disaster strikes, you should think for yourself and use common sense. Don’t rely on government and media lies. These days, you just can’t trust them when it comes to topics like climate and vaccinations. Unfortunately, we’re the ones suffering the consequences of their lies."
"A Market Insider Just Revealed A Stock Market Crash Like No Other Is Coming In October"
Full screen recommended.
"A Market Insider Just Revealed A Stock Market Crash
Like No Other Is Coming In October"
by Epic Economist
"Every day, a new series of stock market crash warnings are making the headlines as more and more experts point out the growing similarities between today and the run-up to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The outlook is bleak. While inflation is accelerating at alarming rates, on the other side of the ocean, the Chinese property market collapse is triggering a cascade of systemic failures that are starting to affect the global market. Some call it "China's Lehman crisis," but others argue that it will be even bigger and it will compromise the global economic growth for years.
Even the real estate giant itself recently warned about its growing financial difficulties. Evergrande alerted the global public that "unprecedented problems" are coming. The Chinese company is set to default on its debts totaling a staggering $300billion, which is likely to trigger a catastrophic financial chain reaction. Now, the latest analysis by experts this year has revealed worrying parallels with the events that led up to 1929 and today. According to Maury Klein's 2001 book, "Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929", several fundamentals of the previous crash can be applied today. In the book, he shows that one year before the crash "new listings on the New York Stock Exchange rose from 58 million shares in 1925 to 102 million in 1928."
In 1929, the number of new listings hit record levels, as a speculative frenzy swept across Wall Street. According to Will Daniel, an investment reporter at Business Insider, the book exposes "startling similarities to today's euphoric markets". "While there are many differences between the era of the 1929 crash and the present day, the rise of new listings is a similarity that can't be denied," he wrote. On the other hand, there has also been a major increase in the number of inexperienced investors and speculators, the same thing happened leading up to 1929. Between 1928 and 1929, brokerage firms opened 599 new offices, and that has brought the total number of brokerage offices in New York to more than 1600 just before the infamous "Black Tuesday" -- more than double the number of operating firms in 1925.
In 2021, a flood of new trading platforms emerged in app stores. Robinhood, E*trade, and Fidelity are just a few examples, and they have been booming like never before. The Charles Schwab Corporation alone added an unprecedented number of 3.2 million new brokerage accounts just in the first quarter, much more than in all of 2020. Even Big Short investor Michael Burry has made a comeback to his Twitter account last week to compare the current options-trading frenzy to the widespread speculation that sparked the Great Depression. Only this time, as Burry noted, the stakes are much higher.
A year and a half after the 2020 stock market crash, expectations for a much sharper correction have never been higher. Market insiders are expecting a huge pullback before the year's end, and a number of indicators are signaling that another financial meltdown is looming on the horizon. Many major Wall Street players are now facing overwhelming uncertainty and they've started to get ready for the worst-case scenario. More than three-quarters of respondents to a CNBC Delivering Alpha investor survey say now is the time to be "very conservative" in the stock market and they highlighted the mounting risks of a crash. Respondents included at least 400 chief investment officers, equity strategists, portfolio managers, and contributors to the financial news outlet.
In a fresh analysis published earlier this week, financial analyst Charles Hugh Smith described how the Fed's monetary policies have helped to create the biggest financial bubble in history, known as The Everything Bubble, which includes stocks, bonds, and housing. The expert says that now that liquidity has to stop propping up the markets, a massive bubble burst is just a matter of time."The problem here is all speculative bubbles pop and so the central bank's inflation of a speculative Everything Bubble has backed the entire economy into a corner from which there is no escape: either the bubble must keep inflating to ever dizzier heights of delusion and risk or the bubble pops and lays waste to all the phantom wealth," Smith noted.
With all this in mind, are we really crazy enough to believe that this bubble will be supported by artificial money forever? Are we really crazy enough to believe that creating trillions of dollars out of thin air and then dumping all this money into assets that don't increase in utility but only in "perceived" value is a sustainable and solid foundation for our economy? We all know better than that. A huge stock market crash is fast approaching and people need to run for the exits before an economic disaster is finally here."
"The "Everything Shortage”: Why Is Everything So Expensive & Out Of Stock?"
Full screen recommended.
"The "Everything Shortage”:
Why Is Everything So Expensive & Out Of Stock?"
by Adam Taggart, Wealthion
"The disruption the pandemic has inflicted on global supply chains is really starting to harm consumers. The world has been watching prices rise dramatically this year across nearly all goods & services - in large part caused by the $trillions in monetary & fiscal stimulus flooding into the economy as well as the disruption of global supply chains caused by the COVID pandemic.
But not only are consumers experiencing rising prices at the store, they're increasingly finding empty shelves, too. On the supply side, things have become so bad that macro analyst, Wolf Richter, has coined the term "The Everything Shortage" to describe the era of scarcity we're now experiencing.
How much longer is it likely to last? Longer than many are expecting, warns Richter in this newly-released interview. He sees higher prices and inventory shortages continuing though 2022, and even into 2023 for certain industries. Here's why, in the video above."
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Related:
Musical Interlude: Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
Full screen recommended.
Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
"A Look To The Heavens"
"Where did this big ball of stars come from? Palomar 6 is one of about 200 globular clusters of stars that survive in our Milky Way Galaxy. These spherical star-balls are older than our Sun as well as older than most stars that orbit in our galaxy's disk. Palomar 6 itself is estimated to be about 12.5 billion years old, so old that it is close to - and so constrains - the age of the entire universe.
Containing about 500,000 stars, Palomar 6 lies about 25,000 light years away, but not very far from our galaxy's center. At that distance, this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope spans about 15 light-years. After much study including images from Hubble, a leading origin hypothesis is that Palomar 6 was created - and survives today - in the central bulge of stars that surround the Milky Way's center, not in the distant galactic halo where most other globular clusters are now found."
"A Dreamer..."
And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.”
- Eldridge Cleaver
"The Empire of Lies Breaks Down: Ugly Truths the Deep State Wants to Keep Hidden"
"The Empire of Lies Breaks Down:
Ugly Truths the Deep State Wants to Keep Hidden"
by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
- Albert Einstein
"America is breaking down. This breakdown - triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and brutality, a growing economic divide that has much of the population struggling to get by, and militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment) - is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.
In New York City, for example, a 200-year-old statue of Thomas Jefferson holding the Declaration of Independence will be removed from the City Council’s chambers where it has presided since 1915. Despite Jefferson’s many significant accomplishments, without which we might not have the rights we do today, he will be banished for having been, like many of his day, a slaveowner. Curiously, that same brutal expectation of infallibility has yet to be applied to many other politically correct yet equally imperfect and fallible role models of the day.
In Washington, DC, a tribunal of nine men and women spoke with one voice to affirm that the government and its henchmen can literally get away with murder and not be held accountable for their wrongdoing. The Supreme Court’s latest rulings are yet another painful lesson in compliance, a reminder that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”
All across the country, from California to Connecticut and every point in between, men and women who have worked faithfully and diligently at their jobs for years are being terminated for daring to believe that they have a right to bodily integrity; that they should not be forced, against their conscience or better judgment, to choose between individual liberty and economic survival; and that they - and not the government, or the FDA, or the CDC, or the Corporate State - have dominion over their bodies. Conveniently enough, this COVID-19 pandemic has created yet another double standard in how “we the people” navigate this country: while “we the middling classes” are subjected to vaccine mandates and denied even the right to be skeptical about the origins of the COVID virus, let alone the efficacy of the so-called cure, the government, corporations and pharmaceutical companies have been shielded from liability with blanket immunity laws that ensure we are little more than guinea pigs for their questionable experiments.
And then in Pennsylvania, a man traveling on a commuter train harassed, assaulted and then raped a woman over the course of 40 minutes and more than two dozen train stops while fellow travelers, watching and filming the attack, did nothing. Not a single witness called 911. Not a single bystander intervened to help the woman. Despite the fact that the man was outnumbered and could have been overwhelmed by those on the train, no collective effort was made to ward off the attack. Only when it was too late, when the damage had been done and the train had pulled into its last stop, did police show up to intervene.
There is an allegory here for what is happening to our country and its citizens, who have also been waylaid by a madman (the Deep State), stripped of their safety nets (their rights undermined and eroded), and savaged out in the open by a fiend (the American Police State and its many operatives - the courts, the legislatures and their various armies) that is devoid of humanity while those not in the immediate crosshairs watch safely from a distance without making a move to help.
This is madness, yet there is a method to this madness. This is how freedom falls and tyranny rises. Remember, authoritarian regimes begin with incremental steps: overcriminalization, surveillance of innocent citizens, imprisonment for nonviolent - victimless -crimes, etc. Bit by bit, the citizenry finds its freedoms being curtailed and undermined for the sake of national security. And slowly the populace begins to submit.
No one speaks up for those being targeted. No one resists these minor acts of oppression. No one recognizes the indoctrination into tyranny for what it is.
Historically this failure to speak truth to power has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings, a bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged - mere onlookers - in the face of abject horrors and injustice.
We can disassociate from such violence. We can convince ourselves that we are somehow different from the victims of government abuse. We can continue to spout empty political rhetoric about how great America is, despite the evidence to the contrary. We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable. We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.
In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial. Yet there is no denying the ugly, hard truths that become more evident with every passing day.
We cannot remain silent in the face of the government’s ongoing overreaches, power grabs, and crimes against humanity. Evil disguised as bureaucracy is still evil. Indeed, this is what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.
As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries," such evil happens when bureaucrats (governmental and corporate) unquestioningly carry out orders that are immoral and inhumane; obey immoral instructions unthinkingly; march in lockstep with tyrants; mindlessly perpetuate acts of terror and inhumanity; and justify it all as just “doing one’s job.”
Such evil prevails when good men and women do nothing. By doing nothing, by remaining silent, by being bystanders to injustice, hate and wrongdoing, good people become as guilty as the perpetrator. It works the same whether you’re talking about kids watching bullies torment a fellow student on a playground, bystanders watching someone dying on a sidewalk, passengers on a train filming a fellow traveler be raped without intervening to help, or citizens remaining silent in the face of government atrocities.
We need to stop being silent bystanders. It’s time to stand up for truth - for justice - for freedom - not just for ourselves but for all humanity. Tomorrow may be too late."
"Bezzle, Bezzle, Boil and Bubble"
"Bezzle, Bezzle, Boil and Bubble"
By Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "What a marvelous time to be alive… with a front-row seat to watch a great empire stumble and fall! It only happens once every hundred years or so… So pull up a chair and enjoy the show.
Here’s the big news, from Bloomberg: "U.S. Factory Output Falls in Fresh Supply-Chain Warning." "Production at U.S. factories fell by the most in seven months in September, in part reflecting a sharp pullback in the manufacturing of motor vehicles as well as broader backlogged supply chains and materials shortages. Supply chain? What’s happening is much more than just a weak link. Adjusted for inflation, real industrial production has been going down for half a century and now is only a third of its 1968 level."
Falling Apart: The U.S. enjoyed a fake prosperity for the last 30 years – but only because China picked up the burden of manufacturing and sold goods to Americans at discount prices, keeping inflation in check. And now, the U.S. no longer has the good jobs, the infrastructure, or the know-how to make things Americans want. Instead, appliances and geegaws are shipped across the Pacific Ocean – at enormous cost – while the discounts disappear. China’s raw materials costs – metals, fuel, etc. – are going up. So are its wages. It can no longer offset America’s money-printing with cheap products.
Yes, here in the U.S., “inflation” is now out in the open… and the whole scam is coming apart. CBS News reports: "A perfect storm of high demand and low supply is sending fuel prices through the roof. Driving your car is costing a lot more – and heating your home this winter could, too.
[…]
The national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas this week is $3.27 – a seven-year high. According to GasBuddy, a price tracking service, the price of a gallon nationwide has gone up more than five cents in a week.
Meanwhile, benchmark crude oil prices have risen above $80 a barrel for the first time since 2014. As a result, Chicago-area utilities are projecting that heating bills will be up to 50% higher this winter. The New York Department of Public Service warned residents last week that their home heating bills could jump 21% compared to last winter."
On the Case: But don’t worry. The Biden team is on the case. Spotted on Bloomberg last week: "Biden Seeks to Spearhead New Attack on Supply-Chain." "President Joe Biden will turn his focus to supply-chain transportation bottlenecks on Wednesday, as the congested Port of Los Angeles will announce a 24 hours a day, seven days a week effort to confront the squeeze on goods. But is the president really doing Americans a service by making it easier for them to buy Chinese products?
Both the Trump and Biden administrations share the same COVID-19-fighting strategy – close up U.S. businesses, but give Americans money so they can shop for Made-in-China goods. Here’s the Asia Times: "Gobbling China’s Exports, US Sinks into Dependency." "China’s exports rose 28% in September from the year-earlier level, more than the analyst consensus had forecast. More important is that China’s exports to the United States have risen by 31% since January 2018, when President Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports from China. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the US is buying $635 billion of Chinese goods, equal to a staggering 27% of US manufacturing Gross Domestic Product."
Fraudfest: As we’ve been saying… the whole thing is a fraudfest. From the most basic premises – that wise guys in Washington can make decisions better than consumers, producers, and investors…that American “democracy” follows the “will of the people”… and adapts to its needs…that elected officials know how to run a shipyard better than people who’ve been doing it all their lives… people with skin in the game and real brains in their heads…that you can spend more than you earn, year after year, and cover the deficits with “printing press” money…and that this fake money actually “stimulates” the economy – it’s a “bezzle.” From start to finish. Dishonest. Corrupt. Incompetent.
Fake Prosperity: You can’t “print” prosperity. You can’t make an economy work with five-year plans. And “democracy” does not mean that the majority always gets what it wants. Nope. It gets whatever bone the elites toss its way. But while tossing out scraps was easy when the economy was growing, of late, it’s become much more difficult.
The U.S. squandered trillions on its misbegotten wars and social programs. Now, it’s got a $3 trillion deficit – even without a recession. And this week, Republicans and Democrats consider the next trillion-dollar-plus programs… while the printing presses run hot to pay for them. More to come…"
"We Are Living in a Chaotic Economy - There is No End in Sight"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAlllegedly, 10/19/21:
"We Are Living in a Chaotic Economy -
There is No End in Sight"
"It does not matter where you live. From Los Angeles to New York City to Great Britain, it is all Chaotic as far as the global economy is concerned. There is no end in sight to the madness."
"Many Thorns..."
“In a word, there are many thorns, but the roses are there too.”
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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Full screen recommended.
Tchaikovsky, “1812 Overture”
The story:
“On September 7, 1812, at Borodino, 120 km (75 mi) west of Moscow, Napoleon’s forces met those of General Mikhail Kutuzov in a concerted stand made by Russia against the seemingly invincible French Army. The Battle of Borodino saw casualties estimated as high as 100,000 and the French were masters of the field. It was, however, ultimately a pyrrhic victory for the French invasion.
With resources depleted and supply lines overextended, Napoleon’s weakened forces moved into Moscow, which they occupied with little resistance. Expecting capitulation from the displaced Tsar Alexander I, the French instead found themselves in a barren and desolate city, parts of which the retreating Russian Army had burned to the ground.
Deprived of winter stores, Napoleon had to retreat. Beginning on October 19 and lasting well into December, the French Army faced several overwhelming obstacles on its long retreat: famine, typhus, frigid temperatures, harassing Cossacks, and Russian forces barring the way out of the country. Abandoned by Napoleon in November, the Grande Armée was reduced to one-tenth of its original size by the time it reached Poland and relative safety.”
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