"Be Very Afraid of Omicron!"

“This Is Such Garbage You Guys Print”

by Brian Maher

“This is such garbage you guys print. F*****gunbelievable.” That is the grievance of one reader. This she filed in response to yesterday’s reckoning about the Omicron variant. We cited evidence that universal vaccination may work at cross purposes, that the policy may be 180 degrees wrong. Rather than cure, we raised the possibility that it may harm — and potentially plenty. That is because broad vaccination may spin out additional, potentially more lethal variants.

Here another reader directs us to the straightabout, to correct our erring ways: "I’m afraid Brian needs to look again at the history of medicine if he really believes vaccines are the source of the problem. Since the beginning of time, viruses have mutated and produced a zillion variants, and before Pasteur, I don’t think that vaccines had much to do with them. Nothing wrong with lateral thinking but one should not forget that the emphasis is on the thinking part!!"

Just so. Yet we have never questioned that viruses mutate through time. Nor have the epidemiological crackerjacks we cited. They are aware of it and then some. They nonetheless believe that vaccines may be fanning variants into existence.

For example: Dr. Robert Malone, pioneer of the very mRNA technology in back of these vaccines.

For example: Dr. Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize winner in medicine.

For example: Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, global authority on the science of vaccination.

These men… highly learned in the strategies and tactics of viruses… have warned it is folly to vaccinate wholesale into the teeth of a pandemic. That is because they claim mass vaccination squeezes the virus into an escape hatch. It facilitates the production of aberrant strains - aberrant strains that outflank and outfox vaccination. Might these gentlemen be mistaken? They may be mistaken, yes. But they present a plausible hypothesis, a hypothesis worthy of investigation… as we see it.

Meantime, Dr. Fauci and his minions are monomaniacal for universal vaccination, come high water, come hell, come what may. But what if it is they who are mistaken? What are the potential consequences if they are mistaken? They nonetheless exercise a monopoly upon the flow of permissible opinion. Dr. Fauci leaps from one mainstream media outlet to the next. There he is given a very, very light handling. We have yet to witness him confront a stumping or hostile question. He is soothed and caressed by fawners and flatterers, by lickspittles and smoochers of backsides. They know the taste of boot polish very well.

You will not see a Dr. Robert Malone offered a mainstream forum. You will not see a Dr. Luc Montagnier offered a mainstream forum. You will not see a Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche offered a mainstream forum - eminentos within their field, each of them. All “respectable” sources deny them - and others like them - an honest hearing.

Dr. Fauci claims to represent “the science.” Let him prove it in free debate with a professional and skillful foe, a rival crackerjack. Should not the American people hear the two opposing sides… in order to decide which is correct? It is The Daily Reckoning’s argument that the American people should hear both sides, in order to decide which is correct. Since they are not, we are put in the position of subversives. We publish what approximates an American form of samizdat.

That was dissident and underground literature in the former Soviet Union that blasted holes in government whoppers and propaganda. We issue no claims of grandeur. Our modest, little, disreputable publication is precisely those - modest, little and disreputable. Yet this somehow delights us. We get to whisper things into your ear you will not hear in boastful, large and respectable outlets… Even if they are occasionally scandalous. Even if they are occasionally “garbage.” And yes, even if they are occasionally true.

As our co-founder Bill Bonner is fond to say: Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always in doubt… Below, Jeffrey Tucker shows you why he believes the Omicron variant is being used to frighten you and to falsely justify further government power grabs. Please, read on."

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"Be Very Afraid of Omicron!"

By Jeffrey Tucker

"However modern we believe ourselves to be, our lizard brains take over from time to time. This weekend was a classic case. Out of South Africa came the news of a new SARS variant, dubbed Omicron. It is so clever that it outwits our best vaccines! Ban travel! Run like hell!

Amazing. The poor scientists in South Africa - so scrupulous, so transparent - believed they were merely alerting the scientific community of the new mutation. They didn’t know that their announcement would prompt the world to regard their fellow country people, and those of surrounding states, to be disease-ridden lepers and therefore quarantined in their own countries.

Back to Travel Restrictions: Israel is so panicked that it has banned all foreign travel into the country. Japan and many other countries have joined in the panic. You had tickets and hotel reservations? Too bad. No one cares anymore about your freedom and your property. They are contingent privileges today, and we are otherwise entirely living by the whims of the public health bureaucrats. We can’t live this way. It’s utterly ridiculous to find yourself with plane tickets that are entirely unusable simply because some bureaucrat is having a disease panic and happens to have the ear of the head of state.

Finally over the weekend, some calm began to dawn. Omicron has been around for months. It is probably already in most countries. It’s not that deadly. It is likely even to be mild. Who could have known? Actually everyone. The famed tradeoff between prevalence and severity applies especially here. Not that this quelled the hysteria. Anthony Fauci was all over the news on Sunday with vague hints that we could lock down again. The last lockdowns didn’t achieve anything, but that doesn’t matter to these people.

Early indications are that this new variant is outsmarting the vaccines or possibly even incentivized by their existence. Those who have natural immunity via exposure are not likely to have any real issues with Omicron. As for those who depend entirely on the jab for their protection, it’s another matter. The vaccines are structured to deal with one variant at a time - and deal only with symptoms, not infection or spread. That means that there will be no end to this.

More Panic! What a world in which we live! My goodness. It’s like we never really improve as humans, never really get smart. Sure enough, markets crashed all over the world - as they have been waiting to do for a while - not just in response to Omicron, but also in anticipation of a new set of lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Moderna and Pfizer stock rose in response to their promise to make a version of their shot that controls Omicron. They might as well push a subscription plan. They ding your credit card once a month so you can get a jab for every new pathogen. It’s the virus-of-the-month deal.

I’ve usually tended to think of these policies as mistaken, dumb, verging on sadistic, but not so much as part of a plot of the deep state. Of course all politics attract grifters the way trash attracts flies. So sure, there are people and businesses out there who have made a killing throughout this pandemic panic. The mask-makers, the subsidized hospitals, the teachers unions who blackmailed every parent in America and of course the pharmaceutical-makers who enjoyed massive subsidies and liability protections.

The chaos of the last two years has allowed government an environment of chaos to ramp up spending, debt and money creation in ways that we will be paying for over a period of decades — in lost productivity and inflation. Yes, I’m sorry it is grim. Very.

Two Books That Expose the Fraud: I would like to recommend a couple of books. I spent the Thanksgiving holiday immersed in books on economics, politics and public health. The first is "A Plague Upon Our House" by former White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas. It is brilliant. He reveals how Trump was wholly betrayed by his health policy advisers who tricked him into destroying the economy that he was otherwise trying to build. Trump was scared and went along with their advice.

Trump somehow made it through two impeachment attempts but got hornswoggled with the virus. He seems to have figured this out by August of 2020, when he brought Atlas into the mix. Once he realized his error, he faced a real problem. He could have expressed regrets and been truly honest with the country. Or he could have merely entered into denial. He chose the second path. That put him massively out of touch with the terrible reality on the ground through the country. This choice lost him the election. Some people think that this was the whole point of lockdowns at least for a while: to cause Trump to stumble and fall. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s not as crazy as you would think.

The Deep State: Another book that has blown my mind is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s "The Real Anthony Fauci." It is about a lot more than that. He describes a plot at the highest levels of government, as pushed by pharmaceutical companies in league with the deep state of the national security bureaucracies. The thing goes back decades, but most immediately to the period after the end of the Cold War when the deep state was looking for some reason for its existence.

It seized on pandemic control. He proves his point by linking to astonishing documents of “germ games” that the elites were playing even up to the months before the pandemic hit. I’ve seen these documents now for the first time. I’m not exactly “out of touch” on these matters, so that I did not know about them alarms me. No question there was a lot more going on than intellectual error.

Yes, discovering all this absolutely does give you the creeps. What kind of people are willing to give up American leadership in the world, sacrifice two years of children’s education, wreck small and medium-sized businesses, ruin health care, demoralize a whole population into paths of drug and alcohol abuse? It’s all hard to fathom.

One might suppose that the ruling class would finally decide that we’ve been tortured enough. Somehow it is never enough. And their shameless ways surely disorient anyone of goodwill. How can Fauci seriously go on television yet again to proclaim that any incredulity toward him is nothing but opposition to science? I have to conclude that these people have no conscience. At some point, they will go too far. Maybe we are already at that point."

- dailyreckoning.com

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

 "Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.

Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080512.html

"An Invisible Man..."

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."

- Ralph Ellison, "Prologue to Invisible Man"

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The Poet: David Wagoner, "Getting There"

"Getting There"

"You take a final step and, look, suddenly

You're there. You've arrived

At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:

This common ground

Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.

What did you want to be?

You'll remember soon.

You feel like tinder under a burning glass,

A luminous point of change.

The sky is pulsing against the cracked horizon,

Holding it firm till the arrival of stars

In time with your heartbeats.

Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression

On the self you were,

By having come all this way through all this welter

Under your own power,

Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising

Meandering lifeline.

What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,

Telling it haltingly like a dream,

That lost traveler's dream under the last hill

Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind

To unburden yourself

Of elements along elementary paths

By the break of morning.

You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight

Called Here and Now.

Now, what you make of it means everything,

Means starting over:

The life in your hands is neither here nor there

But getting there,

So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another

Journey without regret

Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,

The end of endings."

~ David Wagoner

"It Becomes Sad..."

"Why does truth carry such a dreadful face? Why does subjugation carry

such a happy mask? It becomes sad when people understand that they

can lead a better life as long as they bow their heads, ignoring the truth."

- Lionel Suggs

“Life Lessons From a Psychiatrist Who’s Been Listening to People’s Problems For Decades”

“Life Lessons From a Psychiatrist Who’s Been

Listening to People’s Problems For Decades”

by Thomas Oppong

“How you approach life says a lot about who you are. As I get deeper into my late 30s I have learned to focus more on experiences that bring meaning and fulfilment to my life. I try to consistently pursue life goals that will make me and my closest relations happy; a trait that many individuals search for their entire lives. Nothing gives a person inner wholeness and peace like a distinct understanding of where they are going, how they can get there, and a sense of control over their actions.

Seneca once said, “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” “No people can be truly happy if they do not feel that they are choosing the course of their own life,” states the World Happiness Report 2012. The report also found that having this freedom of choice is one of the six factors that explain why some people are happier than others.

In his best-selling first book, “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now”, Dr Gordon Livingston, a psychiatrist who’s been listening to people’s problems for decades, revealed thirty bedrock truths about life, and how best to live it. In his capacity as a psychiatrist, Dr Livingston listened to people talk about their lives and the many ways people induced unhappiness on themselves. In his book, he brings his insight and wisdom to the subjects of happiness, fear and courage.

“Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.” Acquiring some understanding of why we do things is often a prerequisite to change. This is especially true when talking about repetitive patterns of behavior that do not serve us well. This is what Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That more of us do not take his advice is testimony to the hard work and potential embarrassment that self-examination implies.”

Most people operate on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday. They rarely stop to measure the impact of their actions on themselves and others, and how those actions affect their total well-being. They are caught in a cycle. And once you get caught in the loop, it can be difficult to break free and do something meaningful. Past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.

If your daily actions and choices are making you unhappy, make a deliberate choice to change direction. No matter how bleak or desperate a situation may appear to look, you always have a choice. “People often come to me asking for medication. They are tired of their sad mood, fatigue, and loss of interest in things that previously gave them pleasure. ”…“Their days are routine: unsatisfying jobs, few friends, lots of boredom. They feel cut off from the pleasures enjoyed by others.

Here is what I tell them: The good news is that we have effective treatments for the symptoms of depression; the bad news is that medication will not make you happy. Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.” “In general we get, not what we deserve, but what we expect,” he says.

Most people know what is good for them, they know what will make them feel better. They don’t avoid meaningful life habits because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them, Dr Livingston found. They are waiting until they feel better. Frequently, it’s a long wait, he says. Life is too short to wait for a great day to invest in better life experiences.

Most unhappiness is self-induced, Dr Livingston found. “The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Think about it. If we have useful work, sustaining relationships, and the promise of pleasure, it is hard to be unhappy. I use the term “work” to encompass any activity, paid or unpaid, that gives us a feeling of personal significance. If we have a compelling avocation that lends meaning to our lives, that is our work, ” says Dr Livingston.

Many experiences in life that bring happiness are in your control. The more choices you are able to exercise, and control, the happier you are likely to be. “Happiness is an inside job. Don’t assign anyone else that much power over your life,” says Mandy Hale. Many people wait for something to happen or someone to help them live their best lives. They expect others to make them happy. They think they have lost the ability to improve their lives.

The thing that characterizes those who struggle emotionally is that they have lost, or believe they have lost, their ability to choose those behaviors that will make them happy, says Dr Livingston. You are responsible for your own life experiences, whether you are seeking a meaningful life or a happy life. If you expect others to make you happy, you will always be disappointed.

You can consistently choose actions that could become everyday habits. It takes time, but it’s an investment that will be worth your while. “Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: Learning new things, changing old behaviors, building new relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues,”

Most people are stuck in life because of fear. Fear of everything outside their safe zones. Your mind has a way of rising to the occasion. Challenge it, and it will reward you. Your determination to overcome fear and discouragement constitutes the only effective antidote to that feeling on unhappiness you don’t want. Dr Livingston explains. “The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves. I frequently ask people who are risk-averse, “What is the biggest chance you have ever taken?” People begin to realize what “safe” lives they have chosen to lead.”

“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become. Usually it is fear and its close cousin, anxiety, that keep us from doing those things that would make us happy. So much of our lives consists of broken promises to ourselves. The things we long to do — educate ourselves, become successful in our work, fall in love — are goals shared by all. Nor are the means to achieve these things obscure. And yet we often do not do what is necessary to become the people we want to be.”

As you increasingly install experiences of acceptance, gratitude, accomplishment, and feeling that there’s a fullness in your life rather than an emptiness or a scarcity, you will be able to deal with the issues of life better.

Closing thoughts: Dr Livingston’s words feel true and profound. The real secret to a happy life is selective attention, he says. If you choose to focus your awareness and energy on things and people that bring you pleasure and satisfaction, you have a very good chance of being happy in a world full of unhappiness, uncertainty, and fear."

- https://medium.com/

"It’s Going to Be a Long, Cold Winter"

"It’s Going to Be a Long, Cold Winter"

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – We continue our history of America’s Nightmare Winter. By way of prelude, here’s CBS News: "After California became the first U.S. state to ban gas-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers earlier this year, more states, including New York and Illinois, are mulling over similar measures."

And this from The Washington Post: "Roughly 45 percent of households are being hurt by price increases, according to a survey of nearly 1,600 people conducted Nov. 3 to Nov. 16. About 1 in 10 said that hardship was severe enough to affect their standard of living, while 35 percent described the hardship as “moderate.”

The effects were most acute in lower-income households, with 71 percent of those making less than $40,000 a year saying they experienced hardship, compared with 47 percent for middle-income households and 29 percent of those considered upper-income. “Most low-income households are already hurting,” said Mohamed Younis, editor in chief of Gallup. “You can only imagine what that’s going to look like in the next few months if this continues to get worse.”

This winter will bring hardships for the poorest among us. But today, we look at another winter – harder… longer… and further in the future. What are the odds of a staggering economic collapse… political and social chaos… hyperinflation… and revolution? One in two? One in ten? We don’t know. But let us continue the tale of “history” we started yesterday. You decide how likely it is.

Flying Blind: In the 2020s, major governments throughout the world were committed to two remarkably implausible policies, highlighted by the news items above. First, they were “transitioning” to a post-fossil-fuel economy, setting a specific temperature target for the planet.

Second, they were funding their programs with “printing press” money. None of the major powers – Europe, America, Japan, or China – had any real money. The real money – backed by gold – was eliminated in 1971, when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. Thenceforth, the U.S. government would no longer honor its promise to redeem dollars for gold presented by foreign central banks.

Since then, they were all flying blind. And that worked, more or less, for the first three decades. Old habits, principles, and customs prevented politicians and central bankers from running wild. Deficits were mostly contained. “Printing press money” was still a rarity. In the late 1990s, America’s Debt-to-GDP ratio was actually going down. But gradually, time-tested reflexes gave way to empire building, “stimulus” fantasies… and free-money temptations. By 2021, all the world’s major economies were running large deficits and headed for bankruptcy.

Over-Reliance on Renewables: And yet, rather than reverse course and let them recover, policymakers doubled down – especially in the energy sector. Internal combustion engines were penalized. Electric vehicles were subsidized. Power plants were decommissioned. Oil pipelines were shut down. New oil wells weren’t drilled. Storage tanks were abandoned. To make matters worse, inflation hindered investment in all new energy projects. With the political and financial sands shifting beneath their feet, nobody wanted to build new power plants or refineries.

Energy from solar and wind struggled to keep up. Unlike oil-fired generators, they were idle much of the time. At night, for example, the solar panels were worthless. And there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t be idle just when you needed them.

In theory, you could make up for it by increasing capacity, giving yourself a comfortable “margin of error.” But that would mean an even greater “investment” in new power sources. In practice, it was impossible to develop enough generating and storage capacity from renewables to replace the more efficient output of market-driven, tried-and-true, old-fashioned gas, oil, and coal.

Supply Strangled By Bureaucracy: And it was a matter of life and death. After all, the world only used roughly 50 exajoules of energy in 1900 – to support 1.6 billion humans. By 2021, it was using 11 times as much – to support five times as many people. What would happen when the power suddenly went out?

The energy system, 1900 to 2020, was developed in a mostly free economy with – until 1971 – reliable money. It had been built out without subsidies or tax credits… and readily adapted to supply/demand pressures. The post-2020 “transition” system was different. It was directed by bureaucrats, regulators, politicians, and meddlers. It was shaped by government, not private enterprise. But government is very different from the private sector. Businesses earn money by providing goods and services – such as gasoline – at a profit. Government never produces a single gallon of gas. Instead, it regulates… restricts… curbs… and controls. It subtracts, in other words; it doesn’t add.

Systemic Breakdown: On paper, the supply of energy – much of it coming from highly subsidized, inefficient, and centrally controlled new “renewable” sources – was adequate. In practice, the system – like the Soviet economy – was rigid and brittle. Then, one especially cold night… with no sun… and no wind – and temperatures falling below zero in half the country – it failed completely. The power system collapsed. Valves froze up. Fuses blew. Ice-covered wires fell. The dark passage had begun. Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Scottsboro, Alabama. USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Freely Read Online: Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope.

Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.

In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until dawn.”

- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

“Shantaram”

by Gregory David Roberts

“Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in “Shantaram,” a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies peformed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.

He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.

Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughout the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel.” 

– Valerie Ryan

Freely read “Shantaram” online, by Gregory David Roberts, here:

- https://www.readanybook.com/online/565858

There is a download option for registered users.

"Even Those Dread And Hated Enemies..."

"The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be."

- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"

Gregory Mannarino, "The Great Reset Is To A Tyrannical Slave System... GLOBAL Economic Meltdown"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/3/21:

"The Great Reset Is To A Tyrannical Slave System...

 GLOBAL Economic Meltdown"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Get Ready for the Foreclosure Festival - It’s About to Begin"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly AM 12/3/21:

"Get Ready for the Foreclosure Festival - It’s About to Begin"

"There are no forbearance programs anymore. People must pay their mortgages. There’s a 67% increase in foreclosure proceedings. It’s really sad that people are in this position. People have kicked the can down the road and not worked on this until right now. It may be too late for them."

"Fury, Rising"

"Fury, Rising"

by Jim Kunstler

"If anything, political pressures may prevent the White House from going far enough, Binghamton University political science professor Olga Shvetsova argued. In order to halt the virus, she said vaccines must not only be mandated but that fully vaccinated people need to be tested regularly to stop the emergence of new variants. “We cannot allow people to be sick but not too sick,” Shvetsova said. “That’s what created delta, and that’s what created omicron. It’s not only about preventing people from being terribly sick. It’s about preventing them from being sick in invisible ways.”

- As reported in the Washington Examiner

"Of course, Ms. Shvetsova is not a medical doctor, and it’s reasonable to doubt that politics represents any kind of science at all, but just a pretense of it in order to affect some academic respectability. Which prompts one to wonder: what shreds of respectability remain in the universities run by Jacobin maniacs? (Answer: almost none, and zero cred, too, lately, and note that having surrendered entirely to this kind of intellectual racketeering, higher ed is just another major institution whirling around the drain.)

There’s a lot to marvel at, though, in the manifold insanity of Ms. Shvetsova’s quoted views, starting with its overall totalitarian gusto. No ambiguity there about the need for coercion, for pushing people around, with no reference to legal niceties. (Note, political science is a field apart from the study of law, which doesn’t pretend to be science.) The bit I love most is: “It’s about preventing [citizens] from being sick in invisible ways.” Huh…? You know what else is invisible? Your thoughts. You could be harboring hostile thoughts about the folks who seek to push you around, which could lead to the accusation that you are an enemy of the state!

Prof. Shvetsova was not the only one out of her lane in the Covid thunderdome this week. Wall Street shill Jim Cramer took a few minutes off of pimping stocks on his CNBC-TV show to declare that the US army should be used to force vaccinations on the vax-resistant. “Acting President” Anthony Fauci and his political advisor, “Joe Biden,” used the hatching of Omicron to beseech the multiply-vaxxed to booster-up - overlooking the perhaps embarrassing reality that the mRNA vaccines do nothing to stop the spread of Covid, though they do have quite a downside in relative harm from adverse reactions.

For instance, a new study and warning from the American Heart Association concluded that mRNA vaccines dramatically increase risk of developing heart disease between 11 and 25 percent. Twitter slapped an “unsafe” warning on anyone attempting to transmit this news on its sacred app. Unsafe to whom, or what? Why, to the sacred narrative, of course, which is that the USA must be kept in a never-ending paranoid uproar over Covid - certainly until at least past the 2022 elections, in order to maintain all the emergency main-in ballot provisions that enable voting fraud.

Meanwhile, the emerging reality of Omicron is that it has a much lower transmission coefficient than its predecessor, the Delta variant, and produces only mild symptoms of illness. Someone should tell Acting President Fauci that Halloween is over and he can stop trying to scare everybody. Anyway, two federal judges rendered decisions striking down Acting President Fauci’s vaccine mandates. The second ruling, penned by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of Louisiana’s Western District, featured a particularly lusty and detailed diagnosis of the mandate’s constitutional impropriety, and extended the injunction against vax mandates to all fifty states.

This leaves the USA in a distinctly exceptional position among the other nations within the loose confederation of Western Civ. Thanks to manifestations of sanity on the federal bench, the vax mandates appear DOA here now, while Austria and Germany have rushed into full-blown psychotic fugues over Omicron, announcing harsh punishments for their unvaxxed and, coincidentally, wrecking another Christmas season among people whose Teutonic devotion to the ancient pagan solstice rites runs hot and deep. There is obvious awareness among German vax protesters, as seen on their T-shirts and placards, that 2021 is looking like a nauseating rerun of 1933. Is it not amazing that the German politicians don’t see that in their diktats?

The Covid psychosis is just a reassignment of the Trump derangement, which was provoked by the generalized anxiety about collapsing industrial societies. The reasons for the collapse are not hard to grok: a declining resource base, especially affordable, economically plausible oil, a financial system purposefully detached from on-the-ground material reality, and sets of grossly foolish over-investments in complexity in the techno-narcissistic effort to work-around all that.

The epic Trump and Covid hysterias (with a side-dish of climate neurosis) managed to distract the masses from those essential economic quandaries. But now the breakdown in all the channels of production, trade, and money is roaring in our faces, and just at Christmas time, too, when the sore-beset people seek just a few weeks’ respite from their travail and despair. Don’t be surprised by their rising fury over this in the days ahead."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/3/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/3/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Vice President Biden was out today describing his version of the “Dark Winter” he has mentioned in the past. This time it’s in response to the new Omicron virus that the Globalists are hyping as a new way to scare you into getting another jab or booster. It’s tough to convince people to get more of what doesn’t work. Just ask the “Fully Vaccinated” Dallas Cowboys who have at least 9 players with, wait for it–Covid.

Step right up for the booster, and you are stupid if you do. The South African doctor who discovered this variant of CV19 says it is “extremely mild,” and “there has been no real uptick in hospitalizations.” That medical appraisal does not stop the pushers of yet another round of injections when the first two clearly did not work. How many boosters does the public have to get to realize this is a total scam and not about medicine?

Fed Head Jay Powell has broken big news, and that is inflation is NOT “transitory” as the Fed has been claiming for many months. The Fed has officially lost control of inflation. Why is this big news? Well, Powell has to do something about inflation now, and that is going to cause big problems in the markets and economy and may even collapse it altogether. If Powell does nothing, then look out above as inflation in everything including gold, silver and cryptos will rip higher - much higher."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 

these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/3/21:

- https://rumble.com/

"Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"

Full screen recommended.

"Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"

by Peak Prosperity

"Professor Mattias Desmet talks about his work that connects past historical episodes of what is called “Mass Formation” (aka Mass Psychosis) and current events. The risks are as grave as they come. Unless a few brave and courageous people are willing to stand up and say “I don’t agree!” history suggests that we will end up with a fully totalitarian outcome.

That is a dark path. It inevitably leads to mass casualties and atrocities. Eventually all totalitarian systems end in their own destruction.

My position is “it doesn’t have to be this way.” We can do better. Let’s avoid a future of atrocities and the complete destruction of our way of life. Unfortunately, those caught up in the Mass Formation event cannot see the larger or wider implications of their actions. They are very much like a hypnotized person with their field of view narrowed down to a singular threat or risk they have been told is the one-and-only threat they must conquer.

So all of their attention goes there. It focusses down. Nothing else matters. Eventually they transfer their anger and rage at that enemy – which is Covid today – upon a more relatable a nearby object. Perhaps their neighbor. Perhaps the unvaccinated. Perhaps immigrants who are stealing their jobs, or those who aren’t taking Climate Change seriously enough.

With that transference, the path has been laid to re-trod some of the most awful and inhumane periods of history. We’re there again and our own integrity demands that we do what we can to avoid going any further down that path.

In this episode Mattias tells us what can be done. We must never resort to violence. We must be courageous and speak up. We must hold everyone with compassion. But most of all, we must speak up."

- https://www.peakprosperity.com/

Musical Interlude: Richard Harris, “MacArthur Park”, 1968

Richard Harris, “MacArthur Park”, 1968

"Decide..."

“We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”

- “Richard”, “Grey’s Anatomy”

"Stock Market Miracle Today; Mortgage Bailouts Are Over; FED is Buying It All; Foreclosure Flood"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 12/2/21:

"Stock Market Miracle Today; Mortgage Bailouts Are Over;

 FED is Buying It All; Foreclosure Flood"

"The Omicron Variant"

"The Omicron Variant"

by Brian Maher

“It [Omicron] will of course be used as an argument for more stimulus ahead…” We hazard Rabobank’s Michael Every is correct. Perhaps the potential for additional stimulus is why the stock market trampolined so high today. All three major indexes took mighty leaps after yesterday’s Omicron-induced frights. The Dow Jones gained 617 stimulus-expecting points. The S&P 500 added 64; the Nasdaq, 127. Safe haven gold was unsafe for haven seekers — down $15 and change today.

But we suspect the Omicron variant - so-called - will prove a phantom menace. By all indications it is a mere nuisance. It inflicts mild sniffles, coughs and irritations. One South African physician who has witnessed Omicron’s antics labels symptoms “very mild.” The few documented cases are healthy again, all recovered in full. These include the two United States cases. Omicron may actually represent a high blessing…

The Way to Herd Immunity? It is evidently greatly contagious. Yet also evidently, it lacks ferocity. The murderous passion is not in it. It will therefore spread far and it will spread wide… while leaving little wreckage. The infected will then acquire a sort of natural immunity. Since it will not kill its hosts but merely annoy them, they will hand it off to others. This punchless strain could then become the dominant strain.

We speculate of course. The Omicron variant may prove mightier than we envision. Yet the evidence to date indicates it will not. This hazardous material garment-wearer at Los Angeles International Airport almost certainly believes it will:

But in this we are extremely confident: The Omicron variant will become the warrant for additional government gooning.

More Vaccines! Dr. Fauci and his understrappers will bark that the unvaccinated are to blame for the variants. They will credit the vaccines for blunting Omicron’s lethality, rather than acknowledge the strain’s natural punchlessness. They will therefore yell louder and louder for vaccine mandates and universal vaccination - depend on it. For the fully vaccinated, they will require booster shots. Here Dr. Fauci allows the feline out of the burlap sack: "Even though we don’t have a lot of data on it, there’s every reason to believe that kind of increase that you get with the boost would be helpful at least in preventing severe disease of a variant like Omicron." The public health authorities will take their guidance from Europe…

The Return of the Gesundheitspass: Austria has once again imposed stringent lockups in response to rising infections. Austrians can exit their homes only for very limited reasons. Sixty-seven percent of its people are fully vaccinated. Yet it is evidently insufficient.

Just today Germany announced lockups for the unvaccinated. These recalcitrants will be largely banned from society, polite and impolite alike. They will only be permitted out of doors under limited circumstances. Is this the reincarnation of Nazi Germany’s Gesundheitspass - “health pass”?

More importantly… will the United States fall in behind Europe? Fortune magazine: "The jury is still out in the U.S. on how to deal with Americans who are unwilling to get vaccinated, but European countries are increasingly choosing the stick over the carrot as governments across the continent turn to hard-line methods from lockdowns to fines in order to coax the unvaccinated to take the jab. The message: Get vaccinated or don’t participate in society… Europe has often made COVID-19 moves before the U.S., and some analysts expect these measures to migrate across the Atlantic…"

No Exceptions: No exceptions are granted for the naturally immune, at least to our understanding. Yet studies indicate natural immunity confers up to 27 times the defense of vaccines. As we have asked before: Why would the naturally immunized require vaccination if their own immunity is vastly superior? We can conceive of no reason in law or equity why they would.

Yet we must all break to the common harness, we must all yank in one direction - young and old, robust and weak, healthy and sickly alike. We might grant the public health goons a fairer hearing if vaccines were reliable sentries. Yet the evidence indicates that they are not. A representative sample of the vaccinated are afflicted. Vaccines may limit hospitalizations and deaths - thank the Lord - but so do proven therapeutic treatments. Meantime, vaccination’s healthful effects appear to erode after several months. Hence the yelling for booster shots.

Russian Roulette: Yet each dose of vaccine presents risk. The precise numbers of severe side effects… and deaths… are not known. But they are likely far greater than reported. Perhaps by many multiples. Vaccine fatalities may run to the tens of thousands, dramatic side effects to the hundreds of thousands. And the risk of severe side effects increases with each needling. How many will suffer agonies when drilled with a fourth, a fifth, a sixth… a ninth booster?

Here is another possibility to be considered, which we have raised in earlier reckonings: The vaccines themselves may be propagating the very virus they are designed to rout. That is, the vaccines themselves may be frankensteining new variants into existence.

“It Is the Vaccination That Is Creating the Variants”: Dr. Luc Montagnier is a French virologist and 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Says he: “It is the vaccination that is creating the variants.” This Frenchman insists mass vaccination represents an “unacceptable mistake”: "It is an unacceptable mistake. The history books will show that, because it is the vaccination that is creating the variants… I will show you that they are creating the variants that are resistant to the vaccine."

How precisely are vaccines creating the variants? As bacteria outstrategize and outflank antibiotic medicines, viruses can - to our understanding - outstrategize and outflank vaccines. Vaccines force the virus to “evolve” in rapid fashion. Dr. Montagnier: "There are antibodies, created by the vaccine. What does the virus do? Does it die or find another solution? The new variants are a production and result from the vaccination. You see it in each country, it’s the same: The curve of vaccination is followed by the curve of deaths."

When the “Cure” Is the Problem: Here is Dr. Robert Malone - pioneer of the mRNA technology upon which these vaccines are structured - in agreement: "The most important reason why a universal vaccination strategy is imprudent tracks to the collective risk associated with how the virus responds when replicating in vaccinated individuals."

Here, basic virology and evolutionary genetics tell us the goal of any virus is to infect and replicate in as many people as possible…"The more people you vaccinate, the greater the number of vaccine-resistant mutations you are likely to get, the less durable the vaccines will become, ever more powerful vaccines will have to be developed and individuals will be exposed to more and more risk."

Neither Dr. Montagnier nor Dr. Malone represents a lone voice crying out from the wilds. Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is an authority on the science of vaccination. He has provided his expertise to Novartis and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to name some. According to this fellow: "There can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines."

A Saner Alternative: Here is irony itself… if true: The very hunt for the cure could push the cure beyond reach. And so the dog undertakes a merry chase of his tail. The tail, the virus, will always keep its lead over the dog, the vaccine. Does a saner alternative exist? Yes, argues Dr. Malone: "A far more optimal strategy is to vaccinate only the most vulnerable. This will limit the amount of vaccine-resistant mutations and thereby slow, if not halt, the current vaccine arms race…"

There has been much controversy over ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Yet with the emergence of a growing body of scientific evidence, we can be assured these two medicines are safe and effective in prophylaxis and early treatment when administered under a physician’s supervision. Numerous other useful treatments range from famotidine/celecoxib, fluvoxamine and apixaban to various anti-inflammatory steroids, vitamin D and zinc…

The American people deserve better than a universal vaccination strategy under the flag of bad science and enforced through authoritarian measures. The American people may deserve better. But as we have argued before: If these gentlemen are correct… and universal vaccination plows on… forcing additional devil variants…the American people may never get better."

- dailyreckoning.com

○

Related:

Free Download: "The Vaccine Death Report" (PDF)

"The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.

Facts: We aim to only present scientific facts and stay away from unfounded claims. The data is clear and verifiable. Over one hundred references can be found for all presented information, which is provided as a starting point for further investigation.

Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world. The severity of this situation compels us to ask this critical question: will we rise to the defense of billions of innocent people? Or will we permit personal profit over justice, and be complicit? Networks of lawyers all over the world are preparing class-action lawsuits to prosecute all who are serving this criminal agenda. To all who have been complicit so far, we say: There is still time to turn and choose the side of truth. Please make the right choice."

- https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/

○

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"

- Dr. Luc Montagnier

○

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

○

“The Great Global Depopulation Project”

Gerald Celente, "DOW Spikes; New Virus Restrictions Imposed; Danger Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, PM 12/2/21:

"DOW Spikes; New Virus Restrictions Imposed; Danger Ahead"

"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."

"What Do They Know? Insiders Are Dumping Stocks At A Pace Never Seen Before In All Of U.S. History"

Full screen recommended.

"What Do They Know? Insiders Are Dumping Stocks 

At A Pace Never Seen Before In All Of U.S. History"

by Epic Economist

"Something really strange is happening in U.S. financial markets over the past few weeks. CEOs and corporate insiders have been dumping stocks at a far faster rate than we have ever seen before. Do they know something the rest of us don't? If the stock market is booming as the media keeps insisting, and this rally will go on forever, like many investors want to believe, then why these insiders are selling their stocks as fast as they can before the year is over?

While some are still choosing to believe that stock prices will continue to soar into the stratosphere, those who are in the top-tiers of the market are heading for the exits. Of course, if they can see that a brutal stock market crash is fast-approaching, the perfect time to get out is now. After all, you can only make money in the stock market if you get out before the bubble bursts. And it seems like many of the richest people in the world have come to the realization that risks have become too big, especially with the emergence of a new variant that already triggered a crash in some stocks. Perhaps this is the best time to initiate sell-off mode before the whole market irreversibly collapses.

According to CNBC, some big names in the industry have been selling billions of dollars worth of stock over the past few weeks. At least $69 billion in stock have been recently dumped by CEOs and corporate insiders, as lofty share prices seemed to have reached their peak. This is the perfect window to collect profits before losing them.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the richest men on the entire planet each sold $10 billion in stock already. These insiders know that stock valuations can't stay this high if production is slowing down, and soon, the rest of the market is going to know that as well. They've just started to act before everyone else realized the actual risks they're in for. Interestingly, this sell-off has begun just as the U.S. economy has started to fall apart again.

We're currently facing the worst supply chain crisis in history. Our store shelves are getting emptier while inflation is pushing the price of everything to sky-highs. In fact, we haven't seen these levels of inflation since the 1970s. And the worsening chaos in our streets is compromising economic activity in many of our largest urban areas.

This Thanksgiving, brick-and-mortar sales dropped by 90.4% from 2019 levels, according to data released by Sensormatic. Retail giants were already expecting this to happen. That's why Target, Walmart and Best Buy opted to keep their doors closed to customers on the holiday. On Black Friday, retail sales dropped by 28.3% compared with 2019 levels, as consumers were faced with fewer choices and higher prices due to shortages and delivery delays. Inflation on everything from fuel to raw materials is leading businesses to pass on those increased costs to consumers.

Meanwhile, the latest manufacturing figures were quite a disappointment. Manufacturing rates today are lower than they were at the peak of the health crisis in 2020, tumbling 58.3 percent in November. At the same time, the mainstream media keep trying to put a positive spin on our economic issues. Just a couple of days ago, CNN published an article entitled “Why inflation can actually be good for everyday Americans and bad for rich people”. Inflation is rising way faster than wages. The cost of living is escalating at record speed. So how can you pay down your debt if you have to direct a bigger share of your monthly budget to afford the same things you used to a couple of years ago?

We also cannot forget that home prices are 'increasing in value' because the housing market is in a speculative bubble that only exists as long as the Fed keeps pouring more money into the system. But those days are counted, and artificially suppressed mortgage rates are about to soar. Home prices will have to readjust soon, which means that properties, just as stocks, will see their value crashing. And homeowners, just as frenzied investors, will be left scrambling with some painful financial losses.

Our standard of living is being destroyed, and millions of Americans are falling out of the middle class and straight into poverty. And those in a position of power across the global industry and markets can see that more economic damage is coming. That's why they've started to strategize before it's too late. There are many heavy clouds on the horizon. A perfect storm is just around the corner. And when it comes to 2022, you should get prepared for the worst-case scenario."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young. 

But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way's interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html

"A Realistic Attitude..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."

- Philip José Farmer

Gregory Mannarino, "And It Begins... Unvaccinated Lockdowns. Are Concentration Camps Next?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/2/21:

"And It Begins... Unvaccinated Lockdowns. 

Are Concentration Camps Next?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"It Better Be Worth It"

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Brain Differences in Psychopaths Identified"

"Brain Differences in Psychopaths Identified"

by Louise Pratt

"Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study are outlined in the paper 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy', published in 'Molecular Psychiatry.'

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment. Using a powerful imaging technique (DT-MRI) the researchers have highlighted biological differences in the brain which may underpin these types of behavior and provide a more comprehensive understanding of criminal psychopathy. Dr Michael Craig said: 'If replicated by larger studies the significance of these findings cannot be underestimated. The suggestion of a clear structural deficit in the brains of psychopaths has profound implications for clinicians, research scientists and the criminal justice system.'

While psychopathy is strongly associated with serious criminal behavior (eg rape and murder) and repeat offending, the biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood. Also some investigators stress mainly social reasons to explain antisocial behaviours. To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychopathy.

Earlier studies had suggested that dysfunction of specific brain regions might underpin psychopathy. Such areas of the brain were identified as the amygdale, ie the area associated with emotions, fear and aggression, and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the region which deals with decision making. There is a white matter tract that connects the amygdala and OFC, which is called the uncinate fasciculus (UF). However, nobody had ever studied the UF in psychopaths. The team from King's used an imaging method called in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) tractography to analyse the UF in psychopaths.

They found a significant reduction in the integrity of the small particles that make up the structure of the UF of psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological differences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviors.

Dr Craig added: 'This study is part of an ongoing program of research into the biological basis of criminal psychopathy. It highlights that exciting developments in brain imaging such as DT-MRI now offer neuroscientists the potential to move towards a more coherent understanding of the possible brain networks that underlie psychopathy, and potentially towards treatments for this mental disorder."

Contact: Louise Pratt, louise.a.pratt@kcl.ac.uk, King's College London

- http://www.eurekalert.org/

"The Sociopath Next Door"

"The Sociopath Next Door"

by Martha Stout

"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 6 percent of the population.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 6 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions."

- http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/spath.htm