"Authoritarian Madness: The Slippery Slope from Lockdowns to Concentration Camps"

"Authoritarian Madness: The Slippery Slope 

from Lockdowns to Concentration Camps"

by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

- Justice William O. Douglas

"In the politically charged, polarizing tug-of-war that is the debate over COVID-19, we find ourselves buffeted by fear over a viral pandemic that continues to wreak havoc with lives and the economy, threats of vaccine mandates and financial penalties for noncompliance, and discord over how to legislate the public good without sacrificing individual liberty. The discord is getting more discordant by the day.

Just recently, for instance, the Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and deploy the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.” In other words, lock up the unvaccinated and use the military to determine who gets to be “free.”

These tactics have been used before. This is why significant numbers of people are worried: because this is the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate. For a glimpse at what the future might look like if such a policy were to be enforced, look beyond America’s borders.

In Italy, the unvaccinated are banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and could face suspensions from work and monthly fines.

In Austria, anyone who has not complied with the vaccine mandate could face fines up to $4100. Police will be authorized to carry out routine checks and demand proof of vaccination, with penalties of as much as $685 for failure to do so.

In China, which has adopted a zero tolerance, “zero COVID” strategy, whole cities - some with populations in the tens of millions - are being forced into home lockdowns for weeks on end, resulting in mass shortages of food and household supplies. For those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19, China has constructed “quarantine camps” throughout the country: massive complexes boasting thousands of small, metal boxes containing little more than a bed and a toilet. Detainees - including children, pregnant women and the elderly -  were reportedly ordered to leave their homes in the middle of the night, transported to the quarantine camps in buses and held in isolation.

If this last scenario sounds chillingly familiar, it should. Eighty years ago, another authoritarian regime established more than 44,000 quarantine camps for those perceived as “enemies of the state”: racially inferior, politically unacceptable or simply noncompliant. While the majority of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor camps, incarceration sites and ghettos were Jews, there were also Polish nationals, gypsies, Russians, political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

Culturally, we have become so fixated on the mass murders of Jewish prisoners by the Nazis that we overlook the fact that the purpose of these concentration camps were initially intended to “incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime.”

How do you get from there to here, from Auschwitz concentration camps to COVID quarantine centers? Connect the dots.

You don’t have to be unvaccinated or a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to be worried about what lies ahead. You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not about COVID-19. Nor is it about politics, populist movements, or any particular country.

This is about what happens when good, generally decent people - distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps - fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains. It’s about what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual.

The slippery slope begins in just this way, with propaganda campaigns about the public good being more important than individual liberty, and it ends with lockdowns and concentration camps. The danger signs are everywhere.

Claudio Ronco, a 66-year-old Orthodox Jew and a specialist in 18th-century music, recognizes the signs. Because of his decision to remain unvaccinated, Ronco is trapped inside his house, unable to move about in public without a digital vaccination card. He can no longer board a plane, check into a hotel, eat at a restaurant or get a coffee at a bar. He has been ostracized by friends, shut out of public life, and will soon face monthly fines for insisting on his right to bodily integrity and individual freedom. For all intents and purposes, Ronco has become an undesirable in the eyes of the government, forced into isolation so he doesn’t risk contaminating the rest of the populace.

This is the slippery slope: a government empowered to restrict movements, limit individual liberty, and isolate “undesirables” to prevent the spread of a disease is a government that has the power to lockdown a country, label whole segments of the population a danger to national security, and force those undesirables - a.k.a. extremists, dissidents, troublemakers, etc. - into isolation so they don’t contaminate the rest of the populace.

The world has been down this road before, too. Others have ignored the warning signs. We cannot afford to do so. Which brings me back to the present crisis: COVID-19 is not the Holocaust, and those who advocate vaccine mandates, lockdowns and quarantine camps are not Hitler, but this still has the makings of a slippery slope.

The means do not justify the ends: we must find other ways of fighting a pandemic without resorting to mandates and lockdowns and concentration camps. To do otherwise is to lay the groundwork for another authoritarian monster to rise up and wreak havoc. If we do not want to repeat the past, then we must learn from past mistakes. January 27 marks Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a day for remembering those who died at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen and those who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Yet remembering is not enough. We can do better. We must do better.

As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries", the world is teetering on the edge of authoritarian madness. All it will take is one solid push for tyranny to prevail."

- https://www.rutherford.org/

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"Major Food Shortages at Walmart! It's Getting Ugly!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 1/26/22:

"Major Food Shortages at Walmart! It's Getting Ugly!"

"In today's vlog we visit Walmart, and witness a lot of soaring prices. With stores struggling to get in products we are also dealing with another issue of major food shortages. We will also check out the shelves as stores all across the country are having trouble."

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, "FED Day... Are Stocks About To Collapse Or Rip Higher?"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/26/22:

"FED Day... Are Stocks About To Collapse Or Rip Higher?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Worldwide Economy is in a Tailspin - Global Chaos"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 1/26/22:

"Worldwide Economy is in a Tailspin - Global Chaos"

"We can’t get away from the Chaos in the Economy. It is all around us. We see instability in every area of the entire world. The supply chain problems are everywhere, and they are not getting any better."

Greg Hunter, "Financial Cycle Down, War Cycle Up"

"Financial Cycle Down, War Cycle Up"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his cycle analysis shows the highs are in for the stock market, and it’s downhill from here - way downhill. Nenner’s analysis show major support was breached at the beginning of 2022. Nenner explains, “If it closes below the trend line, you better get out of the stock market, and it did. Now, in January, it has closed much lower that all the quarterly lows. This is not making lows on a daily chart but a quarterly chart, and that is much more important than short term. I did a report about how many stocks are in an uptrend and how many stocks are in a down trend. I think 50% is already in a bear market. 

There are just a few stocks that are holding up the market, like Microsoft, Apple, Google. I looked into what the earnings are, it was clear they are never going to sustain those prices. I think 1% of the stocks are holding up 40% of the S&P. Once they give in, the markets go down. A lot of people have already lost a lot of money because most stocks do not perform anymore. I think we are very close, and my target is still 5,000 (on the DOW). It seems very farfetched, but it you just do the math... 

The media will not help you. They will invite you if you talk about markets going up because the companies that want to advertise with them want to sell. So, very few companies like to talk about stocks going up and do not care if it goes up or down. We just tell you the truth.” Nenner says he and his clients are out of the stock market since the first of the year.

Nenner does cycle work for oil, the dollar, Bitcoin, interest rates and the bond market, to name a few. Nenner says interest rates have hit their lows and “are going up for the next thirty years.” Nenner thinks gold will be going up to at least $2,500 per ounce, but it has a short while before it starts moving up. Nenner says the only market investors should be long is the commodity markets. Commodities are going to go up for years to come, according to Nenner’s cycle work.

No cycle is more important to Nenner these days than the “War Cycle.” Nenner does not see a war with Russia, but he expects after the Winter Olympics in China, things are going to turn dramatically more intense with the CCP. Nenner says, “I think the big problem after the Olympics is going to be China. Nobody is going to do anything against China, and I think they are going to take over Taiwan. If the West is going to fight, then we have major war.” (There is much more in the 30-minute interview.)

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with 

renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner.

- https://rumble.com/

"Humanity Hanging From A Cross Of Iron"

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, 

you tell them to go and fight it.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Gerald Celente, "When All Else Fails They Take You To War"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, PM 1/25/22:

"When All Else Fails They Take You To War"

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"Let’s Not Have a War"

Bad idea...

"Let’s Not Have a War"

by Matt Taibbi

"The American foreign policy establishment, chasing decades of failures, appears to be seriously considering the unthinkable in Ukraine. Joe Biden last week said the American response in Ukraine would be proportional to Vladimir Putin’s actions. “It depends,” the president posited, thoughts drifting like blobs in a lava lamp. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion…”

Alarms sounded all over Washington. The rip in the national political illusion was so severe, Republicans and Democrats were forced to come out agreeing, leaping into each other’s arms in panic. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who increasingly looks like a man about to miss a historically important free throw, said of a potential Russian invasion, “We can make crystal clear the stark consequences of that choice.” Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Biden “shocked the world by giving Putin a green light to invade Ukraine.” The National Security Council issued a statement through Jen Psaki that any Russian move into Ukraine would be “met with a swift, severe, and united response.”

In a later press conference, Biden explained he had to cut things short because, “You guys will ask me all about Russia.” He appears days from pulling his pants down to show reporters the electrodes White House chief of staff Ron Klain has probably attached to his testicles by now.

This is a rerun of an old story, only with a weaker lead actor. Six years ago, Barack Obama gave an interview to The Atlantic quashing Beltway militarists’ dreams of war in Ukraine: "The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-Nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do… This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for."

Then as now, both blue and red propaganda outlets howled. The “core interest” of the Washington consensus is war. It isn’t just big business, but our biggest business, one of the last things we still make and export on a grand scale. The bulk of the people elected to congress and a lion’s share of the lobbyists, lawyers, and journalists who snuggle in a giant fornicating mass in the capital are dedicated to the upkeep of the war bureaucracy.

Their main purpose is growing the defense budget and militarizing the missions of other government agencies (from State to the Department of Energy to the CIA). Washington think-tanks exist to factory-generate intellectual justifications for foreign interventions, while attacking with ferocity - as if they were emergencies like pandemics or deadly hurricanes - the appearance of ideas like the “peace dividend” that threaten to move any of their rice bowls to some other constituency.

Both Biden’s comments and the “Obama doctrine” were fundamental betrayals, presidents saying out loud that there existed such a thing as “our” interests separate from Washington’s war pig clique. The latter group somehow believes itself impervious to error, and takes extraordinary offense to challenges to its judgment, amazing given the spectacular failures in every arena from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria.

These people consistently lose popularity contests to cannibals and fingernail-pullers, and their playbook - one play they run over and over, never deviating despite decades of disaster - is designed to reduce every foreign policy situation to contests of force. Their wag-the-dog thinking always argues the right move is the one that allows them to empty their boxes of expensive toys, from weapons systems to Langley-generated schemes for overthrows, which a compliant press happily calls regime change.

Obama looked at the big, muddy stretch of land atop the Black Sea called Ukraine and asked if its strategic importance was worth war. Meaning, real war, with an enemy that can fight back, not third-world pushovers in Iraq or Libya who offer as much resistance as the British colonial enemies Blackadder’s officers once described as being “two feet tall and armed with dried grass.” His answer was an obvious no. Ukraine has less strategic importance to the United States than Iraq, Afghanistan, even Kuwait for that matter.

No one will say it out loud, but the greatest argument against U.S. support for military action of any kind in Ukraine is the inerrant incompetence of our missions and the consistent record of destabilizing areas of strategic interest through our involvement, including in these two specific countries. At the moment the Berlin Wall fell the United States had almost limitless political capital with these soon-to-be ex-Soviet territories. We blew it all within a few years. Now that we’re really in trouble in Ukraine, why would we keep to the same playbook that got us here?"

- https://taibbi.substack.com/

"FED Will Trigger Economic Instability; Markets Want To Crash; Coming Crisis Will Seize Your Money"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/25/22:

"FED Will Trigger Economic Instability; Markets 

Want To Crash; Coming Crisis Will Seize Your Money"

"Food And Meat Shortage 2022! Global Starvation Plan Accelerates"

Full screen recommended.

"Food And Meat Shortage 2022! 

Global Starvation Plan Accelerates"

by Epic Economist

"We’re not ready for what’s coming next. The narratives we’re being told are only half the story. But in today’s video, we’re going to expose the whole truth. The information we’re about to share is extremely alarming, but it isn’t fair with our viewers to keep sugarcoating reality as the mainstream media always does. We all need to know what’s really going on, and the things no one dares to announce to the public. We must get ready while we still can.

It is true that the United States is suffering from stockouts of several items in thousands of grocery stores and supermarkets across the nation. It is also true that food supplies are getting tighter and tighter in every corner of the globe. Government authorities have been insisting that food shortages and our ongoing supply chain crisis are merely a result of the latest wave of infections and its ramifications on the labor market. But there’s more to it – much more. Something they haven’t been telling us is that inflation is climbing so rapidly that millions of farmers and food producers simply won’t be able to plant their crops this year.

In a recent article published by Michael Snyder, the economist unveiled an e-mail he received from a farming insider who allowed him to publicly share some of the content in it to the public as long as his name wasn’t revealed. Snyder highlighted that he has been corresponding with the insider for many years, but the information he shared this time around was simply shocking. The economist has been repeatedly warning about tightening food supplies over the past few years, and he argues that what we’ve experienced so far is just the beginning. But he didn’t realize how dire things have already become until he got that e-mail.

According to this farming insider, skyrocketing costs for fertilizer will make it impossible for millions of farmers and food producers to afford to plant corn this year. ‘The way I see it, a corn shortage will come,” he warned. “I guess there could possibly be a glut of soybeans, but remember that could depend on the seed being available. Of course, the corn market is much larger. Think animal feed and ethanol. What happens to the animal producers who depend on reasonably priced corn? I just don’t see how it can end well,” the farming veteran stressed.

“Even if we end up with plenty of soybeans, even a glut – then you’ll have a busted market for that,” he explained. “I don’t know. There just isn’t much history to base any of this on. I just see it hurting both grain farmers, and animal farmers, and also translating into more shortages and price increases for consumers who buy the end products,” the insider concluded. For his part, the economist said he was completely stunned when he read those messages. Considering that corn is one of the foundational pillars of America’s food supply, such a steep decline in production would mean that millions of food items that include corn in their ingredients will not be available in the stores anymore.

With fertilizer prices going through the roof all around the world, major food manufacturing regions, such as South America, are seeing these increased costs severely hamper corn production. Meanwhile, in Africa, fertilizer costs could result in an acute drop in demand, given that more and more farmers cannot keep up with rising prices, and in turn, that will crater food production in many countries.

Data released by the International Fertilizer Development Center, a global nonprofit organization pointed out that fertilizer demand in Africa could drop by 30% in 2022. That would translate to 30 million metric tons less food produced, which the agency says is equivalent to the food needs of 100 million people. This is beyond serious. What is the world going to look like without enough food for 100 million people? It is safe to say that many more hunger crises will emerge this year. That is absolutely devastating, and it feels like global leaders are taking our problems seriously. They will let things get unsustainable before they start acting.

Sadly, we have to start considering that supply shortages and empty shelves are the new normal. But realistically speaking, many people will still be caught off guard by the pace of this change. The world is quickly turning upside down, and global events have been accelerating at record speed. It’s been hard to keep up with it all of those changes, so we should all start paying very close attention. Now that you know all of this information, please don’t go back to sleep. This is not a drill. We’re heading to a horrifying future, and we all should start acting accordingly."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"

 

Marvin Gaye, 

"Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known. 

The galaxy's protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872's spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160426.html

"I Know..."

“I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”

- Cat Winters

Gregory Mannarino, "Down To The Wire: Tomorrow Expect The Markets To Move! FED Day Is Here"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/25/22:

"Down To The Wire: Tomorrow Expect 

The Markets To Move! FED Day Is Here"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they, and not the leaders of the government, control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain."

- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Ways We Numb Ourselves - Emerging from the Grey"

"Ways We Numb Ourselves - Emerging from the Grey"

by Madisyn Taylor

"Numbing yourself prevents you from confronting your issues and keeps you from ever finding resolution or peace.

We are born equipped to experience a complex array of diverse emotions. Many of us, however, are uncomfortable confronting our most powerful emotions. We may shy away from delight and despair and deny life's colors by retreating into a world of monotone grey. We may numb ourselves to what we are truly feeling. It's easier to suppress our emotions than to deal with them, so we may momentarily turn to pleasures such as alcohol, food, sugar, shopping and too much television. We may even numb our hearts. While it's normal to temporarily seek distractions as a means of coping with intense emotions, numbing yourself prevents you from confronting your issues and keeps you from ever finding resolution or peace. When you are numb, there is no pain or powerlessness, but there can also be no joy or healing.

The activities that numb you may seem harmless or pleasurable, but using them to numb yourself diminishes the quality of your life. Numbing yourself so that you don't have to feel intense emotions can often satisfy a surface need while blocking your awareness of a deeper need. You may find solace in food or shopping when what you really need is spiritual nourishment. The less you feel, the less alive you feel. Your feelings add vividness to your experiences and serve to connect you to the world around you. It is possible to disavow yourself of numbing behaviors a little at a time and once again taste life's rich flavors. When you sense that you are engaging in a particular behavior simply to deaden your emotions, stop and ask yourself why. Examining the feelings that drive you to numb yourself can help you understand what is triggering your desire to emotionally fade out.

With each numbing activity that you cut out of your life, you'll find yourself being more aware and experiencing a greater emotional acuity. Senses once shrouded by the fog of numbness become sharp and acute. Traumas and pain long hidden will emerge to the forefront of your consciousness and reveal themselves so that you can heal them. You'll discover a deeper you - a self that is comfortable experiencing and working through intense emotions with courage and grace."

- https://www.dailyom.com/

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Full screen recommended.

Pet Shop Boys, "Numb"

Lyrics: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petshopboys/numb.html

The Daily "Near You?"

Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Top Twenty Lessons Learned In 2021"

"Top Twenty Lessons Learned In 2021"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"The year 2021 was a shock. Here is an early sketch of what I think I’ve learned. 

1. Governments are fully capable of doing the unthinkable, and doing so suddenly with no exit plan, little consideration of cost, and a callous disregard for individual rights. 

2. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights are largely irrelevant when governments declare an emergency. 

3. The business lobby is far less powerful than I had previously assumed. 

4. Many politicians care more about their personal power than public opinion. 

5. People in general are less committed to their freedoms than I had previously believed. 

6. Economic understanding is rare. 

7. There is no such thing as settled science; scientists disagree, sometimes radically, and many times for political reasons. 

8. The structure of law and the regime are fully capable of dramatic and even overnight change. 

9. Influence is mysterious: the media report what fits their preferred narrative and ignore everyone with a different view. 

10. Professional credentials are useful but not decisive for any argument: in a crisis they are weaponized. 

11. People under duress, in the shock of lockdown, are capable of stunning lies and cruelty. 

12. Most people haven’t the slightest clue about how to think about statistics and hard science; for many people, data are mere abstractions.

13. Hardly any political lobby or interest group genuinely cares about the poor, working classes, or marginalized groups, at least not enough to put their interests above a political agenda. 

14. Very often people’s proclaimed “principles” are nothing but social signalling devices. 

15. The propagation of truth is burdened by disadvantages relative to error and lies. 

16. Known science is fully capable of vanishing in one generation. 

17. No matter how seemingly intelligent and impressive are our institutions, they are neither created nor managed by equally intelligent people. 

18. Markets are adaptive beyond anything I ever imagined possible. 

19. Psychological health for most people is bound up with possessing rights and freedoms. 

20. Individual moral courage is the society’s most precious treasure, as rare as it is powerful." 

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

And now...

The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"

"Quit Your Addiction"

 "Quit your addiction

to sneer and complaint.

Try a little flaunt,

Call for comrades

who bolster your vim

and offer you risk.

Corral the crones,

Goose the nice nellies,

Hunt the bear that hugs

and the raven that quoths.

Stay up all night

to devise a new dawn..."

- James Broughton,

 "Little Sermons of the Big Joy"

"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"Don't Wonder..."

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.

In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,

wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."

- "Grey's Anatomy"

"Nothing is Real for This Economy or the Markets"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/25/22:

"Nothing is Real for This Economy or the Markets"

"You can’t make this up. Nothing is real right now. Everything with our Economy from the stock market, supply chain and the Fed raising interest rates."

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Insanity of the West Accelerates"

"The Insanity of the West Accelerates"

by Paul Craig Roberts

"The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. "

- C. S. Lewis

"The New York Times reports that Biden is going to forestall Russian aggression against Ukraine by deploying between 1,000 and 5,000 US troops on Russia’s border and is prepared to increase the number of troops tenfold to 10,000 to 50,000 soldiers. A Russian army would eat this small number for a snack in 5 minutes. Clearly the purpose of the deployment is not military. The purpose is to heighten the “Russian threat” in the minds of the people in advance of a false flag event that will be blamed on the Kremlin.

If Biden wants to deter Russia all he needs to do is to give Russia the security guarantee she says she needs. Why does Biden want Russia to be insecure? The cause of the problem is obvious. In 2014 the US in an attempt to deprive Russia of her Black Sea naval base overthrew a Russian-friendly and democratically elected Ukrainian government and installed a neo-Nazi regime that began war against the Russian inhabitants of the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, formerly parts of Russia that had been transferred during the Soviet era into the the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian province.

To stabilize the situation, Russia hammered out the Minsk Agreement but neither Ukraine nor the Western signatories kept the agreement. Russia does not want the broke and troublesome Ukraine. Russia just wants Ukraine not to become a place for US missile bases. It is a simple demand easy to accept in the interest of peace.

But peace is unprofitable and is the last thing the US military/security complex wants. Therefore Washington is responding to the Russian/US/NATO security talks by deploying troops on Russia’s borders. The stupid British are stirring the pot of “Russian aggression” by withdrawing the embassy staff from Kiev. 

We have been hearing from US/NATO about the “growing Russian threat” for a long time. What happens to credibility that is already damaged if there is no Russian invasion? It seems that Washington and its NATO puppets are so far out on the limb that they simply must provoke a Russian invasion.

The Russians are waiting in vain for Washington’s written response to their proposal for mutual security. Washington has answered with more accusations, more provocations.

Is the Kremlin having difficulty understanding: (1) that Trump was removed from office because he said he wanted to normalize relations with Russia, (2) that Russia is the necessary enemy for the power and profit of the US military/security complex, and (3) Russia is regarded as the obstacle to US hegemony? How can it be that in the face of all evidence to the contrary the Kremlin has the delusion that Washington is interested in Russians feeling secure.

While the Kremlin wastes time, weapons pour into Ukraine and the Western media prepare their people for “Russian aggression.” Russian protests of intentions attributed to her are pointless. The Western media knows the required narrative and is not interested in any facts. The question really is whether Russia can accept that she has an enemy."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

- https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

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Related, highly recommended:

"U.S. Betrays Its Heritage by Threatening

 World War III Against Russia and China" (Excerpt)

by Anton Chaitkin

"Americans who cherish our country’s legacy are horrified by our headlong rush to war. America at its best was the very motor of world progress, higher living standards and peace. That is our true national identity. We betray “the better angels of our nature” by making military threats against those who are advancing world powers, as we once were. We commit suicide when we dishonor historic agreements that keep the world safe from nuclear annihilation.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. promised Russian leaders that the U.S.-led military alliance known as NATO would not be extended eastward toward Russia. The transatlantic Globalist war-making faction broke this promise. NATO has moved eastward with eight new members, heavily armed and hostile to Russia. The U.S. installed a far-right anti-Russian regime in Ukraine on Russia’s border, and armed them for conflict.

China has been similarly ringed by threatening U.S. fleets and military bases. Russia and China have made it plain they find this intolerable, and cannot permit it to go further. The world is hurtling toward the unimaginable horror of nuclear war."

- https://www.globalresearch.ca/

○

Gabbard: "Washington Elites Are In The 

Pockets Of The Military Industrial Complex"

○

"Putin: If Nukes Head Towards Russia We Are Going

 to Paradise But They Won't Have Time To Repent"

"Fourth Turning 2022: Bad Moon Rising" (Part 2) Excerpt

"Fourth Turning 2022: Bad Moon Rising" (Part 2)

Excerpt

by Jim Quinn

"In Part 1 of this article I laid out how the global elite have used this covid flu to manipulate the weak minded into a fear induced mass psychosis as a key element in their Great Reset plan to control the world and keep you technologically enslaved under lock and key. Now I will try to decipher how this mass hysteria might play out over the course of 2022 and beyond.

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” 

- Strauss & Howe, "The Fourth Turning"

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny

 and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” 

- George Orwell

The American Dream, where all Americans, no matter the circumstances of their birth, had a legitimate opportunity to live a better life than their parents, based upon their own intelligence, work ethic, and good fortune, is an illusion in today’s world. The ruling elite have stolen the wealth of the nation and its citizens. This was not an accident, but a plan implemented over many decades, accelerating after Nixon closed the gold window and opened the door to unlimited amounts of debt being created out of thin air and backed by nothing.

One of the Fed’s only mandates was to maintain a stable currency. Since its inception in 1913 to 2020, the USD had lost 96% of its purchasing power. The USD has lost 7.5% of its purchasing power since 2020, as Powell and his cronies have lost control of inflation.

It is not a coincidence this Fourth Turning was launched due to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street bankers blowing the largest debt bubble in history (until now), issuing fraudulent mortgage loans to millions of willing and able dupes who could never pay them back, packaging the loans into toxic derivative debt time bombs, bullying and paying off the spineless rating agencies to rate these worthless derivatives AAA, and then selling them to oblivious pension plans and innocent little old ladies. But they eventually ran out of greater fools and clueless suckers. The entire control fraud blew sky high in September 2008, representing the debt catalyst for this Fourth Turning.

For the past thirteen years of this Crisis, the puppets at the Federal Reserve have done as instructed by the Wall Street cabal and globalist billionaire oligarchs. They have papered over an unpayable debt problem by creating $8 trillion more debt and shoveling the proceeds into the pockets of the ruling billionaire oligarchy. The billionaire oligarchs and Wall Street bankers aren’t on the hook for the $30 trillion national debt and the other $100 trillion of unfunded social welfare and pension liabilities.

You, your kids, your grandkids, and unborn generations of hard-working citizens are on the hook. Our standard of living had been in a gradual decline since the 1970s, but we have entered the suddenly stage referenced by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises – “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

The Fed’s balance sheet stood at $800 billion at the start of this Fourth Turning, and now is $8.8 trillion and rising every day. The Repo crisis in September 2019 revealed a systemic glitch in the Fed’s well-oiled machine to pump up stock markets and guarantee unlimited profits for Wall Street. Coincidentally, a pandemic that had been simulated (Event 201) in October by Gates and his WEF cronies, conveniently struck in March 2020, with its very own multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign, and fear propaganda spouted 24/7 from the Big Pharma captured corporate media.

After a faux crash in the markets, the Fed rode to the rescue and has proceeded to print $4.8 trillion in the last two years. Meanwhile, the national debt, which stood at $9 trillion at the start of this Fourth Turning, reached $23 trillion prior to the Covid pandemic, will reach $30 trillion in the next month.

The question that might come to mind for the average person is, “how did the Fed’s actions in the last two years benefit me?”. Well, if you are a billionaire, you did fantastic. The ten richest men in America more than doubled their net worth since the March 2020 launch of their plandemic. Do you think this was an accident? Gates made $36.5 billion off the most heavily marketed flu in history, and he was the lowest among the ten. While your local family-owned hardware store went out of business, Bezos and his Amazon empire got further enriched, with Jeff’s net worth soaring by $75 billion, as his Washington Post did their darndest pumping fear porn propaganda to the ignorant masses.

These ten men added roughly $1 billion per day to their net worth. Compare that to what you earn per day at your job. When ten people rake in $730 billion during a “health crisis”, in which millions of workers were forced out of work or fired, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses were bankrupted, you know the fix was in from the beginning. The Fed’s job was to protect and enhance the wealth of the richest people on earth, while 80-year-old grandmothers got 0.1% on the money market account if they weren’t murdered by a Democratic governor in their nursing home.

America, where a multi-millionaire can achieve the dream of becoming a billionaire by just letting the Fed do their job – pumping stocks. America created 116 new billionaires in less than two years during a “terrible pandemic”, a 19% increase. The American Dream achieved by knowing the right central bankers. Are you paying attention?"

Please view this complete article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Massive Food Shortages At Meijer! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, AM 1/25/22:

"Massive Food Shortages At Meijer! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

"In today's vlog we are at Meijer with empty shelves everywhere! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a massive food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets: Make Or Break Not Over Yet"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/25/22:

"Markets: Make Or Break Not Over Yet"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"You Have Enemies?"

 

"10 Signs That Indicate That The U.S., The UK, Israel And NATO All Believe That We Are On The Precipice Of War With Russia"

"10 Signs That Indicate That The U.S., The UK, Israel And

 NATO All Believe That We Are On The Precipice Of War With Russia"

by Michael Snyder

"Are we about to stumble into a war that nobody wants? As I will explain below, it would be so easy to avoid a military conflict with Russia, but the people running our foreign policy have ruled out any easy solutions. Instead, they seem absolutely determined to have some sort of a macho showdown with Russia, and that is extremely dangerous. Sadly, these days most Americans can’t even identify our current Secretary of State, and the name “Jake Sullivan” means absolutely nothing to the vast majority of the population. But these are the guys that are telling the senile old guy in the Oval Office what to do about Russia.

What the Russians want is not complicated. They don’t want western missiles in Ukraine, and they don’t want Ukraine to join NATO. Those two requests are not unreasonable. Just imagine how we would feel if Canada joined a military alliance with Russia and all of a sudden there were Russian missiles stationed all along the U.S.-Canadian border. We wouldn’t like that very much, would we? Well, that is how the Russians feel about the situation in Ukraine.

The Russians have put their requests into two draft treaties, but those two draft treaties have been firmly rejected by the Biden administration… "Speaking to reporters following talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Friday, Blinken said that the American side had given a “firm and substantive” response to two draft treaties proposed by Moscow. “I made clear to Minister Lavrov that there are certain principles that the US, our partners and allies, are committed to defend. That includes those that would impede the sovereign right of the Ukrainian people to write their own future. There is no trade-space there – none,” he said."

If Blinken, Sullivan and the rest of Joe Biden’s national security team were actually competent, this crisis could be over by now. But instead they have made it clear that there will be absolutely no compromises. So where do we go from here?

The following are 10 signs that indicate that the U.S., the UK, Israel and NATO all believe that we are on the precipice of war with Russia…

#1 The U.S. State Department has issued a formal travel advisory warning that Americans should stay out of Ukraine.

#2 The U.S. and the UK are both reducing embassy staffing levels in Kyiv.

#3 Family members of U.S. embassy personnel in Kyiv are being evacuated.

#4 Israel is planning a “mass evacuation” of Jewish people from Ukraine.

#5 CNN is reporting that as many as “8,500 US troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment to Eastern Europe”.

#6 The New York Times is reporting that the Biden administration is also considering sending “warships and aircraft” into the region.

#7 Other western European nations are also preparing to send forces to eastern Europe… Denmark is sending a frigate and deploying F-16 warplanes to Lithuania; Spain will send warships and could send fighter jets to Bulgaria; and France stands ready to send troops to Romania.

#8 A British news source is reporting that “hundreds of military trains packed with Russian troops” have been moving into Belarus.

#9 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is alleging that the Russians are planning a “lightning war that could take out Kyiv”.

#10 The U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has announced that they have obtained information “suggesting that the Russian government is plotting to install a pro-Kremlin leader in Kyiv”.

Despite all of the hysteria, I personally do not believe that war will erupt immediately. But without a doubt, the stage is definitely being set for the sort of military conflict with Russia that I have been warning about for many years.

Meanwhile, the U.S. also continues to provoke China. This weekend, two U.S. aircraft carrier groups “began operations in the South China Sea”… "Two US aircraft carrier groups have entered the disputed South China Sea as Chinese Air Force planes continue to fly near Taiwan, which China also claims. The US Navy says two carrier strike groups, led by the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, began operations in the South China Sea on Saturday."

If you really want to piss off China, that is a great way to do it. In response, the Chinese sent large numbers of warplanes into Taiwanese airspace on Sunday and Monday… "On Monday, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense said 13 Chinese planes flew into the country’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Taiwan reported 39 Chinese Air Force planes in the protected air space on Sunday."

I know that the Russians are getting far more attention from the mainstream media right now, but we are also getting dangerously close to a military conflict with the Chinese. The national security team that Joe Biden has surrounded himself with are extremely incompetent, and they are also a bunch of warmongers. Needless to say, that is an exceedingly combustible combination.

It is the worst national security team in the history of the United States by a wide margin, and I am entirely convinced that they are going to spark a war. Hopefully it will not be next week or even next month, but without a doubt the clock is ticking. These warmongers are making colossal mistake after colossal mistake, and it won’t be too long before we all pay a great price for their ineptitude."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

○

1/24/22: "NATO Puts Forces on Standby; 

US Carrier Group in Mediterranean goes under NATO Command; 

Australia & UK Evacuating Diplomats from Ukraine; 

Australia Telling Citizens to Leave Now"

"I’m Afraid Supply Chain Collapse Is Just Getting Started"

Full screen recommended.

"I’m Afraid Supply Chain Collapse Is Just Getting Started"

Skip to 2:38 to avoid ad.

by Epic Economist

"The catastrophic collapse of the global supply chain is calling a lot of attention in recent weeks. Everyone seems to be worried about the breakdown of this complex system that allows goods to move around the world. From finding groceries at your local supermarket to buying a new car or domestic appliances, every good across the chain seems to be scarce. On top of that, deliveries are facing massive delays and consumers’ options are getting increasingly limited. Many people are still wondering why is all of this still happening. After almost two years of persistent disruptions, the government has vowed to fix our current supply chain issues. But up until this point, things have only gotten more entangled and the crisis has been severely aggravated. There are many reasons behind this complex problem, and in an analysis recently published by the economist and financial expert James Rickards, we can find a more detailed answer.

First, we have to consider that the supply chain is an extensive, interconnected and dynamic system, and when any complex system collapses, looking for a specific cause won’t take us anywhere. This sort of internal chain collapse happens because these systems are essentially too large and too reliant on one another, they also require an extraordinary amount of energy inputs to keep running. So any specific cause cited by government authorities and the so-called experts is more likely to be a symptom rather than a true cause. And although that may be frustrating, it’s not possible to solve a complex problem with a simple solution. But now, it has reached everything. And it’s not just grocery stores. As Rickards explains, it’s every supermarket, convenience store and retail outlet from coast to coast. And, of course, it’s not just cleaning products and paper goods. Your local store might have empty shelves for eggs, meat, canned goods, peanut butter, milk and many other staples.

Evidently, stockouts of certain goods happen from time to time, but the shortages we’re witnessing right now are far more widespread than they’ve ever been. In every store you enter, you can be sure that something will be missing and some of the shelves will be bare. And yet, the government and the mainstream media are still trying to push the narrative that this crisis is going to end soon, and that steps are being taken to alleviate shortages and backlogs and everything will be back to normal in a short while. They have been blaming the ongoing shortages on the new surge of virus cases and the number of workers currently sick. They argue that things will be calmer once the outbreak is put under control. But that’s the narrative, not the reality. There’s growing evidence that the supply chain crisis is just beginning, and it will stay with us for years and have some major economic consequences.

Supply chains are global, and given that everything is connected, everything is collapsing all at once. On the other side of the globe, conditions are pretty chaotic, too. China, the world’s leading manufacturer, is shutting down factories at a large scale due to newly confirmed vírus cases. The country has a zero-tolerance policy, in which even a single new infection case can trigger a lockdown.

This situation is considerably aggravating, and it will worsen even further as more as we move toward the Beijing Olympics and the Lunar New Year holidays in China. That’s to say, as the world’s largest producer is shutting down production for now and for many months to come, we will continue to feel the impacts of this here in America, and it’s safe to say that most people are not prepared for what’s coming next. These disruptions are likely to persist for years, and most investors are still not pricing all the risks it poses. It won’t be simple to solve it and it’s definitely not something that can be fixed quickly. Supply chain problems will be translated into higher costs, lower earnings, and ultimately lower stock prices in the market. And with indexes nearing or at all-time highs, now more than ever it is time to move away from vulnerable assets before the supply chain reality catches up with the stock market bubble – because when it does, things will be disastrous."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”

by Brian Maher

"The stairs up… and the elevator down. Here you have the stock market’s general rate of travel, depending upon its direction of travel. The stock market has lately made tremendous speed - downward. It has been imprisoned within a plunging elevator car, stark with terror, abandoned to the mercies of merciless gravity.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ascended the staircase to 36,952 by Jan. 5 - just prior to abandoning it for mechanical, accelerated transport. The doors proceeded to slam closed… a fraying cable relented… and the index began careening earthward. Under three weeks later, today, the Dow Jones goes at 34,354 - a 2,500-point joyless ride down the chute. It was careening nearly another 1,000 points today… until very late in the afternoon. The Dow Jones then began to rise and rise - as if under magical influence, as if by some occult magnetism, as if by conjury. It closed trading up a miraculous 99 points, at the aforesaid 34,354.

Mysterious Levitation: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite have been jammed into the identical elevator, enduring identical horrors. The S&P quit the stairs on Jan. 4, at the level of 4,818. Into the elevator car it went... Today, it was down to 4,333 - a nearly 500-point plummeting to the lower floors. Yet the same wizardry that worked upon the Dow Jones late in the day pulled upon the S&P. The index scratched out a 12-point gain by closing whistle.

The Nasdaq plunged over 2,000 points across the same span. It has in fact gone freefalling into “correction” - defined officially as a 10% falling from recent peaks. But precisely like the other major indexes, the Nasdaq got a good hauling up today, and at the identical time. It closed trading with an 86-point gain.

What Happened? Explains CNBC: "Stocks mounted a dramatic comeback on Monday as investors stepped in to buy beaten-up tech shares… Investors began Monday’s session dumping technology shares as they have all month on fears the Federal Reserve would soon aggressively tighten policy. But those shares rebounded as the day went on with Facebook-parent Meta, Amazon and Microsoft closing higher…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 1,000 points, before coming back to close about 100 points higher. The S&P 500 was off by nearly 4% at its session low but managed to eke out a small gain. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.6% after falling as much as 4.9%."

The article cites “fears the Federal Reserve would soon aggressively tighten policy.” Once again, CNBC: "Though some areas of the market considered more expensive or speculative began to struggle in November, the broader market took a big step back during the first week of January following increasing hints from the Federal Reserve that the central bank will take aggressive action to slow down the jump in consumer prices…

The central bank has signaled that it plans to stop its asset purchases, hike rates and possibly reduce its balance sheet, starting in March. Government bond yields have surged in preparation for the rate increases, with the U.S. 10-year Treasury rising more than 40 basis points this year alone…"

Did Investors Simply “Buy the Dip”? Yet why did Meta, Amazon and Microsoft close higher after losing to gravity much of the day? Why the late jumps? Why the nearly 1,100-point swing of the Dow Jones? We have rarely witnessed such a violent market schizophrenia within such a tight stretch. Did the fears besieging markets for the past weeks scatter suddenly late this afternoon? We can discern little reason why they would.

Experts would have us believe investors simply bought “the dip” late this afternoon. JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic: "The recent pullback in risk assets appears overdone, and a combination of technical indicators approaching oversold territory and sentiment turning bearish suggest we could be in the final stages of this correction." Just so. Yet this lovely theory leaves us far from convinced.

A Possible Clue: Did investors discover the technical indicators only late in the day? We hazard markets were “oversold” throughout the morning and much of the afternoon. So then, what was the source of enchanting white magic? Why did stocks abruptly reverse today’s vicious plummet? Perhaps the algorithms initiated stock purchases once markets approached a particular floor.

Yet perhaps Mr. Kolanovic gives another clue, an unintentioned clue: "While the market struggles to digest the rotation forced on it by rising rates… in a worst-case scenario could see a return of the “Fed put.”

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”: Perhaps markets decided the Federal Reserve will ride heroically to their rescue. It has proven a safe wager in the past. Perhaps, even, someone within the Federal Reserve whispered into someone’s ear that its asset purchases will continue - that it will repair the elevator before the plummets continue. We have no answer of course. Perhaps - unlikely though it is - the experts are correct. Markets are oversold and investors sniffed opportunity.

We extended a line to our colleague Dave Gonigam of The 5 Min. Forecast late this afternoon. Perhaps his spies had reported rumors, we wondered. They did not. Mr. Gonigam could only raise his arms up into the air… and sigh: “Nothing is rational anymore.” We have arrived at the identical conclusion. Nothing is rational anymore — nor has anything been rational for years and years.

Twisting the Signs on the Road to Price Discovery: For years the Federal Reserve twisted the road signs on the road to price discovery. East is west, west is east. North is south and south is north. Or is north west? Is west south? No one can say. The Federal Reserve has blocked off every southbound lane … and detoured all traffic into one single lane heading north.

The Fed’s Monster Dilemma: Or to return to our elevator analogy: The Federal Reserve has kept the elevator car ranging between the upper floors. Yet it now has a burgeoning inflation on its hands. It must tighten monetary policy in order to scotch it. Yet those trapped in the elevator car require monetary easiness. The one question then remains: Will the Federal Reserve let the elevator go crashing to the ground?"

- dailyreckoning.com