Friday, February 11, 2022

The Poet: Rolf Jacobsen, "When They Sleep"

"When They Sleep"

"All people are children when they sleep.
There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
God, teach me the language of sleep."

- Rolf Jacobsen,
"The Roads Have Come to an End Now" 

"I Would Rather Have..."

"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam

The Daily "Near You?"

Mustang, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Only Difference..."

“The only difference between the Republican and Democratic
parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when
corporations knock on their door. That’s the only difference.”
- Ralph Nader

"Dishonesty is a Bad Business Plan"

"Dishonesty is a Bad Business Plan"
by Jim Kunstler

“Perhaps for the ruling class the only thing that would be more terrifying than seeing children go to school without masks is the idea of losing elections.” - Grace Curley, "The Spectator"

"The whopping untruths launched onto the people of Western Civ by their governments reformatted the brains of millions so badly that they shuffled obediently into a mass formation and ran over a buffalo jump. What a stampede it has been!

But suddenly, the remaining buffaloes are balking at the cliff’s edge, seeing the bodies pile up below. Some of the bulls have even turned the other way and started charging back across the darkling prairie at the creatures driving the herd with their klaxons of deceit. All authority, from Vienna to Vancouver stands revealed as psychopathic - it apparently seeks to kill and injure as many as possible. Talk about the needle and the damage done! Why else persist with vaccines that don’t work and which provoke the most lethal disease mechanisms as side-effects?

The most mysterious element of the story, of course, is what motivated the various actors in this accursed melodrama. You could start by asking Dr. Anthony Fauci why he suggested this week the need for yet another round of the same mRNA booster shots that already proved completely ineffective against the omicron generation of Coronavirus. People are dropping dead from the boosters. Each successive shot sends a fresh cargo of toxic artificial spike proteins into the bloodstream, which remain at work for more than a year, insidiously gumming up the capillaries of vital organs and throwing toggle switches in the coded proteins of immune systems that turn off the body’s natural defenses against a panoply of diseases, including cancers. The life insurance companies are starting to notice and squawk about the astounding rise in all-causes mortality. Nobody else in the loop dares to speak up, most conspicuously the doctors, except a brave few… McCullough, Malone, Kory, Bhattacharya, Kheriaty, Cole, Risch, Marik, Urso….

Dr. Fauci, of course, has an entire career of public health malpractice to cover up. In his quest for medical immortality, he bungled the institutional response to the AIDS epidemic, introducing toxic drug protocols still inexplicably in use today - namely, AZT, which got FDA approval despite its botched 1986 Phase II trials. Next, Dr. Fauci attempted a miracle cure for the terrifying Ebola virus: remdesivir. More botched trials. Anyway, the drug didn’t work against Ebola. But he hauled it out again for his crowning creation, Covid-19, and got the NIH to anoint remdesivir as the standard-of-care for hospital in-patients - at the same time that he got the bureaucracy to ban and demonize effective early treatment protocols, including ivermectin and HCQ - while pushing his next-gen miracle cure, the mRNA vaccines, which also flunked their rushed and inept trials.

Remdesivir provokes renal failure in five days, leading to fluid build-up in the lungs, and the doctors were unable to discern the deadly side-effects from the supposed symptoms of Covid-19 itself. What’s more, the public health authorities gave a $17,000 bonus to hospitals for each course of remdesivir given, and additional cash for reporting deaths as Covid-related. Quite a racket. The net result is hundreds of thousands of deaths from mass medical malpractice, and ultimately the ruin of the entire racketeering-based US medical system.

Henceforth, doctors will have to battle strenuously against being regarded as dangerous quacks, while the entire scaffold of conglomerate hospitals and group practices founders and falls. You have no idea what a sh*tstorm of lawsuits is barreling toward the medical establishment when the fog of propaganda finally lifts and the public can see what has been perpetrated against it. Criminal indictments against Dr. Fauci and some of his colleagues should follow in a sane world, and there’s a chance that the world is beginning to swerve back a little closer to sanity - where a respect for truth and the rule-of-law can re-energize the collective public conscience.

The Democratic Party rode this public health fiasco into power in the USA and has abused its prerogatives exorbitantly in its quest for power without purpose… other than for more power to push people around. The Democratic Party used Covid to enable the ballot fraud that drove its nemesis, Mr. Trump, from office - and dearly wanted the same excuse to use it again this year. For weeks now, the party has been dithering between a quadrupling down of its insane Covid mandates and the fretful recognition that too much news of its Covid crimes and turpitudes has gotten out.

Tens of millions heard the three-hour Joe Rogan interviews with Doctors McCullough and Malone, in which they laid out the shocking facts about the rise of medical tyranny, the propaganda campaign supporting it out of the old news media networks, and the obscene machinations of a rogue pharmaceutical industry drunk on profits. Those two long and thoughtful conversations with McCullough and Malone have shifted the public’s perception of what has gone on, and their participation with other doctors in Senator Ron Johnson’s recent hearings, have thrown the Party of Covid and Chaos completely off-balance.

The uprising of Canadian truckers inspires a general resistance to being pushed around by over-reaching elected officials and their bureaucratic subalterns, and the truckers’ example is being followed all over Western Civ. Wait until the American truckers get in the act, representing a vast class of citizens who have taken a beating for more than two years and, increasingly, have nothing left to lose.

Following the lame, coordinate campaign to discredit Joe Rogan, the Democrats and their accomplices in the news media went into a desperate pivot this week, attempting brazenly to pretend that they can walk away from what amounts to their abetting of mass murder. The midterm elections loom darkly. Not only can they be kicked out of legislative power, but there’s an excellent chance that their hapless, grifter president, “Joe Biden” can be impeached and convicted by a new Congress for bribery and treason, and the vice-president along with him for high crimes, leading to the installing of a new speaker of the house (not a Democrat) as president. Between the congressional investigations that would follow, and the appointment of a new attorney general, the prosecutions can commence and the country can begin the rehabilitation of its conscience."

"Never Be A Spectator..."

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
- Christopher Hitchens

Gregory Mannarino, "Critical Updates: More Fear, More Propaganda, More Lies - Ignore It All"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/11/22:
"Critical Updates: More Fear, 
More Propaganda, More Lies - Ignore It All"

"American Idle"

"American Idle"
No work, no love and no way out...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - “A man with no means of filling up time is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain.” ~ George Orwell

"Yesterday, the rock and the hard place came closer together. CNBC reports: "Inflation surges 7.5% on an annual basis, even more than expected and highest since 1982, was even higher than the Wall Street estimate. Consumer prices surged more than expected over the past 12 months, indicating a worsening outlook for inflation and cementing the likelihood of substantial interest rate hikes this year."

The Fed’s room for maneuver is narrowing. Inflate or Die. Either it allows inflation to continue (and get worse)… or it kills the bubble economy. Most people believe the Fed will do ‘the right thing’ – after exhausting the other possibilities; it will raise its key rates, allow a bear market on Wall Street... and a recession on Main Street. We doubt it. America’s ruling elites depend on the Fed to do the wrong thing; it is not likely to let them down.

But this week we’ve focused on the other side of the inflation equation. Money is what the Fed produces. Goods and services are produced by the economy. More money and/or less ‘stuff’ = higher inflation. We’ve been looking at the men and women who produce stuff… and wondering why they don’t produce more of it.

Backing up… The elite has been corrupted by power and money. Fed governors put in their buy/sell orders… and then make important announcements. Retired generals get cushy sinecures with Raytheon and General Dynamics. Journalists skew the ‘news’ to promote their favorite programs and try to cancel contrary opinions. And as the Fed pumps more money into the stock market, they – the rich – get richer.

Naturally, ambitious young people want to join them. But most only become debt-enslaved janissaries – loyally protecting ‘the system’ as long as it keeps interest rates low and lets them borrow more.

A Common Plight: Meanwhile, thanks to more and more ‘transfer’ payments… and a growing disgust with being ripped off and despised… the working stiffs are staying home. Here’s Andrew Yang on the plight of the common man: "Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners."

Economic transformation has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000. People without much income don’t spend much money. You can see that playing out in the final sales numbers (less inventories). Despite press reports of a “healthy recovery,” final sales rose only 0.08% in the third quarter of last year… and only 1.88% in the 4th quarter.

David Stockman further reports that used car prices have continued to shoot up – by 85% over the last year. Unfortunately, used wheels are how much of the proletariat rolls. And now – with average monthly payments of $500 plus – the average American cannot even afford a USED car.

The Unhappy Idle: But wait… didn’t Joe Biden just pat himself on the back for creating – CREATING! – 6.6 million new jobs in his first year? Of course, he created not a single job. The economy creates jobs. And lately, it is creating far fewer than advertised.

James Dale Davidson comments: "ADT, the private employment services company that calculates from real numbers, reports that U.S. companies SHED 301,000 employees last month. That is credible evidence of a weakening economy, not one in the midst of a growth surge."

Take a closer look at the government’s own statistics. The Labor Department’s official numbers don’t entirely black out the real picture. If you discount their “seasonal revisions,” which can be pure poppycock, the BLS data show that before adjustment, the economy LOST 272,000 jobs last month. The ‘hours worked’ figures are clearer. No jiggling. No joggling. Just count them up. The index of ‘aggregate hours worked’ is still lower than it was in 2019.

By our count, that leaves about 150 million adults – men and women – with a lot of time on their hands, including 90 million more unemployed adults than there were in 1970. What happens to them?

Andrew Yang again: "Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” - those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism - have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years."

If Freud is right, and work and love are the primary sources of human happiness, there must be a lot of idle, unhappy people. With no work to fill their time, maybe love becomes more important? Alas, that too seems to be out of reach. Yang: Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.

No work. No love. “No cream in my coffee. No sugar in my tea.” What is left? Here’s a headline from USA Today. "Fentanyl Kills More Young Americans Than COVID…" Do too many young people put that water bucket on the ground… leaving them with nothing to do and no reason to do it? We don’t know. But there is always more to the story… and this must be part of it. Enjoy your weekend..."

"There Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio

"Wake-Up Call"

"Wake-Up Call"
by Jim Kunstler

"How many times have I reminded you that history is a prankster? Who would have guessed that Canada, demure, inoffensive, shrinking violet among nations, would rise to lead a world-wide revolt against the Satanic dominion of digital neo-Bolshevism? I mean, what else can you call it - this political Saint Vitus Dance sweeping Western Civ that seeks to destroy every constitutional liberty, deprive citizens of life, property, and even language, and reduce every individual to an internet-surveilled and controlled automaton… this global megalomaniacal mental illness posturing as “government?”

Well, now it has happened, and the head of Canada’s government, Justin Trudeau - arguably the most fatuous would-be tyrant in the former “Free World” - has failed to emerge from his hidey-hole for the better part of a week, perhaps afraid of seeing his shadow like the groundhog of legend, and it begins to look as if his days as Prime Minister grow short. It’s rumored that the Canadian military told Mr. Trudeau in plain un-Woke Canadian English to fuck-off, they will not take orders to put down the truckers’ protest, and even the Mounties are wobbling, so it’s left to the Ottawa police, who threaten to arrest anyone aiding the truckers with food, water, and fuel. Wait and see how quickly that will turn to fighting in the streets. Constitutional crisis, ay?

Meanwhile, a dozen or so other members of the Western Civ Club of Nations are ditching their Covid-19 mandates and restrictions. The reason: despite the mighty forces of deliberate organized mind-f**kery and resulting mass delusion, the Covid-19 “vaccines” are finally revealed as a criminal fraud, a danger to all who submitted to them, and an insult to the age-old accrued intelligence of the human race as used-to-be represented by science, ethics, and law.

And still, America’s own putative leader, the empty suit known as “Joe Biden,” had the temerity to go on TV last week and once again tell his sore-beset people to “get vaccinated… get your kids vaccinated!” Who does he think he’s speaking to? The counter-information to Tony Fauci’s criminal bullshit is flooding the zone, despite America’s sinister Intel Community attempting to control the captured and discredited legacy news media.

Just last night CBS’s 60-Minutes told its audience that our hospitals are overwhelmed by the unvaccinated with Covid, which is an outright lie. Maybe we should start asking: who are the individual producers and network executives responsible for this arrant mendacity? Would it be interesting to see them in a court of law, having to answer whether they believe their own bullshit? Or is someone telling them to sell it?

Some powerful counter-information to The Official Narrative emerged last week from the US military’s own Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) when several whistleblower doctors revealed to attorney Tom Renz heretofore suppressed statistics on the shocking increase in vaccine injuries among young, otherwise able-bodied soldiers. Have a look at the list reported out of Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack newsletter:

●  Number of Diseases & Injuries Reported By Year (Hospitalization) up 37%
● Diseases of the Nervous System By Year up 968%
● Malignant Tumor Reports By Year up 276%
● Acute Myocardial Infarct Reports By Year up 343%
●  Myocarditis Reports By Year up 184%
●  Pericarditis Reports By Year up 70%
Pulmonary Embolism Reports By Year up 260%
● Congenital Malformations Reports By Year up 87%
● Nontraumatic Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Reports By Year up 227% Reports By Year up 2,361%
● Suicide Reports By Year up 227%
● Neoplasms for All Cancers By Year up 218%
● Malignant Neoplasms for Digestive Organs By Year up 477%
● Neoplasms for Breast Cancer By Year up 469%
● Neoplasms for Testicular Cancer By Year up 298%
● Female Infertility Reports By Year up 419%
● Dysmenorrhea Reports By Year up 221.5%
● Ovarian Dysfunction Reports By Year up 299%
● Spontaneous Abortion Reports By Year DOWN by 10%
● Male Infertility Reports By Year up 320%
● Guillian-Barre Syndrome Reports By Year up 520%
● Acute Transverse Myelitis Reports By Year up 494%
● Seizure Reports By Year up 298%
● Narcolepsy & Cataplexy Reports By Year up 352%
● Rhabdomyolysis By Year up 672%
● Multiple Sclerosis Reports By Year up 614%
● Migraine Reports By Year up 352%
● Blood Disorder Reports By Year up 204%
● Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) Reports By Year up 2,130%
● Cerebral Infarct Reports By Year up 294%

This is not the first time the nation has learned about vaccine injuries - the CDC’s VAERS registry has reported out massive problems with the Moderna, Pfizer,and J & J “vaccines” since early summer of 2021. (In fact, adverse events are notoriously under-reported by perhaps 100-times.) Now the FDA has gone and issued a full approval of the Moderna vaccine, without convening the customary expert advisory panel. The documents explaining the FDA’s decision were scrubbed from the FDA’s website. The FDA spox responded to questions about it saying, “We are aware of the issue and hope to have the document reposted as soon as possible.” So far, the docs are still missing-in-action. The primary objective of this approval seems to be adding the Moderna mRNA vax to the protocol for children, which would permit the disabling and murder of millions of innocents. This is exactly what “Joe Biden” is calling for. And by the way, adding it to the children’s vaccine schedule supposedly continues Moderna’s shield of immunity from lawsuits. Just remember: in law, fraud vitiates that protection.

We now enter a period of danger as the sleepwalkers of America awaken from their induced consensus trance and begin to understand how they were harmed, swindled, and robbed by a corrupt, criminal officialdom. It will hurt badly because the public wanted so desperately to believe that vaccines would make them safe from the mysteriously conjured Covid-19 virus - and, more than that, would cure their gnawing anxiety over the wreckage of American life caused by what appears to be leadership hostage to sinister forces.

I must say, I believe the truth of our predicament will grow a whole lot weirder as we stumble into springtime. The weirdest part of all will be when America learns exactly who and what have been the prime generators of our disorder. The disillusionment will be cosmic."

"How It Really Is"

"Economic Market Snapshot 2/11/22"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"Economic Market Snapshot 2/11/22"
Updated as available.
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
Latest Market Analysis, Updated 2/7/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Feb. 10th to 11th 2022
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts

Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... 
And now... The End Game...

"Is The Real Rate Of Inflation More Than Twice As High As The Number We Were Just Given?"

"Is The Real Rate Of Inflation More Than Twice 
As High As The Number We Were Just Given?"
by Michael Snyder

"I warned you that inflation was going to get worse. On Thursday, we learned that the consumer price index was 7.5 percent higher in January than it was a year ago. We are being told that this was the highest reading since February 1982, and that sounds really bad. But it isn’t exactly honest, because the truth is that the way the inflation rate is calculated has been changed more than two dozen times since 1980. So if we are going to compare the rate of inflation today to historical numbers, we should actually be doing an apples to apples comparison.

Fortunately, there is someone out there that takes care of the math for us. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1990, the official rate of inflation would be above 10 percent right now. And if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be above 15 percent right now. In other words, using the same methodology that the government used in 1980 would give us an official rate of inflation that is more than double the official number that we have just been given.

Wow.

Many have compared the current crisis to the Jimmy Carter era, but the truth is that we are now surpassing anything that we witnessed back then. On her Twitter account, Washington Post columnist Heather Long shared some specific numbers from the inflation report which show where American consumers are being hit the hardest…

Used cars 40.5% y/y
Gas 40%
Rental cars 29%
Utility gas 24%
Hotels 21%
Furniture 20%
Bacon 18%
Steak 17%
Peanut Butter 15.5%
Pork 14.5%
Fish 13%
Eggs 13%
New cars 12%
Electric 11%
Chicken 10%
Oranges 10%

I am particularly concerned about the rise in energy prices. According to the Labor Department, energy prices overall are up a whopping 27 percent over the past year… "The Labor Department reported that gasoline prices have skyrocketed 40% over the past year, while natural gas has surged 22.6% and electricity is up 10.7%. A gallon of gas, on average, cost $3.47 nationwide Thursday, according to AAA, up from $2.47 a year ago. In California, gas prices are well over $4 per gallon."

In all, energy prices have climbed more than 27% over the course of the past 12 months. A lot of people expect that this new energy crisis will just be “temporary” just like the energy crisis of the 1970s was. But this time is very different.

As I have discussed previously, easily accessible energy reserves are steadily being depleted, and that means that we are going to become increasingly dependent on energy reserves that are more costly to extract. In addition, major financial institutions have become extremely hesitant to fund projects that have anything to do with traditional forms of energy. They don’t want to be seen as “contributing to global warming”, and so they are focusing on funding alternative energy projects instead. But alternative energy sources are not producing enough to keep up with global demand.

So we are now facing a major crunch, and it isn’t going to go away. In fact, it is only going to get worse. On Thursday, Joe Biden promised to “work like the devil to bring gas prices down”. Really? Exactly how does he plan to do that? He already ordered a very large release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve back in November, and that didn’t work. And that was actually a very stupid thing to do, because we are going to need those reserves someday.

The cost of food continues to rise very aggressively as well. According to CNBC, one way that Americans can cope with this is by eating less meat and less dairy… "Meat and dairy tend to be the more expensive items at the supermarket, and especially of late. In response, aim to make more meals that don’t rely on them as the central ingredient, Brown said. Using meat sparingly as flavor, like adding a bit of bacon to a mushroom risotto, is more economical,” she said. Consuming less meat also helps you to lower your environmental footprint, she added." The elite really don’t want us to eat much meat anyway, and so this would work out very well for them.

Of course Biden realizes that ordinary Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated, but he is assuring us that “we will make it through this challenge”… “On higher prices, we have been using every tool at our disposal, and while today is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched in ways that create real stress at the kitchen table, there are also signs that we will make it through this challenge,” Biden said in a statement responding to the report."

Unfortunately for Biden, the American people are increasingly losing faith in his leadership. In fact, CNN just reported on some new approval numbers that are absolutely dismal… “Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of how Joe Biden is handling his presidency, with most of that group saying there’s literally nothing Biden has done since taking office that they approve of,” CNN detailed. The latest survey, taken January 10-February 6, 2022, shows 58 percent disapproving of Biden’s job performance, compared to 41 percent who approve. That reflects a seven-point increase in the number who disapproved from the last survey, taken in December 2021."

So where do we go from here? Well, many are expecting that the Federal Reserve will soon be substantially raising interest rates… "The chances of a 0.5 percentage point Fed rate increase in March rose to 44.3% following the data release, compared with 25% just before, according to CME data. Chances of a sixth quarter-percentage point hike this year rose to about 63%, compared with about 53% before the release.

“With another surprise jump in inflation in January, markets continue to be concerned about an aggressive Fed,” said Barry Gilbert, asset allocation strategist at LPL Financial. “While things may start getting better from here, market anxiety about potential Fed overtightening won’t go away until there are clear signs inflation is coming under control.”

When I saw the term “overtightening”, I just had to chuckle. The Fed has had interest rates pushed to the floor for more than a decade, and someone actually has the gall to suggest that the Fed could soon be engaged in “overtightening”? When the Fed pushed interest rates into the stratosphere in the early 1980s, that was overtightening. Any rate hikes that we see in 2022 will be extremely modest by comparison.

But without a doubt, any rate hikes at all will be painful for the financial markets. Low interest rates helped to fuel the absurd bubble that we are in right now, and many investors could interpret higher rates as a sign that the party is finally about to come to an end."

"Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion"

"Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: 
All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion"
by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” - Frank Zappa

"We are no longer free. We are living in a world carefully crafted to resemble a representative democracy, but it’s an illusion.

We think we have the freedom to elect our leaders, but we’re only allowed to participate in the reassurance ritual of voting. There can be no true electoral choice or real representation when we’re limited in our options to one of two candidates culled from two parties that both march in lockstep with the Deep State and answer to an oligarchic elite.

We think we have freedom of speech, but we’re only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners allow.

We think we have the right to freely exercise our religious beliefs, but those rights are quickly overruled if and when they conflict with the government’s priorities, whether it’s COVID-19 mandates or societal values about gender equality, sex and marriage.

We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Punitive programs strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes.

We think we have property interests in our homes and our bodies, but there can be no such freedom when the government can seize your property, raid your home, and dictate what you do with your bodies.

We think we have the freedom to defend ourselves against outside threats, but there is no right to self-defense against militarized police who are authorized to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, and granted immunity from accountability with the general blessing of the courts. Certainly, there can be no right to gun ownership in the face of red flag gun laws which allow the police to remove guns from people merely suspected of being threats.

We think we have the right to an assumption of innocence until we are proven guilty, but that burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers. Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. A social credit system (similar to China’s) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate.

We think we have the right to due process, but that assurance of justice has been stripped of its power by a judicial system hardwired to act as judge, jury and jailer, leaving us with little recourse for appeal. A perfect example of this rush to judgment can be found in the proliferation of profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies.

We have been saddled with a government that pays lip service to the nation’s freedom principles while working overtime to shred the Constitution.

By gradually whittling away at our freedoms - free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc. - the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

Aided and abetted by the legislatures, the courts and Corporate America, the government has been busily rewriting the contract (a.k.a. the Constitution) that establishes the citizenry as the masters and agents of the government as the servants.

We are now only as good as we are useful, and our usefulness is calculated on an economic scale by how much we are worth - in terms of profit and resale value - to our “owners.” Under the new terms of this revised, one-sided agreement, the government and its many operatives have all the privileges and rights and “we the people” have none. Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions. We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.” In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization and government corruption. In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets - gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red-light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in hefty fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, “we the people” are being reminded that we possess no rights except for that which the government grants on an as-needed basis.

Indeed, there are chilling parallels between the authoritarian prison that is life in the American police state and "The Prisoner", a dystopian television series that first broadcast in Great Britain more than 50 years ago. The series centers around a British secret agent (played by Patrick McGoohan) who finds himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village. While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

Much like the American Police State, The Prisoner’s Village gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable. Described as “an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia,” "The Prisoner" is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, "The Prisoner" confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of mankind to meekly accept his lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of his own making.

"The Prisoner" is an operations manual for how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by brainwashing them into believing they are free so that they will march in lockstep with the state and be incapable of recognizing the prison walls that surround them.

We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom. As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries", “we the people” have become “we the prisoners.”

Thursday, February 10, 2022

"Perhaps..."

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that needs our help. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

"What We Paid For"

"What We Paid For"
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "This week we’ve been looking at the “culture of work.” We’ve seen that over time people want to move to join the elite – the people who work without getting their clothes dirty. We’ve seen, too, that having more administrators, controllers, regulators, elite hangers-on, meddlers, and finger-waving know-it-alls is not necessarily a good thing. Instead of helping move things along more swiftly, they slow things down… misallocate time and resources… reward cronies… push pet projects… and fund jackass ‘investments’ with the country’s hard-earned savings.

Yes, the upper classes are filling up with idle moochers or trouble-making busy bodies. But today, we turn to the others – the 90% of the population who schlep, tote, and bus to keep us fed, clothed, housed, and entertained. Have they been corrupted too? The answer is ‘yes.’ And as usual, our favorite dysfunctional society is way ahead of us. Jared Dillian of the DailyDirtnap:

The labor force participation rate in Argentina dropped to 38.4% in 2020, during the pandemic. Now it stands at 46.7%. A labor force participation rate below 50% means that less than half the country is working - and supporting the other half that is not. It enlarges the welfare state and creates generations of institutionalized dependency that is difficult to reverse. Generations of Peronism have destroyed the culture of work that once existed in Argentina. The country’s problems aren’t simply economic, a matter of a rapidly depreciating currency and high inflation. They’re also deeply rooted in cultural norms around work.

Happily, the US is not quite there…yet. There are approximately 257 million adults over 18 in the country. About 150 million are employed – or around 60%. That leaves a little more than 150 million adults with no visible means of support. How do they pay the rent and their Netflix subscriptions? Transfer payments!

“Transfer” – what a marvelously lobotomized description. Value-free. Judgment-free. Information-free. On the transferee end, people are not criminals… who have knowingly received stolen goods. Nor are they objects of pity and shame for being “on the dole.” Nor should they be embarrassed by being too gimpy, too dumb, too old or too fat to work. No...no… Much of what is transferred is called an “entitlement,” as if they had a right to the money.

Entitlements… welfare… Medicare… Medicaid… unemployment… “Disability…” – with these “transfer payments” millions of people are bought off... pacified… idled by small amounts of public charity and a large dose of government larceny. Peter is paid. But the money must be taken from Paul.

A Genuinely Disabled System: The amounts paid to the poor and middle classes are trivial – at least, compared to the $35 trillion transfer to the wealthy via the Fed. But the effect is huge. A stimmie check here… a disability payment there… a Fannie Mae subsidized mortgage… soon you’re talking irresistible temptation… and undying loyalty to the grand viziers who provided it. And then, instead of tending their flocks and fields, the transferees can pass their long, slow days in front of TV and social media, where the elite make sure they don’t get any ‘misinformation’ that might call ‘the system’ into question.

In the early 70’s, about one out of every ten dollars of income came from government-managed ‘transfers.’ Now, it is one out of every three dollars. In gross dollar terms, that’s an increase from around $30 billion to over $3 trillion.

There are now some 80 million people – up from 20 million in the 1980s – receiving free meds from the Medicaid program. The roster of Medicare and Obama Care beneficiaries adds up to some 65 million. There are 40 million getting ‘food stamps.’

Back when it was set up in 1935, the ‘disability’ part of the Social Security system was meant to give support to people who couldn’t work. And back then, most work was physical. People who couldn’t see or couldn’t walk were practically unemployable. The minimum payment in 1936 was just $10 a month. Now the average is $1,385 per month, with top recipients getting as much as $3,345.

And now there are said to be 8 million people – 5 times as many as in 1970 – collecting SSDI benefits. This is remarkable in itself, since it’s much harder to be genuinely disabled now than it was 50 years ago. Today, millions of people ‘work’ in comfortable chairs, using only their fingertips. Advances in medical science and technology have overcome many former disabilities. Now, you can talk to your computer… and it will answer you. And ‘voice generators’ will transform written text and numbers into spoken words.

Tipping the Scales: If the standards of 1970 were applied today, there would be fewer, not more, disabled people. But standards have changed. Now, psychological, mental, and self-inflicted infirmities fatten SSDI rolls. A Baltimore politician even suggested that being Black should be enough to get onto disability rolls.

Obesity is in itself not a sufficient cause for a ‘disability’ rating, but it can be combined with other impairments to tip the scales in your favor. A skinny person with a bad knee might still be able to get around. A fat one with the same joint issue might be ‘impaired.’

The incentives are perverse. If you could get $3,345 per month simply by eating more desserts… and being unable to work… why not? And of course… the elite are there to help. Here’s a typical ad: "It's Time to Get the Benefits You Deserve." "Suze Orman shares how to get disability benefits in less time—with no out-of-pocket costs."

‘You get what you pay for,’ said Milton Friedman famously. America spent an estimated $60 trillion on transfer payments from 1970 to 2020. What it got was approximately 90 million more people who do not work. But wait… then… what do they do? What happens to them? And what happens to the country that harbors them? More to come…"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Where the Stars and Moon Play"

Full screen mode recommended.
2002, "Where the Stars and Moon Play"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023 this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this remarkable image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries in impressive detail. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star.

 
The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the dusty clouds glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula may contain complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The bright blue portion of the Iris Nebula is about six light-years across.”

"Emergency Rate Hike Tomorrow? The FED Is Scared; The Crash Is Just Starting; Free Money Addiction"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 2/10/22:
"Emergency Rate Hike Tomorrow? The FED Is Scared; 
The Crash Is Just Starting; Free Money Addiction"

Gregory Mannarino, "Again And Repeatedly! The FED Is Playing Their Same Twisted Game!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/10/22:
"Again And Repeatedly! 
The FED Is Playing Their Same Twisted Game!"