Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 5/31/22:
"Get Your House In Order Or Lose It All;
Gas Prices Vaporize Middle Class; Running Out Of Cash"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Robert Gore, "Reckoning With Insanity, Part One"
"Reckoning With Insanity, Part One"
by Robert Gore
"What they fear the most is you, thinking for yourself. Within those three words are two implicit concepts. Thinking is the fundamental essential for human existence. It can be hard work, but nobody will disparage it on that basis. Attacks on thought, and there have been many, tend to be more subtle.
The for yourself is more problematic. For one thing, it sounds selfish. Nowadays you can present yourself as damn near any kind of humanitarian, even when you’re carrying all sorts of obviously hypocritical baggage, and you’ll go unchallenged. State that your first concern is your own welfare, not the common good or the public interest, and most people will mentally consign you to the ninth circle of hell. Sixty-five years after publication, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s tribute to the self-interested mind, is still denounced. Soon it will be banned in those jurisdictions that have not already done so.
And who wants to be consigned to the ninth circle of hell? Think for yourself and worse, dare to speak your questions, speculations, hypotheses, and conclusions, and you open yourself to isolation and attack. The killer bees in the hive mind mind are vicious, relentless, and remorseless, inflicting stinging, sometimes deadly, cancellation. Then there’s that part of thinking many don’t like - the hard work. It’s easier to join the hive. Never underestimate laziness as a human motivation.
For those that do think for themselves, dispelling the smokescreen of obfuscation, propaganda, and lies that now constitute communications from politicians, other public officials, their allies, and their string-pullers has become routine, Citizens of totalitarian regimes know well the guiding precept: all such communications are lies unless conclusively demonstrated otherwise.
Armed with skepticism, adepts see the lie machine for what it is. They dismiss virtually everything and are rarely wrong. As the U.S. has slid towards totalitarianism, a not exhaustive list of such instances includes the second Iraq war, Obamacare promises, Russiagate, the fixed 2020 election, the government-prompted January, 6, 2020 “insurrection,” and the supposed scientific consensus concerning both global climate and Covid-19. Anyone who doubts that these were detectable lies from inception can check the record. In every instance there were publicly expressed doubts.
Raw power allows liars to get away with lying. Policies are promulgated, protest stifled, protestors confined to the fringe, and although the truth sometimes surfaces into a more general awareness, liars are rarely called to account or punished. They’re often rewarded. Those who understand the game are resigned to it, but now we are confronted with two situations - one developing for decades, one recent - that threaten the livelihoods and lives of every person on the planet. These consequences cannot be met with resignation.
Lying every step of the way, monetary mandarins have incrementally shifted the U.S. from the gold-exchange standard of the late 1800s and early 1900s to a system in which the government and Federal Reserve, joined at the hip, issue unlimited fiat debt instruments. The Federal Reserve’s must - by force of legal tender laws - be accepted as a means of exchange. The Fed buys the government’s fiat debt instruments with its fiat debt instruments and calls it sound economic policy rather than the shell game it is. The coup de grâce lie was President Nixon’s in 1971, when he claimed his suspension of the last vestiges of the gold exchange-standard would be temporary. Fifty-one years later, pure fiat is still in place. The skeptics of 1971 are not surprised.
Nobody knows what random wind will blow away the towering pile of debt. It’s probably already begun; the breeze is certainly picking up force. If so, it’s the nature of financial crises that they accelerate into collapse. Whether or not we’re in the midst of it, the mathematics of ever-increasing principle and compounding interest mean that collapse is inevitable. Production and existing wealth are not enough to cover debt service and principle repayment on the debt already incurred; a problem exacerbated by rising interest rates. Debt having become the liars’ all-purpose economic and political tool, you can be sure that as debt implodes, they’ll throw more of it at the ensuing crisis. It won’t work.
The debt situation is an insanity that has become almost normalized because it’s gone on for so long. There has not yet been the kind of catastrophic financial and economic crash that will serve as conclusive proof of its insanity. Absent such a crash, many people ignore, or worse, actively court the looming disaster, dancing on the rim of a rumbling, smoking volcano. Perhaps to divert attention, the liars have started a war with Russia.
The time many people will have to grasp the insanity of the Russian situation may be measured in microseconds. A brilliant, blinding flash and millions are instantly incinerated. The U.S. government is playing chicken with the one nation on the planet that has more nuclear weapons than it does. And for what? The claimed right to expand NATO to the most corrupt nation in Europe, whose kleptocratic government and military are riddled with neo-Nazis. A nation that Barack Obama noted is far more important to Russia than it is to the U.S.
The Ukraine-Russia war began on March 12, 1999, when former Warsaw pact nations Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were admitted to NATO. Their admittance broke a promise that was made to the Russian government after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 that NATO would not expand eastward. Since then that promise has been broken repeatedly. Although Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership is in limbo, it appears that Finland and Sweden will also join.
Knowledge of history, comprehending any perspective other than one’s own, or even glancing at a map are considered weaknesses and markers of traitorous tendencies in Washington. A glance at a map reveals that Russia does not have the benefit of the U.S.’s Atlantic and Pacific moats. And here’s a brief history lesson: Russia has been invaded repeatedly from both the east and west.
Vladimir Putin’s oft-stated objections to NATO on Russia’s western doorstep stem from that history, yet the West has dismissed those objections as irrational paranoia. How can Putin doubt the West’s sincerity and goodwill, notwithstanding: the repeatedly broken NATO promise, the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from arms control treaties, the missiles positioned a few minutes flight time from Moscow in eastern Europe, Ukrainian bioweapons labs, the ongoing demonization of Putin, and the publicly expressed desire for Russian regime change? He’s a madman, they tell us, without ten seconds thought as to how he and the rest of Russia might perceive the situation.
It’s a wonder anybody in Russia sleeps at night. The U.S. and Europe are clearly waging war on them via their Ukrainian proxy and the U.S. is upping the ante $40 billion. Ignoring the Minsk agreement it signed, Ukraine’s government waged war on the Donbass region - which has strong ties to Russia - for eight years and escalated in mid-February. This was the last straw and Russia invaded.
Previous straws were Ukraine’s desire for NATO membership, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s pledge to take back Crimea, and his February 19 Munich speech in which he threatened to withdraw from the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Per that agreement Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees from the U.S., Great Britain, and Russia. How well would you sleep if Russia had nuclear weapons in Mexico or Canada and its officials publicly speculated about “winnable” nuclear wars? The Soviet Union’s deployment of nukes in Cuba in 1962 caused a lot of insomnia. The crisis was only resolved through skillful negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev, cooler heads than the lunatics on both sides plumping for nuclear war.
How well would you sleep if Russia had bioweapons labs in Mexico or Canada that were doing research aimed at American genotypes? What part of the $40 billion appropriation will be covertly directed towards eliminating incriminating evidence concerning Ukraine’s U.S.-funded bioweapons labs and the nature of their research? And what part will buy off accomplices and eliminate evidence that Ukraine has been a bribe spigot and money laundromat for Democrat eminences since the U.S.-sponsored coup?"
Part Two will be posted June 2.
"20 Signs America Is Headed For Another Dust Bowl"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Signs America Is Headed For Another Dust Bowl"
by Epic Economist
"Dust bowl conditions are coming back in America. For decades, the U.S. was considered the breadbasket of the world, but those days have come to an end. As weather conditions get drier and drier, the nation's water reservoirs are rapidly drying up and dust bowl conditions are spreading across the country.
Many factors are contributing to this alarming situation. Scientists have been warning that the U.S. water supply is being depleted at an astounding pace, and new estimates indicate that there won’t be enough water to irrigate millions of acres of crops this year. On top of that, millions of Americans will be affected by water restrictions this summer.
Over the past 20 years, drought conditions have become the "new normal" in many areas of the Southwest. In fact, meteorologists say that the wet conditions that we enjoyed from the late 1940s to the end of the 1990s were the exception to the rule and that most of the time the interior west is actually incredibly dry. They are also alerting that the current megadrought is likely to stay with us a lot longer than it did during the 1930s.
As temperatures go up and water supplies go down, our ability to preserve our agricultural production gets dramatically compromised. Without enough water, we cannot grow enough food to feed our entire population, and with global food supplies getting tighter and tighter, we cannot afford to have a significant decrease in agricultural production right now.
The drought that has enveloped southwestern North America for the past 22 years is the region’s driest “megadrought” — defined as a drought lasting two decades or longer — since at least the year 800, according to a UCLA-led study in the journal Nature Climate Change. Thanks to the region’s high temperatures and low precipitation levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the current drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that previously had been identified as the driest such drought in the 1,200 years that the scientists studied. UCLA geographer Park Williams, the study’s lead author, said with dry conditions likely to persist, it would take multiple wet years to remediate their effects.
Unfortunately, many areas of the heartland of America are slowly but surely heading to another climate disaster. History tells us that it is only a matter of time before dust bowl conditions return to America. Over the past few decades, we have counted on irrigation and other technologies to delay the inevitable, but at the end of the day, this cannot be stopped. At this point, we can only hope that the return of dust bowl conditions is put off for as long as possible, but let's also prepare diligently for the worst because unexpected catastrophes can change everything much faster than we can even imagine.
That is why what is happening is so worrying. For that reason, today we compiled several numbers that expose the dire effects of abnormally dry weather conditions in the U.S."
Gerald Celente, "Ignorance Is Bliss, Knowledge Is Power"
Full screen recommended
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal"
"Ignorance Is Bliss, Knowledge Is Power"
Gregory Mannarino, "Tomorrow The Fed Begins QT. Does This Signal A Stock Market Meltdown?"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/31/22:
"Tomorrow The Fed Begins QT.
Does This Signal A Stock Market Meltdown?"
Musical Interlude: Relaxed Music, "Healing Music To Clear Your Head"
Full screen recommended.
Relaxed Music, "Healing Music To Clear Your Head"
"Use this to study, relax, heal, and focus on your heart. This is a compilation
of songs that have been curated for healing, being mindful, and calming down."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“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, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers, though. Still, this deep telescopic view 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 pretty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140802.html
"We Like To Think..."
"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
Kahlil Gibran, “A Poet’s Voice XV, Part Four”"
“A Poet’s Voice XV, Part Four”"
by Kahlil Gibran
“You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority? Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honor with your mother’s tears?
Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel. Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, “Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!” I say unto you but this: protecting others’ rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.
Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.
The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression – that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great mean; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise. The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.
What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?
You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”
"Know What's Weird?"
"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"
"Three Things..."
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
- Jim Valvano
"Are The Dog Days of the Economy Behind Us?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 5/31/22:
"Are The Dog Days of the Economy Behind Us?"
"The stock market has two hot days in a row. How are we supposed to believe it is problem solved. Real estate experts are now saying that real estate prices will not tank this year. They will go up another 10%. The job market looks so rosy that Airbnb opens up a job board and 1 million people go to it to look for a job."
"The Worst Energy Crisis In U.S. History Is Going To Get Even Worse In The Months Ahead"
"The Worst Energy Crisis In U.S. History Is Going
To Get Even Worse In The Months Ahead"
by Michael Snyder
"Are you ready for what is coming next? Are you ready to pay six dollars for a gallon of gasoline? Are you ready to pay much higher prices for everything at our major stores as the price of diesel goes haywire? Are you ready for widespread blackouts all over the U.S. this summer? Unfortunately, we are being warned that all of these things are coming. The worst energy crisis in U.S. history is poised to get even worse in the months ahead, and there is no “silver bullet” on the horizon which is going to magically solve our problems. The refineries that we need are not being built and the drilling that needs to be done is not really happening. Of course energy supplies are getting tighter and tighter all over the globe, and things will go to an entirely new level once the next major war starts.
Needless to say, things are bad enough already. On Sunday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States set a brand new all-time record high of $4.61 a gallon…"Gas prices in the US soared to record heights again Sunday, reaching an all-time high of $4.61 per gallon."
The number is more than 50 percent higher than the cost of a gallon a year ago. It comes as gas prices have continued to climb during Joe Biden’s presidency, and as millions of Americans were poised to travel by road for Memorial Day weekend. A 50 percent increase in just one year. Just think about that. To my knowledge, we have never seen anything like this before.
If you can believe it, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 25 cents over the past six weeks. That is crazy, but we are being warned to expect significantly higher prices “by the end of the summer”… "Experts say that number will likely surpass the $6 mark by the end of the summer – as pump costs in West Coast cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco already meeting that mark earlier this month."
I still remember when I could get 20 gallons of gas for 20 dollars. Soon, 20 gallons of gas will cost all of us 120 dollars. Who can afford that?
The price of diesel has been increasing at an even faster pace. In fact, it has risen a staggering 75 percent since last Memorial Day… "Diesel prices are up as well – by a whopping 75 percent from Memorial Day last year – at around $5.50 a gallon, also an all-time record. The rising cost of the fuel – commonly used by truckers for their rigs – has further hampered America’s embattled economy, driving up prices of good being transported cross-country by truckers, who are now electing for shorter routes due to the ‘unprecedented’ increase. ‘I can pretty much count on setting on fire $5-$700 a day…minimum,’ 22-wheel driver Eric Jammer told NPR Saturday of the rise in diesel costs seen over the past 12 months."
The trucks and trains that bring our goods to the stores run on diesel. Diesel is only going to get more expensive from here, and America’s companies are going to pass those costs along to the consumers. Yes, that will be quite painful.
Thanks to the soaring cost of fuel, airline fares are also shooting up dramatically…"Domestic airline fares for summer are averaging more than $400 for a round trip, 24 percent percent higher than this time in 2019, before the pandemic, and a full 45 percent higher than a year ago, according to travel-data firm Hopper." One survey that was conducted just a few days ago found that approximately a third of all Americans say that their travel plans for Memorial Day were affected by high energy prices.
Joe Biden promised to do all that he could to drive down gasoline prices, and in order to try to keep that promise he foolishly took enormous amounts of fuel out of our strategic reserve. Obviously that didn’t work, and now we are being told that Biden is running out of options…"President Joe Biden has vowed to do everything in his power to fight record-setting gasoline and diesel prices, but he’s up against a stark reality: There are few options for taming the surge.
While Biden has unleashed an unprecedented amount of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, other tools at the administration’s disposal would come at the expense of environmental protection and have little effect on fuel costs stoked by strained crude supplies and a global shortage of refining capacity. And the one sure-fire fix - for Americans to stop driving so much - is largely outside his control."
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Joe Biden is not going to save us from this crisis. In the short-term, nobody is going to save us from this crisis. We need more refineries, we need more drilling, and ultimately we are going to need some major technological breakthroughs because the way that we are currently doing things is not even close to sustainable.
On top of everything else, our rapidly aging power grids were never designed to handle so much demand. According to CBS News, we could potentially be facing widespread outages during the summer of 2022…"In its annual summer assessment released this week, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that the Upper Midwest is facing a capacity shortfall leading to a “high risk of energy emergencies.” The entire Western U.S. also could face a power outage emergency in the event of spikes in energy use. “We’ve been doing this for close to 30 years. This is probably one of the grimmest pictures we’ve painted in a while,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis, told CBS MoneyWatch."
What will you do if the power in your area goes out for an extended period of time? We all know that California has been experiencing problems for years, but in 2022 we are being told that the middle of the nation is actually at greatest risk…"In a large swath of the grid stretching from Illinois to Minnesota, the summer’s power demands are projected to exceed the grid’s capacity. That’s because this area of the grid - known as the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO - has lost about 2% of its generation capacity since last year as plants have retired; a key transmission line is also down for maintenance."
Perhaps you think that my headline is a little too dramatic. Perhaps you do not yet believe that we are facing the worst energy crisis in U.S. history. If that is the case, give it a few months. By the end of the summer, I think that everyone will understand that we truly have entered a nightmare with no end in sight."
Bill Bonner, "Tilting at Windmills
"Tilting at Windmills
Circular thinking on how to ruin a perfectly imperfect economy.
by Bill Bonner
"You cannot step into the same river twice,
for other waters are continually flowing on."
~ Heraclitus
Geneva, Switzerland - "Herewith… a rumination on why the economy cannot recover from the damage inflicted since 2008.
We drove back up to Paris on Saturday… Almost immediately, our rental car began scolding us about our speed, crossing the white line, following too close and so forth. This electronic back seat driving is completely unnecessary. That’s what we have wives for. Then, stopping at a roadside restaurant for breakfast, we were disappointed to find it had no orange juice on the menu. “We haven’t gotten a delivery of oranges in weeks,” the young woman explained. “What…they grow oranges in the Ukraine, too?” The girl laughed. But we all know that the Ukraine is the new Covid – it explains everything.
All-Time Gas High: Maybe US gasoline comes from the Ukraine too. CBS News Los Angeles reports: "Gas prices in Los Angeles have yet again reached an all-time high, just as 3.1 million Southern Californians were expected to hit the roads and skies over the extended Memorial Day Weekend. As the number of travelers rose, so did gas prices and cost of travel, as Los Angeles experienced it's fifth-consecutive day of increasing gas prices, reaching a record $6.16 per gallon – up nearly two dollars from the previous Memorial Day record of $4.29 in 2012. One gas station in Beverly Grove displayed an astounding $7.49 per gallon of regular unleaded gas."
In the past, we looked forward to a drive in France. The countryside is beautiful… punctuated by fascinating castles and picturesque towns. But today, the view is effaced by monsters – huge ‘eoliennes’ – wind turbines, hundreds of them. You look over a charmingly bucolic scene… and there they are… menacing… like an army of giant robot warriors from outer space, with their deadly blades slicing the air, ready to do battle with all things human.
The turbines are supposed to generate electricity. But many of them were idle. Do they do more harm than good? Do they make the planet worse, not better, by ruining the sweet landscapes that have charmed artists and tourists for generations? Are they like face masks… a sign of mindless obedience, destroying the beauty of France in order to appease the Green Gods?
Once in Paris, we returned the car to Hertz and then went for lunch at ‘Le Train Bleu,’ an iconic restaurant in the Gare de Lyon. The décor is rich and voluptuous… with ornate, gilded moldings and bare-breasted women sculpted on the walls. It was built for the Paris Exposition of 1900 and takes its name from the famous “Blue Train” that took travelers from the chilly English Channel all the way to the Mediterranean. Large paintings still recall the cities served by the train and the warm glory of the South of France in the 19th century.
(Le Train Bleu in Gare de Lyon. Source: Getty Images)
Today, the Gare de Lyon serves Provence, and carries passengers to Lyon, Marseilles, Grenoble, Cannes… and of course Geneva. And the restaurant, in the train station itself, celebrates not only the technological progress of the Third Republique… but the sumptuous ebullience of the Belle Epoque, too.
Crazier and Crazier: Our son, Henry, lives in Paris; he joined us for lunch and brought us up-to-date on France’s situation. “Crazier and crazier;” he gave us his conclusion first. Speaking of France’s ruling class: “They’re not quite as obsessed by things like race and gender. But when it comes to the Green Agenda, the door falls off the hinges. That’s why you see those wind turbines all over the country. The goal is to keep the planet from heating up. Are they effective? I don’t know. But temperature is not the only thing that matters. France used to be beautiful. Now, practically everywhere you look you see those ugly windmills.
Since the power they generate is not really commercially viable, they’re subsidized… which takes capital away from other investments. And since the wind is unreliable, you still need traditional back-up power sources. So when you figure it all out… and add in all the fossil fuel required to make the steel and the concrete, and the environmental damage of having to look at those things, it is not at all certain that you’re ahead of the game.
But that’s just a part of the Green Agenda. Now they’ve got a new law that makes it illegal to throw anything away. It’s part of what they call a ‘circular economy.’ Everything is supposed to be recycled. So, businesses can’t write off unsold inventory, for example. And supermarkets aren’t allowed to throw away food.”
France’s leaders, probably more than those in the US, are technocrats. They do not represent ‘the people’ nor do their bidding. Instead, they believe they are like Moses, leading ‘the people’ to a better world. Henry studied physics in college; he continued: “The idea of the circular economy probably comes from a mistaken reading of the first law of thermodynamics – the conservation of energy. It tells us that the sum of energy in a closed system is constant. It takes energy to make something. So they think you can get the energy back by un-making it. Or save the energy by not making it. But that’s not the way it works. There are a lot of things that go only one way. You can wreck a car. But you can’t un-wreck it. There’s no circularity to it. It’s the end of the line. All you can do is to salvage a few pieces.”
The Ultimate One-Way Road: The same is true for a human life, we thought to ourselves. It only goes one way. And when it comes to the end, you might be able to recycle a few organs, but once the spark of life is gone, you can’t bring the corpse back to life by reassembling the body parts. Time, too, is the ultimate one-way road. You can’t save it. And there’s no backing up. No pausing. No recovering the past. You step into the river only once.
“You use a lot of resources, time, and energy to build a windmill. Of course, you can take it apart. You can break up the concrete foundation, for example. But you can’t just add water and make a new one. Concrete is a one-way phenomenon. As for the rest of it, you’ll just get a lot of scrap steel, plastic, and copper. They can be recycled, but it will cost more – in energy and CO2 emissions – than starting from scratch.
“Same is true for an economy. You can slow it down. You can distort it. You can take it apart. But then, you can’t put the parts back together the way they were. Companies go out of business. Skills are lost. Workers retire… or don’t want to come back to the office. Time can’t be recovered. And capital does not reappear after you wasted it. It’s gone forever.
And who wants to build a new factory if they have to worry that it will be shut down by a new virus? Who wants to buy a bond yielding 3% when the dollar is losing 8% per year? Who’s going to plant more corn when he can’t get parts for his tractor? An economy takes all the ‘knowns’ into account – including the damage that you caused. It’s a new river, in other words. Like a husband and wife after one has been caught cheating, the marriage can go forward… but it can never go back to what it was."
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! What's Next? What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 5/31/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club!
What's Next? What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Sam's Club, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Gregory Mannarino, "Very Important Must Know Updates"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/31/22:
"Very Important Must Know Updates:
10yr Yield, Stocks, Crude, Commodities, Crypto"
Monday, May 30, 2022
"Here's What They Arent Telling You..."
Canadian Prepper, 5/30/22:
"Here's What They Arent Telling You..."
Musical Interlude: 2002, "Cycle of Time"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "Cycle of Time"
Simply beautiful...
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.
Click image for larger size.
Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html
"Job Market Shock Threatens To Trigger One Million Layoffs Or More As Distruptions Soar"
Full screen recommended.
"Job Market Shock Threatens To Trigger One
Million Layoffs Or More As Distruptions Soar"
by Epic Economist
"A labor market shock is looming. Cracks are appearing everywhere in the U.S. labor market. Companies are now looking to curb hiring, and many started announcing mass lay-offs last week amid falling profit margins as the U.S. economy begins to march towards a historic recession. With economic conditions deteriorating at a stunning pace, inflation still hot, and the housing standing on its last leg, the last pillar holding up the U.S. economy – the labor market – has just hit a brick wall, and experts say it’s all downhill from here. Americans should brace for a new wave of lay-offs this summer that could wipe out over one million jobs, and result in significantly lower wages as businesses struggle to stay afloat in face of slower growth.
Remarkable shifts are occurring in the U.S. labor market. Last week, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose, hitting a four-month-high and signaling a major drop in demand for workers amid tightening financial conditions. Jobless claims increased by 21,000 to 218,000, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people receiving benefits increased to 1.3 million while the number of employees who quit their jobs in April also hit a new record, rising above 4.5 million.
On Thursday, earnings reports were finally released and showed corporate profits falling across the board in the first quarter. Now, economists are warning that the historic profit margin crunch and declining share prices are about to force more and more companies to pause hiring and start laying off workers.
Commenting on the impending surge in layoffs, Piper Sandler's chief economist Nancy Lazar says that "rightsizing means that lots more layoffs are coming" and adds that "many companies overhired and overpaid during the health crisis." Lazar also highlighted that "the stay-at-home bubble was a bubble, and not a "new paradigm" of goods consumption" which means that a right-sizing cycle is going to accelerate, with weaker growth in jobs and wages.
Piper Sandler economists warned in a recent note that this summer is going to be a turbulent one for American workers. “We could see a million layoffs or more, as many goods sectors that benefited from the [health crisis] now realize they added too much capacity,” they wrote, underlining that “Low-income workers are now most at risk of layoffs, with remaining job holders to see much slower wage growth.”
At least 107 tech companies have laid off employees since the start of the year, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts across the sector. Economists are afraid that the job cuts seen in the tech sector soon ripple through other sectors. In a new report, Bank of America alerted that the demise of some big companies is likely to trigger a chain reaction and result in a sharp increase in hiring freezes, job cuts, and wage stagnation.
In other words, our leaders will have to decide what’s worse: recession and bear market or runaway inflation as millions of Americans start to see their wages "revert back to normal" if they are lucky, while many other millions are about to lose their jobs.
And soon, the U.S. population will have to confront the terrible fate of seeing their purchasing power slashed right in the middle of another historic economic recession while unemployment rises once again. If you do have a job, you should hold on to it while you can because we surely have a very bumpy road ahead of us. And it is safe to say that nobody will come to rescue us from this gigantic mess."
"Food Too Dangerous To Eat; Home Buyer Regret, Economy Seizing Up; Credit Card And Spending Addiction"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 5/30/22:
"Food Too Dangerous To Eat; Home Buyer Regret;
Economy Seizing Up; Credit Card And Spending Addiction"
"Police State in Slo-Mo"
"Police State in Slo-Mo"
by Jeff Thomas
"For many years, I’ve forecasted that the US will evolve into a police state; that it will begin slowly; then as more and more freedoms are removed, the creation of the police state will accelerate. We’re now seeing that acceleration, as more and more Americans are detained, questioned, and having their property confiscated than ever before.
As an example, in 2016, some 20,000 travellers in and out of the US were stopped, often at random. Typically, their baggage was searched, their documents photocopied, access codes to their electronic devices demanded and their files copied. In most cases, no explanation was given, but they were advised that if the search was refused, they would be detained indefinitely. The following year, in 2017, the numbers of people detained rose by 50%, to 30,000.
It’s important to note that the travellers were not threatened with arrest, which suggests that the authorities were working on the basis that the Patriot Act of 2001 allows all of the above activities - without cause being given, without a warrant being obtained, without access to a phone call or legal representation being allowed, and that the individuals in question may be detained, indefinitely.
This, of course, is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that people have the right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." However, when people travel, they are particularly vulnerable, so the travellers in question are extremely unlikely to refuse. They understand that, "indefinitely" means, "until a Supreme Court ruling is passed, overturning the Patriot Act as unconstitutional." If it hasn’t happened yet and isn’t under consideration, it’s safe to say that the level of police state allowed under the Patriot Act is permanent.
Police States have been implemented countless times throughout history. They tend to be most prominent where collectivism has already been instituted. Wherever collectivism is already firmly established, new crackdowns are generally introduced suddenly. In Germany, in 1938, under existing Nazi rule, Kristallnacht took people by complete surprise. Later, in 1961, under existing Soviet rule, the Berlin Wall went up with no previous announcement. In both cases, the collectivist tyranny was already in place and the people had already successfully been subjugated. These events were merely further losses of freedom.
But what of a country that still enjoys a few of its former freedoms and is in the process of being transformed into a full-blown collectivist state? Well, in such cases, the loss of freedoms is often done in slo-mo. Another way of describing this is the old adage of boiling a frog. Since a frog will jump out of a pot of hot water, place him in a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat. Before he knows it, he’s being boiled to death. Likewise, when the intention is to convert a country to collectivism, make the early changes in stages. Get the people to accept that the losses of freedom are for the benefit of their safety. Then, the further along you go, the more you can accelerate the process.
At present, a majority of Americans appear to now understand that they’ve experienced a significant loss of their "guaranteed" freedoms. They’re now worried and, at each new stage of oppression they tend to say, "I’m not happy about this, but I can probably live with it… and, besides, they say that they’re doing it for my own safety." However, I think that it’s safe to say that a family returning from a holiday that’s just been isolated from each other, interrogated separately, frisked, had all their belongings pored through and copies of their papers and electronic files taken, without even being told the reason, does not feel as though it’s been done for their safety.
Remember, the 30,000 above were just hoping to reach their destination with no trouble from anyone. A generation ago, they never would have tolerated such a violation to their rights. But now, they submit and accept whatever they’re told to do. But, upon release, they most likely assumed that the authorities had been looking for something specific. They were not. In recent years, there have been very few actual prosecutions from such Gestapo-like shakedowns, in spite of the copying of documents and confiscation of minor items. The object here is not to prosecute anyone; it is to teach people to submit.
This will be important later on. What we’re witnessing is a loss of freedom in slo-mo. Just as Germans stood by and accepted Kristallnacht; just as they stood by and watched the Berlin Wall be built that would close off their freedom of migration, the great majority of Americans ultimately will stand by and watch the last of their freedoms be removed, because they’ve already been trained to submit to whatever indignities and restrictions are placed upon them.
After World War II, Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller was questioned as to how he and other Germans could possibly have simply stood by and watched as freedoms were removed, resulting eventually in total domination of the German people. He said, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Niemöller was able to make the above statement in 1976, as he was one of the few survivors of the concentration camps.
But, in addition to the above insight, there’s another very significant lesson to be learned here. Historically, whenever a government is instituting the transition into a collectivist state, one of the early warnings is a limitation on travel outside the country (getting the people used to the idea that they don’t have a right to leave). The US has now reached that point. The next development will be to teach them that, by travelling outside of the country, they are automatically suspect. The implication will be money laundering, drug trafficking, or terrorist activities.
Whether it’s accomplished through the use of a physical barrier, such as a wall, or through the intimidation of random searches and interrogations, as is presently underway in the US, or whether it’s simply the appearance of armed guards in ports of exit (like the armed guard in the photo above), the objective is not to obtain copies of your emails to your friends, or to go through socks in your luggage. It’s to teach you that your rights have been lost and you are expected to submit to any and all indignities and restrictions imposed on you.
Historically, the end-product is always the same. The final acceptance that you’ve waited too long to leave the increasingly oppressive country - and that you’ve been successfully locked in."
Jim Kunstler, "Careening Towards Grace"
"Careening Towards Grace"
by Jim Kunstler
"The World Economic Forum (WEF), a.k.a. the Davos Gang, held its 2022 schmoozefest in that tidy Swiss alpine village last week, after a nearly three-year hiatus on account of the coronavirus pandemic they generously arranged for the rest of us. These are the self-defined leaders of the Great Re-set - Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and Klaus’s scaly majordomo, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, the inverse Adolf Eichmann, famous for declaring that “humans are hackable animals.” Did he mean, like, with a meat cleaver?
Who do these schnitzel-scarfing, Krug-guzzling punks think they are? Or, to paraphrase the immortal words of one Pete Hogwallop, who elected them boss of this outfit? Nobody, that’s who, on this whole, wide, ever-turning world, which they literally aim to take over. Actually, from the way they talk, it already looks like they’ve hijacked the sucker and us “worthless” and “useless” humans riding on it, as Dr, Harari has labeled the multitudes riding the planet in economy class. Kind of looks like we’re in for a rough landing.
As first hallucinated in Herr Doktor Schwab’s pulsating brain, apparently many years ago, the Great Re-set was initially scheduled for 2050, a sort of leisurely stroll-in-the-park to the shimmering gates of transhumanism. Then the gang got nervous and pushed it up to 2030 (climate change, and all). When that retrograde monster of US politics, Donald Trump, came on the scene, they panicked and re-set their Re-set for 2023. Now, despite the surface decorum of this year’s Davos meet-up, it looks like they are - as we say here in the old New World - losing their sh*t.
How come? Well, for one thing, we appear to be in a close race between Klaus’s controlled demolition of the global economy and the US midterm elections this November, and perhaps the gang perceives that won’t go so well for them. Their key project in the 2022 offensive, the War in Ukraine, isn’t working out, either. The idea, it seems, was to bog down and humiliate the Russians so as to bring on the defenestration of Mr. Putin, who, believe it or not and despite the tsunamis of aspersion loosed on him by WEF-funded propagandists, is strangely and actually a defender of Western Civ. Yeah, I know, a stunner, right? (God works in mysterious ways - but the Davos Gangsters don’t believe in him/her /they.)
In their cuckoo clock universe, they are too busy counting the teeth on the gears inside because they are the “experts” and that’s what they do. Which brings us to one of the central fallacies of the mechanistic world-view: that if you measure enough things, you will be able to control them. Their beloved data is failing them. They screwed-the-pooch on the Covid-19 caper and now the data is biting Klaus and Company on the ass. Especially Oberstleutnant Bill Gates’s ass, who was supposed to be in charge of the vaccine op and is jetting around the world now talking out of said cloacal aperture so recklessly that folks are looking to the lampposts of every country he lands in.
Hence, the desperate attempts at censorship by WEF stooges-in-place all around the world. And see how well that has gone, especially in the USA under WEF-installed “Joe Biden,” the cigar-store-Indian in executive drag, who fronts for a US wrecking crew cabinet of oafs, losers, and reprobates. Has the world ever seen a more laughable official exercise as the botched appointment of one Nina Jankowicz, the Singing Censor, to the idiotically-conceived Disinformation Governance Board? They might as well have taken out a Jumbotron billboard ad in Times Square screaming We Suck in flashing psychedelic pixels.
And yet, that demolition of the global economy proceeds a’pace as, with all demolitions, once things start crashing, nothing will stop it. Supply chains for everything are breaking, with sneaky ramifications. For instance, the ammonia-based chemical additive for diesel fuel used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from trucks is getting scarce. New EPA rules require computerized sensors in truck engines that register nitrous oxide levels. If they are too high, the sensors automatically cut the engine. Result: trucks stop running. Further result: nothing gets delivered. Furthest result: you starve.
The WEF worked on its starvation program from other angles, too. The Ukraine-Russian war was engineered to reduce the global wheat supply by a hefty percentage, say around 30 percent, as well as to curtail fertilizer exports from the world’s main producers of them: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. No khobz f’tir for you, peoples of North Africa! (And no Hostess Ding Dongs for you, peoples of Calumet Heights, Illinois!).
Meanwhile, recall the parting admonition of the late eminent virologist Luc Montagnier, discoverer of HIV, the virus behind AIDS, who, just prior to his death predicted that 100-percent of the people vaccinated with mRNA Covid “vaccines” would be dead in two years. Yes, yes, pretty stark stuff, I know. But that was his professional opinion. Forgive me for mentioning it, but there it is, like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl.
We’re in for all kinds of interesting surprises - those of us who survive this clusterf**k - but the biggest one of all will be the WEF’s Great Re-set falling on its aforesaid ass as, when the dust settles, their grandiose, totalitarian, and ultimately wicked model of the human project yields to the astounding re-enchantment of a world pregnant with meaning, purpose, and grace. I’m not kidding around. God may be a prankster, as I’ve suggested many times, but he’s also still God, and he doesn’t appreciate wannabe faux-messianic technocrat pricks like Klaus Schwab messing with his glorious creation."
"Memorial Day, Lest We Forget"
"Memorial Day, Lest We Forget"
By John Kass
"We had some fine traditions in America, though many have been pushed aside because they get in the way of modern politics. And when it comes to patriotism on the days when we mourn our war dead, you can feel the media groaning. Patriots and patriarchs aren’t much appreciated these days. They’re now considered just too toxic, too masculine and they’re such a bother.
America once prized merit and competition. Now, though, we prize politics and our cultural institutions strive to make Beta males. There are unintended costs to all of this, including all those young men lost, boys adrift without fathers to guide them, lonely confused boys who rage in the anonymous shadows of social media. Add unfettered access to violent violent video games, unfettered access to internet porn, raised by mothers who resent the fathers who walked away, shaped by anger and the social isolation that comes from closing schools for the past few years.
Throw in the absence of a spiritual life and the absence of a common morality. Add guns. This stew of rage boils over into murder sprees, in rural areas, in urban centers.
We ignore what we feel in our bones to be wrong. We’d rather play our politics instead.
Ultimately the day comes - and it always comes - when some other powerful nation that isn’t obsessed with creating Beta males shows up with its armies. They come to take all that you have and all that you’d ever dreamed of having. They come to take your food, your life, the lives of your children. Your spine. Your hope. Your identity. Everything. And then you don’t have a country. The landless descend into wandering barbarism. They become as beasts of no nation, because their nation is gone.
Don’t think it can’t happen. It happens. It has happened in many other ages. It happened to Thebes. That nation had destroyed the unstoppable superpower and military might of Sparta, but soon Thebes was itself destroyed, all the way down to the scattered, nameless stones, the people dead or sold off in the slave markets. And who and what they were was forgotten. All that was left were scratches on stones bleaching like bones in the sun.
History tells us these stories again and again, if we’d listen. History warns of what happens to nations that weaken themselves and abandon their own borders, prizing sensitivity and men without chests above virtue.
A culture becoming fragile is awash with tears, but it becomes dry, like pottery. It cracks. And as the ages forget the names, history smirks. When the people are threatened, with the people desperate and frightened, it is then that soldiers are appreciated, welcomed and needed. The armed forces, forming that thin line between civilization and chaos are honored for a time. Though eventually, if they’re successful in defense, they are inevitably forgotten, again. All soldiers throughout history have understood this dynamic, especially in free, prosperous nations like ours.
Our war dead didn’t risk or lose their lives to be praised and petted with flowery words. They knew they were led to slaughter by fine words from the double-tongues about great honor and great sacrifice. But they also knew this: They had a job to do, protecting our liberty and our nation with their bodies and blood. I suppose they hoped, as Americans, that we would live up to our half of the bargain and not dishonor the freedom they’d given to us, that was bought with their lives.
Traditions are an important means for a people trying to stave off cultural betrayal. This is why traditions are often targeted by agents of change. The old traditions remind us who we are, what we were, reminding us of our ideal selves, of virtue lost to time and what we call progress.
But today is Memorial Day, 2022, when we mourn the fallen of the United States Armed Forces who died for our liberty. And because it is Memorial Day, not burger and beer day, not sports day, not play video games day, not chips and dip day, there is one tradition I hope we try our best to keep. It involves us taking time out to think hard and long about a soldier’s poem and the poppies, row on row.
“In Flanders Fields” is that soldier’s poem, written in World War I by Col. John McCrae, a man who’d seen the devastation of war, and hopelessness. Yet with clear eyes and a clean heart he wrote of poppy blossoms as rebirth of hope, those bright orange/red papery thin blossoms, as delicate as dreams, waving in the breeze over the freshly dug graves of the dead.
The scene was Ypres, Belgium at a farm converted to a military hospital, where McCrae was an Army doctor, doctor, dealing with pain and death and disease. Flanders Fields is particularly tragic. The political leadership had led their citizens into hell, and still the citizen soldiers marched toward death and the trenches and the barbed wire, and the gas.
My mother, 92 years old and born of the United Kingdom, hasn’t forgotten. She was born in Guelph, Ontario, the town where Col. McCrae is from. She knew his family. They all knew of the McCraes, but they did not treat them as celebrities. Instead, they respected them. My mom would put a book of his poetry on the breakfast table when my sons were little boys, so that we’d remember as we taught the boys. And that is how traditions are maintained.
And my friend Bill Gritsonis, a former soldier of the U.S. Army and member of the American Legion Hellenic Post 343 hasn’t forgotten. The entire American Legion hasn’t forgotten. The legion remembers the poem and the poppy, and members hand out poppies to help commemorate Memorial Day. “We’d hand out the poppies around City Hall,” he said. “Some of the veterans who survived are so very old. They’re still holding on. We have to do this for them, for us, for our kids, for our country. We just can’t forget.”
On this Memorial Day, when too many of us are thinking of grilling meat and drinking beer and staring at ballgames with sports announcer talking of the loss of a game as if it is death. American Legion posts and Veterans of Foreign Wars and many other groups will attend and participate in ceremonies of somber remembrance and mourning.
Some will be at parades in small towns. Or in quiet gatherings in cemeteries. They’ll bow their heads as a bugler plays “Taps” in a town square, or as the notes from the horns echo on the gravestones in great national cemeteries.
American Legion Hellenic Post 343 plans on being at Elmwood Cemetery, in River Grove, Il., as they have for years, since the 2011 dedication of the Hellenic American Veterans Memorial that honors Greeks who served. “This began way before my time, with others, the group as a whole, Hellenic Post 343 bought the land at Elmwood Cemetery, raised the funds,” Gritsonis said. “The Scouts remember. Our former commander, Anastasios “Steve” Betzelos, he’s 98 and a half. He’s going to try to make it.”
Gritsonis isn’t looking for a mention. He’s not like that. Once a top soldier, he doesn’t seek glory in the words of others. He’d rather that I write around his name. But he and other former U.S. Armed Service Personnel and those on active duty will remember. Why? Once you learn about Flanders Fields, once you read the poem, it sears. It is difficult to forget.
And perhaps because we all come from someplace else. We’re Americans. And whatever our ethnicity or creed, we’re bound together by the ideas that maintain our liberty. They’re written in the Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights added to the Constitution by wise and great men, that form a nation that is still the last, best hope of mankind on earth.
Some old soldiers will be asked about Col. McCrae’s poem and the poppies on the graves. I hope they’re asked about it. You might want to print this poem out, take it with you to the cemetery, or a parade, or a lonely grave. You might leave a copy of the poem on a picnic table, as others stuff their faces and guzzle beers without a thought of the Americans who gave everything for them. I don’t mean to shake it at them as if it’s some kind of dare. We’ve had too much of that on all sides.
Politicians and their angry mouthpieces are waging wars of words right now over what to do in the aftermath of mass shootings, like the one in Texas. The way they talk, they’re all about winning some kind of advantage, hoping to crush their political opponents. It’s as if their words were political tomahawks fashioned from the bones of the dead children from that school in Uvalde. The dead children become the pointed tips of their rhetorical spears.
And others wage wars of words over escalating the war in Ukraine, the same voices that frightened the nation about those weapons of mass destruction that couldn’t be found in Iraq, the same voices that argued for that war. The same voices that assured us that Western-style democracy could be imposed on people with no idea or appreciation for our democratic traditions. These are same voices that told us not to worry about the rise of the American Surveillance State.
And all these barking dogs on all sides sound as if they have a deep faith, not in God, but in themselves, and their own special talents. The anonymous life on social media has left them unbound. They rage and become their own gods, and for as long as they keep barking, I suppose they feel they’ll never be held accountable. So the barking continues.
When “In Flanders Fields” was first published anonymously, in the English magazine “Punch” on Dec. 15, 1915, it seemed as there was a common purpose to our history. And then as now, the young wanted so desperately to live. It became an anthem. Here is John McCrea’s poem:
There have been other poems. But this, to me, to many of us, on this Memorial Day, when we mourn our war dead, is one of a kind. ‘Lest we forget."
○
"For the Fallen"
"With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain."
- Laurence Binyon
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