"The Politics of Obedience"

"The Politics of Obedience"

by Brian Maher

“The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.”

- Johann von Goethe

“A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.” We believe the 16th-century French political theorist Étienne de La Boétie hooked onto a truth here. We plucked this passage from his masterly work "The Politics of Obedience by" title.

We believe it enjoys high relevance in this, the 21st century. More from which: "It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement." Thus the frog goes into its pot of gradually heating water - and never jumps out.

Perfectly Imperfect: We've wondered why so many continue to accept the verdicts of Dr. Fauci... his understrappers within the field of public health… and the elected officials who boss us. In nearly every particular they have proven mistaken - intentionally or unintentionally... Mistaken on masks. Mistaken on lockups. Mistaken on medicines. Mistaken on vaccines. What they claim one day is proven false the following day. What they deny one day is proven true the following day. If not the following day, then the following week. If not the following week, then the following month.

It is not the erring that flusters us. Sincere men - men of good faith - can botch badly. We are merely confounded and discombobulated that so many continue heeding them… and submitting to their blemished authority. And why do so many have such blistering heat against those who point to holes in official theories, who announce that the emperor is well and truly nude? Would they prefer to be foxed, conned and tricked - to believe the emperor is garmented? These are the questions we tackle today...

No Judgment: We do not hector, we do not preach, we do not badger, we do not hold forth today. Nor do we judge. A man shoots an accusing finger outward and three shoot back at him… as is said. We are merely out to solve a puzzle, the way a detective is out to solve a crime, the way an autopsist is out to solve a death.

For light, we turn to Professor Mattias Desmet. This fellow professes psychology at Belgium’s Ghent University. A people acquire an acute anxiety, he explains. In the case before us, acute anxiety of the virus. Coney-catchers, sharpers and opportunists - that is, political leaders - emerge in response, holding out salvation. The people accept the outstretched hand. It soothes and comforts them. Anyone who slaps away this hand is a hellcat, a hobgoblin, a menace to the public happiness.

“Mass-Formation: Here the professor speaks of “Mass-Formation.” As summarized: "In Mass-Formations people become radically intolerant of dissident voices. This person threatens to wake the people up and they get angry when confronted by the initial anxiety and discontent they experience by challenges to the official doctrine. The crowd directs all their aggression at dissident voices.

At the same time they are radically tolerant of their leaders who pronounce the mainstream narrative. These people can lie and cheat and do everything they want and will always be forgiven by the crowd. All the lying, dishonesty and misbehavior is seen by the crowd as doing it for their own safety."

We suffer the acquaintance of certain individuals who fit this description to a fare-thee-well… as perfectly and precisely as the size 10 foot fits the size 10 shoe. They, like your editor, are reasonably sane. They are reasonably reasonable, they are reasonably tolerant. They are generally pleasant and agreeable.

Jekyll and Hyde: But tell them that Dr. Fauci has been less than fully truthful. Tell them that masks are minimally effective. Tell them that lockups fail to jail the virus. Above all… Tell them that these vaccines are not as safe or as formidable as the drummers claim. Now you have a demon on your hands. They will scourge you as a conspiracy theorist… a delusional… an imbecile… a witless dupe of the bedlamite fringe.

Here we speak with the invincible authority of personal experience. We know such gentlemen and ladies. We had best keep the names dark, lest our attorneys receive a sharp note claiming character defamation.

No matter what you hurl against them, it bounces off unbreachable armor… spitballs off a tank. They simply will not listen. They are sunk in a sort of intoxicating hypnosis. And woe to anyone out to shatter the spell…

Why Facts Don’t Work: More: Similar to hypnosis, people in this hyper-focused state are narrowly focused. In hypnosis, only the hypnotized are focused in this way… In Mass-Formation, leaders emerge which are even more narrowly focused than the followers. When people experience this mental intoxication it no longer matters if the narrative is wrong or even blatantly false. What matters is that it leads up to this mental intoxication. This is why they will continue to go along with the narrative.

The resistance to understanding the narrative is false or wrong is driven by the fear of returning to the state of Free-Floating Anxiety and wanting to continue to experience the mental intoxication. This explains why arguing based on facts will not work. Facts no longer matter to them. Given the facts, they are unable to come to sensible conclusions, even in their own best interests.

Here we believe the author lowers his hammer square upon the nailhead. We believe his thesis holds vast explanatory powers. It is immensely plausible. Again: We do not judge or condemn whom we consider the entranced. They consider us entranced. They are of course correct.

For example: This editor of yours believes he is the reincarnated soul of the Emperor Nero. He believes that he is a masterful lover. He believes that he is nice. He accepts them as fact… though in honest moments he concedes he lacks all confirming evidence. But let it go...

The Real Blame: Our grievance is not with the entranced, but rather with the spellbinders who entrance them. That is, with those who would wreck a society over a virus rate with a survival rate in excess of 99%...

With those who would decry the use of safe and effective drug treatments because they would harpoon the legal justification for experimental, emergency-use vaccines… With those who promised us we could discard our facial masks once we took aboard the vaccines… With those who would torture statistics to declare a false “pandemic of the unvaccinated”...

With those who deny that these vaccines have murdered many thousands of people and mangled hundreds of thousands more… With those who would inform mothers-to-be that these vaccines will not injure their child… With those who would vaccinate young children, young children who face infinitesimal risk of sickness or death and who are far more likely to perish from the vaccine itself… With those who believe they can and should dictate the medical choices of free men and women.

It is they who frost our nose. It is they who wring our gizzard. It is they who rile our customary serenity and our detached indifference to the world’s events.

Time for Inaction: We conclude today’s issue where we commenced - with Monsieur Étienne de La Boétie. Here is how to break the hypnotist’s spell… for those who care to break it. His counterspell requires not action - but inaction: "You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces. The time for inaction is now…"

- dailyreckoning.com

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Freely download "The Politics of Obedience" by Étienne de La Boétie here:

- https://mises.org/library/

"Mass Formation Psychosis, Or... Mass Hypnosis - The Madness Of Crowds"

"Mass Formation Psychosis,

Or... Mass Hypnosis - The Madness Of Crowds"

by Robert W Malone MD, MS

"As many of you know, I have spent time researching and speaking about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I have learned has come from Dr. Mattias Desmet, who realized that this form of mass hypnosis, of the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about 20-30% of the population in the western world becoming entranced with the Noble Lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians, science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies and legacy media.

What one observes with the mass hypnosis is that a large fraction of the population is completely unable to process new scientific data and facts demonstrating that they have been misled about the effectiveness and adverse impacts of mandatory mask use, lockdowns, and genetic vaccines that cause people’s bodies to make large amounts of biologically active coronavirus Spike protein.

These hypnotized by this process are unable to recognize the lies and misrepresentations they are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and actively attack anyone who has the temerity to share information with them which contradicts the propaganda that they have come to embrace. And for those whose families and social networks have been torn apart by this process, and who find that close relatives and friends have ghosted them because they question the officially endorsed “truth” and are actually following the scientific literature, this can be a source of deep anguish, sorrow and psychological pain.

It is with those souls in mind that I included a discussion of the mass formation theory of Dr. Mattias Desmet during a recent talk I gave in Tampa, Florida to an audience of about 2,000. As I looked out into the audience and spoke, I could see relief on many faces, and even tears running from the eyes of stoic men.

Unknown to me, someone recorded the speech and appended the vocal track to a series of calming images of natural landscapes, producing a video that has gone viral throughout the world. The video below video, as well as some notes to clarify and supplement the talk are appended below. Many have told me that they find it very healing. I hope it may help you also.

Full screen recommended.

A brief overview of Mass Formation, which was developed by Dr. Mattias Desmet. He is a psychologist and a statistician. He is at the University of Ghent in Belgium. I think Dr. Mattias is onto something about what is happening and he calls this phenomena:

Mass Formation Psychosis: So, when he says “mass” formation, you can think of this as equivalent to “crowd” formation. One can think of this as: crowd psychosis. The conditions to set up mass formation psychosis include lack of social connectedness and sensemaking as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. When people are inundated with a narrative that presents a plausible "object of anxiety" and strategy for coping with it, then many individuals group together to battle the object with a collective singlemindedness. This allows people to stop focusing on their own problems, avoiding personal mental anguish. Instead, they focus all their thought and energy on this new object.

As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Their field of attention is narrowed and they become unable to consider alternative points of view. Leaders of the movement are revered, unable to do no wrong.

Left unabated, a society under the spell of mass formation will support a totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance. A note: mass formation is different from group think. There are easy ways to fix group think by just bringing in dissenting voices and making sure you give them platforms. It isn’t so easy with mass formation. Even when the narrative falls apart, cracks in the strategy clearly aren’t solving the issue, the hypnotized crowd can’t break free of the narrative. This is what appears to be happening now with COVID-19. The solution for those in control of the narrative is to produce bigger and bigger lies to prop up the solution. Those being controlled by mass formation no longer are able to use reason to break free of the group narrative.

Of course, the obvious example of mass formation is Germany in the 1930s and 40s. How could the German people who were highly educated, very liberal in the classic sense; western thinking people… how could they go so crazy and do what they did to the Jews? How could this happen? To a civilized people? A leader of a mass formation movement will use the platform to continue to pump the group with new information to focus on. In the case of COVID-19, I like to use the term “fear porn.” Leaders, through main stream media and government channels continuously feed the “beast” with more messaging that focus and further hypnotize their adherents. We're seeing the exact same process with Ukraine now.

Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution:

● 30% are brainwashed, hypnotized, indoctrinated by the group narrative.

● 40% in the middle are persuadable and may follow if no worthy alternative is perceived.

● 30% fight against the narrative.

Those that rebel and fight against the narrative, become the enemy of the brainwashed and a primary target of aggression. One of the the best ways to counter mass formation is for those against the narrative to continue to speak out against it, which serves to help break the hypnosis of some in the brainwashed group as well as persuade the persuadable middle to choose reason over mindlessness.

Dr. Desmet suggests that for something as big as COVID-19, the only way to break the mass formation psychosis is to give the crowd something bigger to focus on. He believes that totalitarianism may be that bigger issue. Of course, after COVID-19, global totalitarianism may be the biggest issue of our time."

- https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/

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Related:

• "Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"

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• "FFWN: Monstrous Provocations (with Helen Buyniski)"

False Flag Weekly News

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• "COVID Idiots Now Turned Ukraine Idiots"

"How did the COVID idiots transform overnight into Ukraine idiots? If I were a crazy conspiracy theorist I would wonder whether those American bioweapons labs in Ukraine came up with a new COVID variant, genetically tailored to affect Western liberals, that infected susceptible brains with virulent Russophobia.

But that’s a pretty goofy theory, even compared to some of the stuff I hear from my friends. (“Watch the water,” anyone?) For a much more plausible psychological diagnosis, check out "The Psychology of Totalitarianism" by Matthias Desmet. He argues that “mass formation,” a a sort of totalitarian mind-virus, can rapidly affect societies racked by loneliness and isolation, meaninglessness, and free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression."

- https://www.unz.com

“When Will The Madness End?

“When Will The Madness End?”

by Jeffrey Tucker

“I was sitting in the green room in a Manhattan television studio on the day that the storm seemed to hit. It was Thursday, March 12, 2020, and I was waiting anxiously for a TV appearance, hoping that the trains wouldn’t shut down before I could leave the city. The trains never did shut but half of everything else did. On this day, everyone knew what was coming. There was disease panic in the air, fomented mostly by the media and political figures. A month earlier, the idea of lockdown was unthinkable, but now it seemed like it could happen, at any moment. 

A thin, wise-looking bearded man with Freud-style glasses sat down across from me, having just left the studio. He was there to catch his breath following his interview but he looked deeply troubled. “There is fear in the air,” I said, breaking the silence. “Madness is all around us. The public is adopting a personality disorder I’ve been treating my whole career.” “What is it that you do?” I asked. 

“I’m a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I’ve been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It’s hard enough to contain these problems in normal times. What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population. It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic. It seems almost deliberate. It is tragic. Once this starts, it could take years to repair the psychological damage.”

I sat there a bit stunned, partially because speaking in such apocalyptic terms was new in those days, and because of the certitude of his opinion. Underlying his brief comments were a presumption that there was nothing particularly unusual about this virus. We’ve evolved with them, and learned to treat them with calm and professionalism.

What distinguished the current moment, he was suggesting, was not the virus but the unleashing of a kind of public madness. 

I was an early skeptic of the we-are-all-going-to-die narrative. But even I was unsure if he was correct that the real problem was not physical but mental. In those days, even I was cautious about shaking hands and carrying around sanitizer. I learned later, of course, that plenty of medical professionals had been trying to calm people down for weeks, urging the normal functioning of society rather than panic. It took weeks however even for me to realize that he was right: the main threat society faced was a psychological condition. 

I should have immediately turned to a book that captivated me in high school. It is “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay (1841). I liked reading it because, while it highlighted human folly, it also seemed to indicate that we as a civilization are over that period in history. 

It allowed me to laugh at how ridiculous people were in the past, with sudden panics over long hair and beards, jewelry, witches, the devil, prophecies and sorcery, disease and cures, land speculation, tulips, just about anything. In a surprising number of cases he details, disease plays a role, usually as evidence of a malicious force operating in the world. Once fear reaches a certain threshold, normalcy, rationality, morality, and decency fade and are replaced by shocking stupidity and cruelty. 

He writes: “In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

After 2005 when the Internet developed into a serious repository for human knowledge, and it became accessible via smartphones and near-universal access, I too was tempted by the idea that we would enter into a new age of enlightenment in which mass frenzies would be quickly stopped by dawning wisdom. 

You can see evidence of my naivete with my April 5, 2020 article: “With Knowledge Comes Calm, Rationality, and, Possibly, Openness.” My thought then was that the evidence of the extremely discriminatory impact of the virus on plus-70 people with underlying conditions would cause a sudden realization that this virus was behaving like a normal virus.

We were not all going to die. We would use rationality and reopen. I recall writing that with a sense of confidence that the media would report the new study and the panic would end. 

I was preposterously wrong, along with my four-month-old feeling that all of this stuff would stop on Monday. The psychiatrist I met in New York was correct: the drug of fear had already invaded the public mind. Once there, it takes a very long time to recover. This is made far worse by politics, which has only fed the beast of fear.

This is the most politicized disease in history, and doing so has done nothing to help manage it and much to make it all vastly worse. 

We’ve learned throughout this ordeal that despite our technology, our knowledge, our history of building prosperity and peace, we are no smarter than our ancestors and, by some measures, not as smart as our parents and grandparents. The experience with COVID has caused a mass reversion to the superstitions and panics that sporadically defined the human experience of ages past. 

Eventually, people have and do come to their senses, but it is as Mackay said: people “go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

- https://www.aier.org/

"How It Really Is"

MORALS? This is 'Murica, fool! "Morals? We ain't got no morals. 

We don't need no morals. I don't have to show you any stinking morals!"

Concept gleefully stolen from here:

"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Aldi! This Is Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 6/22/22:

"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Aldi! This Is Crazy!"

"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing Empty Shelves Everywhere! We are also noticing ridiculous price increases, and a major food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "The Biggest Crisis Ever Is About To Hit - Global Hunger Crisis"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/22/22:

"The Biggest Crisis Ever Is About To Hit - Global Hunger Crisis"

- https://traderschoice.net/

- Link To The MMRI (Mannarino Market Risk Indicator)

"Walking The Empty Car Lot Today Talking To A Car Salesman; You Are Being Economically Destroyed"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 6/21/22:

"Walking The Empty Car Lot Today Talking To A Car Salesman; 

You Are Being Economically Destroyed"

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal, Mental Institution"

Full screen recommended.

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 6/21/22:

"Trends Journal, Mental Institution"

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"Go To The Gas Stations And Stock Up Now Because Things Going To Get Even Worse In The Months Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

"Go To The Gas Stations And Stock Up Now Because 

Things Going To Get Even Worse In The Months Ahead"

by Epic Economist

"Are you ready for the worst energy supply shortage in U.S. history? Are you ready to spend 50 percent more on a gallon of gasoline? Are you ready for yet another round of price hikes at our major stores as diesel prices continue to soar? Are you ready for another “shortage of everything”? Are you ready for widespread blackouts all over the nation this summer? We’ve been warned that all of these things were coming, and guess what? Now, they’re here. The most devastating energy crisis this country has ever seen is posed to get even worse in the months ahead, and by now, nothing can be done to magically solve our problems.

America’s fuel supplies have never been tighter, and drivers have been feeling the consequences of this where it hurts them the most. At this point, gas prices are still hovering around $5.00 per gallon – and that’s after a 10% drop recorded over the past two weeks.Regardless of the decline, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is still 50 percent higher than it was a year ago. Believe it or not, over the past month, gas prices rose over 50 cents per gallon. And the slight decrease some drivers have seen since June 6 is likely to be just a temporary blip, according to energy consultancy firm Rystad.

At the same time, the price of diesel has been increasing at an even faster pace. Over the past year, diesel prices surged by a whopping 75 percent, and yesterday, another record was broken as prices reached $5.81. That’s even more worrying when we consider that truckers use diesel to transport goods all across the country. Soaring diesel prices are threatening to spark a domino effect of price hikes that will impact virtually everything that we consume on a daily basis. On top of that, industry executives are alerting that it can also trigger widespread shortages and aggravate already-existing supply chain problems.

The latest price increases are just one more supply chain issue facing the U.S. economy right now as prices on all kinds of goods keep going up. But instead of protecting our fuel reserves, we’re exporting record amounts of distillates even though we’re in the middle of a historic fuel shortage. In March, April, and May, exports of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast were up by 32 percent compared to the same time in 2021, data from market-intelligence firm Kpler showed. To make things even more complicated, our aging power grids can’t handle the growing demand anymore. Last month, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that we would face rolling blackouts this summer. Apparently, widespread power outages have already begun.

This week, more than 70,000 customers in Kentucky and nearly 40,000 in Tennessee are experiencing power outages amid high temperatures and extreme weather events. Southwest Virginia has also been hit and according to PowerOutage.US, there are 10,000 families without power. Things are going downhill sooner than expected. Those who don’t believe that we are facing the worst energy crisis in U.S. history are just not looking around. But it is safe to say that in a few months no one will be able to deny what’s going on. Soon, everyone will understand that we truly have entered a nightmare with no end in sight. This is the “new normal,” folks. The shortages are just beginning, and what’s coming next is going to be exceedingly painful."

-  https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"The Dynamics of a Riot"

"The Dynamics of a Riot"

by Jeff Thomas

"In my lifetime, I’ve had the misfortune of being present in two major natural disasters and one violent social crisis. Each taught me valuable lessons.

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, there’s the danger of the loss of shelter, services, and food. In most cases, people who experience the loss of shelter and services realize that “things are bad all around” and they tend to do the best they can, accepting that life will be hard for a period of time.

Food is a different matter. People, no matter how civilized, tend to panic if they become uncertain as to when they will next be able to eat. And, not surprisingly, this panic is exacerbated if they have dependents, particularly children who are saying, fearfully, “Daddy, I’m hungry.” As Henry Lewis said in 1906, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Quite so. Intelligent, educated, otherwise peaceful people can be driven to violence and even murder if the likelihood of future meals becomes uncertain. This has been the cause of spontaneous riots throughout history.

But this is not the only cause of riots. In the post-1960 period in the West, a new phenomenon has occurred that has steadily grown: Governments and the halls of higher education have increasingly taught people that they are “entitled.” Governments have been guilty of this for millennia, beginning at least as early as the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome. It’s a way for governments to get people to be dependent upon them and thereby to do their bidding. But, since the 1960s, it’s become a systemic norm.

And it always ends in the same way. The false economy of “free stuff” eventually devolves into overtaxation and economic collapse. When it does, people are more likely to riot, as the entitlements are “owed” to them. In today’s world, however, this condition has peaked far beyond what the world has ever seen before.

Increasingly, those who are angry that the free stuff they are receiving is not enough to placate them take to the streets. Typically, they throw rocks and Molotov cocktails, burn cars at random, destroy buildings, and loot stores. All of this activity, of course, does not make it more likely that they will receive more free stuff from the authorities who presumably owe it to them. Instead, it victimizes those who have lived lawfully and with less dependence upon the state.

Riots occur for a great variety of reasons. The trigger can be something as absurd as in the 2011 Vancouver, Canada riot, in which locals became infuriated over the loss of a hockey game. Over 140 people were injured and over 5 million dollars in damage was done in a five-hour period. That last bit of information should be emphasized, as the fans had plenty of time to calm down after their team’s loss, but the rage, once ignited, became self-regenerating. This is one of the important dynamics of a riot that’s often overlooked. The riot, which may begin as a reaction to an event, becomes the event and is continued for its own sake.

In the same year, thousands of people rioted in London. The trigger was more serious this time: the shooting of a local man by a policeman. (Although the man had fired on police prior to being shot himself, this fact failed to deter rioters.) The riots, like most irrational retaliations, only served to cause more deaths and injuries. The riots lasted a full five days over a dozen London boroughs, then ignited further in a dozen other cities. Over £200 million in damages occurred, and over 3,400 crimes were logged.

There’s another dynamic that’s not revealed as it’s seen from the safety of our television screens, and that is the spontaneity of a riot. For anyone who has lived through a riot, as I have, the lesson is an indelible one. Riots, on occasion, are planned and, once they begin, there are occasions in which individuals capitalize on them (such as the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, where hired rioters were bussed in). But, in most cases, they’re spontaneous. They begin as a reaction to pent-up anger. (In the Vancouver incident, the anger was building even before the hockey game had ended, but many riots, especially socially related riots, are often the result of many years of pent-up anger.)

The riot itself is generally a small spark that’s added to the existing anger and is often related to a specific event, such as the riots in US cities the night Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968. Once started, riots, for the most part, are entirely unplanned and rely on random acts of violence. Within minutes of the first violent act, entire neighborhoods spontaneously ignite. As in the London riots, the same incident can spark off multiple riots, miles from each other.

A third often misunderstood dynamic is uncontrollability. Police can race to the center of a riot and, in some cases, quell the rioters, but, as the riot is not “organized,” the rioters have merely to stop whatever they’re doing and, for the moment, they cease to be participants. If police move on to other riot locations, the rioters who had been temporarily inactive could begin to riot again. Even if police are successful in quelling all violent activity in a neighborhood, they could receive a radio call directing them to a new riot location, just blocks away.

In my own experience, new locations of violence erupting seemed to be going off all around the city, like popcorn. Before one could be quelled, others would pop up. The incidents were therefore unstoppable by authorities.

Warfare has traditionally been approached from the standpoint that one army faces another and they fight until one surrenders. Guerilla warfare, however, has always proven unwinnable, as long as the guerillas are fighting on their home turf. Rioters have the same advantage as, say, an armed sheepherder in Afghanistan or a rice farmer in Vietnam. The violence only ends when all rioters have decided they’ve had enough.

Of course we’d hope that rioters would learn from their crimes, but this is rarely the case. In the London riots of 2011, rioters burned down the local Sainsbury’s in their own neighborhood. The next day, the same people were on the streets, in front of the television cameras, angrily stating that their grocery store was now gone and their children needed food. They demanded that the government truck in free food as an emergency measure and, not surprisingly, that’s what they got. This is exemplary of the fact that, in every case, reason is abandoned and anger rules the day. No lessons are learned by the rioters. In fact, months later, rioters have often been quoted as saying, “We showed ’em.”

So, what can we take away here? First, and most importantly, that riots are by their very nature spontaneous, mindless, and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Second, if an individual lives in or near a location where sociopolitical tension is on the increase, he is living in danger. The spontaneity of a riot means that he cannot prepare for it. If it arrives on his doorstep, or if he’s on the street at the time when it occurs, he may lose everything, including his life.

Since riots are mindless, rioters cannot be reasoned with. There’s no talking your way out of the danger, once it has reached you. Finally, as riots cannot effectively be controlled, the one and only defense against them is to conclude that, if one lives in an area where socioeconomic conditions indicate that the location (whether it be a neighborhood or even an entire country) is unsafe, it may be time to move. The key here is that the move occur before violence erupts. Once it has, it’s too late."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"Nine Meals from Anarchy"

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch! A Massive Con-Job, Another Grand Deception"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/21/22:

"Must Watch! A Massive Con-Job, Another Grand Deception"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”

Simply beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.

Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131025.html

Free Download: Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"

"Miracles"

"Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge

of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed

at night with anyone I love,

Or sit at the table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honeybees busy around the hive

of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining

so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon

in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread

with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim- the rocks- the motion of the waves

- the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?"

- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"

○

Freely download "Leaves of Grass", by Walt Whitman, here:

- https://edisciplinas.usp.br/

"The World..."

"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel. "

- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770

"Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile"

"Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The great irony of the past 75 years of expanding consumption is the belief that all these decades of success prove the system is rock-solid and future success is thus guaranteed. The irony lies in the systemic fragility that's built into the large-scale industrial production that generates endless surpluses of energy, food, fresh water, etc. and the global financial system that delivers endless surpluses of capital and credit to be distributed by public authorities and private owners of capital.

The key driver of increasing efficiencies has been scaling up production by concentrating ownership and capacity into a few quasi-monopolies/cartels. In industry after industry, where there were once dozens of companies, there are now only a handful of behemoths with outsized market and political power which they wield to retain their dominance.

For example, where there were dozens of large regional banks in the U.S. not that long ago, relentless consolidation has led to a handful of supergiant too big to fail banks which can take extraordinary risks (and undertake criminal skims) knowing that the federal government will always bail them out and leave the banks' corporate criminals untouched.

Two of these too big to fail banks recently paid fines in the billions of dollars, yet no one went to prison or even faced criminal charges. This highlights the systemic problem with concentrating capital and power in the hands of the few: too big to fail means corporate wrongdoers have a permanent get out of jail free card while the small-fry white-collar criminal will get a fiver (five-year prison sentence) for skimming a tiny fraction of the billions routinely pillaged by the too big to fail banks.

The net result is a two-tier judicial/law enforcement system: the too big to fail "essential" companies get a free hand and the citizenry get whatever "justice" they can afford, i.e. very little.

This concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few corporations is of course state-cartel socialism in which the public good has become subservient to the profits of corporate owners and insiders, and the skims paid to the state's insiders. The state enables and enforces this concentration of private wealth and power in a number of ways: regulatory capture, the polite bribery of lobbying, the revolving door between government and private industry, and so on.

The public good would best be served by competition and transparent markets and regulations, but these are precisely what's been eliminated by relentless consolidation and the paring down of the economic ecosystem to a handful of too big to fail nodes which work tirelessly to eliminate competition, transparency and meaningful public oversight.

This ruthless pursuit of efficiencies and profits has stripped the economy of redundancies and buffers. Production supply chains have been engineered to function in a narrow envelope of quality, quantity and time. Any disruption quickly leads to shortages, something that became visible when meatpacking plants were closed in the pandemic.

Supply chains are long and fragile, but this fragility is not visible as long as everything stays within the narrow envelope that's been optimized. Once the envelope is broken, the supply chain breaks down. Since redundancies and buffers have been stripped away, there are no alternatives available. Shortages mount and the entire system starts breaking down.

Quality has been stripped out as well. When markets become captive to cartels and monopolies, customers have to take what's available: if it's poor quality goods and services, tough luck, pal, there are no alternatives. There are only one or two service providers, healthcare insurers, etc., and they all provide the same minimal level of quality and service.

The moral rot in our social, political and economic orders is another source of hidden fragility. I'm constantly told by readers that corruption has been around forever, so therefore nothing has changed, but these readers are indulging in magical nostalgia: things have changed profoundly, and for the worse, as the moral rot has seeped into every nook and cranny of American life, from the top down.

There is no "public good," there is only a rapacious, obsessive self-interest that claims the mantle of "public good" as a key mechanism of the con.

As I discussed in "Everything is Staged", everyone and everything in America is now nothing more than a means to a self-interested end, and so the the entirety of American life is nothing but 100% marketing of various cons designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. That America was a better place without endless marketing of Big Pharma meds and colleges hyping their insanely costly "product" (a worthless diploma) has been largely forgotten by those indulging in magical nostalgia.

What few seem to realize is all the supposedly rock-solid permanent foundations of life are nothing more than fragile social constructs based on trust and legitimacy. Once trust and legitimacy have been lost, these constructs melt into the sands of time.

A great many things we take for granted are fragile constructs that could unravel with surprising speed: law enforcement, the courts, elections, the value of our currency - these are all social constructs. Once legitimacy is lost, people abandon these constructs and they melt away.

It's clear to anyone who isn't indulging in magical nostalgia that trust in institutions is in a steep decline as the legitimacy of these institutions, public and private, have been eroded by incompetence, corruption, dysfunction and the rapacious self-interest of insiders.

What we've gotten very good at is masking the rot and fragility. Masking the rot and fragility is not the same thing as strength or permanence. The nation is about to discover the difference in the years ahead."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Against All Odds..."

"There's a little animal in all of us and maybe that's something to celebrate. Our animal instinct is what makes us seek comfort, warmth, a pack to run with. We may feel caged, we may feel trapped, but still as humans we can find ways to feel free. We are each other's keepers, we are the guardians of our own humanity and even though there's a beast inside all of us, what sets us apart from the animals is that we can think, feel, dream and love. And against all odds, against all instinct, we evolve."

- "Grey's Anatomy"

Judge Napolitano, "Ukraine Russia War Update - Col Douglas Macgregor"

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom 6/21/22:

"Ukraine Russia War Update - Col Douglas Macgregor"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Seymour, Connecticut, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"You May Not Want To Hear This, But More War Is Coming"

"You May Not Want To Hear This,

But More War Is Coming"

by Michael Snyder

"There are dark clouds on the horizon, and those that choose to ignore them do so to their own peril. When World War I started, nobody thought that it would be the most horrifying war that Europe had ever witnessed. The “war to end all wars” resulted in approximately 20 million deaths, but of course it didn’t actually end all wars. World War II erupted in 1939, and it resulted in at least 40 million deaths. After witnessing such immense death and destruction, you would think that humanity would be absolutely determined to avoid a global war in the future. Unfortunately, World War III has now begun, and by the time it is over the number of dead will far exceed the combined totals from World War I and World War II.

Right now, the war in Ukraine is the largest land war that we have witnessed in Europe since World War II. It is essentially a proxy war between Russia and the NATO powers, and as I will explain later in this article a new crisis that has just erupted could potentially turn it into an actual shooting war between Russia and the NATO powers.

Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to make preparations to invade Taiwan. I do not know if they will pull the trigger on an invasion in 2022, but I do believe that it will happen at some point. And when that day arrives, the United States and China will instantly be in a state of war.

But I believe that there is another major conflict that is even more imminent. Israel has always warned that Iran would never be allowed to get to a point where it could produce a nuclear bomb. Sadly, the IAEA recently announced that Iran now “possesses enough fissile material to construct a nuclear bomb”…

Israel and Iran are rapidly approaching an inflection point over Tehran’s nuclear program, and what was the atomic equivalent of a controlled clash between the two countries is now devolving into an unconstrained chain reaction. In late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations agency tasked with globally overseeing nuclear technology and use, reported that Iran possesses enough fissile material to construct a nuclear bomb. Jerusalem’s long-feared specter of Tehran becoming an existential threat to Israel is now very real and imminent.

There is going to be a war between Israel and Iran. It may not begin in the way that you would expect, but it is definitely coming. Of course some would argue that it has already begun, because the “shadow war” between Israel and Iran has greatly escalated over the past year. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…"Israel has stepped up the campaign in the past year, with strikes using small drones to hit Iranian nuclear facilities and an attack on an Iranian drone base, according to the people briefed on the campaigns. Iran blamed Israel for last month’s killing in Tehran of a top Iranian military officer that the Israelis suspected of running overseas hit teams targeting Israelis."

The recent deaths of a small number of Iranians involved in the country’s nuclear and military research programs have also raised questions as to whether Israel was responsible for them. But at least missiles are not flying back and forth between the two nations yet, and for that we should be thankful.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, and Israel recently took the unprecedented step of publicly announcing that it had prepared military aircraft for a strike against Iran…"Israel concurs. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett acknowledged on June 12 Iran is “dangerously close to getting their hands on nuclear weapons.” Earlier, Jerusalem - in an atypical disclosure for Israel - declared it has sufficiently extended the range of its U.S.-supplied Lockheed Martin F-35I Adir stealth fighter-bombers to complete any missions tasked to them in Iran. Israel’s message to the ayatollahs was loud and clear: Israel can reach deep inside Iran and exit Iranian air space unseen. Either abandon pursuit of nuclear weapons or risk getting hit."

Then on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Channel 12 News that “offensive options” against Iran are all set to go if it turns out that they are necessary. Needless to say, it would not be easy to take out Iran’s nuclear program. There are 38 nuclear-related sites, and some of them are deep underground.

And if Israel does conduct such an operation, there will inevitably be a massive response…"Jerusalem’s planning must anticipate Hezbollah, Hamas and other Tehran-backed militias aggressively responding in kind if Israel launches a raid into Iran. In all likelihood, before Israel’s air forces could return to Israeli airspace, massive volleys of rocket fire would be hitting the country from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria - and possibly even from Iran itself. Striking Iran’s nuclear facilities would be only the beginning, not the end, of a hot war between Israel and Iran. Complicating matters is the fact that Israel is now headed for “its fifth election in three and a half years”. Yair Lapid will be the caretaker prime minister until the election in October, and it is unclear whether he will be more aggressive or less aggressive toward Iran than Naftali Bennett was."

Meanwhile, a shooting war between Russia and NATO is now closer than ever now that Lithuania has decided to block all EU-sanctioned goods from reaching Kaliningrad…"NATO member Lithuania became the flashpoint of tensions between Russia and the military alliance on Saturday when it banned the transit of EU-sanctioned goods through its territory to and from the Russian exclave Kaliningrad. The Kremlin described the move as “openly hostile” and warned it will take action if the ban is not lifted “in the near future”.

The Russians are absolutely furious, and they are strongly warning Lithuania to back down…"The Lithuanian chargé d’affaires in Moscow was told that unless cargo transit was resumed in the near future, Russia reserves the right to act to protect its national interests. The Russian foreign ministry said: ‘We consider provocative measures of the Lithuanian side which violate Lithuania’s international legal obligations, primarily the 2002 Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the European Union on transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the Russian Federation, to be openly hostile.’

So what happens if Lithuania doesn’t back down? What will Russia do? At this point we don’t know, but the Kremlin is describing this situation as “more than serious”…"Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The situation is more than serious. This decision is really unprecedented. It’s a violation of everything.” He added: “We consider this illegal. The situation is more than serious…we need a serious in-depth analysis in order to work out our response.”

If the Russians ultimately decide on a military response, that could change everything, because Lithuania is a member of NATO…"Any attack on NATO member state Lithuania would be seen as an act of war against the military alliance. It would therefore likely trigger a retaliation under Article 5 of the NATO treaty which states that an armed attack against one member state is considered an attack against them all."

Did you ever imagine that tiny Lithuania could be the spark that brings the world to the brink of nuclear conflict? I certainly don’t want to fight a nuclear war over a Lithuanian blockade of Kaliningrad, and I am sure that you don’t either. And the truth is that most Americans would have no chance of finding Kaliningrad on a blank map of the world.

But now a very reckless decision by some nameless Lithuanian politicians could end up being the straw that broke the camel’s back. Over and over again, I have pleaded for a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine before it had the opportunity to spiral out of control. Now we are on the verge of the unthinkable, and our leaders continue to find new ways to escalate the conflict."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

Related:

Full screen recommended.

"Biggest Development Since The Ukraine 

Invasion - WW3 Just Started"

"The economic blockade of Kaliningrad has begun in violation of multiple treaties and potentially triggering a Russian Invasion of the Baltic States and Lithuania.  NATO members prepare to deploy more troops to the Baltic to defend against any potential aggression by Russia to take the Suwalki Gap (Suwalki Corridor)"

"World War 3 Just Got A Little Bit Closer"

"World War 3 Just Got A Little Bit Closer"

by Chris Black

"If you don’t realize the goal is WW3, you don’t know these people very well.

🚨BREAKING – #WorldWar3: NATO puts 1 million Russian citizens in Kaliningrad under blockade, provoking Russia to invade Lithuania through Russian allied Belarus to free them. NATO has implemented a ban on all rail transit and goods going to Russia aligned Kaliningrad. pic.twitter.com/cki8hyzuE8

- Alexander Higgins (@kr3at) June 20, 2022

Watch this video and share it:

Lithuania and Kaliningrad are the flashpoint for global thermonuclear war. Russia attacked Ukraine as Ukraine was going to invade Donbas with 100k soldiers, after shelling civilians with heavy arty for 2 weeks in a row. Now ZOG is trying to provoke Russia even more.

I don’t think they’ll take the bait, because they’re winning already. But desperate people can do desperate things, and by that I mean the alien regime in Washington DC/EU. History aficionados know that the cabal living in London, and directing DC, that taught out and is directing the One World Government, was responsible for all the world wars. If NATO goes to war with Russia, what does the 50 million Chinese army do? Sit back, watch Russia, if defeated, knowing they are next, or go to Russia’s aid? That is the question.

What Russia is doing to Ukraine (that happens to have been trained in NATO tactics for the last 8 years) with only 10% of their army has scared the living sh*t out of NATO and the US. They know damn well they wouldn’t have a chance in a conventional ground war with Russia in Eastern Europe. They would immediately escalate the conflict to nukes and Russia would then burn down both the EU and the USA.

Oh and by the way, the US (and their ass kissers in the UK) started this whole thing with the Maidan coup in 2014. Personally, as an armchair general, I’d cut off all gas to Europe (the MSM is already whining about mean and nasty Putin reducing NS1 – it’s a miracle it’s supplying anything), deliver to Kaliningrad via the sea, and refuse to supply Lithuania, even after the EU backs off its rail ban.

Lithuania is run by nosebags for ages. Their move, although boneheaded, is not unexpected. And they will get what they deserve I reckon. The agreement on Kaliningrad dates back to the Potsdam Conference and was endorsed by the US and UK. The transit treaty signed by Lithuania was a precondition for them to join EU and NATO and is three decades old.

Guess we can add this to America’s long list of broken agreements. Perhaps our biggest broken agreement is the dollar. That one will bite us hard, you ain’t seen nothin yet…"

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"No Room For Cowards..."

“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”

- C. Joybell C.