"We live in radical times surrounded by tasks that seem impossible. It has become our collective fate to be alive in a time of great tragedies, to live in a period of overwhelming disasters and to stand at the edge of sweeping changes. The river of life is flooding before us, and a tide of poisons affect the air we breathe and the waters we drink and even tarnish the dreams of those who are young and as yet innocent. The snake-bitten condition has already spread throughout the collective body.
However, it is in troubled times that it becomes most important to remember that the wonder of life places the medicine of the self near where the poison dwells. The gifts always lie near the wounds, the remedies are often made from poisonous substances, and love often appears where deep losses become acknowledged. Along the arc of healing the wounds and the poisons of life are created the exact opportunities for bringing out all the medicines and making things whole again."
“Many people don’t fear a hell after this life and that’s because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn’t end. The kind of hell that doesn’t burn your skin but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can’t see, but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It’s where you feel freedom, where you’re not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing.”
"A Nation of Sheep, Ruled By Wolves, Owned By Pigs:
Americans Have Tamely Surrendered Their Liberties"
by Gen Z Conservative
"Americans, by and large, have not kept themselves informed, and adhered to the limits the Constitution imposes upon our government, which has resulted in more than half the problems we face today as a country, a nation of sheep. And, because the voters themselves do not know, or care, what the Constitution says, they elect candidates who have no intention, or desire, to support and defend it — believing in “the end justifies the means”. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself every election cycle and won’t stop until the people take the time to learn what the drafters of the Constitution intended when they wrote it.
So, as Lysander Spooner so aptly said, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorizes such a government as we have had or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” I could almost stop right there, saying that is how I feel about our system of government and the document that established it…but I won’t.
Even though the Constitution outlined a fundamentally sound system of government, in theory, the problem is that it was the creation of a group of men who held differing views on what government should look like and what powers it should hold.
Ben Franklin explained it best when he said: “For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received …” (Source: Franklin’s Final Address to the Constitutional Convention.
There were many concerns expressed by these patriots who opposed the Constitution, but the underlying theme that can be found in most of their writings is that the Constitution created a consolidation of the States into a Union under a strong centralized government.
In a more perfect union, a more perfect Republic, our sovereign and independent states would reassert the 9th and 10th Amendments more forcefully, since they have been abrogated out of existence by federal laws and judicial activism; the states should unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic: their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free and independent when he is obliged to fulfill engagements which he has voluntarily contracted.
One of the primary concerns of the anti-Federalists was: Did the Constitution do away with the status quo and create a consolidation of the States into a single, indivisible Union; or Republic, or did the States still retain all powers which were not expressly given; allowing the government to intrude into and interfere with the lives and liberties of the people.
On June 5, 1788, in a speech opposing ratification of the Constitution, Patrick Henry expressed those exact sentiments as follows: “I rose yesterday to ask a question which arose in my own mind. When I asked that question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation was obvious: The fate of this question and of America may depend on this: Have they said, we, the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, Sir, on that poor little thing-the expression, We, the people, instead of the States, of America.“
It should be obvious, that the people had already established republics by their having created their own State Legislatures, so they actually had no need to create another Republic for the purpose of governing them all. The purpose for which the delegates were sent to Philadelphia was to arrive at suggestions for amendments, in order to make the existing Confederation Government adequate for the needs of the country; not to toss the existing form of government in the trash heap and replace it with one of their creation.
If the powers given to this new form of government were to be exercised primarily upon the States, then why did the drafters of the Constitution demand that it be ratified by the voice of the people; as it was the States whose authority would be further restricted, or usurped, by the creation of this new form of government. However, if this new system of government was, in fact, a consolidation and a diminishing of the sovereignty of the States, then it would make sense that the people must give their consent to it.
Yet, in Federalist 45 James Madison attempted to ensure the people that the States would retain their authority over the lives and liberties of the people by saying: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
Most Americans believe the Bill of Rights protects certain rights against governmental interference. That is only partially true since the Bill of Rights are amendments to the Constitution which created our federal government; not the constitutions which framed the various State governments. Therefore, technically they only apply to the federal government. However, an argument can also be made that, since the Constitution itself is the Supreme Law of the land, any amendment to it could be implied to apply to the States as well.
Keeping things simple, let’s just say that the Bill of Rights only applies to the federal government. How is it then that the government can dictate what kind of guns private citizens may own; how is it that the Supreme Court — which is PART of the federal government — decides whether a State may display the Ten Commandments, or that children be prohibited from praying in school; how is it that the federal government can violate the 4th Amendment by spying upon the private conversations of every man, woman, and child in this country, just to keep us safe from terrorism?
There exists a whole list of things the federal government has done which are not among the powers listed in Article 1, Section 8 as those powers are given to Congress; which in case you have forgotten, is the lawmaking body of our government; not the President as so many seem to think.
This has all been done because of the concept of implied powers; something introduced while George Washington was President. That occurred because the Constitution itself did not provide specific enough limitations upon the powers it was granting government; leaving loopholes by which government has expanded its power well beyond those originally intended. So, if that is true, then the Constitution itself failed the people as it did not provide sufficient means for the people to resist the encroaching powers of government and to ward off tyranny and oppression.
Not one individual can provide me with the Article and Clause that grants any of us the authority to arrest and charge any of our elected officials, for the crime of violating the Constitution, because such a clause simply does not exist. And, it is this oversight that has resulted in the Constitution’s failure, by not providing the means to oppose a government that no longer adheres to any kind of limits upon their power and authority.
I only care whether the party that is in control adheres to the Constitutional limitations imposed upon them and seeks to protect and defend my rights…that and nothing more, and both parties have failed miserably in this duty. If the government does not do this, then I revoke my consent to being governed by it.
Why do Americans still support a government that no longer resembles or represents the ideas and beliefs which led our Founders to seek their independence from a tyrant? Why do they so meekly submit to tyranny and oppression today? Is there not a drop of patriotic blood left in their bodies?
One certainly must wonder what has kept Americans from marching on D.C, with rifles in hand and sixteen feet lengths of rope, so criminals like Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, James Comey, John Brennan, Samantha Power, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, John Kerry, Susan Rice, Alexander Vindman and so many others can be hung from the highest tree or the balcony of the Capitol Building; especially in light of the current double standard of “law” applied in America.
All I see is a nation of sheep who meekly obey the commands of their masters. What has become of the land of the free and the home of the brave?
I seek and work to restore America — along with any and all like-minded Americans — to Her Founding Principles and more of an Originalist approach towards the implementation of the U.S. Constitution, which has been bastardized far and away from anything ever intended by the Founding Fathers.
If Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were alive today they would either have fled the country, or they would be serving time in Guantanamo Bay as domestic terrorists, because our government has become a soul-sucking, liberty killing monster and the bulk of the people of this country no longer seem to truly care about limited government or individual liberty, seeking only comfort and security, whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans providing it. And it makes me sick to death to watch."
Enter a Highly Focused Mental State - Isochronic Tones"
"This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Use this video to increase focus and concentration while studying, working and doing any mentally taxing activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."
This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here:
Works for me... Listen folks, whether you want to know it or not we're in the fight of our lives, for our lives right now, and it's going to get unimaginably worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too...
• Mass formation is a form of mass hypnosis that emerges when specific conditions are met, and almost always precede the rise of totalitarian systems.
• Four central conditions that need to exist in order for mass formation to arise are widespread loneliness and lack of social bonding, which leads to experiencing life as meaningless, which leads to widespread free-floating anxiety and discontent, which leads to widespread free-floating frustration and aggression, which results in feeling out of control.
• Under mass formation, a population enters a hypnotic-type trance that makes them willing to sacrifice anything, including their lives and their freedom.
• Key strategies to disrupt the mass formation process are to speak out against it and to practice nonviolent resistance. Dissenting voices keep totalitarian systems from deteriorating into abject inhumanity where people are willing to commit heinous atrocities.
Ultimately, “totalitarianism” refers to the ambition of the system. It wants to eliminate the ability of individual choice, and in so doing, it destroys the core of what it is to be human. The quicker a system destroys the individual, the sooner the system collapses
Professor Mattias Desmet, a Belgian psychologist with a master’s degree in statistics, gained worldwide recognition toward the end of 2021, when he presented the concept of “mass formation” as an explanation for the absurd and irrational behavior we were seeing with regard to the COVID pandemic and its countermeasures. He also warned that mass formation gives rise to totalitarianism, which is the topic of his new book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." Desmet’s work was further popularized by Dr. Robert Malone, whose appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast was viewed by about 50 million people.
But as the search term “mass formation” exploded in popularity, Google responded by manipulating the search engine results in an attempt to discredit Desmet and show people in their search results information that would cause them to discount the importance of this work. Why? Because Google is at the core of the global cabal and movement toward totalitarianism.
Understanding the Psychology of the Times Is Crucial: Those who refuse to learn from history are bound to repeat it, they say, and this appears particularly pertinent in the present day because, as explained by Desmet, if we don’t understand how mass formation occurs and what it leads to, we cannot prevent it. How did Desmet reach the conclusion that we were in the process of mass formation? He explains: “In the beginning of the Corona crisis, back in February 2020, I started to study the statistics on the mortality rates of the virus, the infection fatality rates, the case fatality rate and so on, and immediately, I got the impression - and with me, several world-famous statisticians, such as John Ioannidis of Stanford, for instance - that the statistics and mathematical models used dramatically overrated the danger of the virus.
Immediately, I wrote an opinion paper trying to bring some of the mistakes to people's attention. But, I noticed immediately that people just didn't want to know. It was as if they didn't see even the most blatant mistakes at the level of the statistics that were used. People just were not capable of seeing it.”
This early experience made him decide to focus on the psychological mechanisms at play in society, and he became convinced that what we were seeing were in fact the effects of a large-scale process of mass formation, because the most salient characteristic of this psychological trend is that it makes people radically blind to everything that goes against the narrative they believe in.
They basically become incapable of distancing themselves from their beliefs, and therefore cannot take in or evaluate new data. Desmet continues: “Another very specific characteristic is that this process of mass formation makes people willing to radically sacrifice everything that is important to them - even their health, their wealth, the health of their children, the future of their children.
When someone is in the grip of a process of mass formation, he becomes radically willing to sacrifice all his individual interest. A third characteristic, to name only a few, is that once people are in the grip of a process of mass formation, they typically show a tendency of cruelty towards people who do not buy into the narrative, or do not go along with the narrative. They typically do so as if it is an ethical duty.
In the end, they are typically inclined, first, to stigmatize, and then, to eliminate, to destroy, the people who do not go along with the masses. And that's why it is so extremely important to understand the psychological mechanisms at work, because if you understand the mechanisms at work, you can avoid the mass formation to become so deep that people reach this critical point in which they really are fanatically convinced that they should destroy everyone that does not go along with them.
So, it's extremely important to understand the mechanism. If you understand it, you can make sure that the crowd, the mass, will first destroy itself, or will exhaust itself, before it starts to destroy the people that do not go along with the mass. So, it's of crucial importance, and that's what my book describes. It describes how a mass, a crowd, emerges in a society, under which conditions it emerges, what the mechanisms of the process of mass formation are, and what you can do about it. That's extremely important. I will mention this from the beginning.
Usually, it is impossible to wake up the masses. Once a process of mass formation emerges in a society, it's extremely difficult to wake the masses up. But, [waking them up is] important, [because] you can avoid the masses and their leaders becoming so fanatically convinced of their narrative that they start to destroy the people who do not go along with them.”
Indeed, to those of us who did not fall under the spell of the irrational COVID narrative, the cruelty with which political leadership, media and people at large tried to force compliance was shockingly abhorrent. Many were physically attacked, and some even killed, simply for not wearing a face mask, which we knew was a useless prevention strategy."
“Imagine if you will - and you will - a mushroom cloud bigger than anything that you currently see out that window. Imagine jet planes and bombers the size of apartment complexes and hypersonic missiles dropping technological marvels of deconstruction upon this city, this world, all around the epicenter of a blooming death cloud. Imagine that mushroom coming to a head, knowing that it is filled with unimaginable heat and concrete, dust, papers - human faces, eyes, and brains. Gray matter filling the radioactive cloud with electricity as all that is inside us leaves us and becomes one with the mushroom. Glass will melt and connect with steel, and we will melt and connect with each other as everything that made us whole is criminally dissected and rearranged. Everything below us, from the sewer tunnels to the subway line, will be consumed into the cloud and jettisoned into the stratosphere, where it will become nothing but silken ash, hardened to a black substance, and turned back to a black dust, transfixed into a black nothing. A stinking, glowing crater all that remains of where you had your first kiss and told someone that you loved them. A mess of a world where everything you’ve ever done quickly becomes all that you’ll ever do.”
"Prepare for War, Higher Energy Prices & Significant Civil Unrest"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong says, “If my computer had legs, it would hide under my bed.” That’s how bad things are looking for the rest of 2022 and 2023, according to Armstrong’s “Socrates” program that foresees future geopolitical and economic trends and events. Let’s start with war that is already underway with Russia. Armstrong says, “They wanted war. It’s all been provoked, and it’s intentional.”
Armstrong points out, “Ukraine President Zelensky already has hundreds of millions of dollars stashed off-shore. He’s been offered a golden parachute, and he’s willing to fight until the last Ukrainian dies on the battlefield. This is nothing more than a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and they know that. Russia knows Ukraine is not the enemy. It is the United States.”
How close are we to all-out war with the U.S. directly involved against Russia? Armstrong says, “I can tell you I have a friend whose brother is in the U.S. military here, and they have already been told to prepare for war. The U.S. is shipping more troops over to Europe. They are not shipping troops to Ukraine, but to NATO countries. They want war.”
So, are higher energy prices coming? Armstrong says, “They need to get gas prices to $10 a gallon so people will drive less, and that way they can get their electric cars. This is the insanity of what is going on in Washington.”
One rumor that Armstrong is hearing from his Washington D.C. sources is talk about granting citizenship to illegal aliens flooding across the southern border with a Presidential Executive Order shortly before the mid-term election in November. That would allow illegals to vote, and that sort of outright cheating could touch off violence. Armstrong says, “I am concerned if they pull that and they grant all these people citizenship. He’s been flying them in and dropping them off in the middle of the night, why are they doing that? It is to change the election. I am concerned you would be talking about civil unrest going into 2023 that is going to be significant. You have already divided the country between blue and red to begin with. They have misrepresented the abortion thing. Now, with the aliens, how much more are we going to take of this?”
Armstrong talks about the dumbest world leaders he has ever seen. He also talks about Soros and defund the police. Armstrong tells us the importance of silver and cash if there is a total break down on the financial system, the disease cycle that started in 2022 and the decline of the global population that will keep falling until 2040.
In closing, Armstrong says, “The higher the gasoline prices, the greater the economic stress and not just in the U.S and EU, I am talking everywhere. This is why they need war. They need the great distraction, and that is manufacturing World War III."
There is much more in the 1-hour and 7-minute interview.
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing some strange 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!"
"The main legacy plan in this world is to leave your children with assets, not debts. In the UK they want to propose a 50 year mortgage that can be assignable to your children upon your death. This will leave people with nothing. This is ridiculous."
and bonds lookin' like the ugliest pig in the sty.
by Joel Bowman
Tenerife, Spain - "Okay, okay... let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. Then, we’ll get to the ugly stuff...Stocks officially closed out their worst six month start to any year in over half a century last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended lower by 1%... the broader S&P 500 fell by 1.8%... and the tech-heavy Nasdaq shrank by another 3.6%. For those of you keeping/agonizing over the score at home, the three indices are down by 15, 20 and almost 30%, respectively, for the year. Ouchie!!
As we mentioned on Friday, tech stocks alone have given up over $4 trillion dollars since their all time highs of late 2021... an amount roughly equal to the entire GDP of Germany, the world’s 4th largest economy. (If they cough-up another cool trill, they’ll have fallen by more than Japan’s annual GDP.)
The last time markets were hemorrhaging this badly, Burt Bacharach and Hal David had a couple of Billboard Top Ten hits – “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (recorded by B.J. Thomas) and “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” (recorded by The Carpenters). That was back in 1970, the beginning of a decade marred by persistent inflation, economic recession and high unemployment (stagflation) at home and beset by oil shocks, trade embargoes and geopolitical uncertainty abroad. Hmm... sound familiar?
Apples to Apples: Inflation, as if your memory needed jogging, is running at a white hot annualized rate of 8.6% (over the 12 months ending in May). Again, you have to go back to "That ‘70s Show" to find those kinds of numbers. And even then, you still have to believe the cheeky buggers calculating them!
As you might expect, the gate-keepers over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics love few things more in this life than a little methodological prestidigitation. It’s kind of their thing. Which is to say, they’ve rigged up various torture instruments over the years in order to make the numbers sing like proverbial canaries.
That’s why it’s good to check in occasionally with people like John Williams, over at Shadowstats.com, who tracks the data using both 1990 and 1980 baseline methodologies to get his “alternative” (read: historically comparable) prints. Comparing today’s apples to the 1990 era crate, our current inflation rate is probably closer to 13%. And using the 1980 calculation method, it looks more like 17%. (Is that in line what you’re experiencing at the pump and the store? Feel free to comment below with anecdotal observations from your own neck of the woods.)
But despite what you see and hear with your own eyes and ears, the American economy is stronger than ever. At least, that’s what President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. told members of the press at a NATO summit here in Spain on Thursday. “America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,” Mr. Biden assured the room full of reporters. “We have the strongest economy in the world, [and] our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world.”
And it’s true. Inflation is higher in “other nations”... if those nations are Argentina... Turkey... Russia... Brazil... and a tiny handful of others. To be fair, at least he didn’t claim that inflation was higher in “every other major industrial country in the world,” right? Oh, wait... here’s the transcript from an interview Biden gave with the Associated Press earlier in the month. “First of all, it’s not inevitable,” the President said of the recession into which many economists believe we have since plunged. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”
Asked who is responsible for the 40-year high inflation, the man who once proudly tweeted “When somebody is President of the United States, the responsibility is total,” shirked... “If it’s my fault,” Mr. Total Responsibility snapped, “why is it the case in every other major industrial country in the world that inflation is higher? You ask yourself that? I’m not being a wise guy.” And indeed, he wasn’t. Here’s the chart:
(Source: Trading Economics)
So stocks are down. And consumer price inflation is up. Way up. That’s the bad. For the ugly, we turn to the bond market... Bonner Private Research’s own macro analyst, Dan Denning, shared the gory details with members in Friday’s update. Here, a choice snippet..."You have to go back to the 18th century - before George Washington became America’s first President - to find a worse first half of the year for benchmark US government bonds. Ten-year Treasuries are on pace for an annualized loss of 11%, according to Deutsche Bank. To give you an idea of how bad that is, the previous ‘worst’ year in recent history was a 2.4% annual loss in 1994.
Government credit - the ability to borrow on behalf of the American people - did not exist in the late 18th century. In fact, until the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation in 1787 and was finally ratified by nine of the thirteen States in 1788, the central government did not have the power to tax or issue bonds.
It’s a bit beyond the scope of this week’s update, but the link between government borrowing and the Warfare/Welfare State (unlimited debt and unlimited government) is at the heart of many economic and political issues we face today. In Article VIII of the Articles of Confederation, a Common Treasury was established for ‘the common defense or general welfare’ of the new nation. But the money was to be collected by the States, based on a proportional land tax.
One of the big criticisms of the Articles (by the Federalists) was that the federal government was powerless to raise money. The Constitution ‘rectified’ that in Article 1, Section 8, by giving Congress the power to ‘lay and collect taxes’ and ‘borrow money on the credit of the United States.’
You could argue that it’s been downhill ever since - that the Constitution has failed in limiting the size of the Federal government. And you could argue that by giving itself a monopoly over money, regulating the value thereof, and borrowing on the public credit, it was only a matter of time before we got to where we are: $30 trillion in debt with no end in sight. But here we are, nonetheless."
And there you have it, dear reader... where we’ve been... over the past six months... the past 40 years... and since the founding of the nation. The big question, of course, is where to next?"
“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.
The galaxy’s protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872′s spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”
“Almost all Americans have had an intense school experience which occupied their entire youth, an experience during which they were drilled thoroughly in the culture and economy of the well-schooled greater society, in which individuals have been rendered helpless to do much of anything except watch television or punch buttons on a keypad.
Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn’t any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we’ve been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage.
Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They’re like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don’t have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won’t surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent - or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.”
"Most people are completely unaware of how vulnerable NATO is. This video breaks it down. We cannot emphasize enough the prospect for a major global conflict going nuclear, more evidence is provided today. Check out this series that demystifies the prospect of global thermonuclear conflict and why it isn't being the realm of possibility and right now is quite plausible."
“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.
The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.
The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.
Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.
In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.
Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.
Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.
In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.
The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.
It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.
Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.
Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.
There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.
The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.
That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”
"The Illusion of Russian and Chinese Aggression Around the World"
by Schiller Institute, Col. Richard Black,
"Col. Richard Black (ret.), former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon and former Virginia State Senator, addresses the May 26 Schiller Institute conference."
"For a moment in time, it looked as if reality had managed to finally carve its way through the dense fog of propaganda-driven misinformation that had dominated Western media coverage of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
In a stunning admission, Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former senior adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Services, noted that the optimism that existed in Ukraine following Russia’s decision to terminate “Phase One” of the SMO (a major military feint toward Kiev), and begin “Phase Two” (the liberation of the Donbass), was no longer warranted. “The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now,” Danylyuk noted. “They are being much more successful. They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.” “There’s much less space for optimism right now,” Danylyuk concluded.
In short, Russia was winning. Danylyuk’s conclusions were not derived from some esoteric analysis drawn from Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, but rather basic military math. In a war that had become increasingly dominated by the role of artillery, Russia simply was able to bring to bear on the battlefield more firepower than Ukraine.
Ukraine started the current conflict with an artillery inventory that included 540 122mm self-propelled artillery guns, 200 towed 122mm howitzers, 200 122mm multiple-rocket launch systems, 53 152mm self-propelled guns, 310 towed 152mm howitzers, and 96 203mm self-propelled guns, for approximately 1,200 artillery and 200 MLRS systems.
For the past 100-plus days, Russia has been relentlessly targeting both Ukraine’s artillery pieces and their associated ammunition storage facilities. By June 14, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that it had destroyed “521 installation of multiple launch rocket systems” and “1947 field artillery guns and mortars.” Even if the Russian numbers are inflated (as is usually the case when it comes to wartime battle damage assessments), the bottom line is that Ukraine has suffered significant losses among the very weapons systems — artillery — which are needed most in countering the Russian invasion.
But even if Ukraine’s arsenal of Soviet-era 122mm and 152mm artillery pieces were still combat-worthy, the reality is that, according to Danylyuk, Ukraine has almost completely run out of ammunition for these systems and the stocks of ammunition sourced from the former Soviet-bloc Eastern European countries that used the same family of weapons have been depleted.
Ukraine is left doling out what is left of its former Soviet ammunition while trying to absorb modern Western 155mm artillery systems, such as the Caesar self-propelled gun from France and the U.S.-made M777 howitzer. But the reduced capability means that Ukraine is only able to fire some 4,000-to-5,000 artillery rounds per day, while Russia responds with more than 50,000. This 10-fold disparity in firepower has proven to be one of the most decisive factors when it comes to the war in Ukraine, enabling Russia to destroy Ukrainian defensive positions with minimal risk to its own ground forces.
Casualties: This has led to a second level of military math imbalances, that being casualties. Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior aid to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, recently estimated that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day on the frontlines with Russia, and another 500 or so wounded. These are unsustainable losses, brought on by the ongoing disparity in combat capability between Russia and Ukraine symbolized, but not limited to, artillery.
In recognition of this reality, NATO Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg announced that Ukraine will more than likely have to make territorial concessions to Russia as part of any potential peace agreement, asking, “What price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory, how much independence, how much sovereignty…are you willing to sacrifice for peace?”
Stoltenberg, speaking in Finland, noted that similar territorial concessions made by Finland to the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War was “one of the reasons Finland was able to come out of the Second World War as an independent sovereign nation.”
To recap - the secretary general of the trans-Atlantic alliance responsible for pushing Ukraine into its current conflict with Russia is now proposing that Ukraine be willing to accept the permanent loss of sovereign territory because NATO miscalculated and Russia - instead of being humiliated on the field of battle and crushed economically - is winning on both fronts. Decisively. That the secretary general of NATO would make such an announcement is telling for several reasons.
Stunning Request: First, Ukraine is requesting 1,000 artillery pieces and 300 multiple-launch rocket systems, more than the entire active-duty inventory of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps combined. Ukraine is also requesting 500 main battle tanks - more than the combined inventories of Germany and the United Kingdom. In short, to keep Ukraine competitive on the battlefield, NATO is being asked to strip its own defenses down to literally zero.
More telling, however, is what the numbers say about NATO’s combat strength versus Russia. If NATO is being asked to empty its armory to keep Ukraine in the game, one must consider the losses suffered by Ukraine up to that point and that Russia appears able to sustain its current level of combat activity indefinitely. That’s right - Russia just destroyed the equivalent of NATO’s main active-duty combat power and hasn’t blinked. One can only imagine the calculations underway in Brussels as NATO military strategists ponder the fact that their alliance is incapable of defeating Russia in a large-scale European conventional land war.
But there is another conclusion that these numbers reveal - that no matter what the U.S. and NATO do in terms of serving as Ukraine’s arsenal, Russia is going to win the war. The question now is how much time the West can buy Ukraine, and at what cost, in a futile effort to discover Russia’s pain threshold in order to bring the conflict to an end in a manner that reflects anything but the current path toward unconditional surrender.
The only questions that need to be answered in Brussels, apparently, is how long can the West keep the Ukrainian Army in the field, and at what cost? Any rational actor would quickly realize that any answer is an unacceptable answer, given the certainty of a Russian victory, and that the West needs to stop feeding Ukraine’s suicidal fantasy of rearming itself to victory.
Enter The New York Times, stage right. While trying to completely reshape the narrative regarding the fighting in the Donbass after the damning reality check would be a bridge too far for even the creative minds at the Gray Lady - the writing equivalent of trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. But the editors were able to interview a pair of erstwhile “military analysts” who cobbled together a scenario that transformed Ukraine’s battlefield humiliation.
‘Military Analysts’: They described a crafty strategy designed to lure Russia into an urban warfare nightmare where, stripped of its advantages in artillery, it was forced to sacrifice soldiers in an effort to dig the resolute Ukrainian defenders from their hardened positions located amongst the rubble of a “dead” city - Severodonetsk. [Ukraine forces withdrew from the city Friday.] According to Gustav Gressel, a former Austrian military officer turned military analysts, “If the Ukrainians succeed in trying to drag them [the Russians] into house-to-house combat, there is a higher chance of inducing casualties on the Russians they cannot afford.”
According to Mykhailo Samus, a former Ukrainian naval officer turned think-tanks analyst, the Ukrainian strategy of dragging Russia into an urban combat nightmare is to buy time for rearming with the heavy weapons provided by the West, to “exhaust, or reduce, the enemy’s [Russia’s] offensive capabilities.”
The Ukrainian operational concepts in play in Severodonetsk, these analysts claim, have their roots in past Russian urban warfare experiences in Aleppo, Syria and Mariupol. What escapes the attention of these so-called military experts, is that both Aleppo and Mariupol were decisive Russian victories; there were no “excessive casualties,” no “strategic defeat.” Had The New York Times bothered to check the resumes of the “military exerts” it consulted, it would have found two men so deeply entrenched into the Ukrainian propaganda mill as to make their respective opinions all but useless to any journalistic outlet possessing a modicum of impartiality. But this was The New York Times.
Gressel is the source of such wisdom as: “If we stay tough, if the war ends in defeat for Russia, if the defeat is clear and internally painful, then next time he will think twice about invading a country. That is why Russia must lose this war.”
And: “We in the West…all of us, must now turn over every stone and see what can be done to make Ukraine win this war.” Apparently, the Gressel playbook for Ukrainian victory includes fabricating a Ukrainian strategy from whole cloth to influence perceptions regarding the possibility of a Ukrainian military victory.
Samus likewise seeks to transform the narrative of the Ukrainian frontline forces fighting in Severodonetsk. In a recent interview with the Russian-language journal Meduza, Samus declares that: “Russia has concentrated a lot of forces [in the Donbass]. The Ukrainian armed forces are gradually withdrawing to prevent encirclement. They understand that the capture of Severodonetsk doesn’t change anything for the Russian or the Ukrainian army from a practical point of view. Now, the Russian army is wasting tremendous resources to achieve political objectives and I think they will be very difficult to replenish…[f]or the Ukrainian army, defending Severodonetsk isn’t advantageous. But if they retreat to Lysychansk they’ll be in more favorable tactical conditions. Therefore, the Ukrainian army is gradually withdrawing or leaving Severodonetsk, and upholding the combat mission. The combat mission is to destroy enemy troops and carry out offensive operations.”
The truth is, there is nothing deliberate about the Ukrainian defense of Severodonetsk. It is the byproduct of an army in full retreat, desperately trying to claw out some defensive space, only to be crushed by the brutal onslaught of superior Russian artillery-based firepower.
To the extent Ukraine is seeking to delay the Russian advance, it is being done by the full-scale sacrifice of the soldiers at the front, thousands of people thrown into battle with little or no preparation, training, or equipment, trading their lives for time so that Ukrainian negotiators can try to convince NATO countries to mortgage their military viability on the false promise of a Ukrainian military victory.
This is the ugly truth about Ukraine today - the longer the war continues, the more Ukrainians will die, and the weaker NATO will become. If left to people like Samus and Gressel, the result would be hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians, the destruction of Ukraine as a viable nation-state, and the gutting of NATO’s front-line combat capability, all sacrificed without meaningfully altering the inevitability of a strategic Russian victory.
Hopefully sanity will prevail, and the West will wean Ukraine off the addiction of heavy weaponry, and push it to accept a peace settlement which, although bitter to the taste, will leave something of Ukraine for future generations to rebuild."
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
