"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

"Mattias Desmet, 'The Psychology Of Totalitarianism'"

Peak Prosperity, Chris Martenson,

"Mattias Desmet, 'The Psychology Of Totalitarianism'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

For Part 2 of this video (freely available),

please visit: - https://peakprosperity.com/the-psycho...

"Brace Yourselves For The Most Dramatic Shift In The Standard Of Living In All Of U.S. History"

Full screen recommended.

"Brace Yourselves For The Most Dramatic Shift

 In The Standard Of Living In All Of U.S. History"

by Epic Economist

"The level of financial pain Americans are facing right now is simply off the charts, and as the price of virtually everything continues to reach new record highs, they’re about to experience the most dramatic shift in the standard of living in all U.S. history. As the value of the dollar plummets, so does our purchasing power. Consumer prices are still rising much faster than people’s paychecks, and the Fed’s rate hikes seem to be doing more harm than good when it comes to taming stubborn inflation. To call it “economic malpractice” would be way too kind. The truth is that these policies are complete and utter lunacy, and we are all going to literally pay the price for such madness.

An enormous paradigm shift has begun. Out-of-control inflation is creating severe imbalances all across the economy, and U.S. consumers are seeing their buying power evaporate at a stunning pace. In June, the consumer price index, considered the official measure of inflation, soared 9.1% from a year ago. But the truth is that official numbers only show the very tip of the iceberg. Energy prices, for example, were up 41.6% from a year ago. Gasoline prices shot up 60.1% over the past twelve months. Food prices rose 10.4% year over year, with the cost of groceries jumping 12.2%, and restaurant prices climbing 7.7%. However, a new PYMNTS survey found that consumers are actually paying 20% to 30% more for retail and grocery purchases, a significantly higher rate than what official figures suggest.

“For the average consumer, reality is not shaped by how much the government tells them things cost; it’s shaped by their personal reality when they go shopping and pay their bills,” PYMNTS’ Karen Webster noted in her commentary on the survey. As food prices continue to skyrocket, the effect on consumers exceeds even that of the already dramatic increases seen in the hard data about these price changes. These impacts are compounded by consumers’ deteriorating financial situations, and while they spend less, grocers and big-box retailers push prices up even more to offset their financial losses.

This week, Walmart noted that the amount that consumers are spending on groceries and gas is compromising their ability to buy anything else, which is hurting the company’s bottom line. Many other consumer-focused companies have also been raising their prices to make up for lost sales, such as Kraft Heinz and Albertsons. Both companies recently announced another round of price increases ranging between 10 to 20%.

In other words, the cost of living squeeze is far from over. At the same time, many potential home buyers are being forced to put their plans to purchase a home on hold, as housing becomes significantly more unaffordable, and the latest mortgage rate increases make the problem even worse. A new study by online real estate brokerage Redfin found that the rise in interest rates led a good chunk of homebuyers to lose up to $165,000 in buying power on new homes in the last year.

If only our paychecks were rising as fast as the cost of living was, American families would be able to keep up with the escalating prices. But of course, that is not happening, and increasingly more Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day. If your income does not rise as fast as prices are going up, your standard of living will go down."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Government 'Plan' to Fight Inflation"

"The Government 'Plan' to Fight Inflation"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"If you have been on vacation for the last week, good for you. But you missed one of Congress’ greatest scams. They just approved some $750 billion (do these numbers even mean anything anymore?) to “transition” us from fossil fuels and coal over to reliance on the wind and sun, and also to subsidize a bunch of chip manufacturers because American companies screwed up their inventory control two years ago.

Get this. The worst of the two bills is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Shameless! Actually, it is worse than that. What Congress is doing today with its out-of-control trillions in spending is robbing future generations of a chance for prosperity. We will be left holding almost nothing to hand on to our kids and grandkids. Most of all, what’s being stolen is hope for the future.

The last two days have been consumed with a discussion about whether we are in a recession or not. They want to change the conventional definition, just as I predicted. The only piece of data to which they can point is the low unemployment rate while failing to point out that labor participation itself has not recovered from 2020 and continues to fall dramatically. It appears as if we’ve lost 40 years of progress in a mere 2½ years.

Also this week, the Fed raised rates again, all in the name of controlling inflation. But the damage to the dollar is already done: Since lockdowns, we’ve lost some 14% of domestic purchasing power. This has been devastating for savings, the rate of which has fallen to half what it was 10 years ago. In real terms, wages and salaries are falling fast.

Fed policy has also locked up the consumer end of the housing market. People only a year ago were flipping houses like crazy, driving up prices as never before and absorbing vast amounts of upside inflationary potential. But now 2% rates on 30-year mortgages are soaring to 6% and higher, meaning that no existing owner can afford to sell and buy without taking a huge haircut. As a result, we are facing a massive supply-curve shift to the left: soaring prices plus falling demand.

But that’s just the start of it. Credit card debt and defaults are up as real incomes are falling dramatically. Business investment is down. Consumer confidence has crashed to lows never before seen, even as trust in government will soon be in the single digits.

Very crucially: The last time the Fed squeezed the life out of easy-money policies in the late 1970s, we also had a new emphasis on economic growth. That is NOT happening now. On the contrary, the Fed is driving the recession at a time when the ruling class has decided that the rest of us SHOULD be poor and hungry, driving Flintstones cars and foraging for food.

The result, for now, is shocking stagflation. But we don’t even have a word yet for what might be coming. “Depression” is already used. How do you describe high inflation plus a manufactured depression? Let’s go with the White House term: “transition.”

The New York Times assures us that this massive spending bill will help the government achieve its great climate goals. After all, they say, the average temperature has risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years, which, they further assure us, is the fault of industrial prosperity. To be sure, the average person only lived 30–40 years in 1800. During the same century that these people claim we’ve been burning up the planet, our average lives lengthened from 40 to 75 years.

Even granting the sketchy claim that your day trip and barbecue grill are causing the planet to overheat, one might suppose that life extension would be celebrated as a good thing rather than a climate catastrophe that cries out for the wholesale dismantling of industrial civilization. But truly, there is no making sense of these people anymore. They are ready to shell out hundreds of billions to take over arable acreage with solar panels even as we face a food crisis and festoon the countryside with bird-slaughtering windmills rather than permit more pipelines and refineries to open.

The emergency of our times is undeniable as is the solution of putting a hard stop on the insanity of government spending, money printing, controls and impositions that are killing economic growth and shortening life spans. But it is no longer clear whether the current regime has a connection to reality at all. The current plan seems to be to wreck as much as possible before they are all swept out of office. And it’s looking very successful.

Below, I show you how governments and central banks are trying to stop reality by resorting to means that have never once worked in the past - and the damage it’s doing. Read on."

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"The Dangers of a Risk-Free Life"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"Every major investment banking house has sent out communications to its clients to provide a real-time assessment of why so many people have lost so much money. These are interesting to read. They are perhaps more truthful than one would expect, in fact. The latest is from Goldman Sachs. It fascinates me how the economists there do their economics. They work not from theory, not from fundamentals, but purely from probabilities based on history.

Based on this, Goldman has discerned a 30% probability of a near-term recession. That seems low, but at least they are admitting the incredibly obvious point that the whole economy is slipping into the territory of doomed. If you believe yesterday’s negative Q2 GDP figure, we’re already in a recession.

Where to Invest Your Money: And Goldman adds reasonable speculation that the money in the next few years will be made in energy, food and commodities: generally, the stuff the people need to live. Think about what people have to consume and there’s your answer to what one of the world’s largest investment banking firms thinks will be the highest-performing assets.

But the whole topic also gives rise to a different issue. It concerns the efforts on the parts of governments and central banks to stop the inevitable by resorting to means that have never once worked in the past. Governments don’t work based on probability theory; they work based on keeping danger to themselves at bay. No way will they just let the recession unfold naturally, shake it off and move on. Instead, they will sling around every conceivable policy “fix” from their grab bag to stop it, same as with the virus they could not control but tried to control anyway. And over the last decades, this general ethos of safety first seems to have become the entire prevailing philosophy of the West, afflicting generations of people under 40 years old.

Never Take a Risk: The whole subject occurred to me when reflecting on this new policy ethos and how pervasive it is in the culture. It is likely a product of prosperity. Probably one-third of the public has been raised without the usual risks and stresses that defined life in previous generations. The trouble is that this is not real. The illusion of a risk-free and still happy life is a myth, created by adults who want to make the best possible world for children.

The trouble starts as this same ethos continues to shape parental habits as children get older. Then the birthday parties start. You know this if you have kids: Classic competitive games are practically banned now. No more musical chairs. No more pin the tail on the donkey. Everyone has to be a winner all the time. It’s true even in sports for kids. Everyone has a chance. No strikeouts allowed. No one is better or worse than anyone else. And don’t get me started on the participation trophies!

It Doesn’t End There: It continues throughout education, in which now the curriculum is adapted to the students rather than the reverse. This is because trying and achieving have been deemed too stressful and impactful on delicate young psyches. The issue continues through college, which has turned into a four-year vacation from reality, paid by someone else’s credit card. Then they hit the workplace and bring the same now-deeply embedded fear of discomfort, complaining to HR about every not-safe thing that happens. And then the same people bring this attitude to politics, voting only for candidates that promise to continue giving the same safety priority to everything, from climate to disease to economics.

This ethos creates safety and assuredness, to be sure, but also boredom and dependency. It also instills an allergy to all risks. That is not friendly to capitalism. In fact, it leans people toward socialism. Ironically, the impulse toward socialism comes not from the working class and poor but from the privileged and rich. They are the ones seeking the safety of despotism over the riskiness of freedom.

How to Fix This: The trouble is profound and pervasive, which we discovered during the pandemic when the most masked and afraid were 20-somethings who hail from financial privilege and for whom the stress of the traffic of driving to work was the most intense they had ever faced. So staying home and staying safe worked just fine for them. This is a deep philosophical problem that afflicts the West today, that longing for a world of maximum comfort, high income and as little work as possible. Lockdowns were a perfect world for them.

How to fix this? Well, the problem might fix itself in time. The truth is that the real world cannot be forever made safe. To live means to accept danger to some degree. And we are likely to be surrounded by it very soon, as all the systems designed to promote infinite prosperity with no work or sacrifice are all failing. Inflation is a virus that is eating paychecks and has a whole generation panicked about the future. Rightly so.

Parenting: If you are a parent of young children, I have a suggestion. Put them to work. Help them experience discomfort and difficulty early on. As they get older, resist the temptation to coddle them forever. Let them fail. Consider even the most difficult thing of all: a straight-up financial cutoff. No more co-signed notes. No more paying the cellphone bill. No more endless access to the family funds. Yes, this can create loathing but it is short-term. They will thank you in the end.

The systems of safety built up over decades will not protect people for much longer. We are headed to a world that restores the natural order of things, one in which those who dare gain the reward. And those who do that must also experience failure too, and all the pain that comes with that.

In Praise of Failure: There should be another word besides “failure” to describe what I’m talking about. When business doesn’t go as one hoped, when plans don’t turn out, when you have to take lumps and learn to adapt to new realities, that is just part of life. A life without what we call “failure” is a life without adventure, even without meaning at all. That’s what so many have tried to manufacture, but now we see how this vision is running against the brick wall of reality.

The reality is hitting oddly quickly, with something most living people have never experienced: both inflation and recession. Staying ahead of this vise grip is not easy. No system we can construct can provide perfect protection. It will be this generation’s crucible. Maybe it ends with the realization that there are just some forces at work in the world that not government nor central banks nor parents can control. Not even Goldman Sachs."

- dailyreckoning.com

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind VI, "Spirit"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind VI, "Spirit"

"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 

The Poet: W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

"September 1, 1939"

"Defenseless

under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out

wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame."

- W.H. Auden

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"On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people."

- https://www.vox.com/

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And here we are, on the brink of a nuclear World War III,

 having learned... nothing...

"Despite My Firm Convictions..."

"Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."

- Malcolm X

"People Have No Idea What's Coming And They're Too Broke To Prepare For It"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/29/22:

"People Have No Idea What's Coming And 

They're Too Broke To Prepare For It"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The 10-Year Yield Continues To Free-Fall; Mortgage Rates Crater"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/29/22:

"The 10-Year Yield Continues To Free-Fall;

 Mortgage Rates Crater"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Day America Dies"

"The Day America Dies"

by Bonner Private Research

"Our founder, Bill Bonner, has given out only three major warnings during his half-century career. This is his fourth. It may be his most important. We’ve organized this presentation so Bill’s warning can reach a wider audience. You may see it elsewhere on the Internet. or even YouTube. And some of our colleagues in the publishing industry have asked if they can share it with their readers.

As one of our long-standing or current readers, you’ll be familiar with the key points in this message. But for many, these ideas and forecast will come as a shock. Why? For our kids, it will be a very different America What Bill sees now could be the worst crisis ever to hit the US…a combination of incompetence…out-of-control inflation…a stock market crash…a wipeout in the bond market…under-investment in the industries that we depend on…along with a horrendous power outage – followed by riots and revolution.

Bill’s presentation is called "The Day America Dies." He’s organized it into 16 chapters designed to introduce unaware Americans to the threats they face to their wealth and liberty. He also introduces new readers to some our basic strategies for preserving and protecting what you have. We believe that many Americans are unaware of the serious threats they face in the coming years. And if all we do is make them aware of some of those threats, we think it’s worth the effort. Being aware is an important the first step.

Feel free to watch the presentation if you like. Or share it with someone you think could benefit from it. We wanted to make you aware of its existence before it reaches a wider audience. And explain why we decided it was so important to release it now."

Please view "The Day America Dies", by Bill Bonner, here:

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Hawkins, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Why Does The United States Just Keep Getting Hit By One Historic Nightmare After Another?"

"Why Does The United States Just Keep Getting

Hit By One Historic Nightmare After Another?"

by Michael Snyder

"Have you become numb to all the bad news yet? Almost every single day, something really horrible seems to happen in the United States. It is just one thing after another and it has been that way for months. It is as if we are in the midst of some sort of a “perfect storm” that never seems to end. In all my years of writing, I have never seen anything like this. There is so much bad news happening right now that it is literally impossible to keep up with it all. Events are starting to accelerate at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and I am extremely concerned about what the remainder of 2022 will look like.

For months, I have been writing extensively about the endless drought in the western half of the nation. We are being told that it is the worst multi-year megadrought that the region has experienced in 1,200 years, and it just keeps getting worse and worse.

Meanwhile, we are witnessing absolutely unprecedented flooding in the eastern half of the United States. For example, some parts of Kentucky were just pummeled by more than 10 inches of rain in a 24 hour period…"Heavy rain poured down across eastern Kentucky late Wednesday into Thursday, triggering flash flooding that caused mudslides, washed away homes and roadways and promoted a flash flood emergency. The deluge produced more than 10 inches over a 24-hour period in the hardest-hit areas and came only days after another disastrous flood inundated the St. Louis area."

In some areas, it literally looks like a tsunami has just come through. One local meteorologist admitted that he does not “have the words” to describe the incredible devastation that has taken place…"Chris Bailey, WKYT’s chief meteorologist said: ‘I don’t have the words to describe the amount of devastation daylight will uncover across eastern Kentucky. "This is likely to go down as one of the worst flash flood events to ever hit the state."

Governor Andy Beshear is telling us that this was “one of the worst and most devastating events in Kentucky’s history”, and he isn’t sure why such bad things keep happening to his state…"Beshear described this as “one of the worst and most devastating events in Kentucky’s history” during the press conference. Beshear said the state was in the middle of an ongoing natural disaster and warned of the possibility for more rain to fall through Thursday night. Damage assessment and restoration were likely to continue for several days, but the dangerous flooding was hindering first responders’ ability to rescue residents, as well as allow utility workers to get power restored.

“I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,” Beshear said. “I wish I could tell you why areas, where people may not have that much, continue to get hit and lose everything. I can’t give you the why, but I know what we do in response to it. And the answer is everything we can. These are our people. Let’s make sure we help them out.”

Of course this disaster in Kentucky came just one day after one of the worst flooding events in the history of the state of Missouri. We are being told that we just witnessed “the wettest day ever for St. Louis”, and in some areas of the city the water actually got more than 8 feet deep…"One person died when a car in St. Louis was found covered in more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) of water. Several puppies drowned when a building became flooded at Stray Paws Adoptables, a stray dog rescue operation in St. Peters, a St. Louis suburb. Firefighters in boats rescued other dogs from the building.

Damage across the region was widespread after a massive downpour dropped more than 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain in parts of St. Charles County and up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) elsewhere in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Most of the rain fell in a few hours shortly after midnight." I really wish that we could take all of that water and give it to ranchers and farmers in the western half of the country, because the endless drought is absolutely crushing them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is now dealing with two major simultaneous pandemics for the first time in my entire life. Despite everything that health officials have tried, the first pandemic is still raging, and now another frightening disease is spreading like wildfire. This current monkeypox outbreak began in Europe, but this week the U.S. officially became the world leader in confirmed cases…"With more than 18,000 cases worldwide, the monkeypox outbreak is now a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared this week. And the U.S. has recorded more monkeypox cases since the beginning of the year than any other country, according to the most recent statistics."

The number of confirmed cases continues to rise at an exponential rate, and this is one disease that you definitely do not want to get. Many victims have described experiencing absolutely excruciating pain once skin sores start developing, and one man that has had both COVID and monkeypox is telling us that monkeypox is “100 times worse”.

On top of everything that I have already discussed, we just got confirmation that the U.S. economy has plunged into a recession…"The U.S. economy contracted for the second straight quarter from April to June, hitting a widely accepted rule of thumb for a recession, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday. Gross domestic product fell 0.9% at an annualized pace for the period, according to the advance estimate. That follows a 1.6% decline in the first quarter and was worse than the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 0.3%."

Of course Joe Biden will never admit that a recession has now started. According to him, everything is just great…"Biden noted that ‘both Chairman Powell and many of the significant banking personnel and economists say we’re not in a recession.’ ‘Businesses are investing in American in record rates,’ Biden boasted.

But everyone can see what is happening to the economy, and we are being warned that we must endure some “short-term pain” in order to get inflation under control… “We have to endure the short-term pain in the economy in order to get inflation back under control,” said Tara Sinclair, a senior fellow at the Indeed Hiring Lab. She compared the Fed hiking interest rates and tightening monetary policy to a medical treatment that might require patients to undergo something painful in order to have longer-term health. “Then, going forward, we can have a much more stable environment where we know prices are going to be growing about 2 percent per year, we have more certainty about that, we have a better sense of demand and supply coming together. That’s a better working environment for the economy as a whole, and businesses want that kind of certainty.”

Without a doubt, we desperately need to do something about inflation because it is absolutely eviscerating those at the bottom of the economic food chain. For example, just consider the plight of one woman that was recently interviewed by CNN…"For 17 years, Ana Duran worked full time as a travel counselor. Late last year she lost that job, shortly before seeing the price of eggs rise to $7.99 a dozen and the price of a single avocado rise to $2.99 at her local store. In June, it cost her $94 to fill up her gas tank, instead of the $50 it cost her last year. Duran has been receiving unemployment benefits and working part-time as a caregiver for a resident at a senior center. To make ends meet, she’s also been selling her own gold jewelry and crushing aluminum cans to recycle for extra cash."

Unfortunately, what the Fed is trying to do isn’t going to work. The inflation rate will likely stabilize, but we aren’t going back to a low inflation environment. However, dramatically raising interest rates will definitely crash the housing market. Ultimately, we are going to get to enjoy 1970s-style inflation and a repeat of the housing crash of 2008 all at the same time. Won’t that be fun?

A historic economic meltdown of epic proportions has begun, and it is going to get a whole lot worse. We seem to be in the midst of some sort of a “perfect storm” with no end in sight. So why is this happening to us? Why does the United States just keep getting hit by one historic nightmare after another? We appear to have entered an ominous new chapter in our history, and I believe that events will accelerate even more during the difficult months that are ahead of us."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"Few Things..."

"If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You’ll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational."

- Scott Adams

○

"How To Deal With Irrational People"

Bill Bonner, "Economic Shrinkage"

"Economic Shrinkage"

Latest GDP figures throw cold water 

on hopes of a robust recovery.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "You already know our major hypothesis. It’s “inflate or die.” Once an economy has gotten used to big doses of cheap money (artificially low interest rates… deficits… quantitative easing, etc)… trying to go back to normal monetary policies is painful. It’s like a man who has gotten immensely fat by eating 10 cream pies a day. Cut down on the pies and he’ll need a new pair of pants. So too will an economy. Yesterday came more news that the US economy is shrinking. The Wall Street Journal reports: "U.S. Economy Shrank Last Quarter." "The U.S. economy shrank for a second quarter in a row - a common definition of recession - as businesses trimmed their inventories, the housing market buckled under rising interest rates, and high inflation took steam out of consumer spending."

High Calorie Fiat Diet: There is some immutable law of the universe that tells us that over-doing it brings unhappy consequences. Cream pies cause problems – diabetes, high blood pressure… and of course, obesity itself. So, too, did the Fed’s high-calorie credit diet inevitably lead to the doctor’s office. “Too much,” came the diagnosis. “Cut back,” came the prescription.

And so it came to pass, after creating the problem itself, denying there was a problem… and then insisting that it would pass on its own, that the Fed began a campaign to moderate its intake of cream pies. On Wednesday, it took another 0.75% slice off the table.

It’s either more or less. Fat or slim. Inflate or die. But what we are wondering about today is the space in between. Does the Bubble Epoch have to die completely? Couldn’t it be just a little dead? Suppose the economy were to shilly-shally around… neither expanding nor contracting… indefinitely? And couldn’t stocks resume the course they have taken for the last 40 years – dipping now and then, but then recovering upward momentum? Why can’t Apple become a $5 trillion corporation?

Since the Fed began its diet program, stocks lost as much as 20% of their weight. Bonds slimmed down. Mortgage refinancers cinched up their belts. Recently, commodities and energy fell too. Maybe that’s enough?

Peak Delusion: Investors were jubilant this week. They think inflation may have ‘peaked.’ After all, didn’t the inflation come from Putin’s war… from supply chain disruptions… and stimmie checks? And aren’t those things all, well, transitory? And isn’t the inflation they caused working its way through the system? Like a bad meal, it will soon be gone. And then the Fed will not need anymore 0.75% rate hikes. Instead, it can begin to ease off. The damage from higher mortgage rates… and higher lending rates, generally… will be contained.

We are just reciting what we believe to be the main line of talk on Wall Street. We don’t believe it ourselves. Because, the creampie-eating fatso analogy quickly breaks down. A man may slim down a little, or a lot. If he does, he doesn’t have to remodel his bathroom, get remarried or order a new dining room chair. Life goes on, much as it did before.

But when the Fed decides to ‘slim down’ the economy… the pie store goes belly up! Debtors can’t repay their loans… so their creditors go broke. Businesses can’t afford to pay so many employees – so unemployment goes up. Stocks, bonds, and cryptos – that looked like big winners just 6 months ago – are suddenly revealed as Ponzi schemes, doomed from the very get-go.

Near Zero Interest: In a healthy economy, people barely notice the Fed. Its manipulations are slight. Its errors are small. It stays out of the way. That’s the way it was until the 1990s, when Alan Greenspan began backstopping Wall Street. Later, after the mortgage crisis of 2008, the Fed intervened on a scale never before seen in the US. Interest rates were pushed down to near-zero… and left there for more than 10 years. In a single month in 2020, the Fed added more new money than had been ‘printed’ in the preceding 100 years. And now, the whole economy has an almost insatiable appetite for more credit from the Fed.

It’s a monster. Either inflate it. Or kill it. But why does it have to die? Couldn’t it be just a little more normal? A little less obese? Couldn’t it die just a little bit? And then, come back to life? Hmmm… we’ll have to think about that over the weekend…Stay tuned."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

○

Related:

"Real GDP Says: 'Get Real! Trust not the Fed, economists or 

the president. The REAL economy is collapsing all around you'!”

"How It Really Is"

 

"Fed Rate Hike to Unleash Avalanche of Home Foreclosures and Market Drops"

"Fed Rate Hike to Unleash Avalanche of 

Home Foreclosures and Market Drops"

by Mike Adams

"Wednesday the Fed hiked the interbank lending rate by 75 basis points (0.75%), which will lead to retail loan rates rising across the board. This is all part of the Fed’s attempt to reel in rising inflation, which the dishonest government claims is at around 9% but the rest of the world already understands to be closer to 20%.

Thus, raising interest rates by 0.75% isn’t going to halt inflation. Prices of food, fuel and consumer goods are going to continue to rise dramatically in the months ahead. The rate raise, however, will cause sharp drops in the housing market, since housing is strongly dependent on mortgage loans which are highly sensitive to interest rates. Because home loans are often 30-year loans, even a small increase in loan rates can result in dramatic increases in monthly payments, pricing many people out of the homes they could afford just six months ago. The net effect will be falling home sales and decreasing values of real estate, combined with large increases in mortgage defaults.

Foreclosure starts are now up 440% year over year: According to DSnews.com’s reporting on the Black Knight Mortgage Monitor Report, us foreclosure “starts” (i.e. new foreclosures) have risen 440% from last year (June 2022 vs June 2021). July numbers aren’t yet reported, but it is near certain they will also show large increases in foreclosures.

Retail auto sales are down slightly, although much of that may be attributable to lack of supply rather than reduced demand. However, as interest rates rise, people are increasingly priced out of the automobiles they wish to purchase. As the UK Daily Mail reports, a shocking number of Americans are now paying $1,000 a month on a car loan payment:

• The percentage of people taking out new car loans and paying $1,000 in monthly payments has almost doubled from 7% to 12.7% over the last 12 months.

• Average monthly payments on new car loans are at a record high of $686.

• Used car market sees average monthly payments at $554, up 12% year-on-year.

• Pandemic supply-chain problems are partly to blame with the shortage of new cars leading to price hikes on the forecourt.

• Monthly interest payments also shot up after the Federal Reserve raised rates.

Gold and silver will likely drop a bit more as people unload assets to meet margin calls in the stock market, but in the long run, precious metals look poised to skyrocket as the dollar’s real world value plunges and inflation spirals out of control.

The Fed will likely soon stop raising rates and will start lowering them, indicating a total surrender to inflation and the eventual collapse of the fiat currency. It seems likely that this will be the last rate raise of 2022, or potentially the second to last. The Fed is already indicating they plan to start lowering rates in 2023, and many financial analysts believe the Fed will almost certainly accelerate that action to late 2022 as the economic carnage in the real estate industry becomes too messy to ignore.

Ultimately, the Fed will capitulate and abandon any real goal of tackling inflation. They will keep printing money and lowering interest rates while inflation spirals out of control, leading to an end game scenario where food and fuel prices lead to nationwide riots while the dollar collapses in real world value.

On top of this, China, Russia, India and other BRICS nations are rolling out a new global reserve currency that will make the petro dollar obsolete, immediately making global dollar dominance a thing of the past. This will cause dollars to come flooding back to America as other nations dump the hyperinflated dollar and embrace the commodities-backed, gold-backed, energy-backed BRICS reserve currency. 

Before long, America will be a collapsed Third World nation with mass homelessness, starvation, destitution and lawlessness, with a collapsing fiat currency, a corrupt illegitimate government regime and a captured corporate media that now sees its only job as covering up the crimes of the regime in power… the same regime that holds political prisoners in jail without due process, runs depopulation vaccine propaganda campaigns and purges the military of Christians and patriots so they can unleash the military against We the People in a domestic genocidal war. (That’s what is coming if we don’t change course…) This is when you will thank God for the preparedness activities that you pursued in advance."

Get full details on all this and more in today’s

 Situation Update podcast via Brighteon.com:

- Brighteon.com/

Discover more information-packaged podcasts,

 raw intel reports and interviews each day:

- https://www.brighteon.com/

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 7/29/22:

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing massive price increases on most products! 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!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"When is a Recession Not a Recession? The Collapse Has Started"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 7/29/22:

"When is a Recession Not a Recession?

 The Collapse Has Started"

"It’s official! We are in a recession. You can rename it anything you want, but the results will be equal the same thing. Businesses are suffering, people are being laid off, people have no extra money and there is no hope to fix this anytime soon #Recession"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"Buckle Up, Cupcake"

by Addison Wiggin

“Today,” writes Garett Baldwin in the newly minted Agora Uncensored, “6,307 public companies trade on public U.S. markets.” Roughly 29% of these stocks don’t turn a profit. Seriously. Not a penny of profits. 1,941 companies have negative gross margins.” What happens now, when these unprofitable companies have to pay up an additional 75 basis points on all their new debt moving forward? “The answer is a significantly negative impact on their balance sheets.” Or, to put it more bluntly, these companies are in the tanker. Further, the United States has officially entered a recession, as this chart from Statista.com reveals:

- WigginSessions@email.5minforecast.com

And when "these companies are in the tanker" and declare bankruptcy, as they must and will, what do you think will happen to your job, Good Citizen? You and many millions others?

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Central Bank Warns On "Market Panic", Says "Will Kill The Panic" If Need Be"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/29/22:

"Alert! Central Bank Warns On "Market Panic", 

Says "Will Kill The Panic" If Need Be"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/