"Huxley vs. Orwell"

"Huxley vs. Orwell"

by Neil Postman

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one...

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism... 

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...

As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Huxley was quite obviously correct...

"Banking Horror Stories - Get Your Cash Out"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/3/22

"Banking Horror Stories - Get Your Cash Out"

"We are starting to hear more and more stories from banks, as to why people cannot get their money out. We are seeing everything from online banking going down for multiple days to the banks just freezing peoples money."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Tours, Centre, France. Thanks for stopping by!

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"

~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

The Poet: J.R.R. Tolkien, "I Sit And Think"

"I Sit And Think"

 "I sit beside the fire and think

Of all that I have seen,

Of meadow flowers and butterflies

In summers that have been.

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

In autumns that there were,

With morning mist and silver sun

And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring

That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things

That I have never seen,

In every wood, in every spring,

There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of people long ago,

And people that will see a world

That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"Look To This Day..."

"Look to this day

for it is life,

the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all

the realities and truths of existence,

the joy of growth ,

the splendor of action,

the glory of power.

For yesterday is but a memory,

And tomorrow is only a vision.

But today well lived

makes every yesterday a memory

of happiness,

and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day..."

- Kalidasa

"How It Really Is"

 

"Inconvenience Stickers Everywhere At Kroger! Stock Up! Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 12/3/22"

"Inconvenience Stickers Everywhere At Kroger! 

Stock Up! Not Good!"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger Marketplace, and are noticing inconvenience stickers everywhere! The last time we saw this many, there was a major food shortage. For the past few weeks we have seen a steady increase in food prices around the country. In addition we are also seeing a lot more empty shelves. It's getting rough out here as stores continue to struggle to get in products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

"The Truth Virus:

The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
by Dog Poet

"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.

Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually - and sometimes not so gradually - take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.

People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus - and who are not susceptible to catching it - will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.

There’s a lot of news, noise and argument about Howdy Doody’s comprehensive health plan for the Teletubbies. Most people think that some permutation of universal health care is going to be a major step up for American society. They seem to think that having it is somehow going to lead to a more general state of well being among the population. There are several reasons why this isn’t going to make the slightest difference no matter what kind of a program finally gets decided on.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.

The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.

Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?

The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine (nicely recovering from a bad scare) and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.

I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.

With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.

With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.

It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.

There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.

Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.

This virus of mine- and perhaps you have it too- is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."

- http://rockthetruth.blogspot.com/

○

"They Live- Sunglasses"

○

"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

But remember: "I didn't say it would be easy. I just said it would be the truth."
- Morpheus

"A Chime Of Words..."

"Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters -

 to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."
- Logan Pearsall Smith

"We Are Trapped In A Truman Show Directed By Psychopaths" (Excerpt)

"We Are Trapped In A Truman Show

Directed By Psychopaths"

by Jim Quinn

Excerpt: “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” - Aldous Huxley, letter to George Orwell about "1984" in 1949

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” - Aldous Huxley

When I step back from the day-to-day minutia and trivialities flooding my senses from all directions and media devices, it almost appears as if I’m living in a highly scripted reality TV program where the characters and plots are designed to create passions and reactions to support whatever narrative is being weaved by those directing the show. Huxley really did foresee the future as clearly and concisely as anyone could, decades before his dystopian vision came to fruition.

Orwell’s boot on the face vision is only now being initiated because a few too many critical thinkers have awoken from their pharmaceutically induced stupor and begun to question the plotline of this spectacle masquerading as our reality. The mass formation psychosis infecting the weak-minded masses; relentless mass propaganda designed to mislead, misinform, and brainwash a dumbed down and government indoctrinated populace; and complete control of the story line through media manipulation, regulation, and censorship of the truth; has run its course. As Charles Mackay stated 180 years ago, the masses go mad as a herd, but only regain their senses slowly, and one by one.

My recognition that the world seems to be scripted and directed by Machiavellian managers, working behind a dark shroud, representing an invisible governing authority, molding our minds, suggesting our ideas, dictating our tastes, and creating fear, triggered a recollection of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie – "The Truman Show." The movie, directed by Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poet’s Society), had the surreal feel of Forest Gump, while beckoning the horrendous introduction of reality TV (Big Brother, Survivor), which poisons our shallow unserious society to this day. The plot of the movie focuses on individuality versus conformity, consumerism, voyeurism, reality versus manipulation, false narratives, the truth about the American Dream, and the dangers of surveillance in a technologically advanced society."

Read the complete, highly recommended, article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Sell Everything and Run. It's Over."

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 12/2/22:

"Sell Everything and Run. It's Over."

"The Market crash is imminent, we're nowhere near the bottom. Russia states its officially at war with NATO, fires are out of control in Ukraine as people burn things to keep warm, Lithuania has shifted to Combat readiness, Russian Bombers posture and a major killshot is on Ukraines grid is imminent, Latvia state of Emergency remains along border, and that's just scratching the surface of what we talk about today."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"10 Big Retail Stores That Will Disappear In The Months Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

"10 Big Retail Stores That Will 

Disappear In The Months Ahead"

by Epic Economist

"We continue to lose some of our favorite brands and stores to this crazy economy. Retail experts are stunned by the pace at which some of the most well-established companies are decaying, and even household names that have been with us for decades are at risk of going out of business during this downturn, according to an updated report recently released by credit-rating company Moody’s Analytics. In the past two years, hundreds of companies fell prey to the dreaded retail apocalypse. Thousands of stores have been permanently shut down, and countless jobs were lost in the process. Now, new numbers show that the entire sector is still struggling as cash-strapped Americans pull back on spending, foot traffic at brick-and-mortar locations faces a precipitous decline, and retailers’ balance sheets are impacted by a massive glut of inventory that is not selling.

This Black Friday also marked a stark reversal for the sector. According to the Financial Times, we just had the first Black Friday in which retailers seen real-term fall in revenues and sales since the global financial crisis. That's quite alarming given that the event is considered the informal start of the peak shopping season. We're now witessing a turning point for consumer spending, as the highest inflation since the early 1980s erodes shoppers’ purchasing power. Retail sales volumes declined from 13.5% in 2021, to mere 4% this Black Friday, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showed. Michael Zdinak, who leads S&P’s US consumer markets service, says that the exceptional combination of high inflation and a 2.9% rise in unemployment rates took many companies by surprise. “There’s not another year like it,” he said.

With over 80% of Americans worried about rising prices, and 75% worried about the prospect of a prolonged economic recession, according to a brand new CNBC poll, it is safe to say that the outlook for retail sales growth is still compromised.

Consumers are feeling the impact of the most severe cost of living crisis in modern time. Their ability to keep up with rising costs and afford everyday essentials is getting increasingly limited, and now rising interest rates and higher borrowing costs have begun to bite. “Consumers are stepping back, they’re changing how they allocate their spending,” said Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Fed.“They’re dealing with high inflation, of course, so they have to make trade-offs and put things back that they would otherwise get, but they’re also preparing for a slower economy.”

Last week, James Bullard, president of the St Louis branch of the Fed, told reporters that businesses face a “very dicey situation if they get the pricing decision wrong”. “If they try to raise prices too much and too far ahead of whatever their rivals are doing, they will lose market share,” he said, adding that such a loss tended to be “permanent, and it can even put you out of business entirely”. Today, we compiled 10 of the most popular retailers at risk of defaulting their debt, going bankrupt, and closing their doors for good in the coming months."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"Everyone Will Be Working As A Waiter; Society Has Become Unrecognizable; Prepare For Chaos"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/2/22

"Everyone Will Be Working As A Waiter; 

Society Has Become Unrecognizable; Prepare For Chaos"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"This is Not Good News"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 12/2/22

"This is Not Good News"

"It makes no difference where you live in this country. You have to understand that the job report is a complete reflection of how bad things are in the global economy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal" 12/2/22

"Trends In The News"

The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Find out more here: https://trendsjournal.com

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibrations"

Full screen recommended. 

Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibrations". 528Hz Positive Energy, Self Healing with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey."

I can't praise this visually beautiful, and very effective, video enough. In these incredibly highly stressful times, please be kind to yourself and take the time to savor this exquisite work in full screen mode. Headphones suggested but not necessary. It works, as simple as that...

- CP

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.

Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”

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

Chet Raymo, “Asperges Me, Domine” *

“Asperges Me, Domine” *

by Chet Raymo

“Greystone Books publishes a series of "Literary Companions" to natural environments- mountains, rivers and lakes, deserts, gardens, and the sea, so far. Now they come to my environment- night- and have been kind enough to include a chapter from “The Soul of the Night”, the chapter called "The Shape of Night." I am in lovely company, admired companions of several generations- Diane Ackerman, Timothy Ferris, Annie Dillard, Henry Beston, Loren Eiseley, Louise Erdrich, Pico Iyer, and Gretel Ehrlich, to name but a few - all connoisseurs of darkness.

Our earliest mammalian ancestors were presumably nocturnal- to escape the predations of dinosaurs- but for most of human history we have been afraid of the dark, huddling in caves around stuttering fires, curled together in darkness like mice in a burrow. Night belonged to animals with big, dark-adapted eyes and sharp teeth, to footpads and graverobbers, to werewolves and vampires. Ironically, it was with the coming of electric illumination that it became reasonably safe to go out and about at night, even as the illumination erased the best reason to do so.

William Blake called day Earth's "blue mundane shell... a hard coating of matter that separates us from Eternity." At night we peer into infinity, awash in a myriad of stars. We creep to the door of the cave and look up into the Milky Way and catch a glimpse of divinity- everlasting, all-embracing, utterly unknowable. Night- that cone of shadow, that wizard's cap of spells and omens- is the chink in Earth's shell through which we court Ultimate Mystery the way Pyramus courted Thisbe.

Which is why, I suppose, that whenever I think of "the porch" of people who visit here, I imagine Carolina rockers on a southern summer verandah, far from city lights, Vega, Deneb and Altair swimming in the Milky Way, fireflies flickering on the lawn. At some point the conversation ceases and we simply sit, rock, and listen to the sounds of the night- the whippoorwill, the bullfrog, the cricket and the owl- and let starlight fall upon our heads like a sprinkling of holy water.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

* “Wash me, Lord. Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean.”

- The Catholic Mass

"Life Is Difficult..."

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

- M. Scott Peck

“Allegory Of The Cave Updated”

“Allegory Of The Cave Updated”

by T4C

"Socrates: “Why do people think philosophy is bullsh*t? Let me put it this way - imagine you’re in a cave, all chained up so you can’t turn your body at all, and all you get to look at is this one wall. Some fools behind you are making shadow puppets using the light from a fire and making echo noises and that’s all you or anyone else chained up has seen or heard all your life. Sounds terrible, right? Except it’s all you’ve ever known, shadows and echoes, and that’s your whole world - there’s no way you could know that, really, you’re watching a slightly-improved M. Night Shyamalan film.

In fact, you get pretty good at understanding how the patterns in the show work, and everyone else chained up is like, ‘Holy sh*t bro, how did you know that that tree was going to fall on that guy?’ and you’re like, ‘It’s because I f*****g pay attention and I’m smart as sh*t.’ You’re the smartest of the chained, and they all revere you.”

Glaucon: “But Socrates, a tree didn’t really hit a guy. It’s all shadows.”

Socrates: “No sh*t, Glaucon, but you don’t know that. You think the shadows are real things. Everyone does. Now STFU and let me finish.

So eventually, someone comes and unchains you and drags you out of the cave. At first you’d say, ‘Seriously, what the f**k is going on?!’ Well, actually, at first you’d say, ‘HOLY SH*T MY EYES’ and you’d want to go back to the safe, familiar shadows.” But even once your eyes worked you wouldn’t believe them, because everything you ever thought was real is gone. You’d look at a tree, and say ‘That’s not a tree. I know trees. And you, sir, are no tree. THAT DOWN THERE is a tree.’ But you’re wrong. Down there is a shadow of a tree.

Slowly, as your eyes got better, you’d see more and more. Eventually, you’d see the sun, and realize that it’s the source of all light. You can’t see sh*t without the sun. And eventually, you’d figure it out. Something would click in your brain: ‘oh, sh*t, that IS a tree. F**k me. So… nothing in the cave was real? I feel like such an assh**e.’ 

But it’s not your fault, so don’t be so hard on yourself. Finally you’d want to go down and tell everyone about everything you’ve discovered. Except, and here’s the hilarious part, they think you’ve gone f*****g crazy. 

You’d say, ‘Guys, real trees are green!’ and they’d say, ‘What the f**k is green? THAT is a tree over there.’ And you’d squint and look at the wall, but you know you’re f***ed because now you’re used to having sunlight, and now you can’t see sh*t. So they’d laugh at you, and agree that wherever it was that you went, no one should go there because it turns people into idiots.

Philosophy, same thing. The soul ascends and apprehends the forms, the nature of everything, and eventually the very Idea of Good that gives light to everything else. And then the philosopher has to go back to the cave and try to explain it to people who don’t even know what Green is, to say nothing of the Good. But the philosopher didn’t make up the Good, it was always there, and the only way to really make sense of it is to uncover it for yourself. You can’t force knowledge into a dumbass any more than you can force sight into a blind man.

So if you want to learn, be prepared for a difficult journey, and be prepared to make some mistakes. That’s okay, it’s all part of the process. True knowledge must be obtained the hard way, and some people just don’t want to see the light.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Put another way...

"In 'The Republic', Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality. If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he will suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to seeing anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated. He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well."

- Chris Hedges

The Daily "Near You?"

Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical! Get Your Money Out Of The Banks Now!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/2/22:

"Situation Critical! 

Get Your Money Out Of The Banks Now!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"Housing Bubble 2.0 is Bursting,

 Cue the Next Great Financial Crisis in 3-2-1"

"The Numbers Are Screaming That A Giant Tsunami Of U.S. Layoffs Has Now Begun"

"The Numbers Are Screaming That A Giant 

Tsunami Of U.S. Layoffs Has Now Begun"

by Michael Snyder

"We knew that economic conditions were deteriorating, but this is getting ridiculous. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs in November was 127 percent higher than it was in October. That isn’t just a trend, that is an avalanche. And compared to the same month in 2021, the number of layoffs in November was 417 percent higher. Please take a moment and let that figure sink in. A 417 percent increase is a colossal shift. Essentially, these numbers are telling us that a giant tsunami of U.S. layoffs has now begun, and I believe that things will get even worse in 2023 and beyond. Our leaders have pursued policies that have been extremely destructive to the U.S. economy, and many of us have been warning that a day of reckoning would arrive. Well, it appears that a day of reckoning for America’s workers is now here, and the months ahead are not going to be pretty.

There is no way to spin these numbers to make them look good. Major layoff announcements are popping up in the news every single day, and what we have witnessed over the past several weeks is nothing short of staggering…"The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated in November, with the number of layoffs climbing 127% from just one month ago, according to a report published on Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Companies announced 76,835 job cuts in November, led by the technology sector, the analysis showed. That is 417% higher than the same time one year ago."

And these numbers don’t even include the latest layoffs that have just happened. As our new housing crash continues to accelerate, Wells Fargo has decided that now is the time to lay off “hundreds more mortgage employees”…"Wells Fargo & Co. cut hundreds more mortgage employees Thursday, the latest in a series of reductions across the industry after higher interest rates brought the pandemic-era home-lending boom to halt.

The reductions took place across the country, according to people familiar with the plans, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The latest wave comes amid ongoing Federal Reserve rate hikes to tame persistent inflation, pushing mortgage rates toward their highest levels in two decades. Refinancings have dried up and some potential homebuyers have been sidelined in the process."

Normally, big companies would be compassionate enough to at least wait until after the holiday season to let people go. But now times have changed and a lot of these large firms are really feeling a sense of urgency to reduce payrolls. Shockingly, that even includes FedEx…"FedEx Freight, the nation’s largest less-than-truckload carrier, will begin furloughing an undetermined number of drivers on Sunday, the FedEx Corp. unit confirmed Wednesday. The voluntary furloughs will run until March 6, with drivers getting a guarantee to return to work, the unit confirmed. FedEx Freight is offering drivers a $300 weekly incentive to accept a furlough. The total payments will be made when the drivers return to work, according to the FedEx unit."

Have you ever heard of FedEx getting rid of workers prior to the holidays before? I haven’t either. This is nuts. If we are seeing this many layoffs now, what will things look like once the holidays are over?

At this point, even the Federal Reserve is admitting that more layoffs are coming. In fact, Fed officials are now estimating that about a million Americans will lose their jobs by the end of 2023…"Updated projections from the Fed’s meeting showed unemployment rising to 4.4% by the end of next year, up from the current rate of 3.5%. That is significantly higher than in June when policymakers saw the jobless rate inching up to 3.7%. That could mean roughly 1 million Americans lose their jobs between now and the end of 2023."

Of course Fed projections are almost always way too optimistic. If Fed projections were accurate, we would still be in a low inflation environment right now. Let’s be honest. If we get to next December and only a million Americans have lost their jobs, we should have a massive national celebration because that would definitely represent the sort of “soft landing” that Jerome Powell has been hoping for. Needless to say, that sort of wildly optimistic scenario is not likely to play out.

As I discussed a few days ago, 41 percent of all small business owners in America could not pay rent in the month of November.

How bad is the Biden Economy? A stunning 41% of Small Businesses couldn’t pay Rent in November #ChalkTalk pic.twitter.com/Wsc6wZtiJG

- Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 30, 2022

When more than four out of every 10 small businesses cannot even pay rent, your economy is in serious trouble. I warned that we would soon be facing a severe downturn if the Fed kept aggressively hiking interest rates, and many others issued similar warnings. But the Fed didn’t listen to any of us. In fact, Fed officials keep telling us that rates are going to go even higher. So what will their excuse be when the economy completely crashes?

Just like SBF, perhaps they will tell us that they are “deeply sorry about what happened”.

AUDIENCE LETTER: "Can you please ask SBF why he decided to steal my life savings?"

SBF: "Yeah - Um, I mean - I’m deeply sorry about what happened."

pic.twitter.com/tTKCFNEw8n

- Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 30, 2022

But will the millions of Americans that will soon lose their jobs be in any mood to accept such apologies? Losing a good paying job that you absolutely love can be absolutely devastating. Sadly, countless Americans are going to have to endure the sudden loss of a job in the months ahead, and no amount of babbling from our leaders will make the pain go away."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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If this happens to you... what then?

Jim Kunstler, "How’s the War on Truth Going?"

"How’s the War on Truth Going?"

by Jim Kunstler

“I have had enough of this insanity and lack of national media attention or regulatory attention to this clear and present danger and tragedy.” - Ed Dowd

"Barreling down to Christmas and the bitter butt end of a bad year, a primal fear of the deepening darkness makes people desperate - another reminder that human nature has not changed so much in ten thousand years, despite the discoveries of Prozac and plant-based meat. Yet Freud was right: death has its attractions for tormented minds. Thus, our nation appears to hasten to its own funeral.

Can anyone actually grok how “progressive” thinking works these days? This faction now in charge of so many things has decided in the starkest terms that freedom of speech has got to go. For some years, the Party of Chaos had achieved such exquisite control of all national debate by seizing the dials and toggles of social media that they made reality itself their hostage. The truth was only what they said it was, and anyone who said otherwise got banished, cancelled, and even destroyed.

There seemed to be no way to overcome this death grip on the process of consensus, the formation of a coherent collective idea about what is going on in the world. And so, any number of scams could be run on the people of this land. They could rig elections in plain sight. They could surreptitiously suspend due process of law when it suited them. They could send national police thugs to your door at five-o’clock in the morning with riot guns, body armor, flash bangs, and bogus warrants. They could take your livelihoods, your freedom to move about, your childrens’ minds and bodies, and your dignity. Finally, they could take your life with false vaccines - and, unlike the Nazis in 1944, get the private sector to dispose of the corpses.

And now a struggle ensues over the relationship between the truth and the making of a consensus. Elon Musk bought Twitter - the horror! - and methodically set about to liberate this new digital “public square” from insidious and nefarious manipulation. It’s not a trifling matter, of course, but it’s amusing to watch Elon play with our nation’s overlords; and even more entertaining to see these tyrants strain and bluster to justify their war against free speech. How did the cognitive elite, America’s thinking class, the law professors, the editors and pundits, the public intellectuals, the managers of most everything, ever find themselves so self-owned in idiocy?

I wish I’d been a fly-on-the-wall in that meeting mid-week between Elon Musk and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple - the very same week that Apple disabled the Air-drop function on iPhones in China (slyly, by means of a new OS update), making it more difficult for street protesters to coordinate their movements against CCP lockdowns. Rumors were flying days before that the Lords of Tech would pull on Twitter the same kind of treatment they dealt to Parler two years ago, a then-rising rival app for Internet chatter that threatened to open up free debate. Apple and Google took Parler out behind the woodshed and shot it in the head - and nobody could do a damn thing about it. I have a hunch that Elon explained a few things to Tim Cook that made him think twice about another move like that.

Twitter is different than the upstart Parler was. Twitter was already established as the authorities’ official arbiter of approved thought in America. Under the old boss, Jack Dorsey, Twitter accomplished its thought management ends with a staff of thousands of mini-Stalins rooting out anything that smelled like opposition to the official narratives. (Elon fired the whole lot of them in short order.) It has been revealed since then that Twitter carried out censorship at the aggressive prompting of US deep state officialdom, the nagging, twanging, and strong-arming by bureaucrats from many federal agencies. Who knows (not yet, anyway) how many Twitter censors were actually put in-place by the government?

So now, one big truth has come nakedly out in the open: the Left is against the First Amendment to the Constitution. Free speech, they say repeatedly now, makes our democracy unsafe. It can’t be allowed. They say that because they don’t have a better argument. The safety talking-point is a shopworn cliché from their grab-bag of Woke shibboleths that the public is sick of hearing. Anyone with half a brain can see how transparently dishonest and stupid it is. It’s not going over well, even among a people so sorely gaslighted as the USA in late 2022.

Speaking of what is safe and what is not safe, one of the main deceptions the past three years has been the suppression of information about the Covid-19 vaccines that were foisted on the population - for many, made a requirement to earn a living. The old Twitter worked strenuously to bury any data and all news that suggested the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines were disabling and killing people. It has now reached a critical point, with so many suspicious “all-causes” deaths coming to the public’s attention. This is what the authorities are really afraid of: that the people will learn their government has carried out - by epic incompetence or true malice - something the looks like an attempted genocide."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Massive Price Increases At Dollar General! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 12/2/22

"Massive Price Increases At Dollar General! This Is Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Dollar General and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the food shortage situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/2/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/2/22"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"There is a war on Trump from almost every angle. The Lying Legacy Media (LLM) continues the psyop that twists every piece of data into a negative for the 2024 presidential candidate. The Kanye (aka Ye) West antisemitic scam at Mara Largo is the latest attempt to destroy Donald Trump’s reputation with more lies. It ain’t going to work because everybody knows Trump is pro-Israel. He moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem for goodness’ sake. The investigations and lawfare are unrelenting, and yet Trump keeps going. Meanwhile, nobody is talking about the Hunter Biden investigation coming in the House or the FTX crypto allegations of money laundering for the Democrat party. The LLM wants you to think that Trump is the villain, but we all know Biden was cheated in, the 2022 Election continues to be rigged and the Biden crime family are up to their necks in corruption.

Every week there is a new group of unfortunate vax victims. They either “die suddenly” or are damaged for life at a very young age. This is simply not going to stop anytime soon. Now, people in Congress are starting to feel nervous about this increasing debacle and are offering to try to put an end to the mandatory vax idiocy in the U.S. military by withholding funding. Congress is exempt from the vax they allowed on the rest of the country, and it appears they need to try to save face and stop the carnage–at least in the military. There is no stopping what is coming, especially for the double vaxed and boosted. Just ask Al Roker, who just returned to the hospital for more life-threatening blood clots, and, yes, he’s reportedly triple vaxed.

The signs are everywhere in the world and the USA that we are heading into a recession—a deep one. Manufacturing just went into a contraction, European banks are tanking, inflation is boiling, and the Fed is still raising interest rates to fight it. Michael Burry says get ready for an “extended multi-year recession.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble for these stories and 

more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 12/2/22:

- https://rumble.com/

"Blackstone Investors Can't Get Their Money Out; Get Ready To Lose Your Job"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/1/22

"Blackstone Investors Can't Get Their Money Out; 

Get Ready To Lose Your Job"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Breaking: 18 Russian Bombers Spotted, Nuclear Talks Break Down, Major Attack Imminent"

Canadian Prepper, 12/1/22

"Breaking: 18 Russian Bombers Spotted, 

Nuclear Talks Break Down, Major Attack Imminent"

"Satellite images show Russia preparing the biggest bombing campaign so far, nuclear talks between Russia and USA have been scrapped, Russia has sent nuclear capable bombers to China."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Even Now"

2002, "Even Now"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130825.html