Col. Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 3/20/23:
"We Will No Longer Support This War Against Russia"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current
geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."
Comments here:
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, March 20, 2023
"Knowing..."
“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
- Sue Monk Kidd
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
- Arundhati Roy, "The Cost of Living"
Jim Kunstler, "This Has Got to Stop"
"This Has Got to Stop"
by Jim Kunstler
“As the evidence mounts of an even broader censorship effort by the Biden administration, the Democrats’ attacks have become more unhinged and unscrupulous. After shredding any fealty to free speech, they now are attacking journalists, demanding their sources and claiming their reporting is a public threat.” - Jonathan Turley
"And it will stop because, as the old wag Herb Stein laid down in his law years ago: Things that can’t go on, stop. Which raises the question: which things? And the answer is the things Western Civ is doing in its attempted suicide: inciting war, recklessly running up debt, persecuting its own citizens and stealing their liberties, subjecting them to medical malfeasance, destroying their goods production and food-growing capabilities, and subjecting the public to incessant mind-f**kery in a campaign to falsify and disfigure reality.
A consortium of public and corporate bureaucracies has institutionalized the falsification of reality under the pretense of saving the human race from a pack of hobgoblins led by climate change, racism, and normal sexual reproduction. They have been driven insane by the actual reality of pending economic collapse, which has only been accelerated by their own suicidal activities. What they apparently really want to save is their own positions, perquisites, and power. Their enabling mechanism is the digital computer and its many ways of assembling and controlling information, and thus controlling people, especially those who object to totalizing control. They do it because they can.
You can see how bad it got by reading the Twitter Files #19, assembled by independent reporter Matt Taibbi and released on March 17: "The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine, Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True Stories” . The thread tells of the campaign led by Stanford University called the Virality Project, marshalling government agencies, academia, Big Pharma, and NGOs, such as several financed by George Soros, to suppress “misinformation” on social media, including “stories of true vaccine side effects.” Hence, truth became misinformation.
You might see in that how anyone on the side of falsifying reality is playing at a disadvantage. If that is your first principle in a political struggle, you are fighting not just against your opponents but against the laws of the universe. The only recourse of a faction at war with reality is tyranny, forcing the people to accept your bullshit and do your will, whether they like it or not. That is exactly what you get in America’s Democratic Party and other regimes currently in power around Western Civ. Being at war with reality places them at war against their own citizens.
The Covid-19 release seems to have been an act motivated by multiple players for their own reasons which, combined, amounted to crimes against humanity. Anthony Fauci, America’s infectious disease czar, apparently sought a crowning career triumph, which would have been a successful vaccine against a dangerous virus. So, he arranged to engineer the organism that he could then triumph against. Like all of Dr. Fauci’s projects over the roughly forty years that he ran the NIAID agency, the mRNA vaccines - subcontracted to the US Military and manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna - turned out to be an epic fiasco.
Covid-19 also happened to be a convenient device for ridding the government of the troublesome President Trump, who threatened to disassemble major parts of the permanent US bureaucracy. If you revisit the many videos of Mr. Trump appearing in the White House Covid crisis room in early 2020 with Dr. Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and other public health officials, I’m sure you will notice his discomfort, as if he suspected he was being played (he was). And conveniently, right after that, the locked-down public’s attention was galvanized by the George Floyd, BLM, and Antifa riots until the 2020 election was upon us. (Another grotesque prank against the people, never adjudicated.)
It took more than a year after the “vaccines” came out for the disturbing actuarial data to emerge from the life insurance industry that many non-elderly people were being killed and disabled by the shots’ adverse effects. (I think the censors were caught by surprise that the truth leaked out from there.) Meanwhile, any able investigator could understand how the half-assed “vaccines,” along with the denigration of off-label early treatment medicines, the reckless use of dangerous remdesivir combined with enormous government payments to hospitals for mis-treating patients with it, the gaming and hiding of CDC statistics, and the obvious censorship of all that information in the corporate news and social media (with help from the CIA and FBI), all added up to monstrous criminal offense against human decency.
The government now led by the career criminal “Joe Biden,” needed another distraction from intrusive reality in 2022 - including the emergence of the Biden family’s crimes - so it arranged to start a war in Ukraine by threatening to turn that country into a forward NATO base on Russia’s border. Russia was exceptionally clear and straightforward that it wouldn’t accept such an arrangement and the US proceeded anyway. Our country was exceptionally dishonest in its positioning for this conflict. (And our NATO allies were astoundingly credulous going along with it, even after we fatally damaged the EU’s economy).
Now, entering the spring of 2023, all of this sordid untruth is unravelling along with something else that the news media will have trouble lying about: the collapse of the money system in Western Civ. Unlike Covid-19 and the Ukraine War, a banking collapse has no propaganda value to the regimes in power. There is no narrative they can concoct out of it to their advantage. The public will do what they always do to a government that plunges them into penury and hardship. They will turn it out or pull it down.
Since money and banking are subject to the laws of physics, we are going to get the ultimate payback for messing with reality. A lot of things that can’t go on will stop."
"Economic Market Snapshot 3/20/23"
"Economic Market Snapshot 3/20/23"
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
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And now... The End Game...
"Breaking: Massive Recall On Frozen Berries And Baby Formula!"
Adventures With Danny 3/20/23:
"Breaking: Massive Recall On
Frozen Berries And Baby Formula!"
"There is a massive recall on frozen strawberries and baby formula that is affecting many stores around the United States. Costco, Aldi, and Trader Joe's are some of the stores involved. Along with this we have another Baby Formula Recall on the Gerber's Good Start SoothePro Formula. Make sure to check all the dates we go over in our video, or you can visit the F.D.A. website to see if these dates affect you."
Comments here:
Sunday, March 19, 2023
"Breaking News! NATO 300,000 Troops at Russian Border, Civil Unrest in USA, Banks Brace for Collapse"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper 1/19/23
"Breaking News! NATO 300,000 Troops at Russian Border,
Civil Unrest in USA, Banks Brace for Collapse"
"Massive troop deployments are coming to Europe, Civil unrest in the USA, Germany threatens to Arrest Putin, Poland will enter conflict, thats just scratching the surface of todays talk. Buckle up!"
Comments here:
"All Hell Is Breaking Loose In The Stock Market As Major Threats Emerge"
Full screen recommended.
"All Hell Is Breaking Loose In The Stock Market
As Major Threats Emerge"
By Epic Economist
"All hell is breaking loose on the stock market as major threats emerge in the system. Last week, fear of a financial crisis unleashed widespread chaos across markets, plunging bank stocks and sending shockwaves that could result in a disastrous selloff when trading resumes tomorrow. According to some big market players, conditions are looking a lot like those of 1929. Scary predictions and warnings about what will happen next for stocks don't stop coming, and angst over inflation, interest rates, recession, and systemic risks are making the odds of a brutal stock market crash look more imminent than ever.
Financial markets were already facing a period of extraordinary anxiety over tighter credit conditions, worsening outlooks for businesses, and deteriorating economic conditions when a sudden string of U.S. bank failures exponentially raised the risk of a stock market crash in a span of just seven days.
Right now, investors across stocks, bonds, and commodities are in crisis mode. Several key indications are revealing signs of extreme stress, with some nearing levels last seen during previous turmoils. Optimism has vanished, and now investors are increasingly seeking insurance against a potential flash crash in stocks as they brace for more tumult in the market this week after worries over a banking system collapse shook asset prices over the last week.
All of these developments prompted Tesla CEO Elon Musk to warn that there were frightening similarities between the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the crisis that triggered the 1929 Wall Street crash. "Lot of current year similarities to 1929," he said on Twitter Tuesday, in response to a thread by Ark Invest CIO Cathie Wood. In late October 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 23% in two days, signaling the start of the Great Depression. And now Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson is alerting about a potential 22% flash stock market crash by the end of this month.
In a new note to clients, Wilson said he sees the S&P 500 falling to a low of 3,000 after the Fed meeting this coming Wednesday, representing a further 22% downside from current levels. Similarly, JPMorgan analysts added that if inflation stays higher than the Fed and investors would like, “it could spark further downside for a March sell-off that appears to have already kicked off.”
On Friday, stocks plummeted as investors pulled back from positions in risky assets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 400 points, to close at 31,861.98 points. The Nasdaq Composite slid 0.74%, and the S&P 500 lost 1.10% and is now 5% from February levels. Markets closed at a critical moment. “There’s nervousness into the weekend of: How does this all look on Monday?,” says Keith Buchanan, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. “The market is nervous about holding stocks into that.”
The big question at the moment is how far the contagion will spread in the coming days. Analysts are bracing themselves for another rash of selling Monday morning, and things could get a lot worse than they already are. We will soon find out if they are right. But whatever happens, this is all a sign of a much bigger crisis that will ravage the financial world in 2023. This won’t be just a banking crisis or a stock market crash. It will be an everything collapse that will repercuss for years to come."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens: Carl Sagan, 'The Pale Blue Dot'"
"The following excerpt from Carl Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot" was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. As the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned it around for one last look at its home planet.
Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."
"The Pale Blue Dot"
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
- Carl Sagan
Mark Twain, “On The Damned Human Race”
“On The Damned Human Race”
by Mark Twain
“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.
Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.
I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter’s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not. In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.
Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster. Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind (the saving grace which excuses the cat). The cat is innocent, man is not.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate (unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails) man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country, takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man’s slave for wages and does that man’s work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete (as per the telegrams quoted above) he will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one. In truth, man is incurably foolish.
One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable. I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never have been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.
Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity (to enable man to do wrong) it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite) one is the better man for having rabies: The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.
And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch-less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.”
Before particularizing any of the experiments, I wish to state one or two things which seem to more properly belong in this place than further along. This, in the interest of clearness. The massed experiments established to my satisfaction certain generalizations, to wit:
1. That the human race is of one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations (in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on) due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself, and not to be confounded with any other.
2. That the quadrupeds are a distinct family, also. This family exhibits variations (in color, size, food preferences, and so on; but it is a family by itself).
3. That the other families (the birds, the fishes, the insects, the reptiles, etc.) are more or less distinct, also. They are in the procession. They are links in the chain which stretches down from the higher animals to man at the bottom.
I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter’s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not. In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.
Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster. Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind (the saving grace which excuses the cat). The cat is innocent, man is not.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate (unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails) man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country, takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man’s slave for wages and does that man’s work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete (as per the telegrams quoted above) he will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one. In truth, man is incurably foolish.
One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable. I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never have been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.
Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity (to enable man to do wrong) it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite) one is the better man for having rabies: The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.
And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch-less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.”
Freely download: "'What Is Man' And Other Essays", by Mark Twain, here:
"When That Day Comes..."
"If you had one last breath - what would you say? If you had one hour to use your limbs before you would lose the use of them forever - would you sit there on the coach? If you knew that you wouldn't see tomorrow who would you make amends with? If you knew you had only an hour left on this earth - what would be so pressing that you just had to do it, say it, or see it? Well there is something that I can guarantee - that one day you will have one day, one hour and one breath left. Just make sure that before that day that you have said, done and experienced everything that you dream of doing now. Do it now - that is what today is for. So pick up the phone and call an old friend that you have fallen out of touch with. Get out and run a mile and use your body and sweat. Seek out someone in your life to say you're sorry to. Seek someone In your life that you need to thank. Seek someone in your life that you need to express your feelings of love to. Then when that day comes you will be ok with it all."
- John A. Passaro
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine
"Be Like The Bird..."
"What matter if this base, unjust life
Cast you naked and disarmed?
If the ground breaks beneath your step,
Have you not your soul?
Your soul! You fly away,
Escape to realms refined,
Beyond all sadness and whimpering.
Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced
A moment sits and sings;
He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,
Knowing he has wings."
– Victor Hugo
"Markets A Look Ahead: MASSIVE Banking System BAILOUT Under Way. Make Or Break For The Market"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/19/23
"Markets A Look Ahead: MASSIVE Banking System
BAILOUT Under Way. Make Or Break For The Market"
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"Small Banks Will Not Survive, You Can't Stop What's Coming But You Can Prepare"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/19/23
"Small Banks Will Not Survive, You Can't
Stop What's Coming But You Can Prepare"
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"What Gives Money Value?"
"What Gives Money Value?"
An Inquiry into the Origins and Nature of Value...
by Joel Bowman
"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." ~ J. Paul Getty
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Our beat here, unsyncopated as it may sometimes seem, is money. So let’s begin there... What gives money its value?
The question was posed during the week on the Internet’s equivalent of the public bathroom stall (Twitter) by PragerU. With almost a million views, responses to the question varied from the confused (“the government”) to the enlightened (“us”) to the cynical (“ten Nimitz class aircraft carriers”). Then there’s the world’s most controversial clinical psychologist, who posited this pithy response...
Indeed, the question - which prima facie seems straightforward enough – has provoked heated debate down through the ages. From Aristotle to Xenaphon, cowry shells to cryptocurrencies, fiat scrip to the Midas Metal, it’s interesting that something as common as money... at turns said to be the “root of all evil” as well as the thing that “makes the world go around”... would be so commonly misunderstood. (Could evil really make the world go around? Hmm…)
Herewith, a modest refresher on the origins and nature of value. We first published today’s essay in this space a year or so ago, back when bank runs were but a twinkle in the Federal Reserve Chairman’s eye. Fast forward to today, with confidence in the system straining like a fat man’s bicycle and the dreaded C-word (contagion) on every investor’s mind, and the lesson is all the more pertinent.
Today, we unsheathe the mighty pen to slay a sacred cow… or perhaps merely to foil a lame canard. Every so often, history invites Man to reconsider all he thought he knew about a given subject, to upend his presuppositions, and to send him – humbled and eager – back to the drawing board once more. And a good thing, too, for unexamined “truths” can do just as much to retard our intellectual development as undiscovered lies. Especially when we tend to adhere blindly to them, often in care of little more than wounded Pride.
But let us turn directly to our subject, to meet it head on: Money is the matter… it's our question for this week’s Sesh. What is money? We begin before its birth, to get a fuller picture.
Prior to money itself – that is, before folks carried cash, coins, cryptos, cowrie shells, et al. – there was barter. A barter system is one of direct exchange and, as such, does not require money as an intermediary to function. For tens of thousands of years our wandering ancestors got by on such a provincial arrangement.
The barter system is primitive, at best - suitable only for relatively simple transactions in which both buyer and seller desire the exact good or service offered by the counterparty, and at precisely the right time; something economists call the “double coincidence of wants.”
In a complex economy, however, "my three pigs for your one cow" does not exactly form the framework for a viable economic architecture. (As for vegetarians, they are simply out of luck… as well they should be.) Enter, money.
Money, Money, Money: By the time the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 B.C.- 322 B.C.) was seen traipsing the halls of the Lyceum, Man had been using all manner of scrip and shekel to facilitate trade. Some monies were undoubtedly superior to others, with gold and silver typically rising up the ranks over their competitors. The question of the day was, Why? What made one money better than the next?
An incurable cataloger, Aristotle quickly set about defining what henceforth came to be known as his eponymous “essential characteristics of sound money.” Readers of these pages will have no problem reciting them. (All together now!) A sound money, according to the Father of Logic, must be:
Durable – as a store of wealth it must not rot, melt, erode, corrode or find itself otherwise debased or debauched by the fickle whims of nature’s many gods.
Portable – easily transportable, preferably something one can carry around in his back pocket; that he need not bring into town on the back of a donkey.
Divisible – capable of "making change," something he can dissect into the denominations necessary to make paying a king’s ransom and buying a measure of mead transactions of equal ease.
Fungible – mutually interchangeable i.e. one unit ought to be as good as the next.
So far, so good. But let us reckon further on the old Peripatetic’s fifth point for a moment. In addition to the above mentioned characteristics, Aristotle proposed that sound money ought to have “intrinsic value.” In other words, the material from which the money is fashioned should be a worthwhile commodity “in its own right.” It is here that the inquiring brow furrows and the soft cranium begins to ache.
What, exactly, is "intrinsic value"? And what role do phrases that typically accompany it (“in its own right,” and “in and of itself”) really serve… other than to act as polite placeholders for a better, stubbornly absent answer?
Some suspected “intrinsic” value had to do with “something you could touch and hold in your hand.” But that merely explained a physical characteristic (tangibility). Moreover, one can hold lots of things in his hand, not all of them valuable. (The corollary, of course, is that many intangibles – algebra, language… love – are so valuable one could hardly do without them. But try grasping them too tightly and they are likely to disappear altogether.)
Others posited that “intrinsic” value derived from “a long-standing track record.” But that only spoke to Man’s historical preference for one thing over another. Plenty of things go out of favor or are rendered obsolete by technology. Could “intrinsic” value really be so fleeting?
Still others claimed “intrinsic” value came from a thing’s potential applications elsewhere (away from its role as money). But that merely described potential use cases, which again, time and tide and technology might come to replace.
Thus the underlying query persisted: If value was indeed “intrinsic,” if it really was “in the thing itself,” surely it would be there whether man found use for it or not? Like a falling tree, crashing to ground in the abandoned woods. Clearly, Value (capital “V”) had a problem on its hands: whence cometh thee?
Man in the Mirror: For more than two millennia, the question either failed to ask itself clearly and in a loud enough voice, or nobody bothered to answer it anyway. That was until none other than Adam Smith presented it (borrowing from a little-know dialogue of Plato’s) as the diamond-water paradox. Briefly put: How is it that diamonds are so much more valuable than water when they are clearly less objectively necessary to human wellbeing? Some contemporary economists supposed the answer to be found in scarcity. (Diamonds are far less plentiful than water, therefore command a commensurately higher price.)
But there, again, was yet another of many logical culs-de-sac. If scarcity alone accounted for value, how come would-be brides were not elbowing each other out of the way to score Tanzanite engagement rings in preference to comparatively abundant diamond ones? Why don’t people yearn to contract rare diseases? Why do they pay top dollar for ubiquitous iPhones while happily discarding old, relatively uncommon Nokias?
The problem (hint!) was that the scarcity proposition addressed only the supply side of the equation. Smith himself attempted to solve the conundrum by introducing the Labor Theory of Value. From "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations": “The real price of everything, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
But even this value theory only dug the hole deeper. What if a man simply stumbled upon a diamond while out on a casual and fortunate stroll? Surely his minimal labor would not justify the lofty price he could fairly expect to command for his shiny new stones? Besides, chopping away at the branches, Smith hardly attacked the problem at its root; why does Man go to the “toil and trouble” of acquiring something in the first place? Why does he value the thing enough to even bother?
Next came Karl Marx, a man who never saw a cart he didn’t want to put a horse behind. Using the backwards reasoning in front of him, Marx used Smith’s very same "Labor Theory of Value" to smuggle in his class struggle, claiming that the owners of the means of production necessarily oppressed the proletariat because the latter’s labor was not accorded the value commensurate to the product he churned out. (Marx apparently held little regard for the risk the capitalist – private owners of the means of production – necessarily put into the operation in the first place; start-up costs; machinery acquisition; licensing; his own finite time; risk of failure and all the sleepless nights that entailed, etc., etc., etc…)
Alas, Value was still orphaned, without a source on record. At least, that’s how it appeared. As it happened, the answer was staring Man in the face all along… provided he was looking in the mirror. Enter another giant on whose shoulders subsequent thinkers would firmly stand: the father of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger.
Value, Ab Ovo: Rejecting the “cost-base” (labor) value theories of the classical economists, Menger posited a new perspective entirely: that of Man himself. Goods are valuable, he asserted, because they serve various uses whose importance differs with regards to individual preference. In other words, just as beauty resides in the eye of the beholder… and offense in the ear of the listener… so too does value find its womb in the subjective preferences of parties to a given trade.
Menger’s insights influenced many subsequent thinkers, including Ludwig von Mises, who perhaps set the record straight in clearer terms. Value, as Mises described it, was not determined by the nature of objects themselves in a vacuum, but through our interactions with and subjective appreciation for them. "Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things," he argued in "Human Action." "It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment."
In this manner, one object – one money, say – commands value over another, not because it is intrinsically bestowed… but because we afford it value through our interaction with and appreciation for its various properties. We understand intuitively that, depending on the moment in time and the particular circumstances attending it, gold can be a blessing (as in times of hyperinflation or political uncertainty) or a curse (as was the case for poor ol’ mythical Midas).
Who among men, dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, would not trade all the gold in the world for a drop of life-sustaining water? Who on his deathbed would be without his tender (intangible) memory, even for a second, if it meant forgoing a gram… an ounce… a whole chest of yellow metal? Who in that same moment would not exchange all the wealth in the world for another breath, for himself or for a loved one?
Through "Subjective Value Theory," we are all the better equipped to understand why gold has proven a money of superior value throughout history. Likewise are we able to apprehend why cryptocurrencies – non-fiat, intangible and scarcely imaginable even to Aristotle’s bulging cerebrum – may well prove valuable in the Digital Age into which we presently stumble.
As for slaughtering sacred cows and foiling lame canards, whether the metaphor be bovine or anatine, the best way to view the human project seems to be by standing on the shoulders of giants… not unquestioningly carrying them on our own.
And finally today… the kids aren’t alright. “If this is a glimpse at our future,” kvetched a certain curmudgeonly concert-goer at yesterday’s Lollapalooza festival, “I’m sure glad my glory days were in the past!” Your editor had traveled a ways north of the city, to the leafy, upscale neighborhood of San Isidro, with the aim of reliving the misspent days of his youth at a giant music festival, Lollapalooza.
We’ll save the whole horror story for next week… suffice to say, it involved cashless payments, strict zone restrictions, trackable consumption quotas, overt virtue signaling from our globalist, corporate overlords and… perhaps worst of all… a dull, homogenous blob of compliant Gen Z-for-Zombies, sleepwalking toward dystopia while viewing the entire world around them through the 3x6 inch screen glued to their uncalloused little hands.
The apocalypse will be selfie-inflicted, dear reader. No doubt about it. Your editor has been to other side and lives to tell the tale. Tune in next week… In the meantime, we’re off to a new Sunday spot for our ritual carnivorous weekend feast, La Condesa Grill y Pasta. Rumor is they still serve vino in the traditional penguinos. And after yesterday’s desert-dry debacle, we could do with a copa or two. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, enjoy your freedoms while you have them! Until next time..."
Greg Hunter, "Trump CV19 Vax Contract Violated by Pfizer"
"Trump CV19 Vax Contract Violated by Pfizer"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who understands complicated medical and biological contracts. Kingston has been doing a deep dive into the contract President Trump signed with Pfizer for their version of the CV19 vax. The contract proves Trump required Pfizer to follow the law to produce a safe and effective vaccine. The Pfizer vax was not safe or effective and violated the contract. On top of that, the Pfizer vax turned out to be a bioweapon. Pfizer says it produced 63% of the 13 billion injections worldwide. Kingston explains, “Unlike any other contract I have ever read before, the contract says right up front the President said they had to produce a safe and effective vaccine, and they would have to promise it would protect against SARS-Cov-2 infections and all its variants. Oh, and by the way, all those Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) laws that give you immunity under Obama and Bush, Jr., you are going to forfeit those..."
Trump said he wanted it by October 31, and the vaccine must be safe and effective. This was not safe and effective under the emergency use vaccine even though it was going to be EUA authorized. They cite the FDA laws under initial new drug applications that it must adhere to. In fact, Pfizer had to adhere to initial new drug application laws that were separate from EUA laws. On top of that, it had to be guaranteed to be safe and effective. The contract that Trump had Pfizer sign made them guarantee this was safe and effective. So, they broke the contract, and Pfizer is not protected under the EUA law. The way the contract is written, it looks to me, Trump said if we need a vaccine to reopen the country, you have to make sure it was safe and effective. The phrase is in there over a dozen times. There is no gray area that the product (Pfizer CV19 vax) had to be safe and effective.”
The bioweapon/vax is research that has been under development for a couple of decades. Kingston contends, “Even Bobby Kennedy said the last 20 years of Fauci (NIH) and Ralph Baric (UNC) research was bioweapon research. Bioweapon research is based in mRNA technology. So, anyone working on mRNA technology under the guise of vaccines and gene therapy was really working on a bioweapon. This is exactly what Lt. General Kirillov, who heads up Russia’s bioweapon program, stated that this is what mRNA technology is. He said they are artificial viruses, pathogens based in mRNA technology. Basically, they are technology pathogens. They are meant to cause disease, disabilities and death in humans. They have developed this under the guise of vaccines.”
Kingston has been trying to get the leaders around the country and in Congress to stop ignoring the extreme death and disabilities caused by the CV19 bioweapon/vax. The evidence is now overwhelming, and, yet, this huge ongoing bioweapon attack is being ignored. Kingston says, “The NIH, CDC and FDA were co-conspirators, that’s what they are. They were complicit in developing mRNA bioweapons and deploying them, not just in the United States, but deploying them globally. By ignoring the crime, you become complicit in the crime. My concern is also for President Trump.
These are clearly defined as bioweapons that do not prevent infection, or transmission, does not prevent hospitalization and was done under criminal and fraudulent experimentation, that is the definition of a bioweapon, especially when it causes harm. This is my warning to America and Congress. We cannot ignore that a bioweapon was developed by American companies and unleashed on the global population. If you continue to ignore this, then you are complicit in a crime. You don’t want a foreign power to come in and take care of this. The way Russia takes care of many criminals is they execute them or assassinate them. This is not something that America wants another global military power to take care of.”
In closing, Kingston says, “We must stop mRNA technology because it will be used to destroy humanity.” There is much more in the 1-hour and 16-minute in-depth interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives an update on the bioweapon mRNA injections and why they need to be stopped.
May God have mercy on you if you've taken the shot...
"Will Your Bank Be Saved?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/19/23
"Will Your Bank Be Saved?"
"Please don’t think that your bank is important enough to save. You have to understand that so many banks are going to be out of business within the year."
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"Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 1/19/23
"Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing major price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of bare shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and keeping them at an affordable price!"
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"Scott Ritter - The Siege of Ukrainian Troops in Donetsk by Wagner"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 3/18/23
"Scott Ritter -
The Siege of Ukrainian Troops in Donetsk by Wagner"
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"Financial Crisis Worse Than 2008 Has Begun As The Entire Banking System Collapsing"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 3/18/23
"Financial Crisis Worse Than 2008 Has
Begun As The Entire Banking System Collapsing"
"Jim Rickards warns everyone about the bank collapse, market meltdown, financial crisis which is worse than in 2008!"
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