Friday, June 9, 2023

"On Your Own Terms..."

“If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning – a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”
- Jeanette Winterson

"Alea Iacta Est"

"Alea Iacta Est"
by Alexander Macris

"In the closing days of 50 BC, the Roman Senate declared that Julius Caesar’s term as a provincial governor was finished. Roman law afforded its magistrates immunity to prosecution, but this immunity would end with Caesar’s term. As the leader of the populares faction, Caesar had many enemies among the elite optimates, and as soon as he left office, these enemies planned to bury him in litigation. Caesar knew he would lose everything: property, liberty, even his life.

Caesar decided it was better to fight for victory than accept certain defeat. In January 49 BC, he crossed the Rubicon River with his army, in violation of sacred Roman law, and began a civil war. “Alea iacta est,” said Caesar: "The die is cast."
Full screen recommended.
Charles Bukowoski, "Roll the Dice"

The Poet: Galway Kinnell, "Another Night in the Ruins"

"Another Night in the Ruins"

"How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames,
our one work is
to open ourselves,
to be the flames?"

~ Galway Kinnell

"It Was Ironic..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer

The Daily "Near You?"

Machias, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

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.

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.

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.”

Freely download: "'What Is Man' And Other Essays", by Mark Twain, here:

"Against All Odds..."

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

Jim Kunstler, "The Great DOJ Werewolf Hunt"

"The Great DOJ Werewolf Hunt"
By Jim Kunstler

“Whenever Biden says ‘I’m not joking,’ he’s lying. 
Whenever he says, ‘I’m joking,’ he’s telling the truth.” 
- Margot Cleveland

"At long last you know what those plangent cries of Russia! Russia! Russia! ringing across the land signify: America has been turning into Russia, Joe Stalin-vintage, since 2016, just as Lon Chaney turned into a werewolf on-screen back in 1941. Trump Derangement turns out to be an extreme presentation of mass Species Identity disorder, a national altered state that (Wikipedia says): “…typically involves delusions and hallucinations with the transformation only seeming to happen in the mind and behavior of the affected person.”

Clinical lycanthropy is a very rare condition and is largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic or dissociative episode caused by another condition such as Dissociative Identity Disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression. It has also been associated with drug intoxication and withdrawal, cerebrovascular disease, traumatic brain injury, dementia, delirium, and seizures. However, there are suggestions that certain neurological conditions and cultural influences may result in the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition.”

So, now we are to have a grand show trial, in the Stalinist mode, of presidential candidate (and werewolf) Donald Trump on charges actually concocted off-site in the Lawfare laboratory of Commissar for Werewolf Activities Andrew Weissmann and sidekick, Brookings Institute fellow Norm Eisen, late counsel to the House Committee that impeached the werewolf with disappointing results over a telephone call to Ukraine in 2019. And, yes, that would be the same Andrew Weissmann who previously (but surreptitiously) led the team of intrepid Lawfare werewolf exorcists fronted by dementia victim Robert Mueller. Mr. Weissmann’s previous two-year-long werewolf hunt was a bust, too, of course. The werewolf slipped off into the moonstruck night to gnaw on Democrat loins again!

This time Mr. Weissmann’s front-man is federal attorney Jack Smith, new to the werewolf hunting scene, packing a seven-shot indictment of silver bullets, aiming to show America how it’s done. And just in case he misses those shots, he’s got another gun strapped to his ankle chambering silver bullets engraved with “Jan 6” on the slugs. If you think our world has gotten interesting, better buckle into your Big Boy lounger because this werewolf movie is going places like none before.

You may have noticed the timing of this new werewolf hunt has a near-magical synchronicity with oddly identical circumstances shimmering around the current occupant of the White House - another case of misplaced official papers. Unlike the Donald Trump werewolf hunt, the “Joe Biden” classified-docs-in-a-garage case is moving at the speed of an Amtrak train with a broken Johnson rod stuck on a sidetrack outside Joppatowne, Maryland, in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. But those purloined classified papers may be the least of “Joe Biden’s” concerns. Why, just the other day a single “whistleblower” document turned up in the House Oversight Committee’s SCIF - a special room for the performance of secret rituals - suggesting that “JB” was on the receiving end of $5 million gratis from some generous soul connected to a Ukrainian natgas company. That payday, for services left murky, when “JB” happened to be Barack Obama’s vice-president, came around the same period as yet other multi-million-dollar gift parcels from China, Russia, and Romania flew into a long list of companies operated by “JB’s” son Hunter, with no known business other than receiving large sums of money and then writing checks to various Biden family members. “Well Sonofabitch…!” as the president himself once said apropos of legal doings in Ukraine.

You understand, the US Department of Justice - the outfit that employs werewolf hunter Jack Smith - got a hold of that “Joe Biden” Ukraine “whistleblower” receipt a good three years ago, and somehow AG Merrick Garland has been unable to take any action on it since then. It’s been mouldering in some remote FBI file, out of sight and mind until Rep. James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed it. Apparently, not even the most preliminary inquiry. Nothing to see there. May have been a shortage of federal attorneys not already assigned to the odious Jan 6 “insurrection” incident that so scarily endangered our democracy. Why, they are still rounding up suspects from sea to shining sea for that treasonous caper, so deep, broad, and dark was the conspiracy!

Springing the werewolf trap on Mr. Trump in the Miami federal district court is sure to intoxicate the, let’s say, thirty percent of the public gripped by lycanthropic hallucinations. You can hear cheers ring out in Santa Monica and the Hamptons today as the “blue” demographic prepares to watch the glorious ordeal of Donald Trump’s legal vivisection. They are forgetting one thing, though: werewolves have powers unknown to mere men who hunt them. Trapping a werewolf is one thing, but holding onto him is another. There are seventeen full moons between now and the next election. A lot can happen, especially among the, let’s say, seventy percent of the public, who disapprove of all this werewolf craziness. The hunters might even find themselves flipped, horrifyingly, into the hunted."

"How It Really Is"

Full screen recommended.
Buddy Brown, "Everything's Gay In June"

"Stop Lying To Us"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/9/23
"Stop Lying To Us"
"Here we go again. We have been told that so many different countries are doing well financially and then we find out that they are not. The Eurozone just redid their numbers from the first quarter of 2023. They are now officially in a recession. The numbers do lie."
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Degenerate, Delusional and Senile"

"Degenerate, Delusional and Senile"
Is the sun setting on the mighty American Empire?
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "We try to keep our distance from politics. But like a bully in a barroom, politics shimmies up close to us anyway. We smell the liquor on its breath.

Inflation is fundamentally a matter of government policy. Politicians want more money than they can get from taxing and borrowing. Usually, they need it to pay for expensive and unproductive programs, such as land redistribution (Zimbabwe), bribing the voters (Argentina), or war (Germany). Always and everywhere, it is a way of ripping off the many for the benefit of a few.

And it is not entirely unpredictable. There are patterns to markets and to history. In markets, the Primary Trend sets a course that can continue for many decades, no matter what happens in the daily news. The interest rate cycle, for example, can last a lifetime. Interest rates hit record lows after WWII. They rose…and didn’t return to an ultimate low again until 2020 – more than 7 decades later.

A Familiar Pattern: In politics, one of the most powerful trends is the arc of empire – from an earnest, dynamic and humble beginning (the US in the 19th century)... to a powerful, proud, admired hegemon (the US in the 20th century)….to a degenerate, and largely delusional, senility ( the US in the 21st century) – the pattern is familiar; it seems ‘natural.’

On a still-larger scale, the polished glory of the whole English-speaking world…from the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 to its own defeat in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan five centuries later…is now turning gray. The British ruled the waves in the 19th century. America took the lead after WWI and ruled the 20th. But now, US sanctions are said to affect a third of the human race – with little effect. For all the press bluster to the contrary, the Russians appear to be winning their war in the Ukraine. France has announced that it may be going its own way. The Japanese are re-arming. China is beginning to play a larger and larger role. The BRICs are developing their own reserve currency... while asserting their independence. The English speakers’ prestige, power and wealth – relative to the rest of the world – are clearly waning.

Almost 20 years ago, when we wrote our ‘Empire of Debt’ book, with Addison Wiggin, we saw the writing on the wall. The US conquered. But it couldn’t win. It could destroy foreign governments…but it couldn’t build a democracy. It spent money to run its empire…now nearly $1.5 trillion/year…but it had no revenue to pay for it. The gist of our argument, then….and now: This is not going to end well.

Barbarians Inside the Gate: Turning to contemporary politics…what is perhaps most remarkable is that there is so little opposition to the program that is most likely to ruin us. The US has no enemies that it didn’t create itself. Russia is not going to invade Alaska. Canada is not going to send mounties to take control of Minnesota. China is not preparing an attack on California. And Mexicans are very unlikely to march into Houston.

Still, trillions of dollars are spent on ‘national security.’ And in the debt ceiling brouhaha nobody in Congress even suggested the obvious solution: cut a few hundred billion out of the empire budget. Instead, both parties agreed to exempt the Pentagon and its suppliers from any reductions.

The last US presidents to rock the boat at all were Eisenhower and Kennedy, more than half a century ago. In his farewell speech, Eisenhower warned the nation to beware of the military. A celebrated war hero, he knew, better than almost anyone, how perverse and corrupting the military-industrial complex could be. JFK was a war hero too. According to his nephew, RFK,Jr., the young president had been played by the CIA. The Bay of Pigs invasion was intentionally botched, he claims, to force Kennedy to send the Pentagon to the rescue.

A Thousand Pieces: By the early ‘60s, the CIA was a law unto itself…with a classified, apparently unlimited budget. It was a government within a government…the deepest part of the Deep State. It supported revolutions and coups d’etat. It tried to murder foreign leaders. It ran roughshod over much of the world; it bankrolled the Cuban debacle.

But instead of sending US warplanes to cover the assault, Kennedy held US forces in check…and vowed to smash the CIA “into a thousand pieces.” Two years later, Kennedy was assassinated…and the CIA became more powerful than ever. Since then, there has been no serious challenge to the military-industrial-spook complex. And now there are no war heroes to oppose it.

Donald Trump and his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign appealed to those people longing for a return to the early days of the empire. He even claimed he would end the ‘forever wars’ that the CIA had started. But The Donald never understood what was going on. His fans, and maybe he too, thought he opposed the Deep State, even while he gave it bigger military budgets, bigger deficits than America had ever seen, and an unprecedented and unnecessary ‘lockdown’ of civilian society.

And Joe Biden? There is no chance that he will try to change things either. Birds gotta fly. Fish gotta swim. And empires gotta go onto the trash heap of history. But how? When? Who will lead them there? More to come…"
o
"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1
"The woman named Tomorrow 
sits with a hairpin in her teeth 
and takes her time 
and does her hair the way she wants it 
and fastens at last the last braid and coil 
and puts the hairpin where it belongs 
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? 
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. 
What of it? Let the dead be dead. 

2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold 
and the girls were golden girls 
and the panels read and the girls chanted: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 

The doors are twisted on broken hinges. 
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind 
where the golden girls ran and the panels read: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

3
It has happened before. 
Strong men put up a city and got 
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women 
to warble: We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened 
and paid the singers well 
and felt good about it all, 
there were rats and lizards who listened...
and the only listeners left now...
are…the rats…and the lizards. 

And there are black crows 
crying, “Caw, caw,” 
bringing mud and sticks 
building a nest 
over the words carved 
on the doors where the panels were cedar 
and the strips on the panels were gold 
and the golden girls came singing: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 
The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” 
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. 
And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards.
 
4
The feet of the rats 
scribble on the door sills; 
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints 
chatter the pedigrees of the rats 
and babble of the blood 
and gabble of the breed 
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers 
of the rats. 

And the wind shifts 
and the dust on a door sill shifts 
and even the writing of the rat footprints 
tells us nothing, nothing at all 
about the greatest city, the greatest nation 
where the strong men listened 
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg 

Gregory Mannarino, "Be Ready: More 'Food Insecurity' Warnings"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/9/23
"Be Ready: More 'Food Insecurity' Warnings
Goldman Sachs: More Inflation Is Coming"
Comments here:

"Shopping At Walgreens! Very High Prices! This Is Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/9/23
"Shopping At Walgreens!
 Very High Prices! This Is Crazy!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Walgreens and are noticing some very high price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices and find ways to save money! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and charging very high prices!"
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 6/9/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 6/9/23"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Another witch hunt indictment for Donald Trump for what looks like yet another made-up crime to get rid of the top 2024 presidential contender. Trump calls this “election interference at the highest level.” Trump says he is “innocent,” but prosecutors charged him with seven crimes anyway. The only good news is the federal case against Trump is in Florida. So, a convicting jury pool is going to be hard to corral.

Meanwhile, the Hunter Biden laptop allegations go uninvestigated, and Joe Biden is allegedly guilty of taking millions of dollars in actual bribes, according to new documents released this week. The FBI has been sitting on this case that only came to the surface because FBI Head Chris Wray was forced to release it under threat of Contempt of Congress. The person who says he is the one who bribed Joe Biden $5 million is the star witness. Yet, the FBI was not interested in prosecution. A real president has fake charges put on him, and a fake president has real charges ignored. Yeah, that’s fair.

The Lying Legacy Media (LLM) has gaslit the public so badly on Ukraine they do not know how dire the situation really is and how close we are to a much wider war. The Ukrainians are mounting what looks like a last ditch effort to kick out the Russians, and they are being cremated once again. NATO is reverting to more terrorism like blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, but this time they blew up the Nova Kakhovka Dam that supplies water to Crimea. The dam was built by Russia, but NATO wants you to believe it blew up its own infrastructure just like the Nord pipeline last year. Will NATO launch a desperate strike on Russia while holding exercises next week in what is called Air Defender 2023? Will NATO think this is the perfect cover to launch another stupid attack that will bring the world closer to nuclear war? The fun starts next Monday. There is much more in the 54-minute news cast."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/9/23.

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Very strong language alert!
"Gerald Celente, renowned trend forecaster, is back with an in-depth analysis of today's trends in the news. Get a sneak peek into the new Trends Journal issue, learn how to discern valuable information in a sea of irrelevant headlines, and understand why Gerald says, "Thinking for yourself is the best trend to follow." The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. "
Find out more here: - https://trendsjournal.com
Comments here:

Gerald's in fine form today, lol

"Criminals Will Steal Your Money Faster Than A Bank; Food Shortage Warning; People Are Hurting"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/8/23
"Criminals Will Steal Your Money Faster Than A Bank; 
Food Shortage Warning; People Are Hurting"
Comments here:

"56 Million Americans Can't Afford To Retire As Cost Of Basic Items Soars Across The US"

Full screen recommended.
"56 Million Americans Can't Afford To Retire
 As Cost Of Basic Items Soars Across The US"
By Epic Economist

"New studies show that 56 million US workers can’t afford to retire in 2023. Many do not have a single dollar saved for their future, let alone a retirement plan. With the cost of basic necessities going through the roof, it’s getting increasingly challenging for people to start putting money aside for their senior years. The reliance many groups have on Social Security benefits is rapidly depleting this important government fund, and leaving Americans in an extremely precarious financial situation. According to Pew Research estimates, US households will be forced to pay over $13,000 more in taxes every year to fund the retirements of our aging population. This means that even younger generations will feel the impact of this worsening crisis, and many of us will have to lower our living standards to be able to make ends meet.

Today, almost half of Americans say that everyday expenses are rising so rapidly that they won’t be able to afford basic necessities in the future, and this is seen as one of the greatest risks to retirement success. This percentage is up from 44% in 2022 and 38% in 2021, according to Allianz Life. Troublingly, about 40% of US workers admit their retirement strategy has been derailed, and they aren’t sure when or how they’ll get it back on track. Other stats reveal that a remarkable 61% of Americans say they are more afraid of running out of money than they are of dying, with many of them unsure about their real chances of ever achieving a successful financial future by the time they reach retirement age.

It’s not just older workers without a big brokerage account balance who are in trouble. The fact that so many people don’t have enough money to fund their basic spending is going to cost the government more than one trillion dollars when it has to step in to provide assistance, especially when it collects less tax revenue from American workers.

A separate analysis by the Pew Research Center estimates the federal government is going to incur costs of about $964 billion between 2023 and 2040 due to insufficient retirement savings, while states will spend an estimated $334 billion. Their calculations expose that this amounts to $1.3 trillion in costs that governments — and thus taxpayers — will have to bear.

To make things even more complicated, as our population ages, there will be fewer workers relative to the number of seniors facing these shortfalls, so a smaller number of people will need to cover these big costs. In fact, the analysis highlights that the age dependency ratio — the ratio of households with people at least age 65 to those of working age — is expected to grow by nearly 50% in the next two decades. Pew reports that the additional taxpayer liability due to inadequate retirement savings will climb to about $13,600 per household.

We may not be seeing the worst of the retirement crisis just yet, but it's clear that it is already here. We should pay very close attention to the challenges Baby Boomers are facing today becase is similar fate is waiting for us. They were once the richest generation in America, and now millions of them are becoming financially insecure and getting closer to poverty. With a recession at our door, our future looks uncertain, and at this point, we should start doing everything on our power to change the course of things before our living standards deteriorate even further."
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Musical Interlude:Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,

Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,
Live At The Acropolis

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Where did this big ball of stars come from? Palomar 6 is one of about 200 globular clusters of stars that survive in our Milky Way Galaxy. These spherical star-balls are older than our Sun as well as older than most stars that orbit in our galaxy's disk. Palomar 6 itself is estimated to be about 12.5 billion years old, so old that it is close to - and so constrains - the age of the entire universe. 
Containing about 500,000 stars, Palomar 6 lies about 25,000 light years away, but not very far from our galaxy's center. At that distance, this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope spans about 15 light-years. After much study including images from Hubble, a leading origin hypothesis is that Palomar 6 was created - and survives today - in the central bulge of stars that surround the Milky Way's center, not in the distant galactic halo where most other globular clusters are now found."

"I Cannot Believe..."

"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “happy.” I think 
the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate.
It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, 
to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
- Leo C. Rosten

Free Download: Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”

“Automaton Conformity”
by Erich Fromm

“In the mechanisms we have been discussing, the individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming power of the world outside himself either by renouncing his individual integrity, or by destroying others so that the world ceases to be threatening. Other mechanisms of escape are the withdrawal from the world so completely that it loses its threat (the picture we find in certain psychotic states), and the inflation of oneself psychologically to such an extent that the world outside becomes small in comparison. Although these mechanisms of escape are important for individual psychology, they are only of minor relevance culturally. I shall not, therefore, discuss them further here, but instead will turn to another mechanism of escape which is of the greatest social significance.

This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.”
- Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”

Freely download “The Fear of Freedom”, by Erich Fromm, here:

"Damned..."

“Damned is the soul that dies while the evil it committed lives on. And the most damned of all are those who see the evil coming for others and refuse to confront it. For it is not out of fear that heroes are born, but rather out of their selfless love that will not allow them safety bought from the torture, death, and degradation of others. It is better to die in defense of another than to live with the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose to do nothing. And to those who think that one person cannot make a difference, I say this… the deadliest tidal wave begins as an unseen ripple in a vast ocean. Live your life so that your integrity will motivate others to strive for excellence long after you’ve passed on, and know that no good deed or sacrifice, or offer of sincere friendship or love, is ever forgotten by the one who receives it.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Daily "Near You?"

Liberty, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

 

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
On your knees you may live to see another day,
but you’ll never live to see better days.
by Robert Gore 

“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.

In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.

While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!

Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.

It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.

But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.

Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.

The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.

We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”

"It Is Our Fate..."

 

"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with one's self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one's mind what matters and what does not matter."
- Dorothy Thompson

Bill Bonner, "Going... Going... Gono"

"Going... Going... Gono"
From breadbasket to basket case... 
lessons from the world's inflation capital.
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "Among the many curiosities, back eddies, and ironies in the financial world is this: equities can go up, even as an economy goes down. In the news yesterday morning was this report from Zimbabwe. Bloomberg: "Zimbabweans Drive Stocks Up 600% in Rush to Dodge Currency Crash."

"Zimbabweans often turn to equities as a haven from currency meltdowns and episodes of hyperinflation, as happened in June 2020 when the inflation rate reached 837%. The bourse in Harare, the capital, briefly halted trading on Tuesday when the jump in the all-share index breached a 10% limit introduced in April, the second time that’s happened."

Like taking heroin, once you get in the habit of printing money, it’s a hard one to give up. Not that you don’t plan to do it…promise to do it…and even try to do it. But in the end, you just don’t want to do it. Zimbabwe has been fighting inflation, depression and hyperinflation for nearly 20 years. No sign of victory yet!

Breadbasket to Basketcase: Zimbabwe used to be the “breadbasket of Africa,” with rich fields of wheat and tobacco…at the center of a thriving agricultural economy. You can say what you want about the evils of colonialism, but at least the colonials knew how to run an economy. Zimbabwe flourished even after it gained its independence from Britain in 1979.

But in the early ‘90s, politics gained the upper hand. The Mugabe government began its own reparations program, taking land from white farmers and distributing it to Mugabe’s cronies. The whites fled. Food production dropped. Unemployment soared to 80%. Tax revenues fell…and the government turned to the printing presses. Consumer prices rose.

In 2007, the government took forceful action against inflation. No, it did not stop printing money. Instead, it declared it illegal to raise prices. Corporate executives who tried to keep up with inflation by raising prices were put in jail. This had the effect of stopping output all together. Commercial activity shifted to the black market. A loaf of bread, for example, could be bought, legally, for about 500 million zim dollars. On the black market, which was the only place you could normally find bread, the price was $Z10 billion. By July 2008, the inflation rate was believed to be 250 million percent.

Of course, by then it was impossible to keep track of prices. Because there was not much left to put a price on. And in 2009, the Zim dollar was abandoned altogether.

No Food, No Fuel, No Nuthin’: Things settled down. Business returned, using the US dollar as the substitute currency. But in 2018, the authorities went back to their old tricks. A new Zimbabwean dollar was introduced. A year later, the inflation rate was said to be over 500% and today, prices are going up at about 200% per year.

For a long time, we carried a memento of the hyperinflation period – a Zim bill said to be worth $100 trillion dollars. With that and US $5 we would have been able to buy a cup of coffee in Harare, the nation’s capital. But there was no coffee in Harare. Or anywhere else in the country, because nobody wanted to take Zim currency in payment for anything. So, the shelves were cleaned out. And soon, there was no food. No clothing. No fuel. Almost nothing.

And that was when Gideon Gono, head of the Zimbabwean central bank, made the discovery that will prevent the US and other nations from dealing forthrightly with the inflation scourge. He recounted the experience to our old friend Doug Casey, years later. “Yes, of course we could have stopped printing up ridiculous amounts of money,” he said, or words to that effect, “but people needed more and more money just to buy necessities. The situation was terrible. But it would have been even worse – including civil war – if we hadn’t kept the presses going.”

Cold Turkey: What Mr. Gono was describing was the advanced stages of what we call the “inflate or die” dilemma. Once you’re hooked on inflation, in other words, it can be very hard to give it up. Stock prices, corporate profits, household earnings…rich and poor – all depend on more and more money. You have to keep inflating or the whole thing collapses. Even an honest politician thinks twice before cutting off the thing everybody most wants – more money. Going ‘cold turkey’ is painful. It is much easier just to keep printing money.

This is a particularly dangerous predicament when your society is in the grip of empire builders, as the US is now. Many times have we mentioned the sad case of Takahashi Korekiyo. He was in charge of the central bank of Japan in the 1930s, when the country’s military/industrial complex was aiming to take over all of East Asia. It was to be a “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” with Japanese management and capital, along with the labor and raw ingredients of China, Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

But the war machine cost money. And when Korekiyo tried to turn it off, in 1936, he was assassinated. "Inflate or die” must sometimes be taken literally."

"How It Really Is"

 

Horrifying! World Child Sex Trafficking!"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/8/23
"Bombshell! Mel Gibson About To Expose All Of Them"
"Was Mel Gibson the fall guy for wanting to expose child trafficking rings in Hollywood? He is involved in a new documentary about the underbelly of child trafficking in the U.S. and other countries. That is why he is trending today. Will the mainstream condone this or remind us why he is a persona non grata?"
Comments here:

Inconceivable, shockingly horrifying Evil. 800,000 children a year in the United States alone go missing! These loathesome creatures do not deserve living and should be hunted down world wide with extreme prejudice, and I presume you know what that term means! Mass public executions are too good for these absolutely vile and degenerate monsters! God damn them all to Hell, but Hell isn't hot enough, and eternity's not long enough. If I said what I really want to say, Blogger would delete this blog in an instant... - CP