Wednesday, June 21, 2023

"Our Moral Compass..."

"The Holocaust teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason."
- Samuel Pisar

"I think we need to be human. Nobody is objective. We need to go in and be human - especially today, especially given everything that's happening around us, especially given the divides between populations that are growing and what's at stake in terms of our collective humanity, and the fact that our moral compass is broken."
- Arwa Damon
"Moral compass?" Surely you jest! This is 'Murica, fool!

"Preparedness Items At Dollar Tree We Should Be Adding To Our Stockpile!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/21/23
"Preparedness Items At Dollar Tree 
We Should Be Adding To Our Stockpile!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are shopping for affordable prepper options that we can all stock up on for our storage. It's always good to be prepared for any kind of situation, and we are seeking out cheaper options for necessary survival items!"
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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

"It's Only Getting Worse, Wake Up! Credit Card Rates Are Out Of Control; Auto Loan Disaster Inevitable"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/20/23
"It's Only Getting Worse, Wake Up! Credit Card Rates 
Are Out Of Control; Auto Loan Disaster Inevitable"
Comments here:

Scott Ritter, "Examining the Current Geopolitical Landscape"

Scott Ritter, 6/20/23
"Examining the Current Geopolitical Landscape"
Comments here:
Fascinating insights about Russia, Ukraine and America...
o
Scott Ritter, 6/20/23
"Russia Greatest Concentration of Artillery Fires"
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Musical Interlude: Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The photographer had this shot in mind for some time. He knew that objects overhead are the brightest - since their light is scattered the least by atmospheric air. He also that knew the core of our Milky Way Galaxy was just about straight up near midnight around this time of year in South Australia. Chasing his mental picture, he ventured deep inside the Kuipto Forest where tall radiata pines blocked out much of the sky - but not in this clearing. There, through a window framed by trees, he captured his envisioned combination of local and distant nature. Sixteen exposures of both trees and the Milky Way Galaxy were recorded.
Antares is the bright orange star to left of our Galaxy's central plane, while Alpha Centauri is the bright star just to the right of the image center. The direction toward our Galaxy's center is below Antares. Although in a few hours the Earth's rotation moved the Galactic plane up and to the left - soon invisible behind the timber, his mental image was secured forever - and is featured here."

"We Are All Of Us..."

 

"We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow
of a giant question mark that refers to three questions:
Where do we come from?
Why?
And where, oh where, are we going?"
- Tennessee Williams

"For Whom..."

“Life passes like a flash of lightning, whose blaze barely lasts long enough to see. While the earth and sky stand still forever, how swiftly changing time flies across man’s face. O you who sit over your full cup and do not drink, tell me – for whom are you still waiting?”
- Hermann Hesse

"Amazon CEO Warns About Perfect Storm As Retail Business Collapses"

Full screen recommended.
"Amazon CEO Warns About Perfect Storm 
As Retail Business Collapses"
by Epic Economist

"The nightmare in the retail sector never seems to end, and now Amazon, the second largest online and physical retailer in the world, is giving up on its brick-and-mortar operations, according to a new report and warnings issued by the company’s CEO Andy Jassy. Its stores continue to disappear amid the most dramatic shift the industry has ever experienced, and the problems faced by the retail giant are scaring the living daylights out of its rivals, which have a smaller market share and bigger liabilities that could rapidly throw them over the edge. At this point, some of America’s largest brands have already started taking extreme measures to protect their businesses as they get ready for a perfect storm that is threatening to spark the most devastating wave of bankruptcies recorded since 2017. For many of our beloved retailers, this is the beginning of the end.

Amazon recently published an annual letter to its shareholders saying that its service division, a huge part of its business that generates roughly $62 billion in revenue every year, is facing a series of headwinds that are forcing the company to cut costs on other divisions, including brick-and-mortar retail, in order to focus on profitability as executives prepare for a prolonged recession.

Since Jassy took over as CEO, Amazon's stock crashed by 44%. On Friday, the company’s shares fell again wiping out gains from the previous week after the gloomy forecast about future growth and tighter spending was shared by the executive.

He launched one of the deepest austerity plans the retailer has ever known, ending several projects, killing certain services and products, and on top of all else, cutting almost 30,000 jobs in just a few months. According to a report by The Street, Amazon is now giving up on the majority of its brick-and-mortar businesses after years of trying to expand its physical operations across the country and the world.

With the exception of Whole Foods stores, all of its grocery stores are in the process of being shut down in 2023, a trend that started last year, with the closure of several underperforming Fresh and Go stores.

Although these cuts may help Amazon's bottom line in the next few quarters, the overall financial losses caused by the shutdowns will ultimately hurt the retailer in the long run. In addition, all of its remaining physical bookstores, gadget, and electronic stores are being shuttered, not only in America, but all over the globe, including 68 locations in the U.K.

The demise of Amazon’s physical stores comes at a time when other major retailers are coping with lagging sales, changing consumer habits, and rolling out their recession playbook to weather the perfect storm that is on the horizon.

Deteriorating conditions for businesses mean that even some of the biggest players out there are endangered. Sadly, we may lose our favorite stores and we may have to say goodbye to several of the brands that stayed with us for decades. This is just the start of a much bigger crisis that will force more and more retailers to rethink their entire operations. And by the end of this process, America’s retail landscape will be vastly different than what it looks like right now."
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"This Is Going Nowhere"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/20/23
"This Is Going Nowhere"
"Interest rates are not going to go down. This slight pause is nothing but a breather before things head north. Credit card rates are sky high. Student loan debt is about to start collecting payments again."
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The Daily "Near You?"

Lewistown, Pennsylvania, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Get Your Stuff Together..."

“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.”
- Quincy Jones

Robert Gore, "Ants at the Picnic, Part Two"

Deplorable ants will make the picnic a living hell.
"Ants at the Picnic, Part Two"
by Robert Gore


"What scares the powerful are those willing to die in defense of principle. Our rulers are cowards, and they can’t begin to understand devotion to any principle beyond self-aggrandizement, if that can be called a principle. The very existence of such devotion is a moral rebuke. It fills the powerful with one of humanity’s most loathsome emotions: the hatred of the virtuous for their virtue.

Guns are the endpoint in a chain of practical precepts straight from the American Revolution. The biggest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is government, whose force can only be met with counter-force. The powerful have no respect for your rights, but they do for your firearms - you might fight back. Those firearms are the last bulwark against the planet’s most dangerous institutions and psychopaths. If you let them take your guns, it will allow them to take everything else. Both sides know it. Only one will acknowledge it.

The Corruptocracy’s credibility is gone and its narrative has crumbled. People so smitten with themselves and so enamored with their own propaganda never realize the danger posed by those who are neither smitten nor enamored. They are trying to sell a top-down remaking of the entire world, not by selling a purported better life for the masses, but a worse one. It’s overweening, historically unprecedented hubris: hand us total control and we’ll make you miserable. They gave us a preview of coming attractions with Covid totalitarianism, now reprised as Climate Change totalitarianism.

Just slap on a little propaganda and people will be lining up to eat bugs, live in 15-minute urban hellholes, be surveilled 24/7, receive the pharmaceutical overlords’ flavor-of-the-month, embrace serfdom, own nothing, be happy, and obey. We don’t even have the alternative media to thank for revealing this dystopia. The corruptocrats, in their cocksure delusion, have revealed it themselves.

If you’re peddling less than nothing for the future, don’t be too surprised if some of the benighted “beneficiaries” reach for the firearms before it arrives. The corruptocrats know that any straightforward attempt to confiscate guns will be violently resisted, and such resistance will feed on itself. It could be the beginning of a guerrilla war, and governments, particularly the U.S. government, have not fared well in guerrilla wars the last sixty years or so. To forestall a guerrilla war, the totalitarians will try confiscation via a workaround.

The plan is universal identification linked to health records, social credit scoring, and central bank digital currencies. Once these are instituted they’ll have us by the short hairs. They’ll have a digital record of our purchases and receipts, which would include buying and selling firearms. Even for people who have owned their guns for many years, they’d have artificial intelligence (AI) checking for correlations. You refused to vaccinate, you donated to the NRA, you’ve bought physical gold or silver, and you’re a registered Republican? You probably own a gun. With AI the ability to cross-check correlations is virtually limitless.

Because they’ll have full control of the digital currency, they won’t need to confiscate your gun. They’ll simply make it impossible to transact business - to buy anything or to collect your paycheck (if they haven’t cut you out of the job market) - until you surrender the weapons that gun registration or their AI system says you have.

Those who would fight the impending totalitarianism can’t wait until the knock on their door from the stooge sent to collect their firearms. Guerrilla war has to commence well before we’re herded into the Panopticon. If it does, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the guerrillas. This, you see, is the main contradiction behind all the Globalist’s twisted ambitions to control everything, including you. They are working against the current tide of human history which is pushing everything toward down-scaling, re-localization, and re-assertion of the sovereign individual person.

The centralizing trend that began with the formation of nation-state governments at the tail end of the Medieval Age is giving way to decentralized markets, technology, productive capacity, and weaponry. Centralized governments are expensive anachronisms, far too large and bloated to serve any useful purpose. An increasing number of their subjugated realize it. Those who have tied their incomes and status to them will be the last to know.

Guerrillas, terrorists, revolutionaries, or insurgents (what you call them depends on whose side you’re on - insurgents is the most neutral term) are the ultimate ants at the picnic. Not only do they go after the baskets, they attack the picnickers. Throughout history, insurgents have bedeviled governments and their military forces, intelligence agencies, and allied institutions.

The biggest advantage insurgents have is that they are committed to their cause. No one pledges their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on a whim, knowing that death is their almost certain fate if they fail. Insurgents are fighting for their land, way of life, honor, religion, families, friends, and themselves. Agents of government lack these powerful wellsprings of commitment. When it’s trying to quell an insurrection, the government is asking (or ordering) its praetorians to shoot their families, friends, and countrymen. There are always some who refuse to do so or switch to the rebels’ side.

Insurgents are usually aided by noncombatants sympathetic to the cause. Noncombatants can be invaluable as informers, spies, saboteurs, propagandists, keepers of safe houses, and providers of refuge and provisions. Governments have their informers and spies as well, but again they lack the motivation of their insurgent counterparts. They’re currying favor or working for payment or other reward, not because they have a deep allegiance to the government.

The government often becomes the insurgents’ best recruiter. Insurgents who are captured, imprisoned, tortured or executed have friends and family. As the U.S. government has discovered in every guerrilla conflict it’s fought since World War II, killing insurgents invariably creates more insurgents - blowback.

In many ways, Washington is a foreign district within the country from which it siphons its sustenance. The ruling caste’s understanding of much of the population goes no further than crude stereotypes. They find their picture of the typical gun owner - semiliterate, rural deplorables clinging to their guns - frightening enough to forestall attempts at direct firearms confiscation. What they don’t realize is that the realities of gun ownership are far more complicated and dangerous to them than their caricature.

The urban criminal class is armed to the teeth. It has top notch communication and organizational capabilities - think smart phones and flash mobs - and resources - the drug trade - and is highly mobile. It enjoys widespread support among the population. The George Floyd riots kicked off urban guerrilla war. From what’s happened to our cities since, the guerrillas are either winning or have already won.

In response to surging crime and violence, mayors and governors have thrown up their hands and said, “we give up.” Stringent gun control laws in Democrat-run cities have been as effective as a law against ants at picnics. They won’t arrest shoplifters, much less mount any kind of serious campaign against the worst criminals. Take away their guns? Forget about it!

The Democrats running most of our cities are as much figureheads fronting for criminals as Joe Biden is at the national level. Look at the laws and policies they’ve promulgated the last few years: defunding police, decriminalizing crime, eliminating bail, and refusing to prosecute all but the most heinous crimes. Cui bono? They’ve ceded the cities to the criminal class.

In a lawless race to the bottom, the most ruthlessly violent win. Major portions of our cities are already no-go for decent people (much the same situation exists in many European cities). The good flee or foolishly sequester themselves in what they regard as sanctuary enclaves. The bad fight for territory and control. The ugly is the extortionate, parasitical order imposed by the winners.

It would take multiple military divisions to even attempt dislodging such a configuration from say, Los Angeles. Beverly Hills and Malibu are not sanctuary enclaves. The de facto rulers—warlords—leave the de jure government in place, to make speeches and lead parades, but everyone knows who the real powers are. Those who don’t defer to them—nominal leaders or regular citizens—enjoy minimal life expectancy.

Right now, the prototypical “dangerous gun nut” is an urban gang member, not a rural or suburban Trump-loving deplorable. The former are waging and winning guerrilla war in the cities. They have no stake in the existing order, so they have no compunction about destroying it. The latter generally do have a stake—jobs, families, and communities—which makes them much more reluctant to upset the apple cart. That’s not to say they’ll never reach a breaking point—they will—but they’re going to have to be pushed to it, a last straw sort of thing.

The ruling class is pushing as hard as it can, an egregious miscalculation. Cultural and political marginalization has gone on since the Vietnam War (see “Much More Than Trump”). Over the last seven years there has been a Long Train of Abuses, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson. Russiagate, two impeachments, stolen elections, January 6 kangaroo court verdicts and draconian sentences, the Covid fraud, lockdowns, closing businesses, deadly vaccines, the Great Reset. inflation, woke dogma taught in schools and embraced by major corporations, cancel culture, censorship, a war against Russia, indictments against Trump, and no indictments against the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, and the FBI camarilla, to name a few.

What may well be the final straw is economic and financial collapse, which will wipe out much of what has kept deplorables plugged into this country and tolerant enough of its corrupt government to not wage overt insurrection. Chaos will mount as much of the population is rendered destitute. The so-called safety net will be torn to shreds. A bankrupt government will be unable to meet its debt obligations, unfunded pension and medical care liabilities, contingent liabilities such as pension and bank deposit guarantees, and mandated transfer payments with anything other than its increasingly worthless fiat debt and currency. As the paper tiger empire collapses, even heretofore sacrosanct military spending will be curtailed.

Once the breaking point is reached, deplorable ants will make the picnic a living hell. Organic systems adapt to ever changing environments; they are resilient. Governments’ command and control systems are not. There are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations on the books. This interference in all facets of life has been responsible for public-private Rube Goldberg systems of staggering complexity and no resiliency. They are sitting ducks for all manner of sabotage.

In many cases deplorables - potential guerrillas - run these systems. How hard would it be to take out some or all of the electric or transportation grids, supply chains, pipelines, ports, grain elevators, feedlots, hospitals, computer systems, factories, and so on, especially by the people who operate them? It may already be happening; there’s been a lot of suspicious accidents lately. The bull market in chaos is off and running, but what we’re seeing now is just a preview of coming attractions. It will be child’s play to compound the intensifying chaos.

All those Cloward-Piven and Alinsky acolytes inside the government will get the societal breakdown they’ve pined for and fomented, and they’ll wish they hadn’t. Their plan to destroy society and enslave or eliminate the people who would know how to rebuild it was always problematic. How many people in the government and its orbit know how to do anything useful?

The government will be able to muster three million or so military and police personnel, many of whom are administrative, against a deplorable guerrilla force that could also number in the millions, plus sympathetic noncombatants. Not only do deplorables operate many of the systems, but they can build sophisticated weapons, steal them from the government, or buy them on the thriving international black market. And there’s that differential in commitment between the two sides.

Anything the government does in response to guerrillas is only likely to increase the chaos, which increases the difficulty of instituting order. It could shut down the Internet, but there goes a huge part of the nation’s commerce, and the government itself depends on the Internet. It can unleash all the military firepower (Bring on the F-15s!) that hasn’t defeated far less formidable opposition for six decades. Much of that firepower can be stolen, sabotaged, or destroyed. Fighting your own people is a tricky thing indeed.

Bet on the deplorable guerrillas to control the hinterland. Urban guerrillas will control the cities, and the two sides may find it in their mutual interest to live and let live. De jure Balkanization may follow this de facto one, and the United States will be no more. Few will mourn the passing of the incompetent, corrupt, imperialistic, bankrupt, and tyrannical U.S government.

Balkanization will mean both decentralization and smaller political units in those areas in which the reestablishment of order overcomes the chaos. Some of the deplorable guerrillas may become Founding Fathers or Mothers to polities based on freedom, individual rights, and government subordinated to the protection of those rights. We can hope.

The ants are overrunning the picnic. Anthills and their intricate subterranean tunnels are reminders that ants are pretty good at order, but their order is not top-down, command and control order, which is now on the wrong side of history. Theirs is an order based on industriousness and cooperation, an organically adaptive order, elusive for humans but not unattainable.

We, the ants, can sting our oppressors six ways from Sunday and build a much better world than the one they have in store for us. Be an ant and join with other ants."

"How It Really Is"

"Fentanyl and other opioids are fueling the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States. More than 1,500 people per week die from taking some type of opioid, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, making opioids by far the leading cause of fatal overdoses in the country."

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

Bill Bonner, "Channel Blues"

"Channel Blues"
Mission Impossible for American troops at Omaha Beach...
by Bill Bonner

Normandy, France - "On our way out of Ireland yesterday, we stayed overnight at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin. This is the hotel where Joe Biden stayed when he was in town. It’s a favorite for Americans. We’re traveling with a 15-year-old grandson. “Did you see them?” he asked at breakfast. “Who?” “Not who…Wu.” “Wu who?” “Wu Tang.” “Is that a breakfast drink?” “Grandad, the Wu Tang Clan are staying here. I saw them in the lobby.” “Is that a Scottish clan?” “No Grandad, they’re a famous band. You’re not keeping up with popular culture.” “I try not to.”

We set off later for the ferry, spent an agreeable night, and arrived in Cherbourg in the morning. “Can we go see the D-Day beaches?” came the question.

A Bit of History: Normally, we drive down the Cotentin peninsula without stopping. Many times, we have driven past the Pointe de Hoc, Utah Beach, and Ste. Mere Eglise. But yesterday, by request, we paid a visit to honor the WWII dead and give a 15-year-old a bit of US history.

First stop was Ste. Mere Eglise, the little town made famous in the movie, ‘The Longest Day.’ On June 6, 1944 John Steele, a young US paratrooper, with the 505th Parachute Infantry found himself hanging from the church steeple with the Germans beneath him. His parachute had gotten caught one of the spires. His only option was to play dead. Finally, the Germans realized he was alive. They cut him down and took him prisoner. Later, in the confusion, he escaped and rejoined the battle. Today, in Ste. Mere Eglise, a dummy dressed as a paratrooper dangles from the spire and restaurants and bars around the square invite tourists. There is also a museum where visitors get a more detailed and personal look at the WWII battle.

The paratroopers were dropped on the eve of the D-Day invasion. Their job was to secure the roads and bridges to prevent the Germans from sending reinforcements to the beaches. They floated down from the sky at night, hoping the darkness would hide them from German gunners. At Ste. Mere Eglise, however, a large house somehow caught fire that night, lighting up the night sky. Many of the paratroopers were shot before they touched the ground.

The Drop Zone: In the museum, too, is a life-sized replica of a WACO glider, built in Troy, Ohio. It is a remarkably flimsy aircraft, with an aluminum tube frame covered in a tough fabric of some sort. In it were packed a group of 12 soldiers and their gear. The gliders were towed to the drop zone. Then, with no lights and no motor, the idea was for the plane to land, unnoticed, behind enemy lines. As you can imagine, things went wrong. Many of the paratroopers drowned in fields that had been flooded by the Germans. Many were simply lost, scattered over a large area and unable to form up into fighting units. And many of the gliders crashed into trees or swamps, killing their passengers.

France was controlled by the pro-German Vichy government in 1944. So, when the allies landed in Normandy, the toady press went to work dutifully reporting on how the assault had failed. This is a newspaper on display at the museum. It tells us that in the Cotentin peninsula, the “American paratroopers are encircled, suffering enormous losses.”
The headline might have been literally true. The paratroopers did suffer huge losses…and they were encircled (that was the idea; they were dropped behind enemy lines). But they soon went to work. They took control of roads. They blocked bridges. And they seized towns, including Ste. Mere Eglise.

Much of the town was destroyed. But the exhibits focused on the victory…and how it was quickly followed by amity between French civilians and US soldiers. The French had been living on short rations for the four years of German occupation. They were happy to see the well-supplied, friendly yanks sharing their cigarettes and chewing gum.

Revisionist WWII historians have tried to show how the American army was not very different from other armies – brutish, racist, sexist…mistreating prisoners and indifferent to the suffering of civilians. But there is no evidence of it in Ste. Mere Eglise. American soldiers are portrayed as heroes, who sacrificed their own lives to liberate the French. There are photos of them, from Pittsburgh, Boston, Amarillo… they appear as a genuine cross-section of America in the 1940s. We can read their letters home. We see them happily fraternizing with the local people.

“Wasn’t your father in the Army, Grandad?” “Yes, he was…almost everybody was, I guess.” “Was he here in France?” “No…he was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed…and then he fought the war in the Pacific.” “Oh. I guess you’re proud of him.” “Yes…of course.”

Mission Impossible: The theme continued at La Pointe du Hoc, down the coast, dominating Omaha Beach. We were looking at America in what many people think was its finest hour. Driving into town, there were photos of American soldiers hanging from light posts…Sgt. Tawney…Pvt. Lansdale…Cpl. Johnson…and hundreds of others. They did their deeds almost 80 years ago. But they are still remembered here…though perhaps more for the tourists than the locals.

The landscape is impressive and beautiful. High cliffs surround the now-deserted beaches. At the center is the ‘pointe,’ where the Germans had built a remarkable cluster of concrete fortifications to anchor their ‘Atlantic Wall.’ In the early days of the war, it was thought that Normandy might provide the Germans with a threshold from which to invade England. But by 1944, the war was clearly going the other way. And now the Germans needed a wall to keep the English out.

As the gliders and parachutes were coming down a few miles inland, the bulk of the invasion force was gathering off the coast. More than three hundred thousand soldiers and sailors, from more than a dozen allied nations, were preparing the assault. Among them were 225 members of the US Army Rangers, who had practiced on the Isle of Wight and carried with them 100-ft ladders taken from London firefighters. Their mission was to climb up the rock face and take the Germans’ gun emplacements.

Walking around yesterday, it looked to us like a ‘mission impossible.’ The Germans had dug in and created elaborate fortifications of reinforced concrete 2 meters thick, connected by tunnels and trenches. Some of the structures had been damaged by artillery, but even today, many are intact and appear invulnerable. At the ‘pointe,’ for example, is a round stronghold with an open gun port that sweeps around covering much of the coast. How anybody could have gotten near enough to capture it, against determined defenders, is not at all obvious.

A Mobile War: But they did. The first Ranger had scaled the cliff within 5 minutes of the landing. He was able to provide covering fire so that others could make it up. It was only a few minutes later that they discovered how the fog of war had completely obscured their mission. They were supposed to put the German’s big artillery out of action. But there were no big guns; they had already been removed. Nor did the Germans miss their heavy fortifications. The real battle quickly left the beaches and shifted to the fields and hedgerows of Normandy. It was a mobile war…not a war of trenches and battlements.
(Sherman tank. Photo: Bill)
Of the 225 Rangers who attacked the Pointe du Hoc, 77 were killed and 152 were wounded. All are heroes in Normandy. “Grandad, do you think they have museums and monuments like these in Iraq? I mean, honoring Americans for liberating them?” We presumed it was a provocative question; we didn’t need to answer."

"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/20/23"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/20/23
"Western Elites, Ukraine & Madness w/ 
Alastair Crooke, fmr. Brit Ambassador"

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, 
diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
 - Groucho Marx

"It's Time To Wake Up"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/20/23
"It's Time To Wake Up"
Comments here:

"Preparedness Items We Are Stocking Up On!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/20/23
"Preparedness Items We Are Stocking Up On!"
"In today's vlog, we are looking for preparedness items that we can stock up on for future events. We are checking out some of the sales at Meijer to hopefully save money on groceries. Prices are the highest they have ever been in grocery stores, so we are planning our preps accordingly as it doesn't seem prices will drop any time soon!"
Comments here:
o
o
Full screen recommended.
The Real Economy, 6/20/23
"Food Prices Keep Rising! Inflation Isn't Stopping! 
High Labor Costs And Supply Chain Issues!"
Comments here:
o
We'll find out soon, and here's why...
"Nine Meals from Anarchy"
by Jeff Thomas

"In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky. The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport or even walking, if necessary.

But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbor with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbor and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”

There’s no need to speculate on this concern yet. There’s nothing so alarming on the evening news yet to suggest that such a problem might be on the horizon. So, let’s have a closer look at the actual food distribution industry, compare it to the present direction of the economy, and see whether there might be reason for concern.

The food industry typically operates on very small margins – often below 2%. Traditionally, wholesalers and retailers have relied on a two-week turnaround of supply and anywhere up to a 30-day payment plan. But an increasing tightening of the economic system for the last eight years has resulted in a turnaround time of just three days for both supply and payment for many in the industry. This a system that’s still fully operative, but with no further wiggle room, should it take a significant further hit.

If there were a month where significant inflation took place, all profits would be lost for the month for both suppliers and retailers, but goods could still be replaced and sold for a higher price next month. But, if there were three or more consecutive months of inflation, the industry would be unable to bridge the gap, even if better conditions were expected to develop in future months. A failure to pay in full for several months would mean smaller orders by those who could not pay. That would mean fewer goods on the shelves. The longer the inflationary trend continued, the more quickly prices would rise to hopefully offset the inflation. And ever-fewer items on the shelves.

From Germany in 1922, to Argentina in 2000, and to Venezuela in 2016, this has been the pattern whenever inflation has become systemic, rather than sporadic. Each month, some stores close, beginning with those that are the most poorly capitalized.

In good economic times, this would mean more business for those stores that were still solvent, but in an inflationary situation, they would be in no position to take on more unprofitable business. The result is that the volume of food on offer at retailers would decrease at a pace with the severity of the inflation.

However, the demand for food would not decrease by a single loaf of bread. Store closings would be felt most immediately in inner cities, when one closing would send customers to the next neighborhood seeking food. The real danger would come when that store also closes and both neighborhoods descended on a third store in yet another neighborhood. That’s when one loaf of bread for every three potential purchasers would become worth killing over. Virtually no one would long tolerate seeing his children go without food because others had “invaded” his local supermarket.

In addition to retailers, the entire industry would be impacted and, as retailers disappeared, so would suppliers, and so on, up the food chain. This would not occur in an orderly fashion, or in one specific area. The problem would be a national one. Closures would be all over the map, seemingly at random, affecting all areas. Food riots would take place, first in the inner cities then spread to other communities. Buyers, fearful of shortages, would clean out the shelves.

Importantly, it’s the very unpredictability of food delivery that increases fear, creating panic and violence. And, again, none of the above is speculation; it’s a historical pattern – a reaction based upon human nature whenever systemic inflation occurs.

Then… unfortunately… the cavalry arrives. At that point, it would be very likely that the central government would step in and issue controls to the food industry that served political needs rather than business needs, greatly exacerbating the problem. Suppliers would be ordered to deliver to those neighborhoods where the riots are the worst, even if those retailers are unable to pay. This would increase the number of closings of suppliers.

Along the way, truckers would begin to refuse to enter troubled neighborhoods, and the military might well be brought in to force deliveries to take place. (If truckers could afford $5.75 a gallon diesel fuel.)

So, what would it take for the above to occur? Well, historically, it has always begun with excessive debt. We know that the debt level is now the highest it has ever been in world history. (US debt as of October 2022: $31.12 trillion; World debt as of Feb. 2022: $303 trillion.) In addition, the stock and bond markets are in bubbles of historic proportions. They will most certainly pop.

With a crash in the markets, deflation always follows as people try to unload assets to cover for their losses. The Federal Reserve (and other central banks) has stated that it will unquestionably print as much money as it takes to counter deflation. Unfortunately, inflation has a far greater effect on the price of commodities than assets. Therefore, the prices of commodities will rise dramatically, further squeezing the purchasing power of the consumer, thereby decreasing the likelihood that he will buy assets, even if they’re bargain priced. Therefore, asset holders will drop their prices repeatedly as they become more desperate. The Fed then prints more to counter the deeper deflation and we enter a period when deflation and inflation are increasing concurrently.

Historically, when this point has been reached, no government has ever done the right thing. They have, instead, done the very opposite – keep printing. A by-product of this conundrum is reflected in the photo above. Food still exists, but retailers shut down because they cannot pay for goods. Suppliers shut down because they’re not receiving payments from retailers. Producers cut production because sales are plummeting.

In every country that has passed through such a period, the government has eventually gotten out of the way and the free market has prevailed, re-energizing the industry and creating a return to normal. The question is not whether civilization will come to an end. (It will not.) The question is the liveability of a society that is experiencing a food crisis, as even the best of people are likely to panic and become a potential threat to anyone who is known to store a case of soup in his cellar.

Fear of starvation is fundamentally different from other fears of shortages. Even good people panic. In such times, it’s advantageous to be living in a rural setting, as far from the centre of panic as possible. It’s also advantageous to store food in advance that will last for several months, if necessary. However, even these measures are no guarantee, as, today, modern highways and efficient cars make it easy for anyone to travel quickly to where the goods are. The ideal is to be prepared to sit out the crisis in a country that will be less likely to be impacted by dramatic inflation – where the likelihood of a food crisis is low and basic safety is more assured."

Brace for impact folks, here it comes...

"China Talks Fail; NATO Will Enter Ukraine; Alaska Cables Cut; Dirty Bombs And Tactical Nukes"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/19/23
"China Talks Fail; NATO Will Enter Ukraine; 
Alaska Cables Cut; Dirty Bombs And Tactical Nukes"
Comments here:

Monday, June 19, 2023

"I Know My Own Nation Best..."

 

"Putin Just Dropped Bombshell And They Have No Response To It"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/19/23
"Putin Just Dropped Bombshell And They Have No Response To It"
"Ukraine agreed to peace a year ago but reneged on its side after the West got involved. This is what Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged when he showed off a peace agreement that was signed by Ukraine last year when peace talks were hosted in Turkey. It was called the Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees of Ukraine. President Putin said that Russia withdrew troops from Kyiv after this treaty was signed but Ukraine never honored their side of the deal but instead “threw it all into the waste basket of history.” How many lives were thrown into that waste basket along with it?"
Comments here:

Hey Good Citizen, don't you want to know what you and I and all of us got for at very least $120 billion in financial and military support to Ukraine, while our own country is going straight to hell in every conceivable way? Col. Doug Macgregor claimed 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 30,000 Russian troops have been thrown "into the waste basket of history", and many more can be expected as we dance closer and closer to a very real nuclear war. And for what? Why? This never had to happen...

"The World Is Turning On America; Financial Shock About To Hit US Economy; Debt Addiction"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/19/23
"The World Is Turning On America; 
Financial Shock About To Hit US Economy; Debt Addiction"
Comments here:

"This Is Way Out of Control"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/19/23
"This Is Way Out of Control"
"Get ready for meat prices to skyrocket next month. There was a proposition that they thought would be overturned that was upheld that’s going to make things worse. Prices go through the roof. The next thing is the number of repossessions are going to skyrocket."
Comments here:

"Brace For A Car Price Crash Of Unprecedented Proportions As Auto Market Collapse Intensifies"

Full screen recommended.
"Brace For A Car Price Crash Of Unprecedented 
Proportions As Auto Market Collapse Intensifies"
by Epic Economist

"A car market crash of unprecedented proportions has started to unfold, and the price declines we’ve seen so far in 2023 are nothing compared to what is coming next. According to analysts at UBS and Cox Automotive, an oversupply of vehicles is causing a price war that can trigger a crash much worse than the collapse witnessed during the financial crisis. Many car dealers are already facing a train wreck right now, but that also means American motorists will finally see some relief after years of hefty increases that kept vehicles increasingly unaffordable and pushed average payments to record highs.

2023 is going to be the year that prices finally drop, analysts say. Many models have already lost up to 25% of their value as automakers introduce major price cuts to increase sales volume even if that impacts their profitability. The latest data released by auto wholesaler Manheim revealed that April was the second month in a row that the average transactions on new cars fell below retail prices in nearly two years, and manufacturer incentives increased. There was a year-over-year decline in April, too, continuing an 8-month-long series of such declines, the data showed.

At this point, the used car bubble has already burst. But new car prices are set to face a much more dramatic reckoning in the months ahead. On one hand, the downward trend is likely to restore affordability for would-be buyers, but on the other hand, “that’s causing a train wreck now for car dealers,” Howard exposed.

In May, the inventory of new cars rose to its highest level in two years. And a recent report from UBS estimates that car production will exceed sales by 6% this year, leaving an excess of 5 million vehicles that will require deep price cuts to get sold off of lots. Those price cuts are expected to intensify from this month on, and many automarkers are already bracing for a price war and slashing prices to get rid of inventory.

As new car inventory continues to climb across the board, we can expect a sizable correction by December. Plus, buyers may be able to strike a deal with desperate dealerships as manufacturer incentives increase.When wholesale used car prices go down, retail prices typically follow. The company says that it might take between six and eight weeks before we start effectively seeing declines in retail car prices. For those in need of a new ride, that may be the opportunity they needed to finally purchase a new vehicle.

But it’s important to wait before you buy because the downward trend has only just begun, and the new vehicle bubble has a lot further to fall before the market stabilizes. For once, consumers may be benefitted from the car market crash. In contrast, manufacturers and dealerships will bear great financial losses due to the oversupply problem. Just as it happened with retailers a few months back, the glut of unsold inventory will trigger some painful profit losses and throw some struggling companies into disarray. We shouldn’t be surprised to see an uptick in dealership bankruptcies in the latter half of 2023, especially as the recession sets in.

Everything that goes up eventually comes down. It’s just hard to tell by now how fast and how profound this crash is going to be, but it will certainly be significant enough to put major brands in danger of a collapse during the downturn that is now upon us."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”

The Poet: Robert Bly, "Things to Think"

"Things to Think"

"Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die."

- Robert Bly, “Morning Poems”

"Wonder..."

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"What to Say When You Meet the Angel of Death at a Party"

"What to Say When You Meet 
the Angel of Death at a Party"
by Kate Bowler

"Every 90 days I lie in a whirling CT machine, dye coursing through my veins, and the doctors look to see whether the tumors in my liver are growing. If they are not, the doctors smile and schedule another scan. The rhythm has been the same since my doctors told me I had stage IV colon cancer two and a half years ago. I live for three months, take a deep breath and hope to start over again. I will probably do this for the rest of my life. Whatever that means.

When my scan is over, I need to make clear to my friends and my family that though I pray to be declared cured, I must be grateful. I have three more months of life. Hallelujah. So I try to put the news in a little Facebook post, that mix of sun and cloud. I am trying to clear the linguistic hurdles that show up on my chart. Noncurative. Stage IV. I want to communicate that I am hoping for a continued durable remission in the face of no perfect cure, but the comments section is a blurry mess of, "You kicked cancer's butt!" and "God bless you in your preparations."

It feels impossible to transmit the kernel of truth. I am not dying. I am not terminal. I am keeping vigil in the place of almost death. I stand in the in-between where everyone must pass, but so few can remain.

I was recently at a party in a head-to-toe Tonya Harding costume, my blond wig in a perfect French braid, and a woman I know spotted me from across the dance floor.  "I guess you're not dying!"  she yelled over the music, and everyone stopped to stare at me. I'm working on it!"  I yelled back, after briefly reconsidering my commitment to pacifism.

We all harbor the knowledge, however covertly, that we're going to die, but when it comes to small talk, I am the angel of death. I have seen people try to swallow their own tongue after uttering the simple words, "How are you?" I watch loved ones devolve into stammering good wishes and then devastating looks of pity. I can see how easily a well-meaning but ill-placed suggestion makes them want to throw themselves into oncoming traffic.

A friend came back from Australia with a year's worth of adventures to tell and ended with a breathless, "You have to go there sometime!"  He lapsed into silence, seeming to remember at that very moment that I was in the hospital. And I didn't know how to say that the future was like a language I didn't speak anymore.

Most people I talk with succumb immediately to a swift death by free association. I remind them of something horrible and suddenly they are using words like pustules at my child's fourth-birthday party. They might be reminded of an aunt, a neighbor or a cousin's friend. No matter how distant the connection, all the excruciating particularities of this person's misfortune will be excavated.

This is not comforting. But I remind myself to pay attention because some people give you their heartbreak like a gift. It was a month or so into my grueling chemotherapy regimen when my favorite nurse sat down next to me at the cancer clinic and said softly: "I've been meaning to tell you. I lost a baby." The way she said "baby," with the lightest touch, made me understand. She had nurtured a spark of life in her body and held that child in her arms, and somewhere along the way she had been forced to bury that piece of herself in the ground. I might have known by the way she smoothed all my frayed emotions and never pried for details about my illness. She knew what it was like to keep marching long after the world had ended.

What does the suffering person really want? How can you navigate the waters left churning in the wake of tragedy? I find that the people least likely to know the answer to these questions can be lumped into three categories: minimizers, teachers and solvers.

The minimizers are those who think I shouldn/t be so upset because the significance of my illness is relative. These people are very easy to spot because most of their sentences begin with, "Well, at least.."  Minimizers often want to make sure that suffering people are truly deserving before doling out compassion.

My sister was on a plane from Toronto to visit me in the hospital and told her seatmate why she was traveling. Then, as she wondered when she had signed up to be a contestant in the calamity Olympics, the stranger explained that my cancer was vastly preferable to life during the Iranian revolution.

Some people minimize spiritually by reminding me that cosmically, death isn't the ultimate end. It doesn't matter, in the end, whether we are here or there. It's all the same, said a woman in the prime of her youth. She emailed this message to me with a lot of praying-hand emoticons. I am a professor at a Christian seminary, so a lot of Christians like to remind me that heaven is my true home, which makes me want to ask them if they would like to go home before me. Maybe now?

Atheists can be equally bossy by demanding that I immediately give up any search for meaning. One told me that my faith was holding me hostage to an inscrutable God, that I should let go of this theological guesswork and realize that we are living in a neutral universe. But the message is the same: Stop complaining and accept the world as it is.

The second exhausting type of response comes from the teachers, who focus on how this experience is supposed to be an education in mind, body and spirit. "I hope you have a Job experience", one man said bluntly. I can't think of anything worse to wish on someone. God allowed Satan to rob Job of everything, including his children's lives. Do I need to lose something more to learn God's character? Sometimes I want every know-it-all to send me a note when they face the grisly specter of death, and I'll send them a poster of a koala that says, "Hang in there!" 

The hardest lessons come from the solutions people, who are already a little disappointed that I am not saving myself. There is always a nutritional supplement, Bible verse or mental process I have not adequately tried. "Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!"  said a stranger named Jane in an email, having heard my news somewhere, and I was immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.

There is a trite cruelty in the logic of the perfectly certain. Those people are not simply trying to give me something. They are tallying up the sum of my life - looking for clues, sometimes for answers - for the purpose of pronouncing a verdict. But I am not on trial. To so many people, I am no longer just myself. I am a reminder of a thought that is difficult for the rational brain to accept: that the elements that constitute our bodies might fail at any moment. When I originally got my diagnosis at age 35, all I could think to say was, "But I have a son." It was the best argument I had. I can't end. This world can't end. It had just begun.

A tragedy is like a fault line. A life is split into a before and an after, and most of the time, the before was better. Few people will let you admit that out loud. Sometimes those who love you best will skip that first horrible step of saying: "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry this is happening to you."  Hope may prevent them from acknowledging how much has already been lost. But acknowledgment is also a mercy. It can be a smile or a simple, "Oh, hon, what a year you've had."  It does not ask anything from me but makes a little space for me to stand there in that moment. Without it, I often feel like I am starring in a reality program about a woman who gets cancer and is very cheerful about it.

After acknowledgment must come love. This part is tricky because when friends and acquaintances begin pouring out praise, it can sound a little too much like a eulogy. I've had more than one kindly letter written about me in the past tense, when I need to be told who I might yet become.

But the impulse to offer encouragement is a perfect one. There is tremendous power in touch, in gifts and in affirmations when everything you knew about yourself might not be true anymore. I am a professor, but will I ever teach again? I'm a mom, but for how long? A friend knits me socks and another drops off cookies, and still another writes a funny email or takes me to a concert. These seemingly small efforts are anchors that hold me to the present, that keep me from floating away on thoughts of an unknown future. They say to me, like my sister Maria did on one very bad day: "Yes, the world is changed, dear heart, but do not be afraid. You are loved, you are loved. You will not disappear. I am here." 
"Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be."
- Orson Scott Card