“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”

“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”

by Nicolas Perrin

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”

~ Mary Catherine Bateson

“It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity. With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.

What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted to entertain these fear-based thoughts like a Hollywood blockbuster, and as you may know, what you focus on expands. Before I knew it, my body was in a state of complete anxiety and fear. I literally felt my cognitive and creative centers shutting down. I felt completely powerless, a hostage to my own mind. My body felt paralyzed, and I felt disconnected from my talents and gifts. I felt separate, isolated, and vulnerable. I became a victim of the fear. In this moment I realized the powerful impact thoughts can have on how we feel, mentally and physically. Here is what unfolded through me, and the lessons I treasured from this experience.

Fear is a closed energy, referred to as inverted faith. Fear exists when we do not trust our connection to the infinite part of who we are and buy into a story about what’s unfolding in our life. The emotions we feel are created from the thoughts that we choose to focus on, consciously or unconsciously. The emotions act as markers to let us know if we are focusing on expansive, empowering thoughts or fearful, limiting thoughts.

If I were to relate this in a story, it may be like a pilot believing he no longer had any guidance or support from the airport control tower in a large storm, and no instruments on board to detect if he was on a collision course with another airplane. If the control tower represents the infinite part of who we are, which always knows what’s best for us, it can be understandable why the pilot with no other guidance except for his own eye sight would be fearful of the situation at hand. An alarm on the plane beeping at the pilot would represent the emotions. The alarm’s purpose is to get the attention of the pilot so he can focus and realize he is off the path. Once our emotions start to take a grip of our physical body, what can we do to move from a state of limitation and fear into an open, tranquil, peaceful state?

1. Come back to the present moment. The first step is to bring your awareness to the present moment. To do this, take three deep breaths through your nose and exhale through your mouth. After the air has filled your lungs and you’ve felt your stomach rise, exhale through your mouth by forcing the air through your teeth, as if you were hissing out loud. This detoxifies your body from the heavy emotions you’re experiencing and brings you back into the present moment. When I do this, I place my awareness into my feet so I am in a feeling space within my body, rather than being in my mind, entertaining the stories that swirl around with vigor, like a dangerous hurricane. Imagine that all your emotions are in a large sludge bucket. This breathing technique will empty the bucket out so you are empty and free.

2. Put things in perspective. Now that you are present, acknowledge the experience and ask yourself this question: “What is the worst case scenario that can happen to me?” Once we can accept this and realize we will be okay if that happens, we are free from the fear. When I realized I’d blown things out of proportion with my fears, I was able to detach from the story and put things into perspective. I like to imagine that in every moment I have two wolves I can feed (per the Native American myth): the fear wolf or the love wolf. The one that gets stronger and wins is the one I feed.

3. Become an observer of your thoughts. What has served me well in moments like this is to say, “I’m not these thoughts. I’m not these emotions. I’m not this body. I’m an infinite being having a human experience.” In saying this, we immediately detach from the story and allow ourselves the choice of suffering or to become the observer. Imagine that your life is represented in a book, and the story you are living out comes from the words on the page. We can change the words of the story at any point in time.

4. Change your experience. The fourth step is to place your awareness and your right hand on the heart center, which is located near the sternum. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and make the following command: “I am now connected to the infinite part of who I am, which already knows how to be whole and complete. I take full responsibility and accountability for this creation, I recognize how it has served me, and I am now ready to let it go. I command that the fear energy be transmuted into unconditional love now. Thank you. It is now done.” This process is incredibly empowering. We allow ourselves the opportunity to experience being our own inner master and a co-creator of our reality.

5. Prevent your mind from sabotaging you. Visualize a stone being thrown into a pond. Observe the ripples it creates when it enters the water. This is to simply distract your mind and allow the process to unfold without doubt or self-sabotage. It is only our mind that can interfere with our own healing.

6. Be grateful. Express gratitude and appreciation for the integration and healing you have received. The key to happiness is awareness. When we become aware that our mind is wandering, we can gently bring it back to the present moment. It’s only in the present moment that we are empowered and can consciously choose the thoughts we engage with. The thoughts we focus on will determine where our energy flows, and thus what is created in our life. Each thought has a vibration, which is reflected by the feeling we experience in our body. To be able to move from a fear-based experience to an open, peaceful experience we must first take full responsibility and accountability that on some level we created the experience, and nobody else is to blame. The choice is truly ours. Do we choose to experience a fearful, limited life or do we choose a happy joyful life?"

- http://tinybuddha.com/

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Reduce fear, good. Reduce stress also...

Full screen recommended.

Marconi Union, "Weightless"

"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song 

Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"

- https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/

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Think more clearly...

Full screen recommended.

"Cognition Enhancer For Clearer and Faster Thinking - 

Isochronic Tones"

"This session stimulates Beta, SMR and Alpha to train your 

brain for better cognition, such as clearer and faster thinking."

“Complexity Theory: The Avalanche And The Snowflake”

“Complexity Theory: The Avalanche And The Snowflake”

by James Rickards

“One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.

A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes – technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.

In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibility of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. – CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.

Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down.”

- https://caperebel.com/

"I Am An Invisible Man..."

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."

- Ralph Ellison, "Prologue to Invisible Man"

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"The Difference..."

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

- Robert Fulghum

"The Biggest Spike In Homelessness Ever Recorded Is A Sign That The U.S. Economy Is Plunging Into An Abyss Of Pain And Suffering"

"The Biggest Spike In Homelessness Ever Recorded Is A Sign 

That The U.S. Economy Is Plunging Into An Abyss Of Pain And Suffering"

by Michael Snyder

"At least things are still good for those at the very top of the food chain. But for everyone else, economic conditions have already become very painful. Today, the vast majority of Americans have less money than they did prior to the pandemic, and thanks to raging inflation our standard of living is steadily going down. We are in the early stages of “the greatest real estate correction” in our history, and 1 out of every five children in the United States does not have enough food to eat. With each passing day, more members of the middle class join the ranks of the poor, and more poor people find themselves getting kicked out into the streets. According to the Wall Street Journal, new numbers show that the number of homeless people in the United States has reached a brand new record high…

The U.S. count of homeless people surged to the highest level on record, reaching more than 653,000 people early this year as Covid-19 pandemic-aid spending faded, new federal data show. The increase reflects a collision of factors: rising housing costs; limited affordable housing units; the opioid epidemic; and the expired pandemic-era aid that had helped keep people in their homes, federal officials said Friday.

In addition to having more homeless people in this country than ever before, additional people are becoming homeless at the fastest pace on record…"Homelessness shot up by more than 12% this year, reaching 653,104 people. The numbers represent the sharpest increase and largest unhoused population since the federal government began tallying totals in 2007, the U.S. Department of Urban Planning and Development said Friday. Last year, federal data showed 582,462 people experienced homelessness."

We have literally never seen a spike in homelessness like this before. It is being reported that prior to these new numbers “the previous largest increase was a spike of 2.7 percent recorded in 2019”. Just think about that for a moment. At no point during the “Great Recession” did we see an increase in homelessness like this. Essentially the floodgates have opened up and an absolutely massive tsunami of homelessness has begun.

Sadly, some groups are being hit much harder than others…Black people made up 13% of the U.S. population in 2023, but they made up 21% of the U.S. population living in poverty, 37% of all people experiencing homelessness and 50% of homeless people in families with children. Asian and Asian American people had the largest percentage increase in homelessness, up 40% from 2022, to a total of 11,574. Hispanic and Latino people saw the largest numerical increase, up 28% from 2022 to 179,336 in 2023.

And please keep in mind that these are the ones that they can actually count. How many more homeless Americans are out there that can’t be found or that don’t want to be found? Of course many of you don’t need me to tell you that we have a homelessness crisis in America. All you have to do to see it is to step outside your front door.

In San Francisco, residents have to do “the Poopie Dance” as they go to work because so many homeless people use the streets as a toilet…"They call it ‘The Poopie Dance’ and San Franciscans are having to learn it – and quickly. It involves constantly looking straight ahead to find a clean line between where you are on the street and where you want to go." Sadly, it’s the reality in parts of the Bay City as the growing homeless population have taken to using the famed streets of San Francisco as one giant open-air toilet.

So why is this happening? Well, the truth is that there are a lot of factors that are contributing to this crisis, but one of the biggest is the fact that housing in the U.S. is now more unaffordable than it has ever been before…"High housing costs continue to be a financial stressor for the poorest Americans. In recent years, more people in the U.S. are rent-burdened, according to HUD, meaning they spend more than 30% or even over 50% of their income on rent."

Of course just about everything is less affordable these days. For example, just check out what a new Ford F-150 will cost you these days…"For the 2024 F-150 XLT, in the two-door rear-wheel-drive base-everything configuration, the MSRP before “destination and delivery charges” is $47,620 per Ford’s website today. The “destination and delivery charges” of $1,995 give the truck a total MSRP of $49,615. The average transaction price for all new vehicles sold is about $46,000, according to J.D. Power. A fully decked-out high-end F-series 4×4 Crew Cab can be well over $100,000."

Ouch! A new truck is out of reach for most Americans at this point. And actually “a middle class lifestyle” is out of reach for most Americans at this point. The numbers that the government gives us say that we aren’t officially in a recession at this moment, but to most of us it certainly feels like a recession has already begun…

"That’s according to a recent survey conducted by Bankrate, which found 59% of U.S. adults feel like the economy is in a recession, defined by two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Regardless of income, households said they are feeling the pressure at about the same amount. Sixty percent of respondents in the lowest-income households, making under $50,000 a year, said the economy feels like it is in a recession. Of those in higher-income households making more than $100,000 annually, 61% agreed."

I wish that I could tell you that economic conditions will improve in 2024 and beyond. But I can’t do that, because the truth is that they are going to get worse. The U.S. economy really is plunging into an abyss, and so much pain and suffering is ahead. So if you have a warm home to sleep in tonight, be thankful, because there are countless others that do not."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "Don’t Fall for This Credit Trap"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 12/19/23

"Don’t Fall for This Credit Trap"

"Ever been tempted by those "no interest, no payments" deals? Well, it's time to wake up to the fact that the banks aren't your pals in this game. In this video, I'm exposing how daily interest charges and the allure of postponing payments can lead to a financial nightmare. Don't be one of the 68% who fall for it and get slapped with staggering interest rates."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Honey Badgers"

Full screen recommended.

OpenmindedThinker Show, 12/19/23

"Yemeni Military Dares US Coalition In Red Sea, 

Board Two More Ships!"

o

"Honey Badgers"

Scott Ritter has humorously described the Yemeni Houthis as "the honey badgers of the Middle East, absolutely fearless and relentlessly ferocious." They just simply don't care. They've declared war on Israel while all the other Muslim states except Algeria just talk, and daily send missiles and drones to attack Israel. They totally control the 12 mile wide Bab-el-Mandab ("Gate of Grief") strait connecting the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, which transits 40% of the world's oil. Closing that would have catastrophic consequences on global economies, and the Houthis know it. And so it is...

Full screen recommended.

Wildacious, 12/15/23

"Honey Badger Takes Savagery to a Whole New Level"

"Honey badgers are the Italian mafia of the animal kingdom. No one, and I mean no one, wants to mess with these savages. They literally woke up and chose violence on the daily. They are regarded as the most fearless animal in the wild and they back that up every day, all while looking like a ferret on steroids.

Honey badgers woke up and chose violence. They'll combat anything from lions, leopards, hyenas and even cobras and pythons. But how did they become so fearless? How do these compact sized danger-weasels take on the deadliest predators like it was a regular Sunday’s brunch with the girls? These are moments of honey badgers being straight up savages. Let's get into it."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up On These Items At Meijer Before Prices Skyrocket!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 12/19/23

"Stocking Up On These Items At Meijer Before Prices Skyrocket! 

Get Ready, It's Gonna Get Bad!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

World War III Prelude: Israel - Palestine War 12/19/23"

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 12/19/23

"Houthis Warn To Turn Red Sea Into 'Graveyard' 

Over U.S.-led Naval Task Force; Attack Another Ship""

"Unswayed by the U.S.-led 10-nation Naval task force to quell their attacks in the Red Sea, Iran-backed Houthi rebels issued a warning and launched an attack on another ship. The Yemen-based rebels launched a fresh attack on another ship at the entrance of the Red Sea. The vessel was reportedly surrounded by small boats with 4-5 people on them and forced to change course. The Houthis also warned that they will turn the Red Sea into a graveyard following the U.S.' announcement of a new task force."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The US Prepares It's Ukraine War Coalition Fleet In The 

Red Sea To Protect Israel, Attack Yemen; Russia Responds"

And the mighty $13 billion dollar aircraft carriers sent to the region? One precision guided missile which destroys the flight deck so nothing takes off or lands and what's left is a huge floating target, which will be rapidly sunk....

o

Full screen recommended.

OpenmindedThinker Show, 12/19/23

"This is the Biggest Offensive

 From The Resistance In Lebanon!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Note: Hezbollah beat Israel to a standoff in the 2006 conflict, and has immensely improved since then anticipating the next war. Doug Macgregor said they have 140,000 missiles which can hit anywhere in Israel. They have over 100,000 battle-hardened professional soldiers, fully and extensively well armed and trained, and huge artillery resources.

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 12/19/23

"Israel Will Literally Face Strategic Defeat 

If Hezbollah Jumps Into Gaza War w/Both Feet"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Iron Domes Destroyed! 15 USA Bases/Nukes On Russia's Border! Massive Cyberattack; Iran Bombed!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 12/19/23

"Alert! Iron Domes Destroyed! 15 USA Bases/Nukes

 On Russia's Border! Massive Cyberattack; Iran Bombed!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

We're building 15 military bases, with nuclear weapons, in Finland near the Russian border?! What complete and utter psychopathic insanity! What do you expect the Russian response will be? Ukraine wanted membership in NATO, at US urging of course, and intended for nuclear weapons to be placed very near the Russian border, despite countless warnings that was totally unacceptable, a red line not to be crossed. They tried to cross it anyway and join NATO. Ask 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers and 78,000 dead Russians how that worked out...

Jeremiah Babe, "The Mall Was Dead Today; They Are Purposely Going To Destroy The Dollar"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/18/23

"The Mall Was Dead Today; 

They Are Purposely Going To Destroy The Dollar"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "River Of Stars"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "River Of Stars"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust.

Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210903.html

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

"I Sit And Think"

“I sit beside the fire and think

Of all that I have seen,

Of meadow flowers and butterflies

In summers that have been.

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

In autumns that there were,

With morning mist and silver sun

And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring

That I shall never see.

For still there are so many things

That I have never seen,

In every wood, in every spring,

There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of people long ago,

And people that will see a world

That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"What If..."

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

~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought..

"Democracy – the Illusion of Liberty"

"Democracy – the Illusion of Liberty"

by Jeff Thomas

"In the run-up to an election in any westernized country, candidates are forever reminding us that the opposing political party and its candidates intend to take away our democracy. Far less time is spent warning us that the accused party will tax us heavily, destroy the economy, or take away our liberty. Whether or not democracy should be the most important issue to the voter, the political parties unquestionably want it to be uppermost in the minds of voters… and they want voters to be in fear of losing it.

So, let’s step back a bit and have a look at this sacred cow. Consider the system it replaced and why it figures so prominently in today’s political rhetoric. Democracy has been around in one form or another for millennia, but it really came to prominence following the Middle Ages. It replaced the feudal system – a system that’s looked upon today as having been quite primitive.

Back then, many people owned small plots of land, which they generally farmed. Those who owned no land often approached a nobleman who owned large tracts of land. He would provide the landless with a section of land to be farmed. In return, the standard payment was "One day’s labour in ten." In essence, this meant that the nobleman would receive 10% of your crop, whatever it might be. The nobleman’s henchmen would serve as collectors in good times, and as an army, if invasion occurred. Chances are, the serf would remain on the property for life, as might subsequent generations.

So, what happened to this deal? Why did it fall out of favor? Well, not surprisingly, anyone who was beholden to a nobleman was likely to resent the fact that he was dependent upon him. The rich man in the castle was the perfect demon – easy to focus on as the sole cause of all that was ill.

Eventually, towns sprang up, and anybody who could cover the expense of building a shop could use it to ply his trade, becoming independent from the noblemen. Not surprisingly, this newfound freedom appealed to many, and towns grew, some expanding into cities. Along the way, castles fell into disrepair, and noblemen no longer had the economic clout they once had.

So, it would seem that that would spell the end of privileged rulers who lived off the poor vassals. But that’s not what happened. There will always be those who seek to live off the hoi polloi like ticks. Such people soon set themselves up as mayors, and on higher levels, members of parliament, etc. So, instead of resenting a single nobleman, the average man had a host of people to resent. And, after all, who were these leaders? What right did they have to rule over others? This problem was solved brilliantly with the adoption of democracy.

On the surface, democracy represents liberty – free choice. The average man, no matter how poor and insignificant, has an "equal right" to vote. In his eyes, he has taken part in choosing whether he wants Candidate A or Candidate B to rule over him. The voter is so pleased with the appearance of choice that it rarely occurs to him that neither Candidate A nor Candidate B has any intention of representing his needs. Quite the opposite: both candidates fully intend to represent themselves and the system that made their rise possible.

And herein lies the beauty of democracy to the would-be ruler: Once the voter has accepted the democratic system, he can be enslaved to a far greater degree than he could have been under a lone nobleman. At best, the voter gets to switch oppressors every few years at election time. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Democracy is no more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%."

But the true beauty of democracy is that, since the voter feels he’s been given a choice, whatever comes out of that choice is somehow "fair." He will now tolerate whatever level of oppression is placed upon his shoulders, even if the victor was not the candidate he voted for. But surely this is an exaggeration. Surely, the voter retains his power of reason, and that will continue to remind him of what is "fair" and what is not.

Well, let’s go back to that "one day’s labor in ten." It was by no means arbitrary – no law enforced it. It was the level of taxation that seemed reasonable to the largest number of people, and so it eventually became the standard.

Compare that to the present day. Income tax, property tax, climate tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, stamp tax, inheritance tax, value-added tax, corporation tax, and an endless list of taxes and duties on consumables and services. Today, taxation covers so much ground and is so convoluted that it’s virtually impossible to figure out what the total might be. But, let there be no doubt: the total far exceeds the 10% that the average serf would have thought reasonable.

Democracy really pays. And it’s significant to note that, while in the Middle Ages, the nobleman did at least provide land to his serfs, this is no longer true of today’s governments. (My own family lost the family castle, Leybourne Grange, to the taxman in the 1960s. Under UK government ownership, it has since fallen into ruin – worthless to anyone.)

As mentioned above, governments are essentially parasites. What little they actually contribute to a population could almost always have been done cheaper and better by private enterprise. The result would have been a more prosperous economy for all. But if all that were not enough, political leaders use their looted wealth to continually rob a population of their rights. Not only does the voter not have the opportunity to vote for a truly "representative" candidate, but his freedoms are continually being eroded.

So, is that it, then? Is there no escape from the one and only system that purports to represent the average guy? Well, in fact, there are communities throughout the world that operate on the principle that smaller is better. The Amish, for example, define a community as "no more people than can be gathered in a barn." All community meetings are held in that barn, and because the average community consists of no more than forty families, no one member has the opportunity to raise himself above the others. (When the community grows beyond that level, it splits into two communities, each making its own decisions in separate barns.)

Small countries, too, tend to make it more difficult for anyone to rise so high as to become unapproachable. But the larger the country, the greater the separation and elevation of the leaders above the populace. And, by extension, empires are worse than countries. Democracy is not your friend.

If the reader lives in a country where he feels he has no connection whatsoever to his leaders, except for the illusion that his vote has meaning. He should not conclude that he is guilty of wrongful thinking (as his leaders might well suggest, calling him a subversive or a domestic terrorist). Indeed, his thinking is quite right. He’s just living in the wrong place, and during the next election, he might want to forego his trip to the polling station and, instead, vote with his feet, moving away from the promise of democracy and toward greater liberty."

- https://internationalman.com/

"And There Comes A Time..."

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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"World War III Prelude: Israel - Palestine War 12/18/23"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, AM 12/18/23

"Israel Shoots Itself in the Foot"

"With Larry Johnson, a distinguished former operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This conversation takes a microscope into the complex dynamics surrounding Israel's actions and their potential repercussions, as seen through the experienced lens of Larry Johnson. The dialogue explores the multifaceted aspects of Israel's decision-making, analyzing the possible consequences and unintended fallout from various perspectives. Larry Johnson's background in intelligence lends a unique and informed perspective, allowing for a nuanced examination of the strategic, geopolitical, and diplomatic implications of Israel's actions."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, AM 12/18/23

"2,000 IDF Permanently Disabled,

 Israel Actually Lost This War To Hamas"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, AM 12/18/23

"As Hezbollah Preps For All-Out War,

 Israel Seeks US Help For UNSC-1701 'Weapon'"

As hostilities increase at the Israel-Lebanon border, Hezbollah appears to be making its intention of an all-out war more clear. The group launched as many as 10 attacks on Israel in the span of just a few hours on December 17. Israel claims to have responded in kind. Amid war rhetoric from both sides, worries of a widening conflict in the Middle East are rising. With its biggest ally America reticent about opening a new warfront, Israel is pushing its western allies for help with 'UNSC 1701'."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, AM12/18/23

"Houthis Bring U.S. To Its Knees? Biden Requests 

NATO Nation Italy To Join Navy Op In Red Sea"

"Italy is considering whether to join a Western naval coalition meant to protect ships in the Red Sea from attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthis of Yemen, as per a Reuters report. This comes as Yemen's Houthis have waded into the Israel-Hamas conflict by attacking vessels in vital shipping lanes in the Red Sea."

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o

12/18/23: 20,000 dead Palestinian old people, women, and over 7,000 children! God damn the inhuman monsters doing this racist genocidal slaughter, and God damn US for allowing and supporting it! Shame and total disgrace on us... - CP

The Daily "Near You?"

Albemarle, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan, I Allegedly, "Are You Surprised That They’re Not Paying?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly AM 12/18/23

"Are You Surprised That They’re Not Paying?"

"There is a tremendous amount of people not paying their student loan debt. People are not paying their mortgages and the extensions are all over with. People are there per their past due rent. Plus, credit card debt is rising, and people are upside down on their credit card debt."

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"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

by Charles Hugh-Smith

"Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain harvests of the Roman Empire, which coupled with rising populations resulted in a reduced caloric intake for many people. This weakened their immune systems in subtle ways, leaving them more vulnerable to the Antonine Plague of 165 AD.

The decline of temperatures in Northern Europe in the early 1300s led to “years without summer” and failed grain harvests which reduced the caloric intake of most people, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to the Black Plague which swept Europe in 1347.

I’ve mentioned the book "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" a number of times as a source for understanding the impact of natural cycles on human civilization. It’s important to note that the natural cycles and pandemics of 200 AD didn’t just cripple the Roman Empire; this same era saw the collapse of the mighty Parthian Empire of Persia, the kingdoms of India and the Han Dynasty in China.

In addition to natural cycles, there are human socio-economic cycles of debt and decay of civic values and the social contract: a proliferation of parasitic elites, a weakening of state finances and a decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor. The rising dependence on debt and its eventual collapse is a cycle noted by Kondratieff and others, and Peter Turchin listed these three dynamics as the key drivers of decisive discord of the kind that brings down empires and nations. All three are playing out globally in the present.

In this context, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a political expression of long-brewing discontent with precisely these issues: the rise of self-serving parasitic elites, the decay/corruption of the social contract and state finances and the decades-long decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor.

Which brings us to karma, a topic of some confusion in Western cultures more familiar with Divine Retribution than with actions having consequences even without Divine Intervention, which is the essence of karma. Broadly speaking, the U.S. squandered the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War 40 years ago on hubristic Exceptionalism, wars of choice, parasitic elites and an unprecedented waste of resources on unproductive consumption.

Now the plan – for lack of any real plan – is to borrow trillions of dollars to fund an even more spectacular orgy of unproductive consumption, on the bizarre belief that “money” can be conjured out of thin air in essentially infinite quantities and squandered, and there will magically be no consequences of this trickery in the real world.

Actions have consequences, and after 30 years of waste, fraud and corruption being normalized by the parasitic elites while the purchasing power of labor decayed, the karmic consequences can no longer be delayed by doing more of what’s hollowed out the economy and society.

Which brings us to luck. As a general rule, historians seek explanations which leave luck out of the equation. This gives us a false confidence in the predictability and power of human will and action and cycles. Yes, cycles and human action influence outcomes, but we do a great disservice by shunting luck into the shadows as a non-factor.

If Emperor Pius had chosen someone other than Marcus Aurelius as his successor, someone weak, vain and self-absorbed like so many of Rome’s late-stage emperors, then Rome would have fallen by 170 AD as the Antonine Plague crippled finances and the army, and the invading hordes would have swept the empire into the dustbin of history. It can be argued that only Marcus Aurelius had the experience and character to sell off the Imperial treasure to raise the money needed to pay the soldiers and spend virtually his entire term in power in the front lines of battle, preserving Rome from complete collapse. That was good judgement by Pius but also good luck.

As we ponder luck, consider the estimate that had the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago struck the Earth 30 minutes earlier or later, it would not have generated the Nuclear Winter that destroyed the dinosaurs. (A direct hit in deep water would have spawned a monstrous tsunami, but no dust cloud. A direct hit on land would have raised a dust cloud but without the water vapor/steam generated by the vaporization of millions of gallons of sea water, the cloud wouldn’t have risen high enough to encircle the planet.) That was bad luck for the dinosaurs, and good luck for the mammals who replaced them.

The global economy has been extraordinarily lucky for 75 years. Food and energy have been cheap and abundant. (If you think food and energy are expensive now, think about prices doubling or tripling, and then doubling again.)

In our complacency and hubris, we attribute this to our wonderful technologies, which we assume guarantee us permanent surpluses of energy and food. The idea that technology has reached hard limits or that it could fail doesn’t occur to us. We’ve taken good luck to be our birthright because it’s all we’ve known. We attribute this good fortune to things within our control–technology, wise investments and policies, etc. The possibility that all these powers that we consider so godlike are insignificant doesn’t occur to us because we’ve enjoyed the favorable winds of luck without even being aware of it.

We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck. My sense is the cycles have turned and the good luck has drained from the hour-glass. Energy and food will no longer be cheap and abundant, our luck in leadership will vanish, and our vaunted technologies will fail to maintain an abundance so vast that we can squander the finite wealth of soil, water, resources and energy on mindless consumption.

I’m reminded of a line from an Albert King song, "Born Under a Bad Sign" (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” The next five years might have us singing this line with feeling."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com

o

Albert King, "Born Under a Bad Sign"

"Winter Is Coming"

"Winter Is Coming"

by John Wilder

"The last year has seen more change than the last twenty years, combined. This is to be expected, especially if you give Strauss and Howe’s "The Fourth Turning" idea any credence. A short version of The Fourth Turning (also known as Kondratieff Wave Theory) is that there is a roughly 80-year cycle of human affairs. Let me use the life of my Dad, Pa Wilder, to describe it:

When Pa Wilder was young he spent most of his childhood in Winter, the first defining experience of his life was the Great Depression. Back then, they had printed versions of the Internet that they would get delivered to their house every day, called newspapers. They also had cell phones that never needed charging, and that you could never lose because they were in the living room and conveniently connected by a cord to the wall.

I’m sure all of the kids on the playground talked with Pa about how obvious it was that the Federal Reserve’s® monetary policy, combined with bankers lending to anyone with a pulse led to near financial collapse. Oh, and how their parents couldn’t afford shoes. Thankfully, Pa lived in a farming community, and every little house in town had a very large garden out back. Food from the grocery store?

Why would you spend money on food when you had to pay for the mortgage? That’s the sort of lesson that bored itself into Pa Wilder’s mind. As a kid, he saw people lose houses, he saw people lose fortunes. He saw a nation nearing collapse.

Economic collapse led to the second thing that defined Pa Wilder’s youth: World War II. Not long after Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor he was in boot camp in Ft. Sill and before long was a 2nd lieutenant in the Army. The next four years he spent on an all-expenses-paid European vacation

The end of the war was the end of Kondratieff Winter. What followed was Spring. In post-war United States, growth and unrivaled prosperity followed from 1945-1965. Pa Wilder, like the rest of the G.I. generation, came back and built families and factories and farms. They looked out at a world that was shattered, and they made fortunes rebuilding it. They even found Dean Martin’s favorite eel. Don’t remember that? It’s a moray.

Spring was characterized by extreme faith in government institutions – sure the government had fumbled the ball in the Great Depression, but it had unified the country for World War II. It stayed back enough to allow growth, and Eisenhower’s America got out of North Korea and planted the seeds for the Super Science® projects that would provide unmatched weapons systems and the seeds of space exploration.

Spring gives over to Summer. Around 1965, the spiritual awakening was followed in 1975 by the “Me” decade. In Summer, the economy is humming along, the weather is great, and the first questioning of the previous ideas that led to the success of the country begins. It’s probably no coincidence that the disastrous Immigration Act of 1965, the arguably unconstitutional Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Lyndon Johnson’s voter-plantation Great Society acts (1964 and 1965) took place at the start of Summer when Americans were questioning their values, questioning the things that made America great.

Pa Wilder was an established businessman, working as the president of a very conservative farm bank. You could get a loan, but only if you had collateral and a good income stream. Pa Wilder told more people “no” than “yes” for loans. That bothered him, with the exception of the fact that he told me, “I’ve never had to foreclose on a house, son.” To him, it was a moral duty. Thankfully Pa never served in the paratroopers, otherwise, they would have called him “debt from above.”

In society, however, the big splits had started in 1965. The subversion of colleges started and would be nearly complete by the 1980s. Religious decline started, and Nixon got tired of hiding the fiscal shenanigans of the country that gold was exposing. His solution? Get rid of gold.

But Summer was still a good time. Autumn, however, is harvest. Pa Wilder was pretty close to retirement at this point, and the real economic power had moved to the Boomers. Pa’s natural fiscal conservatism led to a strong and stable business. The people that took over from him, however, would “give a loan to anyone with a pickup and a backhoe.” They even loaned out money on haunted houses, places they were sure were going to be repossessed.

Inertia is important in an economic system. But in 1985 the financial systems of the United States began to be harvested. “Greed is good” became the motto, and systems were run entirely for near-term economic benefit. Everyone from Pa Wilder’s generation was dead or retired – the new people in charge had no living memory of the national crisis brought on by The Great Depression.

The end of Autumn is the first chill of Winter, and the end result was the Great Recession (right on time!) in 2007-2008. In the Winter, things fall apart. I’ve been really quite amazed that things have held together so well since that first cold snap. Obama was, well, a disappointment. Trump seemed (in many ways) overwhelmed by the system and couldn’t figure out how to move the levers of power in any significant and lasting ways – which makes sense on a failing system.

That was the starter’s gun on the crisis, the date Winter began. We should have been a long way through it by now, but this Winter is different: The United States had a uniquely dominant position at the start of Winter, having both complete military dominance as well as a strong economic dominance of the world. The Federal Reserve© decided to just print all the money that it could to spend its way into continued prosperity.

Sure, sometimes government wants to stop a crisis so that the citizens can have a stable country. Sometimes. But other times, governments are waiting for the crisis, looking forward to it. Planning on it. In one article titled Sometimes the world needs a crisis: Turning challenges into opportunities(LINK), the Brookings Institute lists the things they love about crises. I admit that some of them are positive, but here are a few that I think are a bit more ominous – these descriptions are directly from Brookings:

Systemic Change: Global crises that crush existing orders and overturn long-held norms, especially extended, large-scale wars, can pave the way for new systems, structures, and values to emerge and take hold. Without such devastation to existing systems and practices, leaders and populations are generally resistant to major changes and to giving up some of their sovereignty to new organizations or rules.

Dramatic Policy Shifts: Sometimes the fear generated from a crisis and corresponding public outcry enables and even forces leaders to make bold and often difficult policy moves, even in countries not involved in or affected by the crisis.

COVID-19 was the big crisis they were waiting for this Winter. As the economic systems unwind under the unsustainable debt the ‘Rona is the perfect opportunity. Imagine the tapestry of that you see was planned. What end is being sought? Well, they told us already. Systemic Change. Changes to virtually every system in the United States. Want to have a nice, neat, prosperous, and orderly community? Too bad. That’s not a thing that’s going to happen. The police will be neutered. How badly will communities suffer? Here’s how bad it is now:

● Leftist controlled Chicago: arrests/stops are down 53 percent, murders are up 65 percent.

●Leftist controlled New York City: arrests/stops are down 38 percent, murders are up 58 percent.

●Leftist controlled Louisville: arrests/stops are down 35 percent, murders are up 87 (not a typo) percent.

●Leftist controlled Minneapolis: arrests/stops are down 42 percent, murders are up 64 percent.

●Leftist controlled Los Angeles: arrests/stops are down 33 percent, murders are up 51 percent.

●Leftist controlled St. Louis: in 2020, the murder rate hit “a 50-year high, with 87 out of every 100,000 residents being murdered.”

When there is murder and mayhem there is control. This is their plan. This is the crisis. Remove police – replace with ideological commissars that aren’t bound by law. Now, if they see a “crime” that they feel is wrong, they can punish it however they see fit. Most commonly, this will just be by removing the protection of the law and letting the mob do the rest. The biggest crimes? The crimes against the Left.

That’s just the first of the planned Systemic Changes. There are more planned.

●Universal basic income.

●Boards to approve hiring at private companies.

●Equity everywhere.

●More rules than you can imagine. All of them will be based on some fear – guns in rural areas will be restricted because people in the city can’t stop killing each other.

●Climate change lunacy: to meet Joe Biden’s climate goals, Americans would be restricted to four pounds (344 milliliters) of meat a year. This will be walked back.

●And your ideas: they probably won’t be as bad as the real plans.

To be clear: Winter is here. The Left has an endless list of Leftist goals to accomplish during the crisis to come. The Winter will be dark. Where are our goals? The Right cannot just have the goals of “what the Left wants, but less,” or, “the opposite of what those guys want."After that? Organization. And leadership. And longjohns. Winter is here."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Bill Bonner, "Pivot Error"

"Pivot Error"

The Fed's fantastic fumble, 

megapolitical currents and serious mental illness...

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Last week was a good week for Wall Street. Traders were sure that if the fix weren’t in already, it would be soon. It was just a matter of time, they believed, before the Fed finally ‘pivots’ and the happy days are here again. Here’s the Wall Street Journal, reporting on Wednesday’s Fed press conference: "In September, officials had projected one more hike this year followed by two cuts next year, taking the fed-funds rate to around 5.1%. On Wednesday, officials projected they would lower it to around 4.6% by the end of 2024, the equivalent of three quarter-point reductions from the current level."

That was close enough to a real ‘pivot’ for government work. Traders could take their positions, more or less confident that the Fed has their backs. But what the Fed governors expect to happen usually doesn’t happen. In the 2020-2021 period, for example, everyone with a brain could see that flooding the economy with $6 trillion in new money…while also reducing output by ‘locking down’ much of the economy…would produce higher consumer prices. But the Fed didn’t see it, or didn’t want to say anything.

Still No Idea: Then, when inflation suddenly picked up, the Fed totally mis-understood what was going on, insisting that it was ‘transitory.’ As late as April of 2021, when the Fed should have been aggressively raising the sea-wall before the tsunami hit, the Fed – with its hundreds of Ph.D economists – still had no idea of what was going on. Jerome Powell, April 28, 2021: "We want inflation to run a little bit higher than it's been averaging in the last quarter century. We want it at 2%, not 1.7%," Powell told reporters Wednesday afternoon."

A year later, the CPI was over 9%. Oops. How about now? The CPI is around 4% – it’s come down recently but is still at a high we had not seen for more than 30 years. The federal budget meanwhile, is headed for a $2 trillion deficit, which must be funded somehow. And even now…after 22 months of rate hikes… the Fed’s key lending rate is only 1.3% above inflation.

At this stage, it’s impossible to know whether consumer prices are rising or falling…in the short run. And the major threat investors face is deflation of their asset prices…again, in the near term.

Looking farther into the future, however, it seems unlikely that the authorities will be able to resist inflating the currency. The first wave of consumer price inflation has receded. But the ‘megapolitical’ currents – the deeper, usually invisible trends – are still headed in the same direction. We doubt they will change anytime soon.

Serious Mental Illness: The idea of megapolitics – that the most important trends take place below the surface – was developed by our friends James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. Here’s how it works. There are said to be 57 million people in the US with ‘serious mental illness.’ Statistically, one out of every 5 members of Congress is likely to be impaired. Likewise, 2 or 3 of the Feds’ 12-member FOMC are probably brain damaged in some way.

It is tempting to blame many of our public policies on mental defectives. But that would be missing the point. Politicians, and other elites, do not do ‘stupid’ things because they are dumb, but because they are being swept along by a megapolitical trend. In the present case, they’ve been corrupted, bought and paid for, in a decaying empire. They get money from the military/pharma/welfare/racism/gender industry; then, they dance to the tunes that are piped for them.

Ours is not to point the finger of blame – neither at the jackasses in Congress…nor at the phonies at the Fed …nor at cronies and profiteers in the private sector. Had we been elected or appointed to public office, we might do the same thing. Ours is merely to figure out what they might do next.

Why does Congress vote for more military spending and more deadly weapons for the Ukraine and Israel? America’s pocketbook is empty. Besides, the Ukraine war is a lost cause (and not a good one). And Israel, the richest and most powerful country in the region, can take care of itself.

But there is too much hot money at stake for politicians to say ‘no.’ In that sense, the Russians and the Palestinians have no one to blame but themselves. Had they gotten their acts together…hired the president’s son…bribed members of Congress…given huge gifts to universities…and bought much of the US media…well, we’d now be sending weapons to Russia and pulling Israeli kids from the rubble.

Bread and Butter: Right and wrong have (almost) nothing to do with it. Politicians argue about what we “should” do…but they are merely mouthpieces for megapolitical forces they neither understand nor control. Technologies come and go. Empires rise and fall. Money, power, status ebb and flow…

It may be theoretically and experientially true that the Fed cannot improve on the decisions made by investors, consumers and business people – that is, the folks with ‘skin in the game.’ But being a celebrity economist at the Fed – pretending to make the world a better place – is not a bad gig. Okay, you have to shake a lot of hands and say a lot of things that you know are just mumbo-jumbo. Still, you earn a decent living, you get your name in the paper, and you can even make a few bucks by front-running Fed decisions. And then, after you leave the Fed, like Janet Yellen, you can collect millions in speaking fees from the banks whose bread you helped to butter.

Yes, that’s the point, dear reader. Things don’t work the way you think they should work. In practice, if it weren’t for chicanery, stupidity and hypocrisy, at least half of all newspaper headlines would disappear and most of what we know as ‘public policy’ would vanish.

The Fed, for example, doesn’t operate in some rarified world of pure logic and innocent decision making. It operates in the real world. The world of megapolitics. Its public announcements may be nothing more than blah-blah and bunkum. But its real mission is to make sure its brethren in the banking business do not have many bad hair days."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"How It Really Is"