Free Download: Erich Maria Remarque, "All Quiet on the Western Front"

Ask her if it was worth it...

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“You still think it's beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment

taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.”
- "Paul Baumer", "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)

Freely download “All Quiet on the Western Front”, by Erich Maria Remarque, here:

- http://explainallquietonthewesternfront.weebly.com/

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Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Staying Home"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 6/14/24

"People Are Staying Home"

"People are not going to restaurants. People are not traveling. 

People are not buying anything. People are staying home."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Staying home, if they still have a home...

"How It Really Is"

 

Redacted, "America Is Building These Secret Facilities In All 50 States. Why?"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 6/13/24

"America Is Building These 

Secret Facilities In All 50 States. Why?"

"America is secretly building large scale detention facilities in all 50 states. Will they be used to house illegal immigrants? The answer is no and the real reason is far more nefarious. Former customs and border protection, supervisor JJ Carrelll shares this unbelievable story."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Federal Reserve's Inflation Confirmation Fallacy"

"The Federal Reserve's Inflation Confirmation Fallacy"

by David Stockman

"The reason for the dangerously high growth rates of Fed credit is what might be termed the inflation confirmation fallacy. That is to say, once high inflation broke out for the first time in peacetime history, flummoxed mainstream economists soon embraced the notion that the central bank should midwife a gentle, gradualist cure by "accommodating" some significant part of the rising price level, lest a too stingy growth of Fed credit would cause real interest rates to soar and bring the economy to its knees.

The effect of this unfortunate assumption was the introduction of inflation rate management into the Fed’s remit, tool kit and vocabulary. While the official 2% "goal" did not materialize until decades later, it did creep into practice on a de facto basis under Volcker and his successors. At length, the idea that the Fed was not simply managing bank reserves and credit, but was in charge of the performance of the entire GDP including the rate of increase in the general price level became deeply embedded in the institution.

To be sure, Paul Volcker was exceedingly cautious on the matter of accommodating the embedded inflation and bringing down the rate of price increase in a deliberate manner, but he was also a sound money man at bottom. He was willing to accommodate existing inflation to only a limited degree and was ready to risk a recessionary contraction if that was required to break the back of financial speculation and the extant spiral of wage/price/cost inflation that had become embedded during the 1970s.

In fact, that’s actually what did happen and the deep recession of 1981-1982 did accelerate the pace of disinflation. From the peak Y/Y rate of 14.6% in March 1980, the CPI increase slowed sharply to just 2.36% as of July 1983.

At that point, however, Volcker was reluctant to press the case back to old-fashioned notion of price stability, even as he was forced to cope with the Texas cowboy (i.e. James Baker) who had taken over the Treasury during Reagan’s second term. The latter forced through the abomination of the 1985 Plaza Accord, a globally "coordinated" and/or imposed maneuver to trash the strong dollar, thereby importing inflationary pressures back into the US economy.

In any event, the Y/Y inflation rate bottomed at 1.91% in February 1987 and that very month Howard Baker became chief of staff at the White House. From that point forward the two Bakers - James and Howard, who were both easy money inflationists - operated a de facto GOP (the Republican Party) regency in the Reagan White House. So doing, they were not about to have the independent Volcker getting in the way of Republican electoral success.

So Paul Volcker was out, and his successor, Alan Greenspan, soon faced the infamous 22.6% stock market collapse on October 19, 1987. Thereupon, the once and former gold standard advocate and Ayn Rand disciple opened up the spigots at the Fed’s money-pump, thereby initiating a new surge of inflationary pressure during the last years of the 1980s.

As is evident by the chart below, Volcker’s partial victory over inflation was short-circuited after mid-1983. In all, the price level rose by 71% or 3.3% per annum through the next stock-market meltdown, when the NASDAQ plunged by 33% during 30 trading days in March/April 2000.

Click image for larger size.

Greenspanian "Wealth Effects": This capitulation to permanent, residual inflation in the 2-4% zone was a huge historical mistake. It opened the way for Greenspanian "wealth effects" management and the resulting economic abominations. That is, a battered main street economy, which gave way to massive off-shoring of America’s industry, coupled with the relentless inflation of financial assets, which showered Wall Street and the 1% with hideous amounts of unearned windfall wealth.

The trigger for this untoward breakdown was Greenspan’s fundamental policy error. He invented the spurious argument that residual inflation at 2-3% was good enough, when the actual requirement was to purge the inflationary cost structure that was already embedded in the US economy owing to the inflation spree of the 1970s.

What resulted from the Greenspan pivot was nothing more than a great inflationary disaster which amounted to monetary central planning and pro-inflation targeting by the central bank. Suffice to remind why a huge share of America’s merchandise goods are now sourced in China and other parts of the global low-wage supply chain. To wit, the Fed simply inflated American workers out of their jobs via soaring unit labor costs, which became increasingly noncompetitive in global markets."

- https://internationalman.com/

"Jefferson’s Warnings"

"Jefferson’s Warnings"

by Paul Rosenberg

"People remember Thomas Jefferson mainly for the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote in 1776. Some remember that he served as president from 1801 to 1809, but aside from that, few know much more of his life and work. In fact, he lived and worked until 1826, when he died on July 4th, fifty years to the day after the ratification of his Declaration. What’s lost to history is that Jefferson was convinced Americans were losing their fight for freedom.

Consolidation: In his last years, after a lifetime of learning and experience, Jefferson had one thing preeminently on his mind: the principle of decentralization. Jefferson didn’t use the words “centralization” or “decentralization,” of course. Rather, he used the common words of his time: consolidation and distribution. Obviously they meant the same things.

Here’s a direct statement on the subject, from his autobiography, written in 1821: "It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected."

This statement put Jefferson at odds with political leaders, as he writes in a letter to Judge William Johnson in 1823: "I have been blamed for saying that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution."

The following passage is from a letter to Judge Johnson, written in 1822: "Finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this country, they [successors to the Federalist Party] rally to the point which they think next best, a consolidated government. Their aim is now, therefore, to break down the rights reserved by the Constitution to the States as a bulwark against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the Constitution at its birth."

Notice his primary points: Political parties were pursuing centralization, as was in their interest.The parties were trying to steal the power of the individual States and to centralize it in one city. Furthermore that they were degrading the Constitution to do so.

In a letter to William T. Barry in 1822, Jefferson refers to the Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803, a decision that American schoolchildren are taught to revere. Jefferson, however, considered it a disaster. He writes, "The foundations are already deeply laid by [the Supreme Court’s] decisions for the annihilation of constitutional State rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part. If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface."

The Marbury v. Madison decision was beyond all else astonishing, because it maintained that the man who wrote the Constitution, James Madison, didn’t understand it! More importantly, however, it granted the right to interpret the constitution to the Supreme Court, taking that right away from the states. The decision consolidated power in Washington.

It’s also central to this point that both Jefferson and Madison - the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution respectively - were so concerned over this that they wrote resolutions in 1798 (the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions) to preserve the constitutional position of the states, which was being overridden by the Federalist party during the presidency of John Adams.

Here is one final passage from Jefferson, from a letter to William B. Giles in 1825, half a year before his death: "I see… with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power."

The Man Was Right: Jefferson wasn’t right on every detail, of course, and the path to consolidation had some detours, but overall he was quite correct: Lincoln’s Civil War enslaved the states to the national government (nothing in the Constitution forbids secession) and the events of 1913 (the income tax, stripping the states of their power to appoint senators, and a central bank) brought the entire nation, from ocean to ocean, under the control of a single city. And so the United States became something like an empire, even though (thankfully) some decentralization remains.

The American nation wasn’t designed to be this way. Jefferson saw it coming and warned us."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

Bill Bonner, "Megapolitics"

The Roman Forum

"Megapolitics"

But oversimplifying can cause big mistakes. ‘Enemies’ are 

not always real enemies. Wars are not always worth fighting. 

And stock market prices do not always go up.

by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "Megapolitics attempts to extract major structural patterns that repeat throughout history. The factors leading to megapolitical change include topography, climate, microbes and technology. By taking into account how different factors influence human incentives, you can better identify the implications of change. This perspective allows you to perceive with greater clarity the rising and falling of governments, economies, cultures and violence." - Matthew Siu

“Megapolitics” is our not-so-secret weapon. It gives us an edge, we believe, by helping us understand the deeper currents of politics and economics. You could, for example, watch the weather. Day by day, it changes. One day is hotter. The next day it rains. You could guess about what will happen as the days go on. But it is very useful to know that there are seasons... patterns that repeat themselves... never exactly the same, but always, reliably present.

Megapolitics is really nothing more than an insight, but an important one: there are seasons in our markets and politics too. You may think, for example, that ‘the government would never allow that to happen’... or that it won’t happen because ‘no one wants that.’ But then... it happens anyway.

People - smart people especially - fool themselves. Regularly and consistently they over-rate their ability to understand what is going on...and their competence to control the future and take the kinks out of history. They undertake vast programs and projects to make the world a better place - the Crusades, WWI, the Russian Revolution, the Great Leap Forward -and end up making history kinkier than ever.

The problem arises from the nature of life itself. It is, as Wallace Stevens put it, ‘an old chaos about the sun.’ There are an infinite number of things going on... and an infinite number of ways to look at them. We humans, however, do not have an infinite amount of time or an infinite brain capacity. So, we put things into categories (a process that Kant described as the ‘categorical imperative’) in order to simplify them.

Danger: Proto-humans had to make quick decisions in order to survive. If they saw a big, hairy thing charging in their direction, for example, they didn’t have time to wonder about what genus or species the thing might be... or if it was not some optical illusion caused by the setting sun... or a practical joke played on us by one of our own tribe members. They had to run... as fast as possible... to survive. Our ancestors, the survivors, were those who ran... not those who wondered for too long.

Today, we receive thousands of ‘messages’ - advertising, notices, data, opinions, and observations. We go through them on our computer screens... as quickly as possible... picking out those that are worth our attention. Most are disregarded immediately. Some are noticed... and studied carefully. A few actually change our ideas or behavior. Most people are busy; they sort things into very simple categories - good or bad; red or blue, friend or foe. Enemies are ‘bad’ people; that’s all you need to know.

The world of finance too can be reduced to the simplest dichotomy. Prices are either going up or down; why complicate it? But oversimplifying can cause big mistakes. ‘Enemies’ are not always real enemies. Wars are not always worth fighting. And stock market prices do not always go up. For a hint about what is really going on, we need to understand the seasons. We can look out the window and see the sun peeking through the clouds... but it also helps to know that it is springtime.

Natural Patterns: In the most simplistic, superficial sense, people make their choices and try to get what they want. But in the deeper, mega-political world, what they want has nothing to do with it. Megapolitics describes the profound currents of history... like the Gulf Stream... an immense underwater river. On the surface, it is not even visible. But underneath the waves, it carries warm water across the Atlantic and makes Northern Europe habitable. It is a natural pattern. It influences us; we have no influence over it.

Megapolitics recognizes that ‘stuff happens’ whether you want it to or not. Who wants to die, for example? But everyone does. And who can imagine that the US empire will be brought to its knees? But that will happen too.

Megapolitics encourages us to look beyond the slogans and platitudes we take for granted. The Titanic was considered unsinkable... until it sank. And now, many people think the Fed ‘wouldn’t allow’ a major recession, runaway inflation, or long-lasting bear market. But can the Fed really prevent these natural corrections? Probably not.

At another level, we believe that ‘all men are created equal,’ for example... and that we should ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us.’ But when power shifts dramatically, equal rights vanish. Imagine an invasion by a race of aliens with vastly superior technology. They might treat humans like we treat cattle... or snakes. Even among humans, huge disparities in power lead to relationships that are in no way ‘equal.’ That was the underlying story of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Europeans had such a big advantage in firepower over the indigenous peoples of Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas that they were able to colonize huge expanses of territory. The locals may have had ‘rights,’ but only those the conquerors chose to give them.

Megapolitics exposes the patterns and realities that few people want to think about. It makes us suspicious about ‘what everybody knows’ and skeptical about ‘what everybody believes.’ Does the war in the Ukraine really make any sense? Can the Fed really know what interest rates America needs? Does US democracy really work the way the voters believe? We have more questions than answers. But merely asking them gives us an advantage over most people.

Questions: How, when, why does a great empire die? The US/Anglo/Western empire seemed to peak out around 1999. Since then, despite record highs in nominal terms, US stocks and bonds have lost ground in real terms - measured in gold. This has happened against a background of soaring debt - from $5 trillion to $35 trillion of government debt alone - which was supposed to ‘stimulate’ growth.

And what is going on in the markets? In addition to the trends of days, weeks, and months, there are “Primary” trends that can take decades to play out. It appears that a major turning point was reached between the summer of 2020, when US bond yields bottomed out, and the end of 2021, when US stocks hit all-time highs. Where to now? Checking with CNN or Bloomberg won’t tell us. Maybe the Primary Trend patterns will.

And what about inflation and debt cycles? What’s in store for a country that has nearly four times as much debt as GDP? And what’s ahead for a democracy in which most voters want neither candidate and the most important issues are decided by big money influencers?

Few people will want to go too deeply into these questions. Good guys versus bad guys, us versus them, red versus blue - that’s enough for most of us. But in the difficult years ahead, shallow analysis could prove disastrous. Stay tuned."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Sick Of and Done With"

"Sick Of and Done With"

by Jim Kunstler

“Biden is not well. Everyone knows this even those who support him…the 

difference is they don’t care and that’s the most frightening aspect of this situation.” 

- Edward Dowd

"They’re kidding, right? That “Joe Biden” is capable of being president? Not just for another four-year term, but right here and now? This has got to be the most pitiful case of national gaslighting since 218-AD when the Romans installed 14-year-old Heliogabalus to front for their empire. Like “JB,” he reigned for four years (before the praetorian guard offed him). The Danish historian of ancient Rome, Barthold Niebuhr, said of him: “He had nothing at all to make up for his vices, which are of such a kind that it is too disgusting even to allude to them.”

Lately, even the news media has begun to report “Joe Biden’s” senile mishaps. On Thursday at an outdoor photo op during the G7 meet-up in Italy, the ol’ dawg just wandered off from the assembled pack of world leaders until Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni went and reeled him back in.

Earlier in the week at a Juneteenth party, they rolled him out on the White House lawn like a cigar-store Indian where he stood utterly frozen while all around him boogalooed and clapped to the music of jubilee.

Do you think that folks are starting to notice? Even many mind-f*cked Democrat Party regulars who have been just fine with the controlled demolition of our country under this human door-stop of a president are murmuring ominously that the scam has become too obvious. Not Rachel Maddow, though. America’s Woke lunatic-in-chief reigning on MSNBC warned this week that the return of Trump would lead to her (and millions of her fans) getting jammed into “concentration camps.”

Maybe you’ve already noticed that Rachel Maddow lives in a concentration camp of-the-mind located inside her own batshit-crazy skull. Dunno about you, but for the first time in a life lived through many decades of purportedly rational post-war Modernity, I’ve developed a sympathetic view of how come people in earlier eras resorted to burning witches. They are obdurate public nuisances. Their “magic” lately is the ability to provoke a mass formation psychosis, an actual “threat to our democracy” or, more precisely, to our republic. Maddow, the proudly out-front lesbian non-breeder is living proof that renouncing motherhood is a predictor of Cluster-B personality disorder - the condition that defines the “progressive” Wokery of these times.

I’m a little sorry to go all quasi-supernatural with you about this, but we are truly faced with the fact that the devastation in sexual relations and failures of family formation in recent decades has produced a very particular form of anomie in Western Civ’s female population - and the dynamic has badly deranged increasingly feminized men, too. Covid-19 was basically a Munchausen-by-proxy event, which ChatGPT describes accordingly:

" A psychological disorder wherein a caregiver, typically a parent, exaggerates, fabricates, or induces illness or injury in a person under their care, usually a child. The primary motive is to gain attention, sympathy, or praise from medical professionals and others, rather than any tangible benefit like financial gain.”

Actually, ChatGPT was wrong about the financial gain part. There were billions made off Covid by Big Pharma, including hundreds of millions in royalties doled out to public health employees. The government played the role of “mother” in the Covid caper, keeping you (her “children”) safe. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that claims about safety and safe places have been major themes in Wokery both before and during Covid. Anyway, as usual with Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, the “children” (i.e., the US population) were injured badly by the “treatment,” the mRNA vaccines. And also as usual with mothers displaying Cluster-B personality disorder, the “bad” children who refuted the narrative and refused the specified “treatment” were punished severely. (Cluster-B is sadistic.)

One thing this suggests is that the cabal running things behind the empty suit “Joe Biden” is dominated by women, and my guess would be the women directly associated with Barack Obama: Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco, Kathryn Ruemmler, Sally Yates, Valarie Jarrett, Samantha Power, Avril Haines, Torie Nuland, give-or-take some combo of them, et al. I have alleged for years that the motif driving batshit-crazy, Cluster-B Democratic Party women is that Donald Trump represents Daddy’s-in-the-house. In their boundaryless state-of-mind nothing threatens the Cluster-B ladies as much as the imposition of boundaries by a fearsome daddy figure. Daddy = the monster of monsters to them.

Thus, the “Biden” regime’s remorseless persecution of Mr. Trump - like the village rabble hunting down Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks - and the fantasies, were he allowed to live, about being sent to concentration camps by the likes of Rachel Maddow. There’s nothing like barbed-wire and sentry towers to vividly suggest the imposition of “boundaries” on your behavior.

I have strayed a bit from my initial theme concerning the grotesque game of “pretend” being played around “Joe Biden’s” re-election candidacy. Let’s say this: it is the terminal op being run by an out-of-control Deep State blob now losing its mojo in big gobs each day as its epic dishonesty gets exposed. This blob had some very potent tools at its command to jerk around the people of this land, especially the legacy news media. Most of that consisted of deception which is to say the tactical application of untruth. The op was tragically effective for some years, but its victims - US citizens - are onto the game now and they are angrily flipping over the game board. Mark this essential fact of life: truth is sturdy and lies are fragile. So, now you know what must, in the end, prevail.

“Joe Biden” is not long for this world as a token in that game. Mere days, I’d say. There is no way that the Democratic Party can afford to put him in a debate arena June 27th with Mr. Trump. Two minutes in, “JB” would be leaking sawdust and stuttering incoherently. The Party would be revealed as a fraud for the ages. And then, by the time you’re scarfing down blueberry pie on the Fourth of July, Hillary Clinton (better known here as Rodan the Flying Reptile, or She-Whose-Turn-It-Is) will be flapping her leathery wings on-high in triumph as “JB’s” emergency replacement. "I am here to save our democracy, caw caw!" Wait for it! Trouble is, batshit crazy women are exactly what our country is sick of and done with."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East, 6/14/24"

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano, 6/14/24

"Douglas Macgregor: Lebanese Troops Enters 

Northern Israel In Shocking Escalation!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 6/14/24

"Iran’s Big Warning As Israel-Hezbollah Tensions 

Escalate Amid Gaza War; ‘Tehran Will Not Allow…’"

"Iran issued a massive warning to Israel amid tensions with Hezbollah. The Iranian Foreign Minister said Iran will not allow Israel to attack Lebanon and achieve its goals against Hezbollah. This comes after Israel killed a Senior Hezbollah Commander in a recent attack."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 6/14/24

'"Netanyahu Is Scared': Israeli Residents Blast 

'Coward' Army & Govt Amid Hezbollah Blitz "

"Israeli leaders in Northern Israel have slammed PM Netanyahu and IDF Chief for alleged lack of action against Hezbollah amid ongoing rocket fire from the Lebanese side. According to Jerusalem Post, Moshe Davidovich, head of the Mateh Asher Regional Council, said the residents of the north are used as cannon fodder for Hezbollah chief's whims, and the Israeli government is falling asleep while standing."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Owen Jones, 6/13/24

"Israel's Strategic Defeat Explained - w/. Dr. Alonso Gurmendi"

"Why isn't there more discussion about the huge strategic defeats suffered by the Israeli state? No better to discuss this with than Dr. Alonso Gurmendi, a brilliant expert in international relations."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24"

Dollar Dying, Russian Missiles Here, CV19 Vax - NOT!

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"This past week, the so-called petrodollar officially died. What does this mean to Americans? The petrodollar ending will affect everything from interest rates and inflation to solvency of the Treasury market, and it can even affect whether the US survives as a country. In short, the US dollar is dying, and that death just got kicked into overdrive. Now that Saudi Arabia will accept many currencies for its oil, the world does not have to hold dollars. Get ready for hard times as all these useless dollars find their way back to America. When you have a lot of something, the price goes down. The dollar will survive, but the buying power of it won’t be anything like it is today.

A few weeks ago, the Biden Administration started supplying missiles to Ukraine and gave the evil regime their permission to start shooting them into Russia. What could go wrong with that hairbrained decision? How about Russia is now sending nuclear armed subs and stealth submersible craft to patrol the US coastline. How long will Russia allow the US to shoot missiles into Russia before it shoots a few into the US? If a nuke hits Saint Louis, there will be no Republicans and Democrats anymore. It will be just “We the People” sinking in the same boat. Call your Congressman and Senator and ask them if they have lost their minds to be pulling this reckless stunt with Russia, a hypersonic nuclear armed country. Really—call them.

It’s official. The CV19 vax is NOT a vaccine. It is a “treatment,” and it does not stop the spread of Covid or provide immunity. The 9th Circuit Federal Court came to this conclusion this past week. The CDC honchos changed the definition of vaccine when the CV19 shots came out a few years ago, and they have been lying to the public ever since. The 9th Circuit ruling is the official admission that the entire country, with 700 million CV19 injections, was hit with one big deadly and debilitating fraud. One thing the CV19 injections are good at is disabling and murdering its victims. Don’t be surprised because, this week, Harvard Law professor Francis Boyle, who drafted the 1989 Bioweapons Act, went on record to say the CV19 injections are, in fact, “weapons of mass destruction.” That is exactly what biotech analyst Karen Kingston said nearly three years ago on USAWatchdog.com. There is more in the 50-minute newscast."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these

 stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24.

- https://rumble.com/

Jim Rickards, "The Economy Is Going To Be Destroyed..."

Jim Rickards, 6/13/24

"The Economy Is Going To Be Destroyed..."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Time To Load The Boats... We're F#%@ed"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 6/13/24

"Time To Load The Boats... We're F#%@ed"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "It's Too Late For You, The Worst Is Yet To Come; Here Come The Job Losses"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/13/24

"It's Too Late For You, The Worst Is Yet To Come;

Here Come The Job Losses"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "WW III: Israel And Ukraine Wars On Fire"

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 6/13/24

"WW III: Israel And Ukraine Wars On Fire"

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Oh, Gerald's in fine form here... lol

"San Francisco Has Become HELL, Full Tour of The Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

ThisisJohnWilliams, 6/13/24

"San Francisco Has Become HELL, Full Tour of The Collapse"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Pepe Escobar: Russia Readies War With NATO"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/13/24

"Pepe Escobar: Russia Readies War With NATO"

"In this eye-opening discussion, we sit down with the renowned geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar to delve into the escalating tensions between Russia and NATO. Escobar provides an in-depth analysis of Russia's strategic maneuvers, the implications for the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and the potential for a broader conflict. We also explore the recent deployment of Russian warships and submarines to Cuba, adding a new dimension to the geopolitical chessboard. Don't miss this critical conversation that sheds light on the future of global stability."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Are Always"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "We Are Always"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured exposure, taken from Florida, USA, covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon.

Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."

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

"The Invitation"

"The Invitation"

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know
if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by
life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance
with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember
the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. 

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;

 if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;

 if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand
on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to
know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments."

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear The Mask”

“We Wear The Mask”

“We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!”

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

A Comment

Moody Blues, "Don't You Feel Small?"

"See the world, ask what it's for,

Understanding, nothing more.."

A comment: I'm quite aware this blog's content has progressively turned into a virtual chamber of horrors - devastating economic and social collapse, governmental corruption and loss of civil liberties, wars and very possible nuclear war which we cannot and will not "win", exploding poverty, drug epidemics, police state surveillance, and on and on - one disaster or horror after another - everything's going to Hell in a hand-basket and it's as clearly displayed here as I can make it. The world's a complex place, so the articles are lengthy of necessity. Not by choice - I'd much rather focus on other, better things, or be doing something else, but take a glance at the main-stream liars and propagandists, you won't see any of these things covered truthfully there, just more of the sensationalistic garbage and pure propaganda from all those cheaply bought low-life money whores. I've always believed you CAN handle the truth, given the chance to know it. Of course you can find truth, or the best version of it, elsewhere on many sites, if you know where to look, and I hope you're doing that. I can only speak to what you'll find here. 

Please, don't come here expecting all sweetness and light, you'll be rudely disappointed. Anymore the blog article selection is really a threat-analysis and prioritization process, in hopes of keeping you informed about what's really happening behind the smoke screens and lies, and alerting you to imminent crises. We've run out of time, hence the sense of urgency. These things are upon us, they're here now, and you have an absolute right to know and understand how and why it's all happening as it is. That knowing may help you prepare, help you deal more effectively with things you can change, and inevitable changes we can do nothing about. But we will NOT go down without a fight! So, apologies for the sometimes grim article content, but that's real life, just how it really is, whether any of us like it or not. Stay informed, stay aware, and stay strong, always, never give up, and most of all thanks for stopping by!

- CP

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"; "Ten Rules For Being Human"

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOm

"Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul. Life is the province of learning, and the wisdom we acquire throughout our lives is the reward of existence. As we traverse the winding roads that lead from birth to death, experience is our patient teacher. We exist, bound to human bodies as we are, to evolve, enrolled by the universe in earth school, an informal and individualized academy of living, being, and changing. Life’s lessons can take many forms and present us with many challenges. There are scores of mundane lessons that help us learn to navigate with grace, poise, and tolerance in this world. And there are those once-in-a-lifetime lessons that touch us so deeply that they change the course of our lives. The latter can be heartrending, and we may wander through life as unwilling students for a time. But the quality of our lives is based almost entirely on what we derive from our experiences.

Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul, as well as the intellect. The scope of our instruction is dependent on our ability and readiness to accept the lesson laid out before us in the circumstances we face. When we find ourselves blindsided by life, we are free to choose to close our minds or to view the inbuilt lesson in a narrow-minded way. The notion that existence is a never-ending lesson can be dismaying at times. The courses we undertake in earth school can be painful as well as pleasurable, and as taxing as they are eventually rewarding. However, in every situation, relationship, or encounter, a range of lessons can be unearthed. When we choose to consciously take advantage of each of the lessons we are confronted with, we gradually discover that our previous ideas about love, compassion, resilience, grief, fear, trust, and generosity could have been half-formed.

Ultimately, when we acknowledge that growth is an integral part of life and that attending earth school is the responsibility of every individual, the concept of "life as lesson" no longer chafes. We can openly and joyfully look for the blessing buried in the difficulties we face without feeling that we are trapped in a roller-coaster ride of forced learning. Though we cannot always know when we are experiencing a life lesson, the wisdom we accrue will bless us with the keenest hindsight."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

•

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have 

drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."
- Richard Bach

•

"Ten Rules For Being Human"

Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three: There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four: A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five: Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six: 'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven: Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about  another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine: Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Rule Ten: You will forget all of this at birth. You can remember it if you want by unravelling the double helix of inner knowing.

- Cherie Carter-Scott, 

From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

"Do You Want..."

"Do you want to live life, 

or do you want to escape life?"

- Macklemore

"You May Wonder..."

"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."

- Stephen King

"In This World..."

"In this world, the thing people fear the most, and what pains people the most - is giving more than they receive. God forbid I cut off more of my fingernail for you than you cut from your fingernail, for me! Heaven forbid I hold my breath in longer while thinking about you, than the amount of time your breath is held in for me! Not a second longer! It is a sad fact of human nature that there you stand as an Infinite Soul and yet your greatest fear is not receiving from another person in proportion to what you give. Your viewpoint is low, your vision is clouded. You have become, in your eyes, a funny little drawing on the paper pad of the universe. Indeed, this race is yet to evolve. And yet, I am surrounded by such fear, to such a great extent that I begin to fear the same!"

- C. JoyBell C.

Dan, I Allegedly, "Things are Choppy and Scary"

Dan, I Allegedly, 6/13/24

"Things are Choppy and Scary"

"Today we bring back Bob Kudla from Trade Genius. There are numerous potential Black Swans on the horizon. We will hear him talk about the state of the economy and where he feels the market is headed. This will include crypto, energy, stocks, and precious metals."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"NUKEMAP"

"NUKEMAP"

by  Alex Wellerstein

"We live in a world where nuclear weapons issues are on the front pages of our newspapers on a regular basis, yet most people still have a very bad sense of what an exploding nuclear weapon can actually do. Some people think they destroy everything in the world all that once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between: nuclear weapons can cause immense destruction and huge losses of life, but the effects are still comprehendible on a human scale. 

The NUKEMAP is aimed at helping people visualize nuclear weapons on terms they can make sense of, helping them to get a sense of the scale of the bombs. By allowing people to use arbitrarily picked geographical locations, I hope that people will come to understand what a nuclear weapon would do to places they are familiar with, and how the different sizes of nuclear weapons change the results. There are many different political interpretations one can legitimately take away from such results. There is not intended to be a simple political "message" of the NUKEMAP."

Access NUKEMAP here:

- https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 6/13/24

"Russian Army's 'Electronic Launch Of Nuclear Missile' Drill: 

Putin Nuke-Ready Amid West's New Moves"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 6/13/24

"'Ready To Use Nuclear...': 

Russia Openly Brandishes Nukes After NATO's New 'Trigger'"

"Russia has pulled out its nuclear weapons as NATO nations permit attacks on its soil. Russian and Belarusian troops have started the second stage of tactical nuclear drills. Moscow said the drills were aimed at ensuring that the two countries' military personnel and equipment were ready to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Russians do not bluff, ever...

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Problem With The World..."

 

"We Are Doomed And Challenged...:

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin

to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."
- Arthur Miller

Chet Raymo, “Examination of Conscience”

“Examination of Conscience”
by Chet Raymo

"I have been reading Stephanie Smallwood's “Saltwater Slavery,” a close examination of the trade in human beings between the coast of West Africa and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a sobering read, but if there is one thing I came away with, it was this: We have an enormous capacity to rationalize the most horrendous crimes. Everyone involved in the slave trade - the European owners of the ships, the masters of the trading companies, the ship captains and crews, the plantation owners in the West Indies and the Chesapeake, the African tribal chiefs who captured and sold their neighbors to the European merchants - knew in some part of their souls that what they were doing was wrong. All of them - good Christians among them, pillars of their communities - found ways to rationalize their participation.

Who among us is immune to self deceit? To what extent am I implicated in the horrendous tragedies that are Darfur and Iraq? What do I owe to the global environment? Is there such a thing as innocence when we are so intimately connected that people in Fiji and Japan will read these words only moments after I write them?

What about science, the favored subject of this blog? Here is Smallwood: “The littoral [of the West African coast]...was more than a site of economic exchange and incarceration. The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied upon a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas.”

Even science, like religion and democratic politics, can be pressed into the service of evil. We are all of us to some extent in the grip of economic forces as powerful and sometimes as pernicious as those that drove the saltwater slave trade. Few of us are required to personally face the direst evils. We are saved from moral anguish only by the fact that our acts of commission and omission ripple outward until their consequences are diluted and lost in the general happiness or unhappiness of humankind.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Everywhere in Chains"

"Everywhere in Chains"

By Joel Bowman

“Man is born free,” Rousseau reminds us, “and everywhere he is in chains.” The exiled Genevan’s point, if we grasp it correctly, is that our natural state is one of liberty... of rights unalienable... of freedom. It is the world we make, held he, that makes us unfree.

How does Rousseau, himself a scalawag of the highest order, resolve this conundrum? By supposing a “social contract,” of course, the deus ex machina of the Gordian philosophical knot, in which everyone is beholden to everyone else because of something Rousseau calls the “general will.” “Each of us puts his person... under the supreme direction of the general will.” Rousseau posits the body politic as a single entity, composed of each participating individual, in which the “common good” outweighs the rights of the component parts. Collectivism, in other words.

“Let us set equal terms for the truce” Rousseau begins his treatise (quoting from Virgil’s epic poem, "Aeneid"). Departing from Hobbes’s cynical assertion that, without the civilizing agent of government, man would be left in a state in which existed “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau holds that force alone (such as exerted by the State) does not itself create right.

Allow us to preempt your next question, dear and incisive reader: “Then why create a state in the first place?” Perhaps it is useful here to consider the State not as a civilizing agent, as Hobbes had it, but as an expression of the many, varied and reliable ways in which man is uncivilized. This would be the inverse of what the much overpraised eugenics enthusiast, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, argued: “Taxation is the price we pay for civilization.” Properly considered, civilization is the price we surrender when permitting the gang of thieves calling itself the State to rob, coerce and enslave us, to deny us our individual sovereignty."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/