Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/5/24
"WTF Alert! Emergency Meeting w/Russia-Iran;
Closed Airspace; Nuclear Bunker Opens; Market Chaos"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, August 5, 2024
"Something Like Reverence..."
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
o
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence has come, and this is only the beginning.
This global economic collapse will trigger total social chaos and collapse everywhere, with
unimaginably horrifying consequences for us all, including a very likely nuclear world war.
There is no escape...we must do our best to bravely face it. Stay strong, folks.
God help us, God help us all...
Full screen recommended.
Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, "Amazing Grace"
"If..."
If you were facing a firing squad, and we all are...
wouldn't you at least want to know why?
And who stood you against the wall?
”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse”
”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse”
by Dmitry Orlov
“Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.
But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler’s evocative but unscientific-sounding “clusterf**k,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.
For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point.
Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic complexity will no longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points in his “Collapse of Complex Societies,” there are circumstances in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it need not automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors disbanding into solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness and subsisting miserably. Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly, organized retreat rather than a rout.
For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union – our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial collapse – did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was much social dislocation and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. Thus situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.
Having given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers – the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is collapsing as I write this – I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve it.
Rather than tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross model, the proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift. It is something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool) wants to be the last fool to believe in a lie.
Stages of Collapse:
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, "The Mountain People"). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"). There may even be some cannibalism.
Although many people imagine collapse to be a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages. That all the players seem poised to make just such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy – a conscious but inexorable march to perdition – rather than a farce (“Oops! Ah, here we are, Stage 5.” – “So, whom do we eat first?” – “Me! I am delicious!”) Let us sketch out this process.
Financial collapse, as we are are currently observing it, consists of two parts. One is that a part of the general population is forced to move, no longer able to afford the house they bought based on inflated assessments, forged income numbers, and foolish expectations of endless asset inflation. Since, technically, they should never have been allowed to buy these houses, and were only able to do so because of financial and political malfeasance, this is actually a healthy development. The second part consists of men in expensive suits tossing bundles of suddenly worthless paper up in the air, ripping out their remaining hair, and (some of us might uncharitably hope) setting themselves on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve. They, to express it in their own vernacular, “f**ked up,” and so this is also just as it should be.
The government response to this could be to offer some helpful homilies about “the wages of sin” and to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations including Wall Street. The message would be: “You former debt addicts and gamblers, as you say, ‘f****d up,’ and so this will really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring your own bowl, because we don’t do dishes.” This would result in a stable Stage 1 collapse – the Second Great Depression.
However, this is unlikely, because in the US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one. As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf. Every level of government, from local municipalities and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their public works and public services, to the federal government, which relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as possible.
About the only thing the government currently seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble, by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent financial institutions. This has the effect of diluting the dollar, further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial Collapse.
As businesses shut down, storefronts are boarded up and the population is left largely penniless and dependent on FEMA and charity for survival, the government may consider what to do next. It could, for example, repatriate all foreign troops and set them to work on public works projects designed to directly help the population. It could promote local economic self-sufficiency, by establishing community-supported agriculture programs, erecting renewable energy systems, and organizing and training local self-defense forces to maintain law and order. The Army Corps of Engineers could be ordered to bulldoze buildings erected on former farmland around city centers, return the land to cultivation, and to construct high-density solar-heated housing in urban centers to resettle those who are displaced. In the interim, it could reduce homelessness by imposing a steep tax on vacant residential properties and funneling the proceeds into rent subsidies for the indigent. With plenty of luck, such measures may be able to reverse the trend, eventually providing for a restoration of pre-Stage 2 conditions.
This may or may not be a good plan, but in any case it is rather unrealistic, because the United States, being so deeply in debt, will be forced to accede to the wishes of its foreign creditors, who own a lot of national assets (land, buildings, and businesses) and who would rather see a dependent American population slaving away working off their debt than a self-sufficient one, conveniently forgetting that they have mortgaged their children’s futures to pay for military fiascos, big houses, big cars, and flat-screen television sets. Thus, a much more likely scenario is that the federal government (knowing who butters their bread) will remain subservient to foreign financial interests. It will impose austerity conditions, maintain law and order through draconian means, and aid in the construction of foreign-owned factory towns and plantations. As people start to think that having a government may not be such a good idea, conditions become ripe for Stage 3.
If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one’s own living-room window, which may or may not still have glass in it. After a significant amount of bloodletting, much of the country becomes a no-go zone for the remaining authorities. Foreign creditors decide that their debts might not be repaid after all, cut their losses and depart in haste. The rest of the world decides to act as if there is no such place as The United States – because “nobody goes there any more.” So as not to lose out on the entertainment value, the foreign press still prints sporadic fables about Americans who eat their young, much as they did about Russia following the Soviet collapse. A few brave American expatriates who still come back to visit bring back amazing stories of a different kind, but everyone considers them eccentric and perhaps a little bit crazy.
Stage 3 collapse can sometimes be avoided by the timely introduction of international peacekeepers and through the efforts of international humanitarian NGOs. In the aftermath of a Stage 2 collapse, domestic authorities are highly unlikely to have either the resources or the legitimacy, or even the will, to arrest the collapse the dynamic and reconstitute themselves in a way that the population would accept.
As stage 3 collapse runs its course, the power vacuum left by the now defunct federal, state and local government is filled by a variety of new power structures. Remnants of former law enforcement and military, urban gangs, ethnic mafias, religious cults and wealthy property owners all attempt to build their little empires on the ruins of the big one, fighting each other over territory and access to resources. This is the age of Big Men: charismatic leaders, rabble-rousers, ruthless Macchiavelian princes and war lords. In the luckier places, they find it to their common advantage to pool their resources and amalgamate into some sort of legitimate local government, while in the rest their jostling for power leads to a spiral of conflict and open war.
Stage 4 collapse occurs when society becomes so disordered and impoverished that it can no longer support the Big Men, who become smaller and smaller, and eventually fade from view. Society fragments into extended families and small tribes of a dozen or so families, who find it advantageous to band together for mutual support and defense. This is the form of society that has existed over some 98.5% of humanity’s existence as a biological species, and can be said to be the bedrock of human existence. Humans can exist at this level of organization for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Most mammalian species go extinct after just a few million years, but, for all we know, Homo Sapiens still have a million or two left.
If pre-collapse society is too atomized, alienated and individualistic to form cohesive extended families and tribes, or if its physical environment becomes so disordered and impoverished that hunger and starvation become widespread, then Stage 5 collapse becomes likely. At this stage, a simpler biological imperative takes over, to preserve the life of the breeding couples. Families disband, the old are abandoned to their own devices, and children are only cared for up to age 3. All social unity is destroyed, and even the couples may disband for a time, preferring to forage on their own and refusing to share food. This is the state of society described by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull in his book “The Mountain People.” If society prior to Stage 5 collapse can be said to be the historical norm for humans, Stage 5 collapse brings humanity to the verge of physical extinction.
As we can easily imagine, the default is cascaded failure: each stage of collapse can easily lead to the next, perhaps even overlapping it. In Russia, the process was arrested just past Stage 3: there was considerable trouble with ethnic mafias and even some warlordism, but government authority won out in the end. In my other writings, I go into a lot of detail in describing the exact conditions that inadvertently made Russian society relatively collapse-proof. Here, I will simply say that these ingredients are not currently present in the United States.
While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1 and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is probably worth everyone’s while to dig in their heels at Stage 3, definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical survival to avoid Stage 5. In certain localities – those with high population densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial installations – avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely at Stage 4.
Although it is possible to prepare directly for surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable if you plan to become one of the Big Men. Be that as it may, I must leave such preparations as an exercise for the reader. My hope is that these definitions of specific stages of collapse will enable a more specific and fruitful discussion than the one currently dominated by such vague and ultimately nonsensical terms as “the collapse of Western civilization.”
- http://www.energybulletin.net/
o
Download "The Collapse of Complex Societies",
by Joseph A. Tainter, here:
"They Just Admitted The Financial Collapse Is Here And They Are Hiding The Reason"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 8/5/24
"They Just Admitted The Financial Collapse
Is Here And They Are Hiding The Reason"
Comments here:
"Stock Market Crash Has Begun As The U.S. Economy Heading Into An Economic Collapse"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 8/5/24
"Stock Market Crash Has Begun As The
U.S. Economy Heading Into An Economic Collapse"
"This morning Japan’s Nikkei recorded its worst stock market crash, losing 4,451.28 points from the previous day's closing amid panic selling triggered by fears of a possible U.S. recession and the yen's strength. For a long time, there was a lot of denial about the direction that the U.S. economy was heading. The Biden administration and the mainstream media just kept insisting that everything was just fine even though everyone could clearly see that it wasn’t. But now reality is setting in. Last week we got some numbers that Wall Street really didn’t like, and a massive temper tantrum ensued. The stock market crash that we witnessed on Friday was quite breathtaking, and it became much worse this week. Yes, this is really happening.
On Friday, many were surprised when the employment numbers were much worse than anticipated. But the only reason why the official figure showed an addition of 114,000 jobs last month is because the birth/death model added 246,000 jobs to the final number. In any event, even if we take the government’s report at face value, the Sahm Rule has still been officially triggered. What is Sam Rule? It is an indicator that is used to provide an early recession signal. The rule stipulates that a recession is likely when the three-month moving average of the jobless rate is at least a half-percentage point higher than the 12-month low. Even though this indicator has successfully predicted every single recession since 1970, Fed Chair Jerome Powell insists that it may not be correct this time around.
Unfortunately, it appears to be inevitable that the unemployment rate will go even higher because large companies all over America continue to shed workers. Businesses from coast to coast have fallen on hard times, and business bankruptcy filings have risen by more than 40 percent during the past 12 monthsnand have now reached a number not seen since the second quarter of 2020, at the peak of lockdowns. American households are following along, with total bankruptcy filings up 16.2 percent in the past year, including 132,710 new filings in the second quarter of 2024 alone. The last time business bankruptcy filings were this high was during the lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic. But we don’t have any lockdowns to blame the current wave of bankruptcies on. Right now, our banks are sitting on gigantic mountains of commercial real estate loans that have gone bad.
For many of those banks, it is just a matter of time before they go belly up. But don’t just take my word for it. Recently, a number of prominent experts have been warning that a tsunami of bank failures is on the way. Yes, this is really happening. A tremendous amount of financial chaos is in our future, and most people are going to be completely blindsided by it. There is one thing that the Federal Reserve could do to mitigate the damage. We are being told that the Fed “might” give us a rate cut in September. That isn’t going to do the job. We need help now, because the economic collapse are already starting to erupt all around us."
Comments here:
"We're so freakin' doomed!" - The Mogambo Guru
Jeremiah Babe, "Monday Market Massacre, The Worst Is Yet To Come"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/5/24
"Monday Market Massacre,
The Worst Is Yet To Come"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens..."
"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame.
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."
The Poet: Carl Sandburg, “From the Shore"
“From the Shore"
“A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.
Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.
Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.”
- Carl Sandburg
Chet Raymo, “Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”
“Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”
by Chet Raymo
“If there is one word that should not be uttered, it is the name of – no, I will not say it. Any name diminishes. In the face of whatever it is that is most mysterious, most holy, we are properly silent. It is appropriate, I think, to praise the creation, to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for the sensate world. But praising the Creator is another thing altogether. When we make a big racket on His behalf we are more than likely addressing an idol in our own image. What was it that Pico Iyer said? “Silence is the tribute that we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred place, just as we slip off shoes.” The God of the mystics whispers sweet nothings, as lovers do.
In a diary entry for “M.”, near the end of his too-short life, Thomas Merton wrote: “I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough.” The natural world was for Merton the primary revelation. He listened. He felt a presence in his heart, an awareness of the ineffable Mystery that permeates creation. It was this that drew him to the mystical tradition of Christianity, especially to the Celtic tradition of creation spirituality. It was this that attracted him to Zen.
There come now and then, perhaps more frequently in late life than previously, those moments of being (as Virginia Woolf called them) when creation grabs us by the shoulders and gives us such a shake that it rattles our teeth, when love for the world simply knocks us flat. At those moments everything we have learned about the world – the invaluable and reliable knowledge of science- seems a pale intimation of what is. In Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves”, the elderly Bernard says: “How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”
In moments of soul-stirring epiphany, it is reassuring to feel beneath our feet a floor of reliable knowledge, the safe and sure edifice of empirical learning so painstakingly constructed by the likes of Aristarchus, Galileo, Darwin and Schrodinger. But at the same time we are humbled by our ignorance, and more ready than ever to say “I don’t know,” to enter at last the great silence. Erwin Chargaff, who contributed mightily to our understanding of DNA, wrote: “It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If the scientist has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”
The whole thrust of the mystical tradition, the whole thrust of science, is toward the great silence- an awareness of our ignorance and a willingness to say “I don’t know.” A lifetime of learning brings one at last to the face of mystery. We live in a universe of more than 2 trillion galaxies. Perhaps the number of galaxies is infinite. And the universe is silent. Achingly, terrifyingly silent. Or, rather, the universe speaks a little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”
"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.
Free Download: Ernest Becker, "The Denial Of Death"
"The Denial Of Death"
"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."
Excerpt: "The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that : the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. I believe, that knowledge is in a state of useless overproduction
I have had the growing realization over the past few years that the problem of man’s knowledge is not to oppose and to demolish opposing views, but to include them in a larger theoretical structure .
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: Human Nature and the Heroic: Freud discovered that each of us repeats the tragedy of the mythical Greek Narcissus: we are hopelessly absorbed with ourselves. If we care about anyone it is usually ourselves first of all. This narcissism is what keeps men marching into point-blank fire in wars: at heart one doesn’t feel that he will die, he only feels sorry for the man next to him.
The unconscious does not know death or time: in man’s physiochemical, inner organic recesses he feels immortal . In man a working level of narcissism is inseparable from self- esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth. In childhood we see the struggle for self-esteem at its least disguised. The child is unashamed about what he needs and wants most. His whole organism shouts the claims of his natural narcissism.
We like to speak casually about “sibling rivalry,” as though it were some kind of by-product of growing up , a bit of competitiveness and selfishness of children who have been spoiled, who haven’t yet grown into a generous social nature. But it is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration , it expresses the heart of the creature : the desire to stand out , to be the one in creation. When you combine natural narcissism with the basic need for self-esteem, you create a creature who has to feel himself an object of primary value: first in the universe, representing in himself all of life .
Sibling rivalry is a critical problem that reflects the basic human condition: it is not that children are vicious , selfish , or domineering. It is that they so openly express man’s tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe; he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible contribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else.
It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning .
Society itself is a codified hero system , which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a "religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives .
CHAPTER TWO: The Terror of Death: "Is it not for us to confess that in our civilized attitude towards death we are once more living psychologically beyond our means, and must reform and give truth its due ? Would it not be better to give death the place in actuality and in our thoughts which properly belongs to it, and to yield a little more prominence to that unconscious attitude towards death which we have hitherto so carefully suppressed? This hardly seems indeed a greater achievement, but rather a backward step… but it has the merit of taking somewhat more into account the true state of affairs..." - Sigmund Freud
Of all things that move man , one of the principal ones is his terror of death. Heroism is first and foremost a reflex of the terror of death. We admire most the courage to face death; we give such valor our highest and most constant adoration; it moves us deeply in our hearts because we have doubts about how brave we ourselves would be. The hero was the man who could go into the spirit world, the world of the dead, and return alive .
These cults, as G . Stanley Hall so aptly put it, were an attempt to attain “an immunity bath” from the greatest evil: death and the dread of it. Zilboorg says that most people think death fear is absent because it rarely shows its true face; but he argues that underneath all appearances fear of death is universally present: Let sanguine healthy- mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
Such constant expenditure of psychological energy on the business of preserving life would be impossible if the fear of death were not as constant. The very term “ self-preservation ” implies an effort against some force of disintegration ; the affective aspect of this is fear, fear of death .
Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality. We are intent on mastering death… A man will say, of course, that he knows he will die some day , but he does not really care. He is having a good time with living , and he does not think about death and does not care to bother about it - but this is a purely intellectual, verbal admission. The affect of fear is repressed. Repression takes care of the complex symbol of death for most people."
“Death twitches my ear; 'Live,' he says...
'I am coming.” - Virgil
Freely download "The Denial Of Death", by Ernest Becker, here:
"A Question of Timing"
"A Question of Timing"
by Jeff Thomas
"France, 1788. Russia, 1916. Germany, 1937. These dates have something in common. In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage. And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.
Similarly, in 1916, Russia was at war with the Germans, and the populace was becoming increasingly vocal about the state of the economy. Yet, even the czar believed that the people simply had to accept the situation and muddle through. A year later, soldiers were deserting, a host of political wannabes were vying for power and anyone who simply wanted to be left alone to run his own life was now afraid to go out on the streets.
And of course, in Germany, prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, all the warnings were there that the country was beginning to unravel, but virtually everyone assumed that, somehow, things would be all right. A year later, Germany was at war with five nations and had invaded three others. People were being rounded up, imprisoned and/or shot. Those who sought to get out of Germany found that they were no longer allowed to do so.
And history is full of similar cases. In hindsight, the warning signs have always been there: an increasingly autocratic government, increasingly volatile and irrational political struggles, mounting debt, increased taxation, a declining economy and the removal of basic freedoms "for the greater good."
In 1929, if you lived in the US, you might have just paid $2,735 for a new Packard Custom 8 Roadster – a means of showing off your recent gains in the stock market. A year later, you might well have offered it for sale for only $100, as, for all your previous price offers, there were no takers. And you, like they, had been wiped out in the crash, and $100 meant the difference between eating and not eating.
In 1958, you might have been enjoying a daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana and joking to friends about ‘las barbudas’ – the tiny rebel force hiding in the Sierra Madre. A year later, the joking had ended and private businesses like El Floridita had been nationalized by the new government.
For millennia, the playbook has been the same. Countries that had been wonderful to live in, began to deteriorate from within, and the great majority of residents had failed to read the tea leaves – the warning signs that, in the future, conditions were not going to get better; they were going to get worse. But why should this be so?
Well, in 1787, in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment that gave rise to Adam Smith, economist and historian Alexander Tytler is credited as having said: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." He further noted that the latter stages of any such decline are marked, first, by complacency, then by apathy. The final stage is invariably one of bondage.
In some cases of collapse, the country is taken over by an outside force, but invariably, as stated above, the rot always starts from within. It’s simply human nature for the majority of any population, when passing through challenging times, to fall prey to promises that, somehow, a change in the form of government can and will result in the elimination of problematic conditions.
But how do those who make such claims sell their ideas? Do they suggest that everyone should work harder and practice a greater level of abnegation? Well, no. Although such people may exist and may even become outspoken, they are, historically, never the individuals whom the majority of the population follow. Invariably, the majority (having become complacent and pathetic), choose those who promise to take from one group and share the spoils amongst those who are less productive. As illogical as this promise is, most people, even if they doubt the reality of the claim, tend to think, "Well, it couldn’t be any worse. I might get something, so let’s give it a try."
A very simple case in point is the Bahamas election of 1967, in which Bahamians elected their first ‘man of the people’ as their premier. Under his rhetoric of ‘Bahamas for Bahamians,’ he promised the large underclass of Bahamians that he would take the top jobs away from the British bankers and other business leaders and that the spoils would go to the average Bahamian.
Of particular interest were the luxury vehicles driven by successful businessmen. Bahamians in their thousands imagined that the senior staff in banks would be fired, that they themselves would be given the jobs… and the fancy Jaguar Saloons. And that did happen to some extent. Those who were loyal to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling did move up to management positions overnight – positions for which they were not qualified. Not surprisingly, they were unable to learn decades of knowledge overnight. They subsequently either lost their new jobs, or the banks lost business on a massive scale.
And the Jaguars? Well, it turned out that there were thousands of Bahamians for every Jaguar that existed, and for 99.9%, there would be no previously imagined spoils. Instead, their lives soon headed south in the coming months and years, as wealth flowed away from the Bahamas, most of it never to return.
In other countries the details have often been quite a bit more complex, but the scenario and the outcome have been the same. Once the warning signs begin to appear, it’s important to remember that, historically, the process never reverses itself. An apathetic population is not one that will suddenly decide to roll up its sleeves and get the country, once again, on a productive footing. Invariably, the population jumps on the toboggan of empty promises and rides it downhill until it reaches the economic bottom.
And so, circumventing such a situation becomes a question of timing. When it becomes clear that the telltale signs are reappearing once again, those who are wise will acknowledge that the sands are running out and it’s time to move on. The signs tend to be the same in any locale, in any era. They’re quite easy to see. The difficult part is choosing to make an exit whilst it’s still easy to do so."
"Emergency! Global Market Meltdown"
Redacted, 8/5/24
"Emergency! Global Market Meltdown,
US Dollar Dumped As Recession Hits"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/5/24
"An Emergency FED Rate Cut?
This Would Be A Disaster Of Massive Proportions!"
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Full screen recommended.
Jack Chapple, 8/5/24
"The Global Stock Market Crash Just Happened,
And Its Much Worse Than We Could've Imagined"
"This is what happened in the Japanese stock market today. This is what happened in the Taiwanese stock market today. This is what happened in the British stock market today. And this is what happened in the American stock market today. All around the world, stock markets took a tumble. And almost every single big stock took a big dip today. Except for one…You see, one stock shot up so high today, that it might be signaling to the rest of the world, that something really, really bad is about to happen…
But lets start off with where this stock market collapse began, and that is Japan. You see, Japan's stock market didn't just have a bad day today, but it had its worst day in almost 40 years. In fact, it crashed worse today than at any time during the pandemic. The only other time it was worse was Black Monday in 1987, an infamous day when the world lost trillions of dollars in the stock market in just a few hours.
But why did this happen? Well, there are a few hypotheses. One is something called a carry trade. You see, Japan over the last few years actually has kept their interest rates low and have experienced very little inflation. And so, what a lot of very big corporations and Wall Street firms have been doing is borrowing tons of money in Japanese yen with low interest rates, and then taking that money and investing it in other currencies and stock of other countries like in Australia and the USA who have higher interest rates, pretty much meaning these large investment firms borrowed cheap money in Japan, and have been using that debt to invest in the United States, and it's estimated that between 5 and 10% of the entire American stock market is on a carry trade.
But what happens when that cheap money in Japan has their interest rates go up. You see, japan has not raised their interest rates since 2007, meaning they have been a safe bet to borrow cheap money for nearly 2 decades. But in March, Japan raised its interest rates for the first time. And they did so again just 5 days ago.
Meaning that now all of the Wall Street firms and financial institutions that have been relying on Japans cheap borrowing cost, now are worried that their payments will go up on their debt, or that they will no longer have access to cheap money for future investments into the stock market.
Oneperson who may have actually seen this coming is the renowned investor, Warren Buffet. A man who has been known for outperforming the stock market for about 70 years, decided to cash out pretty much immediately after hearing this news out of Japan. Now this could have been a coincidence, because he has been cashing out slowly over the last 12 months. But 4 days ago, he nearly doubled his cash position, meaning that he expects some sort of market correction or collapse soon.
And that brings us to the next point about why the globa stock market appears to be showing signs of a collapse right now. And that is the fear of a real recession. You know, one of the interesting tidbits I always bring up is after World War 1 the world was expecting to experience something like the Great Depression. Essentially something terrible was supposed to happen after the war and Spanish flu decimated the world population and global industries. One somewhat brief recession did happen in 1920 and 1921, a single year recession that was fairly quick but also a very large downwards spike. But then afterwards the world experienced what was called the Roaring 20's, a time when we hear about the glitz and glam and wealth explosion that everyone got to experience. But in reality, only the top half of the wealthiest people got to really reap the financial rewards of the Roaring Twenties because asset prices began to sky rocket and debt was very cheap to borrow. But if you were a lower middle class person or were working as something like a farmer, then you actually lost ground during the Roaring 20's. But hey, as long as the people who owned assets got richer, that's all that matters, right?
Anyways, what followed after the Roaring 20's was the Great Depression, the worst and longest economic downturn in modern history, a horrible economic decade that essentially needed a world war to take the world out of this economic downturn."
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Judge Napolitano, "Scott Ritter: The Evil That Netanyahu Has Wrought"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/5/24
"Scott Ritter: The Evil That Netanyahu Has Wrought"
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Dialogue Works, 8/5/24
"Col. Larry Wilkerson: Is Israel Pushing the
US Towards WWIII? NATO's Next Move?"
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Adventures With Danno, "Grocery Deals At Meijer!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/5/24
"Grocery Deals At Meijer!"
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"How It Really Is"
Full screen recommended.
"US Debt of $30 Trillion Visualized in Stacks of Physical Cash"
This is 3 years old when the debt was only $30 trillion,
but gives you a good perspective of how it really is.
God help us...
"Your Enemy, The Deep State"
"Your Enemy, The Deep State"
by Doug Casey
"A lot of people would like political solutions to their problems, i.e., getting the government to make other people do what they want. People with any moral sense, however, recognize that can only create more problems. Clever players, therefore, use the government as a tool but do so from behind a curtain. They know that it's more effective, and a lot safer, to pull the puppet's strings from offstage. Sometimes, they step into the limelight, depending on the circumstances and the depth of their personal narcissism. But they're all about two things: Power and money. Call them the Deep State. Once a country develops an entrenched Deep State, only a revolution or a dictatorship can turn things around. And probably only in a small country.
The American Deep State is a powerful informal network which controls most institutions. You won't read about it in the news because it controls the news. Politicians won't talk about it or even admit that it exists. That would be like a mobster discussing murder and robbery on the 6 o'clock news. You could say the Deep State is hidden, but it's hidden in plain sight. The Deep State is involved in almost every negative thing that's happening right now. It's essential to know what it's all about.
The State: The Deep State uses and hides behind the State itself. Even though the essence of the State is coercion, people have been taught to love and respect it. Most people think of the State in the quaint light of a grade school civics book. They think it has something to do with "We the People" electing a Jimmy Stewart character to represent them. That ideal has always been a pernicious fiction because it idealizes, sanitizes, and legitimizes an intrinsically evil and destructive institution, which is based on force. As Mao once said, political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.
The Deep State: The Deep State itself is as old as history. But the term "Deep State" originated in Turkey, which is appropriate since it's the heir to the totally corrupt Byzantine and Ottoman empires. And in the best Byzantine manner, our Deep State has insinuated itself throughout the fabric of what once was America. Its tendrils reach from Washington down to every part of civil society. Like a metastasized cancer, it can no longer be easily eradicated.
In many ways, Washington models itself after another city with a Deep State, ancient Rome. Here's how a Victorian-era freethinker, Winwood Reade, accurately described it: "Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo."
The Deep State controls the political and economic essence of the US. This is much more than observing that there's no real difference between the left and right wings of the Demopublican Party. Anyone with any sense (that is, everybody except the average voter) knows that although the Republicans say they believe in economic freedom (but don't), they definitely don't believe in social freedom. And the Democrats say they believe in social freedom (but don't), but they definitely don't believe in economic freedom.
Who Is the Deep State? The American Deep State is a real but informal structure that has arisen to not just profit from but control the State. The Deep State has a life of its own, like the government itself. Within the government, it's composed of top-echelon employees of a dozen Praetorian agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA - top generals, admirals, and other military operatives - long-term congressmen and senators, and directors of important regulatory agencies.
But the Deep State is much broader than just the government. It includes the heads of major corporations, all of whom are heavily involved in selling to the State and enabling it. That absolutely includes Silicon Valley, although those guys at least used to have a sense of humor, evidenced by their defunct "Don't Be Evil" motto.
It also includes the top people in the Fed, and the heads of the major banks, brokers, and insurers. Add the presidents and many professors at top universities, which act as Deep State recruiting centers - top media figures, of course, and many regulars at things like the WEF, Bohemian Grove, and the Council on Foreign Relations. They epitomize the status quo, held together by power, money, and propaganda. Altogether, I'll guess these people number a couple thousand. You might analogize the structure of the Deep State to a huge pack of dogs. The people I've just described are the Top Dogs.
But there are hundreds of thousands more who aren't at the nexus but who directly depend on them, have considerable clout, and support the Deep State because it supports them. This includes many of the wealthy, especially those who got that way thanks to their State connections. The 1.5 million people who have top secret clearances (that's a shocking but accurate number), plus top players in organized crime, especially the illegal drug business, little of which would exist without the State. Plus mid-level types in the police and military, corporations, and non-governmental organizations. These are what you might call the Running Dogs.
Beyond that are the scores and scores of millions who depend on things remaining the way they are, like the 50%-plus of Americans who are net recipients of benefits from the State - the 70 million on Social Security, the 90 million on Medicaid, the 50 million on food stamps, the many millions on hundreds of other programs, the 23 million government employees and most of their families. In fact, let's include the many millions of average Joes and Janes who are just getting by.
You might call this level of people, the vast majority of the population, Whipped Dogs. They both love and fear their master; they'll do as they're told and roll over on their backs and wet themselves if confronted by a Top Dog or Running Dog who feels they're out of line. These three types of dogs make up the vast majority of the US population. I trust you aren't among them. I consider myself a Lone Wolf in this context and hope you are, too. Unfortunately, however, dogs are enemies of wolves and tend to hunt them down.
The Deep State is destructive, but it's great for the people in it. And, like any living organism, its prime directive is: Survive! It survives by indoctrinating the fiction that it's both good and necessary. However, it's a parasite that promotes the ridiculous notion that everyone can live at the expense of society.
Is it a conspiracy headed by a man stroking a white cat? I think not. It's hard enough to get a bunch of friends to agree on what movie to see, much less a bunch of power-hungry miscreants bent on running everyone's lives. But, on the other hand, the Top Dogs all know each other, went to the same schools, belong to the same clubs, socialize, and, most importantly, have common interests, values, and philosophies.
The American Deep State rotates around the Washington Beltway. It imports America's wealth as tax revenue. A lot of that wealth is consumed there by useless mouths. And then, it exports things that reinforce the Deep State, including wars, fiat currency, and destructive policies. This is unsustainable simply because nothing of value can come out of a city full of parasites.
A Solution? Many Americans undoubtedly believe Donald Trump is a solution to what ails the US. They think he's a maverick who will smash the Deep State. That's understandable since he's a cultural conservative. He wants the country to resemble the happy days of yesteryear, when Mom, apple pie, and Chevrolets were more important than Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He's a nationalist, a traditionalist, and business-oriented. That's all very well. But irrelevant to the Deep State.
The problem is that Trump will almost necessarily surround himself with Deep State players; they're really all there is in and around the Washington Beltway, Wall Street, Academia, or the media. He's not about to abolish government agencies (although he might prune a few) and fire scores of thousands of government employees. His lack of a philosophical core will guarantee that instead of trying to abolish the State (in the manner of Milei or Ron Paul), he'll just use it in ways he thinks are righteous. The proof of that is the trillions of new government spending and deficits he approved of when he was in power. He'll spend trillions more if he's re-elected. And all of it will feed the Deep State.
On the bright side, if Trump is elected, his rhetoric will be less objectionable than Kamala's. There will probably be less overtly disastrous legislation enacted, and some regulations will likely be cut back. On the not-so-bright side, I'm afraid the Democrats could win come November. They have control of the apparatus of the State, and they absolutely don't want to give it up. The Deep State will be just fine if Trump wins, of course. But nobody wants to take a chance; there might be some broken rice bowls. He might turn into a loose cannon. So the Deep State, the Establishment, will be even fatter and happier if the Dems take control. That's what they'll work for. And that's the way to bet."
"The Right to Think for Yourself" (Excerpt)
"The Right to Think for Yourself"
Consequences of State Control of the Overton Window
by Robert W. Malone, MD, MS
Excerpt: "By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms… elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest… will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of Totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly like they were in the good old days. Democracy & freedom will be the theme of every broadcast & editorial. Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as they see fit."
- Aldous Huxley, 1962
"Our minds and our speech are what make us uniquely human. Our ability to conceive and communicate our personal view of the world around us is a central aspect of ourselves and of our person. To compromise or limit the ability of an individual to exercise freedom of thought and speech is to make that individual less human. This type of activity is not only intrinsically oppressive and fundamentally damaging to the human soul, it is a form of theft. Those who seek to limit thought and speech without permission to do so are stealing something of value from those whom they oppress. In so doing, they make the oppressed less human. They are literally stealing a fundamental asset of the individual without consent. In “The Anatomy of the State”, Murray Rothbard argues that there are two means of producing wealth:
Economic Means refer to producing and exchanging goods, services, and value through voluntary human effort, creativity, and entrepreneurship. They are additive and generate wealth for all parties involved. Note the keyword “voluntary,” which implies a lack of coercion, enticement, compulsion, and reliance on informed free will.
Political Means refers to using force or coercion to seize wealth from others. Political means are reductive, distorting incentives and undermining long-term prosperity. For example, taxation is a form of theft in which political means are used to seize wealth from others.
The censorship-industrial complex, in collusion with corporate media, works hand in glove with the State to use political means to seize involuntarily your ability to think and speak your own mind. The censorship-industrial complex, their media partners, as well as those companies that practice Surveillance Capitalism, are stealing value from you without your permission in order to enrich themselves at your expense."
Full, highly recommended article is here:
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