"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death. The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"

"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death.

The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.”  - Roger Waters

“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund

“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James

“A lie gets halfway around the world before

the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

– Winston Churchill

"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.

The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.

But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.

SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,

“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.

Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”

Postman ended his book by writing: “What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:

“Amused To Death”

by Roger Waters

"Doctor, Doctor what’s wrong with me?

This supermarket life is getting long.

What is the heart life of a color TV?

What is the shelf life of a teenage

queen?

Ooh western woman,

Ooh western girl,

News hound sniffs the air

When Jessica Hahn goes down

He latches on to that symbol of

detachment

Attracted by the peeling away of

feeling

The celebrity of the abused shell

of the belle

Ooh western woman

Ooh western girl

And the children of Melrose strut

their stuff

Is absolute zero cold enough?

And out in the valley warm and clean

The little ones sit by their TV screens

No thoughts to think

No tears to cry

All sucked dry down to the very

last breath.

Bartender what is wrong with me,

Why I am so out of breath?

The captain said excuse me ma’am,

This species has amused itself to death

We watched the tragedy unfold,

We did as we were told.

We bought and sold,

It was the greatest show on earth.

But then it was over,

We oohed and aahed,

We drove our racing cars,

We ate our last few jars of caviar,

And somewhere out there in the stars

A keen-eyed look-out

Spied a flickering light

Our last hurrah.

And when they found our shadows,

Grouped ‘round the TV sets,

They ran down every lead

They repeated every test,

They checked out all the data in

their lists.

And then the alien anthropologists

Admitted they were still perplexed.

But on eliminating every other reason

For our sad demise,

They logged the only explanation left.

This species has amused itself to death.

No tears to cry,

No feelings left,

This species has amused itself to

death…"

- https://www.globalresearch.ca/

○

Freely download “Amusing Ourselves to Death:

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, by Neil Postman, here:

- https://interesi.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/amusing.pdf

John Wilder, "Distractions, Pascal, And Postman"

"Distractions, Pascal, And Postman"

by John Wilder

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

– Fight Club

"Distractions. Blaise Pascal wrote about them in his book "Pensées," which is French and means “reflections” and is pronounced “Hamwich” because the French never properly figured out that sounds in words should be connected in some fashion to the letters used.

Pascal was a mathematician, a physicist, and invented the laptop computer, which was initially a plank of wood. In reality, he did some of the foundational work that showed that atmospheric pressure varied with altitude, even has a unit named after him. Pascal was also a philosopher, and thought a whole bunch about Christianity. This was back before the “let’s get a cappuccino and listen to Pastor Dave talk about why God wants lesbian ministers” type of church, and instead when there were debates on how salvation occurred and if free will was a thing.

Pascal wrote: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet, it is, itself, the greatest of our miseries.” And, although he’s dead, Pascal was entirely correct. We see it all around us right now.

Distraction is seductive. I remember we were on a family vacation and stopped at a Denny’s® to get breakfast. There was a line, and about 30 people (mainly families) were waiting. As I looked, every eye was focused on a phone – 30 people sitting next to each other, yet distracted by whatever it was that they were looking at. They had escaped reality, and also escaped talking to each other, almost as if they were addicted to the distractions coming to them over their iPhones®.

In reality, many of them probably are technically addicted to those phones. Much of the internet, even back then, was built on the premise of stimulating dopamine to create engagement with the phone, and not with the world surrounding us. Were those people worried about their bills, their jobs, or their immortal soul? Nah. They were distracted by flappy bird games or Faceborg™ or InstaChat©. They were allowing the moments of their lives to drain away into that sea of distraction rather than confront reality.

They did have bills. Their jobs sucked. Their immortal soul was in peril. But that’s difficult to think about, so it’s much easier to look at pretty colors and cat videos for ten seconds before flipping to the next infotainment bite. The distraction was total.

Is it any wonder that coping skills have been drastically impacted in the generation raised on the distraction of phones? Kids can’t cope because they’re never forced to confront themselves until the stakes are high. This creates a group of victims. I hate victims. A lot. They’re whiney and they suck every bit of energy out of the room, like psychic vampires. Oh, wait, I just described "The View."  Huh.

Absolutely, there are people who are in situations that are far beyond their control. And, absolutely there are people who don’t deserve what fate has given them. However, when I look at people who have self-control, who have looked fate in the eye and said, “Yeah, so what? I’m still standing here, chump,” I feel admiration.

Neil Postman was a professor and writer, but then he died. Perhaps his best-known work is "Amusing Ourselves to Death," written in 1985. The Mrs. introduced me to it not long after we met, and I knew she was a keeper. In it, Postman talks about the impact of amusement. Amusement is close enough to distraction for our purposes and both Postman and Pascal are dead, so they can’t put up too much of a fight.

Again, Postman wrote about this in 1985, well before the every distraction, every place, all at once monster of the smartphone appeared. In it, Postman identified television as a drug. If so, it’s a gateway drug like aspirin, and the Internet is heroin.

Part of distraction is that it discourages the formation of complete thoughts. I think at least partially that’s part of the inspiration for this place, since I want to create and bring forth ideas that people might not think about, or might have forgotten in all frenzy of flashing lights, free porn, and distractions of Instabook© and Facegram™.

It’s a world where, “Excuse me, I’m talking” becomes a replacement for actual thought and people thinking deeply about issues like old Pascal becomes rarer and rarer. A side effect is that the information we get becomes information we can’t take action on. Want to complain to your congressman? How would you even contact them? How would you get their attention? Hell, getting the attention of an HOA is nearly impossible in some subdivisions. Instead, you’ll complain to your neighbor.

Worse, though, is the impact that’s happening to our youth. The lesson that bad crap is going to happen to them so they need to learn deal with it simply isn’t taught because they just distract themselves away from the Truth they don’t want to consider. It’s not their fault – their brain is optimized to live in villages, and we distract them with the hardest hitting drug in history: the smartphone.

Failure is an option. And failure is a teacher, but when the teacher is fired and replaced with social media? The lesson is muted or ignored. How did Pascal manage to deal with being a religious philosopher, a mathematician, and a physicist? I guess Pascal was good at avoiding distraction and dealing with pressure."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

And so we have this...

"The Millennial Job Interview"

The Daily "Near You?"

Sand Springs, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 9/6/24"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/6/24

"The US Economy Is Bleeding Jobs, 

Worldwide Depression Coming"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/6/24

"Dollar Meltdown Continues, 

And What Is About To Happen Is Much Worse"

- https://traderschoice.net

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"If..."

If they'll do this for a TV, what happens when there's no food?

"Bread And Circuses"

"Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt."

- Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, in English "Juvenal"

"Take away my bread and circuses and all I have left is my pitchfork..."

"Homo Credulus"

"Homo Credulus"

by Joel Bowman

"Man: He’ll go along with just about anything. Given the right circumstances…a little programming…and enough time for it all to marinate in his soft, mammalian brain… there is almost nothing Homo Credulus will not learn to embrace. Don’t believe us?

Take a look at the historical record; you’ll soon wonder how we ever got this far. Sure, you’ll discover gizmos and flying contraptions, art and agriculture, music and mathematics. You’ll witness spectacular scientific breakthroughs, the number “0” and a man’s footprint on the moon. You’ll also find automobiles with so many cup holders, you won’t know where to holster your oversized 7/11 Big Gulp.

But you’ll also scratch your head. Perhaps you’ll even weep. And if you think hard enough, you’ll put a few things to serious question…“Central banks?” “Modern democracy?” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show?” How has mankind survived such atrocities? Self inflicted, no less! And why, moreover, does he rush so earnestly to repeat and replay his worst mistakes? (Ellen has been on air since 2003!) Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dear Reader. After all, repetition is nothing new…

You’ll recall that it was the Greeks who first gave the world democracy – from the Greek, dēmokratía, literally “Rule by ‘People’”. (And yes, it was those very same Greeks who put their own beloved Socrates to death, by a majority vote of 361-140.) Today, democracy is a cherished tenet of “the West.” It is woven into the civic religion, sewn into the social fabric. Men march off eagerly to fight for it, to proselytize it, and to die in forgotten ditches defending it.

At least, that’s what they believe they’re doing. As usual, the poor saps have been duped. Herewith, a little historical context…The phrase “Making the world safe for democracy” was actually a marketing slogan, coined back in the 1910s, as a way to sell “The Great War” to America. Weary from their own disastrous Civil War just a few decades earlier, in which hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young men gave up the ghost, Americans were mostly inward looking at the time. That is to say, they wanted little to do with what they largely saw as a “European affair.”

Polls might have indicated no appetite for battle, but the nation’s politicians were nonetheless starved for military misadventure. They sensed big profits abroad, both in manufacturing armaments and making onerous bank loans to foreign lands. Sure, “the nation” would have to fill tank and trench with warm young bodies, but very few soldiers would carry senatorial surnames along with their rifles. And so, after a public relations campaign of truly epic proportions, America marched off to war, wrapped in the delusion they had freshly been sold.

Eddie Bernays, the man who coined the phrase and, thus, peddled the war to America, made a fortune for his efforts. He was even invited by Woodrow Wilson to attend the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, as a show of gratitude for his services. There, Bernays learned the full impact of his “democracy” slogan. An obviously bright fellow, the surreal experience caused him to think. If people will line up to kill one another under the influence of a mere marketing campaign they could surely be convinced to do, say and buy just about anything!

Bernays was right. In fact, he wrote a series of books, detailing his insights. They included "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923), "A Public Relations Counsel" (1927) and a neat little number titled "Propaganda" (1928), in which Bernays laid out the blueprint for mass social and psychological manipulation. The collected works went on to become a huge success, and the favorite of none other than Joseph Goebbles, Reich Minister for Propaganda in Nazi Germany between 1933-45.

Bernays himself, writing in his 1965 autobiography, recalls a dinner at home in 1933 where… "Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. […] Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign."

It is indeed chilling to think of such a heinous undertaking as being engineered, blueprinted, premeditated and carried out according to some kind of script. And yet, there it is, in Bernays’ own words, the “Father of Propaganda.” Having acquired somewhat of a tainted reputation-by-association, propaganda, itself, underwent a “strategic rebranding” after WWII. But make no mistake, the very same métier thrives to this day, under the more socially palatable designation, “Public Relations.” Still, a ruse by any other name…

“Could we be so stupid again?” wonders the gentle reader. “Might the mob still be swayed by what Charles Mackay termed ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds?’” Why, of course! That’s the nature of the mob! Whether in love, finance, politics or any other matter, man is wont to be convinced, assured, persuaded, often against his own best interests. Few are the absurdities in which he will not take refuge, invest his hard-earned capital or squander his morality. All he needs is a good story, something to arrest his imagination and cauterize his capacity for reason. A distraction from his lonely, quotidian existence. That, and a few crumbs to pass his lips.

The Roman poet, Juvenal, recognized as much when he mocked the panem et circenses (bread and circuses) stratagem almost two millennia ago. In his "Satire X", he referred to the Annona (a kind of grain dole) and the famous circus games, held in the Colosseum and elsewhere, as designed to keep the unthinking population fed and happy.

Look around you today, Dear Reader. What do you see, two millennia later, in the Year of Their Lord, 2024 AD? We’ve got reality television and stadium sports matches, food stamp programs and an Everest of transfer payments, we’ve had mask mandates at schools and the whole pretense of safety and security, there’s $35 trillion in national debt and government spending out the wazoo., plus a collapsing workforce, an opioid epidemic (out-killing COVID-19 in < 65s) and Whoopi Goldberg in the sin bin...

And behind it all, the greatest bread and circuses show ever: modern representative democracy. Now, as then, the show goes on!"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

Freely download "Satire X", by Juvenal, here:

- https://www.poetryintranslation.com/

"How It Really Is"

"Cause and effect: In California, home of big tech, minimum wage is raised so much, that fast food joints can’t afford to hire low wage workers (primarily teens, in their first job). So, expedited development of robotics capabilities for automated fast food joints happens. Being developed in the same state that has raised minimum wages to $20 an hour. Planned?"

Bill Bonner, "Boy Meets Girl"

"Boy Meets Girl"

"In an honest money system, people earn money by providing goods and services 

often, labor) to others. So, the more they earn, the more ‘things’ they produce."

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France -  "The secret, dear reader, is the money itself. Real money comes from output, not from the feds’ printing presses. As we keep saying, when the money goes, everything goes. So today we wonder why….

Federal debt was 32% of GDP under Jimmy Carter. Now it is 125% of GDP. So what? The total value of the stock market (Wilshire 5000) was about 40% of GDP during the Carter years. Now it is almost 200%. Why not? But it’s not enough just to look at the numbers. The data is meaningless without context. What we are looking for is patterns. And analogies.

If you say, the current market capitalization/ GDP ratio is 191%, the number is meaningless…until you add the context. Then you see a pattern. And you can make an analogy ‘Oh…this is like 1999…or 2021…’ Now you can guess that there may have been things going on back then that are analogous to what is going on now. And at least you can make a plausible forecast about what happens next. You have a pattern.

Here’s another one. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Boy and girl get married. They have more boys and girls.How often has that happened? Billions of times. So, a boy meets a girl today. They fall in love. Will they marry and have children? We don’t know. But we wouldn’t bet against it.

And stocks? For the last 100 years, the typical stock has sold for between 12 and 15 times its company earnings. Why not 30 times? Or only 2 times? And why does Buffett believe the stock market should worth only about 100% of GDP…and not 200%? And total debt? It averaged only about 30% of GDP during the Carter years. Today, it is three times as high. What’s wrong with that?

Natural things have natural limits. Tomika Itooka is the world’s oldest living person. She is only 116 years old. Not 300 years old. And financial indicators, such as debt and market prices, have their limits too. Because they do not exist in a world of numbers alone. They are part of a system, more like a living thing than a theoretical, numerical notation. Ultimately, debt, GDP, and prices - all represent real things. And those real things are weighed out, measured, valued …in money.

To make a long story short, in an honest money system, people earn money by providing goods and services (often, labor) to others. So, the more they earn, the more ‘things’ they produce. Prices tend to be stable. No inflation – neither of consumer prices nor of the stock market. Nor of debt. That’s why price levels in 1913 were not much different from what they were 100 years before.

But wait. People can borrow money in an honest money system too. Can’t they lend too much? Can’t debt still get out of hand? Unlikely. Because borrowed money comes from savings. And savings must be earned before they can be lent out. So, credit represents goods or services that already exist.

In a dishonest system, on the other hand, the feds ‘print’ more money and lend it out at artificially low interest rates. No additional goods or services are added. Then, prices rise with the increase in the money supply. People who own assets get richer as asset prices rise. People who don’t own assets – in the large, ‘working class’ – get poorer as the things they buy become more expensive. And the whole system gets distorted and enfeebled by false money signals.

Want a financial history of the US from a guy standing on one leg? That was it. The US money system was fairly honest. Then, it became progressively more dishonest in three major steps -- the creation of the Fed in 1913, the introduction of fake, credit-based dollars in 1971, and then the Fed’s active manipulation of interest rates, post-1987. And now, the very rich are richer than ever. Debt is approaching $100 trillion. Stocks have never been more expensive. And we await the reckoning. Already, since 1913, the dollar has lost 98% of its value. In the years ahead it will lose the rest. Stay tuned."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Ghosts in the Machine"

"Ghosts in the Machine"

by Jim Kunstler

“The lies then and now are mind boggling. The people who continue to lap up the lies are beyond reach. The poison unleashed into the population will be with us a long time.” 

- Edward Dowd

"How is it that our country turned into some kind of theme park spook ride, a cheesy-looking haunted house of programmed frights, howling holograms, phantoms with their hair on fire, doors slamming open on glimpses of hell, ill-winds and foul odors, climaxing in a tableau vivant of death-in-life never ending?

I’m sure that this will surprise you, but you can choose to be sane. How? You take care of your business conscientiously; you steer in the direction of what is true and away from what is false; you find purpose in your existence by discovering your talents and using them in ways that do not bring harm to other people; you seek the company of kindred spirits...love the one you’re with...work hard so you can rest easy... express your gratitude for being here. That’s a start.

If you prefer being insane, there’s always the current incarnation of the Democratic Party, dedicated to gaslighting the nation into ruin. Of course, at this point - the point of extreme desperation - the Dems are just running interference for the distraught intel-Globalist blob. The blob’s agenda has been thwarted, overwhelmed by runaway debt and drinking too much of its own propaganda Kool-aid. A great deal of that has entailed the commission of crimes, which always implies the possibility of having to pay for them.

Russia is about to roll up on what’s left of Ukraine. Our State Department neocon division thought it was wicked-smart to start a little action there in 2014, to provoke Russia into a ruinous war against NATO (the game: “Let’s You and Him Fight”) in order, theoretically, to wreck Russia and depose Mr. Putin. Didn’t work. Do you know why? I will tell you (it’s really simple): Russia’s leadership is more intelligent than ours, and far less psychopathic. They perceived correctly that we were only wrecking ourselves.

Ten years later, the Ukraine caper draws to a humiliating end for our neocons, and a ruinous end for NATO and the EU. So far this year, it appears that “Joe Biden’s” party has ceased paying attention to Ukraine. The pretty yellow and blue flags have all but disappeared - except in Massachusetts, we noticed, the most highly “educated” and most deeply insane state in the union. I’ll be interested in how Kamala Harris explains our Ukraine war policy in Tuesday’s presidential debate. Defending democracy, I suppose.

The governments of the major EU nations stupidly followed the bidding of America’s psychopathic neocons and now they ‘ll have to answer for it as their people awake to the destruction of the EU nations’ economies. Early elections will be called and globalist stooges will be swept away. The turmoil will rhyme with the chaos of 1848, a year of revolution. NATO, finding itself not just purposeless but toxic to Europe’s well-being, must dissolve as members on the periphery withdraw, some seeking to join the BRICs economic bloc. Germany, France, and the UK get sucked helplessly into a new great depression and social turmoil as they contend with many millions of hostile migrants.

Here in America, you can already hear the fake anguished cry of “Russia, Russia, Russia” echoing out of Merrick Garland’s fake Justice Department. We’re to understand that the Russians are coming for our election - more gaslight - when it’s actually the Democratic party, led surreptitiously by its lawfare cadres, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, et al. Their many courtroom pranks have failed against Mr. Trump. Judge Chutkan was bloviating in the DC federal court this week to generate a little heat on MSNBC, but her case has a wooden stake through its heart and Xs where its eyes used to be.

Up in New York, Judge Juan Merchan pretends to wrassle with whether or not to start Civil War Two by remanding Mr. Trump to Rikers Island on September 18 (I doubt that happens). In the event, though, I believe Mr. Trump might simply say, “No thank you,” and go about his business running for president. That would be a counter-prank I’d be eager to see. Who gets in the act then? Federal marshals? The FBI (ha!)? The Supreme Court term begins the first Monday in October. They could have something to say about the steaming pile of horseshit that was Alvin Bragg’s and Mathew Colangelo’s case. (Also, Weissmann’s, Eisen’s, Monaco’s, and McCord’s.)

Gawd knows where things might stand after next Tuesday’s great debate. The rules are pretty stringent. No candidates questioning each other. No audience. No confab with staff during commercial breaks. The mute buttons will be on. Without her “I’m speaking” routine, Ms. Harris has... zotz. All Mr. Trump really has to do is be polite for 90-minutes.

More than a few people, meanwhile, are beginning to ask who is running the country, since “Joe Biden” is mostly off-duty, beaching it, not attending cabinet meetings, and probably not being consulted on any number of matters being carried out in his name. Are you comforted to know that the US government is on auto-pilot, a colossal, menacing machine run by ghosts?"

- https://kunstler.com/

Travelling with Russell, "I Went To Russia's First Weapons Shopping Mall"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 9/6/24

"I Went To Russia's First Weapons Shopping Mall"

"Take a look inside Russia's first-ever weapons shopping mall. The Babylon Mall is a new space in Moscow, with an area of more than 1000 m2. This mall is the first weapons center in Russia. What is sold inside, what can you buy and how simple is it to buy a weapon in Russia?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Broke - The Dollar Store Meltdown!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/6/24

"People Are Broke - 

The Dollar Store Meltdown!"

"We're diving into a hidden crisis - the Dollar Store Meltdown! With people feeling more broke than ever, even the go-to bargain spots like Dollar Tree are seeing a massive drop in sales. The CFO admits they can't stop this decline, and it's affecting everyone, from cheap shampoo to your favorite toothpaste deals. And yes, they're closing 1,000 stores! Catch all the details and more in today's video."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"Evictions Break Records in Phoenix, A Housing and Food Crisis is Brewing"

Full screen recommended.

ThisisJohnWilliams, 9/5/24

"Evictions Break Records in Phoenix,

 A Housing and Food Crisis is Brewing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Credit Crisis Hits Hard As 50 Million Americans Abandon Creditors!"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 9/5/24

"Credit Crisis Hits Hard As 50 Million 

Americans Abandon Creditors!"

"The United States is grappling with an unprecedented financial crisis, with up to 50 million Americans defaulting on their debts. This has triggered significant disruption in the nation’s credit system, causing widespread economic instability. Lenders are scrambling to contain the fallout, while consumers are overwhelmed by growing debt. Although the American economy has weathered numerous challenges in recent years, the current credit crisis stands out as the most severe. With more than 50 million people halting payments to creditors, the situation has progressed from early warnings to a full-scale emergency. As consumer debt surges, the impact is becoming painfully clear."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "WTF?! Military Soldiers In New York Hotels; Look Around, Everything Is Closing"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/5/24

"WTF?! Military Soldiers In New York Hotels;

 Look Around, Everything Is Closing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Markets Remain Volatile As Dragflation Ramps Up"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 9/5/24

"Markets Remain Volatile As Dragflation Ramps Up"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

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Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind: "Slow World"

Liquid Mind: "Slow World"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Planetary nebula Abell 78 stands out in this colorful telescopic skyscape. In fact the colors of the spiky Milky Way stars depend on their surface temperatures, both cooler (yellowish) and hotter (bluish) than the Sun. But Abell 78 shines by the characteristic emission of ionized atoms in the tenuous shroud of material shrugged off from an intensely hot central star. The atoms are ionized, their electrons stripped away, by the central star's energetic but otherwise invisible ultraviolet light.

The visible blue-green glow of loops and filaments in the nebula's central region corresponds to emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms, surrounded by strong red emission from electrons recombining with hydrogen atoms. Some 5,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Cygnus, Abell 78 is about three light-years across. A planetary nebula like Abell 78 represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience... in about 5 billion years.”

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

The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"

"Courage"

"It is in the small things we see it.

The child's first step,

as awesome as an earthquake.

The first time you rode a bike,

wallowing up the sidewalk.

The first spanking when your heart

went on a journey all alone.

When they called you crybaby

or poor or fatty or crazy

and made you into an alien,

you drank their acid

and concealed it.

Later,

if you faced the death of bombs and bullets

you did not do it with a banner,

you did it with only a hat to

cover your heart.

You did not fondle the weakness inside you

though it was there.

Your courage was a small coal

that you kept swallowing.

If your buddy saved you

and died himself in so doing,

then his courage was not courage,

it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,

if you have endured a great despair,

then you did it alone,

getting a transfusion from the fire,

picking the scabs off your heart,

then wringing it out like a sock.

Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,

you gave it a back rub

and then you covered it with a blanket

and after it had slept a while

it woke to the wings of the roses

and was transformed.

Later,

when you face old age and its natural conclusion

your courage will still be shown in the little ways,

each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,

those you love will live in a fever of love,

and you'll bargain with the calendar

and at the last moment

when death opens the back door

you'll put on your carpet slippers

and stride out."

~ Anne Sexton

"Our Dilemma..."

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;

what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. "

- Sydney J. Harris

"When We Have Time..."

“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”

- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”

○

“The problem is, you believe you have time.”

- Buddha

"The Final Depressing Chapters For The Late, Great U.S. Economy"

"The Final Depressing Chapters For 

The Late, Great U.S. Economy"

by Michael Snyder

"It is incredibly sad to watch the U.S. economy slowly but surely come apart at the seams all around us. For most of our history, the rest of the world marveled at our economic performance, and that is because we embraced economic values that led to great blessing. In recent decades, we have abandoned those values, but we were able to maintain a very high standard of living by going into unprecedented amounts of debt. Our leaders were able to keep the game going for longer than a lot of people thought, but now we have entered the final depressing chapters for the late, great U.S. economy, and we can see evidence of this all around us. If you doubt this, just look at all of the businesses that are going bankrupt. Last week, I discussed the fact that for the year ending June 30th, the number of business bankruptcy filings was up more than 40 percent compared to the previous 12 months. There is no way that the Biden administration can manipulate this number. Either a business filed for bankruptcy or it didn’t, and right now we are seeing a spike of historic significance.

On Sunday, CNBC published an article that listed ten prominent restaurant chains that have filed for bankruptcy this year…

-Roti

-Buca di Beppo

-World of Beer

-Rubio’s

-Melt Bar & Grilled

-Kuma’s Corner

-Red Lobster

-Tijuana Flats

-Sticky’s Finger Joint

-Boxer Ramen

We really are in the midst of a “restaurant apocalypse”, and more of our favorite eateries are getting into trouble with each passing day. For example, a large number of KFC locations just suddenly shut down in the Midwest…"Dozens of KFC locations owned by one franchisee have abruptly closed across the Midwest. Up to 25 restaurants owned by major fast food franchisee EYM Chicken have shut in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, according to reports. The closure of several locations in Wisconsin will lead to nearly 100 employees being laid off, according to local media WKOW 27 News."

At one time, KFC was such a wonderful American success story. But now KFC restaurants are becoming an endangered species. There used to be one about an hour from where I live, but that one has been shut down too. If you still have a KFC in your community, you should visit it while you still can.

Meanwhile, we just learned that a chain of gas stations and convenience stores in the Midwest has also abruptly shut down…"The gas station and convenience store sector has faced distress in recent years marked by bankruptcy filings and store closings. The Store convenience stores and gas stations, owned by Team Schierl Cos., in July 2024 was forced to shut down all operations of its 25 locations in Michigan and Wisconsin after its landlord Mountain Express Oil Co. filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in August 2023, Convenience Store News reported."

Whatever is happening to the economy right now, it seems to be hitting the Midwest particularly hard. At the rate that things are going, I think that it won’t be too long before even more communities in the Midwest resemble the nightmare that Gary, Indiana has become…"Gary, Indiana – best known as the birthplace of Michael Jackson – is home to the highest abandoned home rate in the nation at 31.41 percent, according to analysis from 247WallSt. The data found that the population has staggeringly dropped by 18.2 percent from 2010 to 2020, with a population around 67,000."

We also continue to see more signs of trouble in the banking industry. According to the Daily Mail, the U.S. lost 41 more bank branches in just one recent two week period…"Major banks have closed 41 branches in just two weeks as the shift toward online banking continues. Major banks such as Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo were among those shuttering locations." When the economy is booming, banks tend to open up lots of new branches. What we are witnessing now is the opposite of that.

Of course lots of retail stores are being permanently shut down as well. Thousands of store closings have already been announced in 2024, and now Big Lots has raised the number of stores that it is likely to close “to a maximum of 315”…"In the first quarter, the discount retailer said its net sales for the three-month period declined 10.2% year-over-year to $1 billion. For all of 2023, net sales were $4.72 billion, a 13.6% decrease compared with the prior year. More recently, in an Aug. 2 filing, the company told investors that it had upped the number of permitted store closings to a maximum of 315 as part of late July amendments to a credit agreement and term loan facility. That marked a 165-store increase from the 150 previously permitted. There were nearly 1,400 Big Lots stores in the U.S. as of the first quarter. The discount retailer’s locations sell home goods, furniture, seasonal decorations and other products."

Sadly, this really is the beginning of the end for Big Lots, because it won’t be able to survive much longer. Rite Aid is another major chain that is in serious peril. They have already closed hundreds of stores, but that hasn’t helped much…"Another retail casualty this year has been the sudden bankruptcy of Rite Aid, leaving hundreds of stores empty in states such as Michigan and Ohio after closing up to 500 stores nationally. In its filing, the company said it expected its losses would increase significantly in the past quarter, following a loss of $750 million between March 2022 and March 2023 and another $307 million in the second quarter this year. The last quarterly report filed by Rite Aid was in June, when they had only $135.5 million of cash to work with, combined with $3.3 billion in long-term debt."

Needless to say, Rite Aid is far from alone. All over the nation, once thriving businesses are being boarded up. U.S. consumers simply do not have the same level of discretionary income that they once did. The cost of living crisis has hit most Americans really hard, and at this point the vast majority of the population can no longer afford to purchase an average home. These days most Americans are desperately trying to find a way to scrape by from month to month, and so there just isn’t a lot of room for discretionary spending.

Economic conditions are not good right now, but what is this country going to look like once they take a dramatic turn for the worse? You might want to think about that, because what we are experiencing at this moment is going to look like rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is eventually coming."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Is Kamala Very, Very Afraid?"

"Is Kamala Very, Very Afraid?"

by Jim Kunstler

“On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know 

the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it.”

 - Jeffrey Tucker

"You might wonder, as I do, whether Kamala Harris can even stay in the race until November 5. Based on her grim appearance in last week’s “interview” with Dana Bash, slumped at the table of a crummy Georgia café under poor lighting, her trademark cackle suppressed, she looked psychologically wilted. Don’t be surprised if late this week she “catches Covid” and asks to “postpone” the September 10 debate with Mr. Trump.

Consider the depressing reality of her situation, lately cloaked by the farcical “joy” motif put out by her party’s campaign spin doctors: First, the cabal running the White House bum-rushed “Joe Biden” out of the campaign, just hooked him offstage like a broke-down vaudevillian annoying the audience with his tired antics. Then, the same gang buffaloed Kamala onto center stage by some mystical process that disregarded her lack of preparation, her proven unpopularity in the 2020 primaries, and her near-invisibility in 3.5 years as veep.

For a couple of weeks her head must have been spinning with sheer intoxication at the amazing turn of events. Who wouldn’t be amazed to find him or herself unexpectedly selected to run for president? But now, post the artificial hoopla of the convention, the dread steals in. If she was previously used to self-medicating with chardonnay during the irksome veep years, imagine the pressure now on those campaign bus trips.

She has a lot to be afraid of. She’s not nimble of mind in the spotlight, and she knows it. When she tries to riff on anything off-the-cuff, all that comes out are laughable tautologies. She really doesn’t know much about the world, even about simple geography, certainly not the complex interplay of national interests. Her economic notions are a kind of Frappuccino® of processed Marxian sludge from the Berkeley cafés. If exposed regularly to even friendly reporters, she’d ignite howling embarrassment for herself (and the party). And, after all, there’s her record, including hundreds of videos on the Internet showing plainly the crazy policies she supports and now has to pretend to dissociate from.

Lurking behind her is not only the American intel blob of dark forces and sinister figures, but an international blob made up of malevolent groups within and throughout Western Civ, clearly working to bring it down - the Eurocrats wrecking their own countries’ agriculture and their industrial economies while jailing their opponents for thought crimes; the WEFers pushing the demented climate change agenda and ruinous migrant invasions; the bankers looking to seize the “collateral” (property, chattels, investment portfolios) of a billion everyday citizens when the bond Ponzi scheme blows up, as it must; the WHO steered by Bill Gates seeking to inject unsafe vaccines into everybody in order to greatly and quickly reduce the population; the Soros NGO legions working to subvert the public interest here, there, and everywhere; the NATO warmongers trying like hell to start World War Three. Kamala Harris surely understands - if she understands anything - that she has become their chosen pawn, and is at their mercy (they have none).

She should be afraid especially of the American blob. That combine of higher-ups in the CIA, the DOD, the FBI, the DHS, the State Department, and Gawd knows how many lesser-known agencies and “black op” back offices, knows that it is in great danger if Mr. Trump happens to get elected (despite their best efforts to rig things). After all the trips laid on him, all the way up to attempted assassination, you can be sure that Mr. Trump will be coming after the cabal for committing real and serious crimes. They are running scared now. Despite all the power seemingly at their command, nothing has availed so far - not lawfare, not bullets - to stop Mr. Trump’s implacable march back into the Oval Office, where he could possibly succeed in turning the USA back into a functioning republic

Poor Kamala Harris is the blob’s wholly inadequate instrument to fend off this fate. If she continues to perform badly, the blob might not hesitate to try getting rid of her. That may be the blob’s last chance of stopping the election from happening altogether. The nation has never been in the predicament of having the head of a ticket resign or die in the homestretch of an election campaign. There is no provision in the Constitution for it because there are no provisions in the Constitution for political parties per se. It would all be a kind of improv.

And then, of course, America would be stuck with the unfit and incapable “Joe Biden,” heading the government, at least until something else can be worked out. Maybe that working out would just be the final stage of the coup that has been in motion, really, since 2016 when John Brennan, Barack Obama, and James Comey attempted to oust Mr. Trump with RussiaGate. Some kind of “interim commission” might be formed to “solve” the problem of the cancelled election. They’ll look for someone with “proven ability” to serve as provisional president — maybe, someone who has already been president... say, Mr. Obama. Voila and fait accompli! If he finds himself appointed rather than elected, he would not be in defiance of the 22nd Amendment. Okay, now try re-thinking how scared Kamala Harris must be."

- https://kunstler.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Pawleys Island, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!