Friday, September 13, 2024

Jim Kunstler, "What You Don't Know Might Surprise You"

"What You Don't Know Might Surprise You"
by Jim Kunstler

“One debate doesn’t change the issues Americans are facing every day.” 
- James Rickards

"By now, you’ve probably heard enough debate about The Debate, so I’ll spotlight only a few points everybody else left out. You might know this, but Hollywood plays a larger role in the Kamala campaign than just stuffing the endorsements of celebs such as George Clooney, Taylor Swift, and John Legend into the corporate media tank. In fact, much bigger playas, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, are producing and directing things backstage at Kamala Central, so what gets in the Kamala news plays as a Spielberg movie like "The Color Purple." Just so you know...

Ms. Harris had the advantage Tuesday night of being able to speak in declarative sentences, while her opponent, Mr. Trump, is given, shall we say, to a more choppy, telegraphic speech delivery. It lent Ms. Harris the appearance of being intelligent. The catch was, everything she said was disingenuous or an outright lie.

One whopper - more significant than you might realize - was her stating that she was in the US Capitol building when the J-6 riot happened. You’d think she’d want to be on-hand there, seeing as a joint session of Congress was about to certify her as the first female veep in US history - a chance to be joyful and shine! But, in fact, at 11:15a.m. on 1/6/21 - hours before protesters breached the Capitol — Kamala Harris was spirited away a few blocks to 430 South Capitol Street, the headquarters building of the Democratic National Committee, where a pipe bomb (or facsimile of one) had been planted hours before by some DC law enforcement person (Capitol police? FBI? DC Metro Police? A paid “contractor” to the preceding outfits?). The exact identity of the culprit has never been released by the FBI, though they have all the perp’s cell phone data and closed circuit TV footage.

The plan, you see, was to disrupt the election certification process underway at mid-day in the House chamber by creating a furor over the discovery of the pipe bomb planted to assassinate veep-elect Kamala Harris - a joint blob/Democratic Party operation. The pipe bomb ruse, it turned out, was never needed because the FBI-instigated riot at the Capitol created a big disruption just in time to send the politicians scurrying for safety and cancel scrutiny of various state’s electors’ reports.

After that scare, the Senators and Congressmen did, in fact, drop the certification challenge and returned to hurriedly finish the certification process later that night of 1/6/21. The pipe bomb story barely made the news, and the scant news about it was expeditiously memory-holed thereafter. After nearly four years, as averred to above, the FBI has come up with. . . nothing. It is important that you understand just how nefarious your federal agencies are, and how corrupt the news is.

Now, as for the Harris-Trump debate, otherwise, and given the rigged features of the exercise, it’s obvious that Mr. Trump muffed several major scoring opportunities. When Ms. Harris dredged up the notorious hoax about “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, Mr. Trump could have addressed the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis and asked them why they did not “fact-check” the utterance, which had been thoroughly debunked by the Left-wing site Snopes.com, advertising itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” Nor did they fact check the likewise debunked “suckers and losers” hoax about US soldiers supposedly uttered by Mr. Trump at the Normandy D-Day cemetery. Actually, Muir and Davis “fact-checked” Mr. Trump over thirty times and Ms. Harris hardly at all.

In any case, Mr. Trump blew many other chances to pin Ms. Harris with her own lies and hypocrisies - like, failing to state plainly that in nearly four years she never actually visited the Mexican border (whatever her designated title was: “Border Czar,” “Root Causes Detective”)... failing to clarify that the president has been removed from the abortion debate altogether and has no role in telling women what to do with their own bodies under current law...that Ms. Harris’s voteless selection as nominee was a paradigmatic affront to “our democracy” that even her own fellow party members ought to recognize...that the War in Ukraine was actually started in early 2014 by Barack Obama, Victoria Nuland, and the CIA, not by Mr. Putin...and omitting to state that all - every last one - of the 2020 election lawsuits across the nation were dismissed on procedural grounds and not on the merits of their arguments, which were never heard in court. That’s just a short list. It is also rumored that Ms. Harris got the debate questions beforehand, since her husband, Hollywood lawyer Doug Emhoff, is a close friend of Dana Walden, Co-chair of the Disney Corporation board of directors (Disney owns ABC-News.)

Anyway, that much-awaited event is over now and we are into the homestretch of this election. Kamala Harris has still shown no disposition to meet the press, to answer any questions impromptu and unscripted. The voting public seems to be losing patience with that. Her poll numbers are sinking, despite her admirable ability to speak in declarative sentences and lead joyful laugh-fests.

What remains for our sore-beset country beyond that vortex of nefarious blobbery and balloting lawfare is the interesting development that our government is now pressing to commence World War Three before the election can happen. “Joe Biden,” of course, is lately as absent from the public consciousness as Rutherford B. Hayes, but whoever acts in the president’s name these days just gave permission for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with long-range missiles. So far, the UK and the Netherlands have officially jumped in on that decision.

Note that the Ukrainians have no ability to actually do the targeting of said missile themselves, which involves satellite technology, meaning whatever missiles happen to get fired into Russia will be done by NATO personnel. Mr. Putin has made it clear that such action will have consequences. We might infer that means Russia will strike back at some NATO targets. I must imagine his primary target will be NATO headquarters in Brussels. Other targets would probably follow, perhaps even in the USA. Prepare to duck-and-cover, or possibly to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

"How It Really Is"

 

"As Americans..."

''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''
- Dave Barry

"Two Wolves and a Lamb"

"Two Wolves and a Lamb"
by Brian Maher

"Professional obligations required us to view Tuesday night’s presidential debate. The experience jackhammered home our central contention: Politics is disguised violence. There you had the two combatants, Harris and Trump, Trump and Harris. Perhaps one half of the nation is for the one. The second half is for the other. One will win and the other will lose. Thus roughly one-half of the population must suffer for the following four years - if not more.

As we have argued before: Assume your election. 50.1% of voters yank a lever for X. 49.9% pull one for Y. Thus X claims the laurel. He proceeds instantly against the desires, wishes and interests of the vanquished 49.9%. Each day they live this hapless bunch must cringe, wither and chafe beneath X’s atrocities… helpless as worms on fishermen’s hooks.

A Binary Choice: Let us consider the case at bar. If Ms. Harris gets in, half the nation must endure an additional four years of unfettered immigration, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, sexual deviancy boosting, “green” energy drumming, election disintegrity, et cetera.

We would cite additional debt heaped on by extravagant Democratic spending. Yet the nation’s debt galloped by bounds under Mr. Trump’s reign. Prior even to the pandemic, the fellow liked to spend money. We do not believe the shade of Cal Coolidge will seize control of Don Trump next time.

And if Mr. Trump gets in? The other half of the nation - the half for Ms. Harris - must endure four years of dictatorship, threats to democracy, retribution, isolationism, trade war, racism, disinformation, Russophilia and every other species of calamity. That is, victory by either will leave half the nation very far from gruntled.

The Old Politics Are Gone: We recall the days when politics centered within a fairly limited range. Should the highest marginal tax rate settle at 36% - or 39%? Should this regulation go upon the statute books or come off the statute books? Should we spend x on “defense,” x+1 or x-1?

Yet in these our days, political combats assume a more… fundamental coloring. Red-state America and blue-state America are at each other’s throats. And neither intends to let go the chokehold. At essence - as we have argued before - it is because politics disunites, divides, disrupts, discombobulates. It is a twin of war itself. For politics disunites, divides, disrupts and discombobulates as war itself. Democratic politics offer no exception. It in fact constitutes the very proof of the rule.

The Beauty of Federalism: And as we have likewise argued before: The higher the office… the greater the menace. We argued, for example, that the mayor of Why, Arizona, may impose his torments upon his outvoted victims - as may the mayor of Whynot, North Carolina. Yet these victims are free to jump the fence. The bordering hamlet might run to saner and more tolerable settings as the outvoted sees them. And so the oppressed can flee, refugees from oppression.

The same asylum-seeking applies to individual states. Has a California or an Oregon or an Illinois gone lunatic? For many they have. But a Texas or a Tennessee or a Utah holds out its beacon. These local competitions form a severe brake on the natural rascalities of politics, especially in the American system. These local competitions, in fact, form the crowning glory of the American device of government.

But to escape a president? A fellow must jump the Rio Grande to the south, the 49th parallel to the north or swim oceans east or west to get away. If he chooses to linger on, he must rot down four years until he takes another go at the vote booth. And if the scalawag wins reelection? Our poor wretch must endure another four years under occupation - for a total of eight. We have previously contrasted the political system with the market system. Today we do it again…

Voting in the Marketplace: We have argued that free markets - authentically free markets - lack entirely the violent combats central to politics. And that they are scenes of peace, tolerance… and justice. Consider, for example, a Coca-Cola. This beverage holds itself out before the American people. It is Candidate X in a theoretical market election. “Vote for me,” yells this candidate. I’m the “real thing.” Behind the other podium stands a Pepsi-Cola - Candidate Y. “No. Vote for me,” counters this fellow. Drink me “for the love of it.”

The fickle and capricious voter proceeds to choose. Out comes his wallet, containing his vote for one or the other. Yet does his individual vote injure, usurp or ruffle the opposing voter? Does he club the other voter over the head to enforce his wishes… as he does in politics? He does not.

Satisfied Voters: A voter for either Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola is a satisfied voter. Crucially, neither denies the other his soft drink of choice. Multiply this one example countless times and in countless directions. What emerges is a picture of majestic electoral peace and serenity. McDonald’s vs. Burger King, Honda vs. Ford, Nike vs. Adidas, Walmart vs. Target… it is all one.

Chain a red-state American to a blue-state American. Compel them to vote between any product on the free and open market. The blue-state voter may razz the red-stater’s ghastly and barbarian tastes. The red-state voter may in turn razz the blue-stater’s effete and supercilious tastes. But neither attempts to dragoon or bayonet the other. Each concedes the other’s freedom to vote his own way, as he might, according to his liver and lights. Thus peace prevails between them.

Yet when the political voter steps into the vote booth on Election Day - conversely - he conducts a sort of warfare. He wants to boss the opposing voter in a way the opposing voter does not wish to be bossed. He in essence places a gun against the fellow’s ribs. And when he pulls the lever? He pulls the trigger.

Two Wolves and a Lamb: We must therefore conclude the free market’s voting system is vastly superior to political voting. A vote in the marketplace is a “win, win” deal, as our co-founder Bill Bonner styles it. Both purchaser and producer benefit from the transaction. What is politics then but a colossal “win, lose” deal? Do we propose an alternative to the political arrangement? No - not earnestly. We merely diagnose a disorder. We do not prescribe a fix.

You say the system under which we wallow is the best on offer in this fallen world of sin. There is very little alternative. We must simply make the best of it. You may very well be correct. You are very likely correct. Yet as old Ben Franklin never said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” What if you are the lamb?"

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical: You Think It's Bad Now? Well, You Haven't Seen Anything Yet!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/13/24
"Situation Critical: You Think It's Bad Now? 
Well, You Haven't Seen Anything Yet!"
Comments here:
o

Thursday, September 12, 2024

"Alert! Putin Warns NATO Is About To Declare War; US Preps Farmland For Nuclear Event"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/12/24
"Alert! Putin Warns NATO Is About To Declare War;
 US Preps Farmland For Nuclear Event"
Comments here:

God help us...

"NATO, You Are Declaring War On Russia! We Will Respond!" Putin Warns West"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 9/12/24
"NATO, You Are Declaring War On Russia! 
We Will Respond!" Putin Warns West"
"Over the past 24 hours we've seen that the deep state puppets running the White House have finalized plans to expand the war against Russia. According to Politico the US and UK are getting ready for a massive escalation in the war against Russia."
Comments here:

"Putin Threatens War As Western Allies 
Near Deal On Missile Strikes In Russia"
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India,  9/12/24
"Russia Openly Threatens To Wipe Out UK 
With Hypersonic Missiles; Putin Aide's Chilling Threat"
"Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now Deputy Chair of the Security Council, has dismissed UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy's promise of 100 years of support for Ukraine as a lie. Medvedev mocked Lammy's remarks and threatened the UK, claiming the island of Britain might sink in the coming years."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/11/24
"EMERGENCY ALERT! Russia's Global Nuclear 
Exercise As NATO Prepares To Strike Moscow Before Election!"
Comments here:
o

Tony Robbins, "How to Love Today As If It Were Your Last"

Read the post above this one...
Tony Robbins, 
"How to Love Today As If It Were Your Last"
Comments here:

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, 
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?" 
- Stephen Levine

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad"

Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In the lower left corner, surrounded by blue spiral arms, is spiral galaxy M81. In the upper right corner, marked by red gas and dust clouds, is irregular galaxy M82. This stunning vista shows these two mammoth galaxies locked in gravitational combat, as they have been for the past billion years. The gravity from each galaxy dramatically affects the other during each hundred million-year pass.
Last go-round, M82's gravity likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81's spiral arms. But M81 left M82 with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. This big battle is seen from Earth through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy. In a few billion years only one galaxy will remain."
o
"When observing the stars, you should see them in another perspective. Take into account what they really are: the mothers of the atoms from which we are constituted, the atoms that constitute the mortal and thinking species that admire the sun as a god, a father or a nuclear power station. The particles that were composed at the beginning of the Universe, the atoms that were forged in the stars, the molecules that were constituted on Earth or in another place… all that is also inside us."
- Michel Cassé, French astro-physicist, "Desafio do Século XXI"

"From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation"

"From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to 
Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation"
By Maria Popova

"We were never promised any of it - this world of cottonwoods and clouds - when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are - creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb. Creatures who hope.

A generation after Maya Angelou held up a cosmic mirror to humanity with “A Brave and Startling Truth,” Pattiann Rogers - who writes with uncommon virtuosity about the intersection of the cosmic and the human, and whose poems have therefore been a frequent presence in "The Universe in Verse" - offers a poignant cosmogony of our self-creation in the stunning final poem of her book "Flickering" (public library).                                                            

                                             "Homo Sapiens: Creating Themselves"

by Pattiann Rogers, Read by Maria Popova

I.
"Formed in the black-light center of a star-circling
galaxy; formed in whirlpool images of froth
and flume and fulcrum; in the center image of herring
circling like pieces of silver swirling fast, a shoaling
circle of deception; in the whirlpool perfume of sex
in the deepest curve of a lily’s soft corolla. Created
within the images of the creator’s creation.

Born with the same grimacing wrench of a tree-covered
cliff split wide suddenly by lightning and opened
to thundering clouds of hail and rain.

Cured in the summer sun as if in a potter’s oven,
polished like a stone rolled by a river, emboldened
by the image of the expanse beyond earth’s horizon,
inside and outside a circumference in the image
of freedom.

Given the image of starlight clusters steadily silent
above a hillside-silence of fallen snow… let there be sleep.

II.
Inheriting from the earth’s scrambling minions,
images of thorn and bur, fang and claw, stealth,
deceit, poison, camouflage, blade, and blood…
let there be suffering, let there be survival.

Shaped by the image of the onset and unstoppable
devouring eclipse of the sun, the tempestuous, ecliptic
eating of the moon, the volcanic explosions of burning
rocks and fiery hail of ashes to death… let there be
terror and tears. Let there be pity.

Created in the image of fear inside a crawfish
skittering backward through a freshwater stream
with all eight appendages in perfect coordination,
both pincers held high, backing into safety beneath
a fallen leaf refuge… let there be home.

III.
Made in the image of the moon, where else
would the name of ivory rock craters shine
except in our eyes… let there be language.

Displayed in the image of the rotting seed
on the same stem with the swelling blossom…
let there be hope.

Homo sapiens creating themselves after the manner
and image of the creator’s ongoing creation — slowly,
eventual, alert and imagined, composing, dissembling,
until the right chord sounds from one brave strum
of the right strings reverberating, fading away
like evening… let there be pathos, let there be
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness. Let there be
weightless beauty.

Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
and accounting, let there be praise resounding."


Complement with astronomer-poet Rebecca Elson’s ode to dark matter and the mystery of being, “Let There Always Be Light,” non-speaking autistic poet Hannah Emerson’s astonishing “Center of the Universe,” and Jane Hirshfield’s “To Be a Person,” then revisit Pattiann Rogers’s harmonic of the human and cosmic perspectives, read by David Byrne and illustrated by Maira Kalman."

"They Couldn't Have Known..."

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie – that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all. But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”
- Lauren Oliver

Chet Raymo, "Trying To Be Good"

"Trying To Be Good”
by Chet Raymo

“A few lines from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”:

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”

“I’ve quoted these lines before, if not here, then elsewhere. When I first read them back in the late 80s, they resonated with what I felt at the time. I had spent part of my earliest adulthood walking on my knees, both literally and metaphorically, seeking to tame what I took to be the animal within. Saint Augustine was whispering in my ear, and Bernanos’ gloomy country priest walked at my side. I was ready to follow Thomas Merton into the desert; indeed, I once took myself briefly to the monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky, where Merton was in residence. That was a journey of more than a hundred miles, and I was busy repenting, although of what I don’t know.

As I read those lines from Mary Oliver in middle age, I had long been cultivating the “soft animal” within, immersing myself in the is-ness of things, the flesh and blood, the gorgeously sensual. No more walking on my knees, repenting. I walked proudly upright, with my sketchbook and my watercolors, my binoculars and my magnifier, sniffing the world like an animal on the prowl. I was letting my body learn to “love what it loves.” Those were the years I wrote “The Soul of the Night” and “Honey From Stone”- the most intensely creative years of my life. The world offered itself to my imagination, if I may borrow another line from “Wild Geese.”

And now, another half-lifetime has passed. The soft animal dozes, the body seeks repose. And I think of the first line quoted above: “You do not have to be good.” What could the poet have possibly meant by that? Of course one has to be good. In a cell at Gethsemane or on the bridge over Queset Brook, one has to be good. And so one tries, one tries. The soft animal of the body that nature has contrived for us is not fine-tuned for goodness.”
o
“Wild Geese”

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

- Mary Oliver

Free Download: Henry Miller, "Tropic Of Cancer"

“The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.

All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.

At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts. On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.”
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"

Freely download "Tropic of Cancer", by Henry Miller, here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Weatherford, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Oh, The Humanity!"

“One of the penalties of being a human being is other human beings.”
- Christopher Morley, “Hide and Seek”

“The truth is... that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond 
what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. 
Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness.”
- Virginia Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”

“The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

"Hell is other people."
- Sartre

"The Gospel of Radicalism"

"The Gospel of Radicalism"
by Paul Rosenberg

"A few hundred years ago it was a standard medical practice to bleed sick people: to make cuts in various parts of their bodies and to drain blood from them. Most people submitted to this useless and frequently harmful treatment without question. Would you have been one of them?

What do you think of the bleeders? Does it seem to you that they were from a primitive and ignorant age? Well, guess how your descendants are going to think about our generation in a few hundred years! Unless you can break from the clamor of popular opinions, you are doomed to that fate.

All of the social and political norms that people now hold dear will someday be gone and will look as archaic as praying to the gods of wind and rain. Rationalize anything you want, but most people are living in ways that will be pitied by future generations. The fashion of this world will pass away, and it will not be missed.

Look at our history: 6,000 years of wars, famines and nonstop emotional misery. Isn’t it time to question the rules we’ve been living under?

At some point, shouldn’t it become obvious? How much misery do you need before you start to ask hard questions? Shall I recite statistics to you of how many millions of people were violently killed in the past century? How many millions were starved to death by the authorities that ruled them? How many people – probably billions – who are emotionally damaged to the point of reduced function? What will it take? Are you in so deep a fog that you will never question whether something is fundamentally wrong?

Humanity in our time remains in infancy. We are essentially unlimited creatures, yet we have been wallowing in abject poverty – physically, mentally, and spiritually.

We have natures that are suited to high adventure, yet we remain stagnant. Why? Because we’ve been conditioned only to exist, not to live. That conditioning was imposed upon us as children, then reinforced during many years of compulsory training. After a while, we learned not to buck the system and eventually to find a safe place within the social order. We are afraid to venture too far out. The powers that be made sport of ruining people who venture too far out of bounds, so we stayed safe and ignored our selves in the process. Safety is a fine thing to choose when you are five years old but not when you are grown!

Your life is too valuable not to be lived. By virtue of being a healthy human, you have what seems to be unlimited potential. Why the urge to sit quietly? Why the fear of movement and expressiveness? Why the paralyzing fear of being different? Wake up! Don’t be satisfied to merely exist. Live!"

“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars… everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
- Thornton Wilder

"What Are The Facts?"

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” 
- Robert A. Heinlein

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
- Carl Sagan

And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
 however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

Hey, who lied and told you any of this was easy?

Dan, I Allegedly, "Would You Sue? You Won't Believe This!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/12/24
"Would You Sue? You Won't Believe This!"
"Today we dive into the wild world of real estate where a tech billionaire is suing his agent for allegedly misleading him into a $6 million discount. Can you imagine selling a home to Jeff Bezos and not knowing it? It's a story of wealth, deception, and high-stakes lawsuits in the exclusive Billionaire's Bunker. Plus, I'll discuss the impact of real estate scams and other financial traps affecting us all."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "It's Getting Dangerous, More Break-Ins; Heading To Los Angeles, Time To Feed The Homeless Today"

Jeremiah Babe, AM 9/12/24
"It's Getting Dangerous, More Break-Ins;
 Heading To Los Angeles, Time To Feed The Homeless Today"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "6 Days. Countdown To Massive Currency Devaluation And Rate Suppression Cycle Nightmare"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/12/24
"6 Days. Countdown To Massive Currency Devaluation 
And Rate Suppression Cycle Nightmare"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Jim Kunstler, "The Votes and Who Counts Them"

"The Votes and Who Counts Them"
by Jim Kunstler

"Those who vote decide nothing. 
Those who count the vote decide everything."
- Joseph Stalin 

“The world is a dangerous place to live - not because of the people
 who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” 
- Albert Einstein

"When The New York Times tells you that the United States Constitution is a threat to democracy - as it did on the front page of its August 31 edition - you know that you are in thrall to exceedingly subtle minds. The Times only employs persons, both birthing and other, of the subtlest minds. You can tell because they are credentialed by our country’s finest institutions of educational credentialing.

They come to The Times fully equipped with the armamentarium of advanced, progressive, innovative, nuanced, cutting-edge modes of understanding our world - which, you’ll agree, is a pretty goshdurned complex place, and rather niggardly in yielding its secret workings. Hence, The Times has concluded that the Constitution is flawed, perhaps fatally, because it allowed for the election of Donald Trump once, and now, possibly, a second time:

"It’s no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution. But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another, very different, argument: that Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional.”

The Constitution does not stipulate a particular election day, but subsequent US law established the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day for federal elections (the states can establish their own election dates for state and local offices). This changed beginning in the year 2000, when Oregon legislated to conduct all elections by mail-in ballot and other states followed with alterations to voting methods beyond a single election day. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted states to permanently relax rules on absentee ballots and expand mail-in voting, under guidance from the federal agencies such as the CDC, while the CARES Act of 2020 provided emergency funding to implement procedures for mail-in voting in order to reduce in-person voting that might enable the spread of Covid-19.

All of that followed orderly legislative procedure. The result was widespread ballot fraud, especially in crucial swing voting districts, much of it arrant. Contrary to official narratives out of the “Joe Biden” administration and the salient organs of corporate news, the allegations of widespread fraud were not “baseless” nor were they “conspiracy theories.” Subtle minds schooled in nuanced, cutting-age modes of analysis agreed to ignore documentary evidence of ballot fraud because it disfavored their preferred candidate, “Joe Biden.” Subtler judicial minds subsequently dismissed challenges to official tallies.

Other shenanigans such as the $400-million that Mark Zuckerberg (Meta and Facebook) injected into swing districts for “election administration and voter turn-out,” via his Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), was not adjudicated in any court. The upshot of the “Zuckerbucks” prank was that polling offiicials in many precincts were replaced by Democratic Party activists who ended up counting the votes. The Federal Election Commission (after “Joe Biden” became president) decided that under federal campaign finance law, the contributions were not seen as illegal - though the “Zuckerbucks” scandal did lead to legislative reform in several states.

You might suppose in the years since the 2020 election that opportunity would be seized to materially correct the weaknesses of mail-in ballots, early voting, ballot “harvesting” practices, giant “balloting centers,” and the use of vote-tallying machines (Dominion, etc.) with modems allowing for Internet hackery. The best and simplest reform would be a return to paper ballots cast only on one election day, with voter ID and proof of citizenship (accomplished prior in voter registration), conducted in smaller, distributed precinct polling places that make hand-counting of ballots practical. Alas, this was too difficult for Congress, while the subtle, nuanced, cutting-edge minds working in news media were not interested in such straightforward reform and did not advocate for it.

Rather, the news media advocated for further laxity in voting rules. And so, now they are actually arguing about whether it is desirable for non-citizens to vote. The “Joe Biden” administration allowed at least 10-million people to enter the country illegally since 2021 and have gotten a million or more of them registered to vote via motor-voter laws - automatic registration when an illegal alien gets a driver’s license, and ditto when they apply for various social services. Alejandro Mayorkas’s Department of Homeland Security has shrewdly distributed large numbers of these illegal aliens into swing districts of states crucial to the Democratic Party’s election chances.

The inquiring mind is prompted to wonder whether it is the US Constitution that is a “menace to democracy” or the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is issuing communiqués on “X” (Twitter) that his party is paying special attention to voting fraud in the current election, with imputations of very severe punishment to cheaters and fraudsters. You might think that the Kamala Harris campaign would declare likewise."

"EMERGENCY ALERT! Russia's Global Nuclear Exercise As NATO Prepares To Strike Moscow Before Election!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/11/24
"EMERGENCY ALERT! Russia's Global Nuclear 
Exercise As NATO Prepares To Strike Moscow Before Election!"
Comments here:

OMG, these totally insane psychopaths are really going to do it!
We're all dead...

"Will Russia Push the Button?"

Full screen recommended.
"Will Russia Push the Button?"
By Martin Armstrong

"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception." 
- Carl Sagan

"Dmitry Konstantinovich Kiselyov (born 1954) is a major TV host, and his latest warning to the West is to issue an ultimatum to the UK and the US. On Russian TV, Kiselyov warned that if a Western power deploys soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to ‘inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,’ it will result in Armageddon. Of course, what I find stunning is how the Western press characterizes him as “Vladimir Putin’s propagandist,” and the implication of those words is that they are not a real threat. The press takes NOTHING said from Russia seriously – it’s all a joke, just propaganda. As they said of Rome when it fell, the Romans were still laughing, watching the games to notice they had been invaded. Not a single journalist has any integrity, for they never consider when they are reading the American/European propaganda that what if they are sleepwalking society into nuclear war?

Kiselyov is not going to say this on national TV without the Kremlin actually delivering this warning. He said: ‘If Nato countries send their troops into Ukraine in order to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, then the very moment about which Putin once said, “Why do we need the world, if there is no Russia in it?” would come.‌

Russia has indeed threatened to ‘turn the US into radioactive ash’ and ‘sink Britain’ below the waves. While some NATO leaders have been more circumspect, this need for war to justify the defaulting on debt that is the real factor behind the West’s desire for war will have far greater consequences than these fake world leaders who are all hand puppets of the Neocons. Kiselyov added: “This is not propaganda.” Yet in the West, the Neocons are saying this is a bluff, and Putin will never use Nukes so the West can completely destroy Russia – their hated enemy for decades, without a shot fired?

I have an old Russian friend who we met back in Tokyo some 20 years ago. She has reiterated to me a question, and she is NOT political or involved in the government. “Why does the world hate us so much?”

This is where my experience with governments and geopolitics clashes with the reality of humanity. I know the answer is that these fake leaders will NEVER admit that borrowing year after year to get votes is coming to an end and they can no longer sustain our present monetary system - which is why they are moving to CBDCs, and many are talking about now taxing even unrealized gains in stocks and real estate. They think they can cover up their disastrous fiscal mismanagement since World War II with war.

NATO is scared to death if there is no threat of war, then they will be irrelevant and defunded with the money going to Climate Change. They should heed the words of Mahatma Gandhi, but of course, they will NEVER listen: “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” If NATO keeps up this propaganda that Russia will invade and seek to conquer Europe, what they are doing is pushing Russia into a corner where they might as well commit the annihilation they have been accused of harboring.

When I went into the Kakadu in North Australia and lived off the land for two weeks, my guide, who was the real live version of Crocodile Dundee, warned me that a wounded snake is far more aggressive and even more vigorous/dangerous, so never approach such a snake or I would be dead in minutes. No amount of “training” can prevent terrified wild animals from behaving instinctively or defensively, and trainers and handlers cannot always protect themselves and the public. This has been documented many times with trainers being attacked.

To think for even one second that a nation will not defend itself when its existence is threatened is absolute stupidity. But we have no real investigative journalists and the mainstream media are just propaganda agents that they are accusing Kiselyov of being. Russia will launch whatever it has, as would China, and so would the United States if it is about to be conquered. A defeated person is ALWAYS far more dangerous, just as that snake I was warned about.

This war would be over in 24 hours. The Minsk Agreement that the West negotiated was to buy time to start this war. The West played Putin for a fool. He has offered peace many times. But the West wants the war to cover up the collapse of this, ending borrowing with no intention of ever paying off any debt. All pensions will collapse when they get to the point that they are unable to sell new debt to pay off the old.

I warned on February 22, 2022, that Volodymyr Zelensky would be the man they hired to create World War III. My sources made it clear that the election was rigged. The oligarch behind Zelensky was the same one who hired Hunter Biden. Our future will be destroyed by this man who takes orders from the American Neocon. There will be no DEFEAT of Russia. For anyone in charge of a country that was about to be destroyed, the natural response is to take everyone else with you – just push the bottom.

(1) Russia won – Ukraine has lost, and NO Amount of Money will win this war
(2) The Administration is pouring money down a black hole where NOBODY knows where it is going
(3) Congress is throwing money into a failed war, and they do not demand any accountability, as was the case with Iraq and Afghanistan. Why?
(4) Those who will benefit are the Western firms that invested in Ukraine and have lost their shirt – Another bailout?

This is why our insane leaders are urging NATO to send in troops to Ukraine, which will start World War III. Russia is warning us NOT to do this, and our Western Press refuses to acknowledge anything our warmonger leaders are doing, no less the risks that they are subjecting everyone to over a civil war the West began with this intention from the outset. Some inside Russia advocate nuking Kyiv in a major display and then showing the world what will happen if we continue to go down this path. They suggest this is the ONLY way to stop World War III and that the people will wake up and overthrow the warmonger leaders pushing us to Armageddon.

Putin is NOT a warmonger despite all the bullshit put out by the Western Press. The West staged the Moscow Nightclub attack and did not even try to hide that they were behind it, hoping Putin would respond. They are desperate to try to get Putin to attack anything in NATO so they can pretend he is the aggressor when it is our Neocons and NATO. What I fear is that Ukraine will try to kill Putin, KNOWING that such an act will replace him with a warmonger, and we will get into World War III. I can confirm that the critics behind Putin have been telling him this war is with the USA and NATO – not Ukraine. The hardliners have told him he should have taken out Ukraine as the US did to Iraq, and this war would have been over in 6 weeks, and Zelensky would not have been able to create his media tour.

If Ukraine killed Putin, it would be at the direction of NATO, and then they will get their World War III. That would be the result if Russia attacked Washington to kill Biden, no matter how unpopular he is. Such an act would galvanize the USA into a single action for war."

"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"

"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat 
Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"

"Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency. Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports.

“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying. “Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tonnes to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.

Putin said in February that the Sarmat – one of several advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, is deployed now. In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.

The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.

Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s. Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region."
o
RS-28 Sarmat
15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.
One Sarmat can destroy an area the size of Texas or France.
A hypersonic nuclear missile launched from Russia will hit Washington, DC in 23 minutes.
Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...
o
The Poseidon torpedo with a 100 megaton warhead explodes deep underwater, causing a 1,600 foot high tidal wave which destroys everything on the U.S. East coast as far inland as West Virginia. England would simply disappear beneath the waves...

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Beware: The BRICS Will End The Dollar; Stock Market Miracle Today"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/11/24
"Beware: The BRICS Will End The Dollar; 
Stock Market Miracle Today"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "A World Financial Meltdown Is Already Happening!"

Gregory Mannarino, 9/11/24
"A World Financial Meltdown Is Already Happening!"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Land of Forever"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Land of Forever"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”