Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, April 15, 2022
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar have a hook-like appearance in wide-field images. But this mosaicked close-up, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatory data, follows the galaxy's structure in amazing detail.
Obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surround a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars. The sharp image data also reveal more distant background galaxies seen right through NGC 2442's star clusters and nebulae. The image spans about 75,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442."
"The Trial of Winnie the Pooh"
"The Trial of Winnie the Pooh"
by Jim Kunstler
"A solemn silence turned collective gasp in the District of Columbia Woke Circuit courtroom as two bailiffs entered the door beside the jury box with the small cream-colored bear suspended between them, his stumpy hind legs wheeling fruitlessly to seek purchase in the unavailing air. The Queen of Hearts, presiding, banged her gavel as the little bear was seated at the table for the defense beside another rather small, darkish, furtive figure.
The Queen of Hearts peered over her half-glasses at the defendant and snarled, “State your full name and residence.”
“Winnie-the-Pooh,” the defendant said. “From the Hundred Acre Wood.”
“What is your personal pronoun?”
The bear looked perplexed. “Oh, bother,” he said. “Nobody I know has such a thing?”
“Of course they do,” the Queen said.
“Perhaps it’s ‘the’,” the bear said.
“That is a definite article, not a pronoun!” the Queen barked. “Are you an imbecile?"
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s ‘dear'”-
“That’s enough out of you!” the Queen said. “And let’s have no more impertinence! Do you have counsel?"
“Why, yes,” the bear said. “Mr. Kafka, who is seated beside me.”
“You are mistaken,” the Queen said. “That is a cockroach seated beside you, and the court is displeased to see it. Bailiff, please remove that disgusting cockroach from my court.” Mr. Kafka, gesticulating in protest with all six arms and legs, had to be dragged out.
“First witness!” the Queen screeched. “Counsel for the prosecution...” "Calling Uncle Remus,” said the prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, famous for his exploits in the Enron case and with The Mueller Team in the old Russia collusion days. An elderly gentleman-of-color with white beard and a kindly face limped forward and took the witness stand.
“Do you know this bear?” Weissmann asked. “I knows a Brer B’ar,” Uncle Remus said. “But he a black b’ar. Dishyere one a white b’ar.”
“Exactly!” Weissmann said. “Dismissed.”
“Dat all?” Uncle Remus asked.
“It’s plenty,” Weissmann retorted and smirked at the jury, composed of members from the United Federation of Teachers, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Antifa, who all nodded amongst themselves. “A white bear!” Weissmann repeated for emphasis, shaking his head. “And not a polar bear, either. A white bear. From England. Think about it…!” The jurors emitted growls of opprobrium.
“Next witness,” the Queen cried.
“Calling N-Word Jim,” Weissmann said.
A strapping middle-aged gentleman-of-color, dressed in ragged clothes, strode to the witness chair.
“You reside in libraries all over the world, is that correct?” the attorney asked.
“Yassuh, dat is so. But I’se originally fum Hannibal, Missouri.”
“Are you acquainted with the defendant?”
“I done seen him on many a shelf ‘round de worl’.”
“How much shelf space does he occupy compared to you?”
“Well, fur as I knows, ‘bout double.”
“Does that seem fair to you?”
“Way I sees it, he in mebbe twice as minny books as me and Huck.”
“Huck! Who is this Huck?”
“White boy I done made a journey down de ribber wif one time.”
“What is your experience with white folks, Jim?”
“Well, dey runs mos’ everything, I ‘spect. Leas’ as fur as I kin see.”
“Exactly!” Weissmann argued. “Is it not white privilege to — as you say — run everything?” he added, shaking his head gravely. “Hegemonizing and colonizing literature everywhere you look.”
“Say, what…?” the witness rejoined and pulled his chin.
“You can go back to your raft, Jim,” Weissmann said. “Dismissed. Calling Mr. Christopher Robin.”
A very old man, bent and trembling, shuffled forward to the stand, leaning on his brass-headed cane.
“You’ve been acquainted with the defendant for how many years?”
“Oh, yes, many, since…let’s see… uh, nineteen hundred and twenty-six, I’d say.”
“In all those years, did he ever… touch you?”
“We held hands. And hugged frequently.”
“I see,” Weissmann sneered. “And this ‘touching’ started when you were, what? About five years old?”
“I suppose. Yes. It was a very long time ago.”
“Do you recall an incident involving the defendant, a person named Piglet, and a broken balloon?”
“Yes… yes, I do!”
“That was not really a balloon, was it, Mr. Robin?”
“At the time, I thought…”
“You thought!” Weissmann barked. “We all think, don’t we? Sometimes maybe a little too much! I’ll tell you what I think: I think the jury can see exactly what was going on between you and the defendant, this very privileged bear. And if they think the way I do - that is, as a normal person with healthy morals - they’ll think that this was depraved behavior on the part of this bear, routinely abusing a five-year-old boy, year after year after year!”
The jury members all nodded avidly and buzzed between themselves.
Christopher Robin looked up at the bench.
“Balloon, indeed!” the Queen snorted, wagging her finger at both the bear and Christopher Robin. “I think we’ve heard enough.” “No! I have one other witness,” Weissmann said. “Calling Peter Pan….” A figure wearing a leaf-green tunic and tights, and a feathered cap, flew across the room and landed in the witness seat.
“You’ve had occasion to work at the Disney Studios with the defendant, have you not?”
“I would see him around the lot on lunch breaks,” Pan said. “But we weren’t on the same pictures - except one time for a TV Christmas special where we all did cameos.”
“And what was your impression of this bear?”
“He made a crack about not believing in fairies. I didn’t know if he was kidding or not.”
“Were you hurt by that remark?”
“Not personally, but I saw what it did to my sidekick, Tinkerbelle. Her light almost went out.”
“Your honor, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries of the jury, we have definitely heard enough.”
“The defense rests!” the Queen of Hearts screeched. “Mr. Pooh, you have led a life of disgusting racism, colonialism, hate-ism, white supremacy, and depravity. I am directing the jury to find you guilty as charged and sentence you to be cancelled.” She pounded the bench with her gavel.
“Oh, bother,” Winnie the Pooh said, still perplexed and bewildered.
“Take him out, burn all those wicked books of his, and put him on top of the fire.”
“Lawks a’mercy,” Uncle Remus cried from the back of the room.
“See you up in sweet Beulah-land, Pooh, honey,” N-Word Jim said.
“Next case!” the Red Queen yelled above the commotion. “The people versus Robin Hood and his so-called Merry Men.”
Roll credits.
Fade to black…"
"Evil, I Think..."
"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
- G. M. Gilbert
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"It Is Inevitable..."
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
- Blaise Pascal
David Stockman, "The Inflationary Hell That's About to Break Loose"
"The Inflationary Hell That's About to Break Loose"
by David Stockman
"It is only a matter of time before Kiev surrenders to the Russians, with or without their clown-car president signing the armistice. But that deal will be so onerous from Washington’s perspective that it will not mark the end of the sanctions war, but will be an excuse for its actual intensification and indefinite prolongation.
When that becomes the reality, however, inflationary hell will break out all over the place. And the Fed’s decades-long experiment in egregious, inflationary money-pumping will splatter ignominiously all over the Eccles Building (Fed headquarters). The Fed has already pumped enormous distortions into the economy and inflated an “everything bubble.” The next round of money printing is likely to bring the situation to a breaking point.
It now appears that commodities markets have been so drastically roiled by the action to date that Washington’s war on the global trading and payments system is now open-ended and can theoretically go on for years. That’s because the Russian-loathing, Putin-demonizing Dems now in charge of policy in Washington cannot even see straight when it comes to the real issues of the conflict.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with partitioning Ukraine and Crimea, nor with Putin’s proposed new security arrangement that would have NATO move its missile bases to the pre-1999 status quo and the re-garrisoning of US and Western military forces to the old NATO territories.
But these plausible solutions are so far removed from the war fevers now raging on the Potomac that there is no chance of Washington embracing a negotiated solution to the Ukrainian war. It will actually take a historic GOP sweep in the 2024 elections to clear the decks of Putin/Russian demonization, and even that would not make a difference if the blood-thirsty neocons and military hawks retained control of the GOP.
Meanwhile, just like that, the price of oil recently hit $130 per barrel. Here’s the thing. Double-digit inflation is now guaranteed and it will be long-lasting. That’s because the Fed is occupied by what amounts to anti-Volckers. These group-think addicted Keynesian crackpots are clueless about the dire inflationary fires now raging and are still buying bonds (QE) and planning only tepid 25 basis point rate increases when actually hundreds of basis points of rate increases are needed ASAP.
Here is just one example. Nickel spot prices are up nearly 5X, and this is merely illustrative of the inflationary firestorm now gathering a head of steam. Wheat prices have skyrocketed more than 60% recently as the war effectively shut off more than 30% of the world’s wheat supply, which ordinarily trades out of the Black Sea ports for Ukraine and Russian producers. The commodity, in turn, is used in everything from bread to cookies and noodles. Accordingly, those soaring upstream costs will rapidly work their way down the processing pipeline until they arrive on the grocery shelves. When? Just in time for American consumers to be paying $6 per gallon to drive to Kroger’s to pick up an inflated-priced loaf of bread.
And there is far more to come."
"This Very Moment..."
“Hope is always about the future. And it isn’t always good news. Sometimes, hope can imprison us with belief or expectation that something will happen in the future to change our lives. Similarly hopelessness isn’t always about despair. Hopelessness can bring us right into this very moment and answer all of life’s most difficult questions. Who am I? Where am I? What does this mean? And what now?”
- Daniel Gottlieb
Bill Bonner, "Crucified on a Cross of Paper Money"
"Crucified on a Cross of Paper Money"
by Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - "Good Friday, 2022. As long time sufferers of this blog know, we are part-time residents of a country that is way ahead of the US. Whatever dumbbell thing US politicians, opinion mongers, and the Establishment Elite do in America… the Argentines have already done it, more than once… and with style. And so… when we are down here, we keep our eyes open… and learn something.
This morning, for example, we have a crew of 5 masons and laborers working on a low stone-and-adobe wall. It is meant to hide the irrigation canal from the house.
(The Great Wall of San Martin. Photo: Bill)
At least three of them are skilled stone masons. They’ve been working for three days already – assembling stone and adobes, sand, mud and cement. They begin at 7:30 in the morning. They take a two-hour break for lunch… and work until about 7 in the evening. It looks like they will spend a total of 3 weeks on the job. They bid $3,000 to get the job. After materials, that works out to about $33 per person/day. They will consider that a very good wage.
In the US, a mason should be able to earn about $25 an hour. Or around $50,000 per year. Why the big difference? What makes a mud-slinger so much more valuable in the US than in Argentina?
Unions, Socialism and Demagoguery: Could it simply be a matter of public policy? Like the US, Argentina has abundant resources and a European culture. And until the 1940s, it was on a similar path of development with income per capita much like England or France. But Argentina had more Italian immigrants than the US. They were fond of trade unions, socialism and demagoguery. They poured into Buenos Aires early in the 20th century and quickly became the dominant base of voting power. Ever since, the political math always adds up to the same thing: promise the Buenos Aires mobs more free stuff… and get elected.
Like the US, the Argentine government routinely spends more than it can afford. Typically, it borrows the rest… and then stiffs its creditors 10 years later. Private lenders are naturally wary. If they’re going to lend any more money to the gauchos, they need high interest rates to make up for the high likelihood that the latter won’t pay. This limited how much the Argentines could borrow.
But then, along came the Great and the Good… central bankers from the US and Europe… who decided that the world would be a better place if it had lower interest rates… and more money sloshing through its accounts. The idea is that money begets output. And more output equals more real wealth.
On the surface of it, any dope can see that the proposition is fraudulent. The whole thing is backward. The great French economist, Jean Baptiste Say explained it in the 19th century. You don’t actually buy products with money, said he; you buy them with other products. You have to give to get, in other words. You provide something of value to others… so they will provide something of value to you. Each person, trying to get more for himself, is thereby forced to give more… and thus (as if guided by an ‘invisible hand’) contributes to the material progress of the entire world.
Money is just a ‘medium of exchange.’ It is like a claim ticket for a car in a parking garage. The attendant can give you two tickets; you still won’t have two cars.
A Century of Debt: But persisting in the old fallacy – that money itself is the source of prosperity… and that printing up more money will ‘stimulate’ output – central bankers provided the world with so much new credit that even the Argentines could borrow at low rates. Naturally, they were happy to let others err on their behalf.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017: "Argentina sold a 100-year bond on Monday, the latest sign of investor hunger for yield as the country joined a small group to sell so-called century bonds. The Argentine government raised $2.75 billion through the debt issue with a yield of 7.9%, the country’s Ministry of Finance said."
A one hundred-year bond? From Argentina? Your editor laughed out loud. Statistically, the country would go broke 10 times before the bond was repaid. But for a few months, the joke was on him. In December of 2017, the ‘Century’ bond traded above par. And then gravity took over. By 2019, the bond had lost 60% of its value.
And then, yesterday, the gauchos announced a new central bank lending rate. Not because they wanted to; but because the IMF – the only lender still dumb enough to talk to them – insists upon it. Bloomberg: "Argentina Raises Key Rate To 47% as Inflation Hits 20-Year High." "Fourth rate hike this year as prices rose 6.7% m/m in March." "IMF agreement calls for real positive interest rates."
Argentina’s central bank raised interest rates for the fourth time this year after inflation data published earlier in the day showed prices increasing at the fastest monthly pace in 20 years. Yesterday, the 10-year Argie bond yielded 49%. If you could earn 49% on a 10-year bond, how much would a bond with a coupon of 7.2%, maturing in 2117 be worth? Not much.
But while Argentines slide smoothly into poverty, Americans stumble. With no IMF to discipline them, their central bank lends at a rate that is deeply negative – about MINUS 7.7%. And pity the poor US mason. He is being crucified on a cross of paper money. If he is lucky, he may get a 5% wage increase this year. Correctly measured, consumer prices are rising at about a 13% rate. This will mean a pay cut for him of about 8%... or a loss of $2 per hour.
That’s just the way it’s supposed to work. Inflation is a tax… a way of ripping off the working classes. It worked for Argentina’s political bosses. It will work for America’s jefes too. And perhaps on some Good Friday, in the glorious future, you’ll be able to hire an American bricklayer – in the post-dollar money of the time – for about $33 per day.
Happy Easter."
"One Chance..."
“You get that one chance; and damn it, you’ve got to take it! If there’s one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don’t let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement – the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness – that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn’t? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will… but I don’t think you should.”
- C. JoyBell C.
Jim Kunstler, "You’ve Been Misinformed"
"You’ve Been Misinformed"
by Jim Kunstler
"Isn’t it obvious by now that pervasive dishonesty is the foremost crisis of many crises in Western Civ generally and American life in particular? All our authorities have made themselves false, lying their way into the broad collapse of confidence that drives the nation toward some culminating horror show of strife and loss.
The go-to lever of concerted mind-f**kery has been the term-of-art misinformation, applied especially to things and propositions that are truthful - thereby confounding the public’s ability to discern truth in anything, or to discover how they are being misled in matters of life and death. We’ve allowed the worst in human nature to disgrace ourselves. Satan, Father of Lies, is Western Civ’s paragon of disgrace, and so American life appears more and more Satanic and disgraceful.
All this was epitomized in the operation of Twitter, the cheerful little bluebird of social messaging which evolved in a very few years into an instrument of coercion, punishment, deception, and lying, until it became clear that Twitter’s misinformation was misinformation itself. Half the nation doesn’t believe anything it is told by those in authority and the other half revels in its reckless abuse of authority.
And so, it’s refreshing to see one Elon Musk act to seize control of this Satanic vector of disgrace. Mr. Musk appears motivated to defeat the culture of lying by restoring open debate in the ubiquitous online public arena. It’s a heroic deed. But, you see, it’s not merely Twitter’s management or its biggest shareholders that Mr. Musk is messing with, but malign forces in the US government, which have surreptitiously taken control of Twitter and other social media to work its will on events. If you don’t know that Twitter, Facebook, and Google are proxies serving the US Intel Community, then you have not been paying attention.
Using Twitter to impose that culture of pervasive dishonesty in public chatter is what gave permission for all others to follow the script. Medicine has succeeded completely in disgracing and destroying itself by lying about everything connected to Covid-19, from its origins, to the insanely outlawed treatments for it, to the harmful actions of the vaccines, to the hidden data that might tell us the results of all that lying. Twitter set the tone for that with its censorship policies. Anyone who suggested that lockdowns, masking, remdesivir protocols, and vaccine mandates violated common decency was tossed out of the arena, often with added punishment of losing a career, a professional license, a livelihood, and having to endure the betrayal of colleagues cowed into silence.
Twitter also enabled the suicide of higher education, which has succumbed to a plague of Jacobin craziness that would embarrass the inmates of an old-time locked ward. The failure of authority on campus is cosmic. Can you name a single college president who has raised a voice against such manifest idiocy as men competing in women’s sports, the invention of ersatz fields of study, the re-segregation of dormitories and graduation ceremonies, the shouting down of invited lecturers, the persecution of free-thinking faculty, the kangaroo courts for sex disputes, and a hundred other violations of intellect and decency?
All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse.
Mighty forces are marshalling to prevent Elon Musk from buying up Twitter stock and taking the company private. Black Rock, Vanguard, the prince regent of Saudi Arabia are all principal stockholders in Twitter, with gazillions in capital to theoretically match and overcome Mr. Musk’s moves. Meanwhile, the Tesla boss maintains a prankish self-confidence in this exploit, offering cryptically comic gibes to a news media that is openly vested in opposing him. You have to suppose that he’s gamed out the gamble. He’s looking like someone who has dealt out a hand of cards aiming to shoot-the-moon.
The prospect of an open public arena for ideas is exhilarating all of a sudden, considering how the information-stream got hijacked in service to the wicked. It’s fun to see their tortured casuistry as they plead for “content moderation” - the phrase du jour for censorship, as if it were a good thing rather than the opposite of anything good. This feels like the beginning of something positive after a long siege political degeneracy. Let the sunshine in to disinfect the arena. Cast the Demons back into darkness. You go, Elon!"
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"I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies"
"I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies"
by Jim Rickards
"All wars are full of lies. Winston Churchill famously said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
We accept that idea broadly. Secret invasion plans should be closely held. The identities of spies must be kept under wraps. New weapons and defensive tools should not be revealed because enemies will be alerted to their potential and begin offensive workarounds.
Still, just because the government has legitimate reasons to deceive the public in wartime does not mean that citizens don’t have a duty to find the truth to the extent they can. The Russian-Ukraine kinetic war and the broader U.S.-Russian economic war are full of more lies than any public events I’ve seen in my lifetime including Vietnam, Watergate and the Iraq War. That’s how big the lies are.
The Bodyguard of Lies: Here’s the official U.S. narrative as echoed by the mainstream media: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, Putin’s three-day blitzkrieg of Kyiv has failed, Russian forces are bogged down and valiant Ukrainian troops are putting up a powerful defense and regaining lost ground with the help of weapons from NATO. In this version, President Zelenskyy is the new Churchill rallying patriots against an evil dictator. All of that is either entirely or mostly false.
Here’s the real story: Russia’s invasion is the end result of 14 years of provocation by the West, including repeated declarations that Ukraine will join NATO and a U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2014 that displaced a pro-Russian president.
Russia never planned a blitzkrieg on Kyiv. That’s a Western invention intended to make Putin look like a failure. In fact, Russia is slowly and methodically taking territory in the south and east of Ukraine in order to control the seacoasts, eliminate pro-fascist elements in Mariupol and establish pro-Russian autonomous zones in Donbas.
Churchill? Really? A full assault on Kyiv, if it ever comes, is last on the list. Ukraine may reoccupy a village here and there, but they’re losing ground in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Melitopol, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and surrounding areas. Moreover, Zelenskyy is no Churchill. He’s succeeded in presenting himself as a strong wartime leader, standing up to the big, bad Putin. But in reality, he’s a corrupt oligarch with millions of dollars hidden offshore. His acting skills have enhanced his propaganda efforts, but it doesn’t take much training to see how phony he is.
Innocent civilians, including women and children, are dying under his failed leadership and inability to come to terms with Putin before the invasion began. In a nutshell, Zelenskyy bet on support from Biden and the West and lost. There is ample evidence from numerous sources to support this analysis. Some of the best sources come from Switzerland, where military experts are infuriated that traditional Swiss neutrality has been cast aside.
Most tellingly, Pentagon leaks say the same thing. The story from inside the Pentagon is that Putin is not acting recklessly but is being patient and methodical. It also says that, despite some civilian casualties, Putin is actually using a restrained approach. Furthermore, there are no signs he is preparing for the use of chemical or biological weapons.
So what about the economic sanctions? Are they working?
The Most Severe Sanctions in History: Payments in and out of Russia have been blocked. The Central Bank of Russia has been banned from the global dollar payments systems. The same is true for the 10 largest Russian banks and a long list of oligarchs and Russian government officials.
Accounts of Russian targets in Western banks have been frozen. Exports of critical technology and high-tech equipment to Russia have been banned. U.S. and European airspace has been closed to Russian airlines. Secondary sanctions have been imposed so that if another nation like China sells goods to Russia made with U.S. technology or machines, that nation will be punished also. The list goes on.
Economic sanctions of these kinds sound powerful when they’re announced and do have some impact. But in the long run they never work. In the end, the costs are real but the effects of the sanctions are nil. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
Sanctions Against Oligarchs Are Doing Putin a Favor: Some losses are incurred by those whose accounts are frozen or whose businesses are handicapped. A few Russian oligarchs may lose their yachts, but guess what? Putin doesn’t like the oligarchs anyway. We’re actually doing Putin a favor by clipping the oligarchs’ wings. Putin’s power comes from the military and security services, not the oligarchs.
Tellingly, the strategic goals that justified the sanctions are never achieved. At most, they are slowed down temporarily. It’s just a matter of time before the affected parties devise workarounds to the sanctions.
The bottom line is Russia has not stood still. Russian exports of critical strategic metals such as nickel, titanium, palladium and aluminum have been cut off. Russian (and Ukrainian) wheat and other grains have also been cut off. This will result in starvation in certain parts of the world and massive food price inflation everywhere. Given the extent of these sanctions and the retaliation, the damage to world trade, supply chains and even the availability of goods will be massive.
But what about the strategic aims of the sanctions?
Sanctions Won’t Stop the Ukrainian War: Here, the sanctions are a complete failure. They have had zero impact on Russian advances on the battlefield and Russian goals in Ukraine. In fact, Putin has proved to be a master chess player as he runs rings around the sanctions.
When the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian banks, the value of the ruble collapsed. Still, oil and natural gas exports from Russia were allowed because Europe is dependent on them and the world is facing an energy shortage independent of the war in Ukraine. Oil and natural gas are paid for in dollars. In a masterpiece of judo, Putin is now demanding that Russian oil and natural gas bought by states imposing sanctions be paid for in rubles. This mystified many. If Russia needs dollars (they do), why be paid in rubles?
The answer is that the only way for Europe to get rubles quickly is to buy them from the Central Bank of Russia using dollars. Under Putin’s plan, Russia still gets the dollars, still sells oil and natural gas but he has the added benefit of making rubles stronger because Europe has to buy them to pay for the energy exports. Cutting off Russian exports of oil and natural gas is pointless because Russia will just sell the same energy to China and India. But the price will go up. It’s a world market, after all.
Putin’s Many Moves Ahead of Biden: This is how judo works. You use your enemy’s power against him by avoiding the main attack and turning the tables. Putin’s a judo expert in real life and he just demonstrated that he can practice it in economic warfare. The West will now be engaged in propping up the ruble after they did so much to destroy it. Putin thinks many moves ahead on the chessboard while Biden is playing pin the tail on the donkey, blindfolded.
Sanctions ultimately harm everyday citizens and consumers most. Inflation is surging in Russia and the United States because of the sanctions. But the pain on the American people has only begun. It’s about to get much worse. U.S. consumers and investors will suffer as prices soar, growth lags and stocks collapse.
This is all unpleasant news for Western warmongers. But it’s critical to know what’s actually going on in the chaos to come. The best information is that the war in Ukraine will last longer than most expect, will produce supply chain disruptions and will amplify the inflation that’s already present. In the end, Putin will prevail in Ukraine, while the Ukrainian people and Western consumers will pay the heaviest price."
"Massive Price Increases! When Will It End? - What's Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/15/22:
"Massive Price Increases! When Will It End? - What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are noticing massive price increases! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"The Party is Over and the Music is About to Stop"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/15/22:
"The Party is Over and the Music is About to Stop"
"From one day to the next, there’s more economic news that concerns all of us. From different countries raising interest rates to our Fed's indecision. The global economy is getting so much worse before our eyes."
Thursday, April 14, 2022
"Robert Kiyosaki Last Warning: 50% Of American People Are Going To Be Wiped Out"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, "Robert Kiyosaki Last Warning:
50% Of American People Are Going To Be Wiped Out"
"Robert Kiyosaki warns about the rising inflation, prices are skyrocketing, people can't afford the lifestyle they've used to. Prepare for the worst!"
"Robert T. Kiyosaki is an American businessman and author. Kiyosaki is the founder of Rich Global LLC and the Rich Dad Company, author of the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" famous book that offers personal finance education to help you learn about cash flow, real estate, investing, and business building."
"The Great Supply Chain Collapse To Continue Into 2023"
Full screen recommended.
"The Great Supply Chain Collapse To Continue Into 2023"
by Epic Economist
"Chaos and panic have become commonplace across global supply chains. At this point, disruptions were supposed to be easing. Instead, experts say that problems are getting bigger and the situation is getting dramatically worse. What they’re witnessing right now is the combination of two years of continued breakdowns in addition to the bottlenecks caused by the Russia and Ukraine crisis, a new round of lockdowns in China, and record congestion at US ports. We’re being warned that in the best-case scenario, the global supply chain nightmare is going to extend until 2023. But lots of things can go wrong until then, so we should all start preparing for the worse.
Over the past 24 months, we have seen shortages of everything from lumber to fertilizer to semiconductors, which have resulted in price increases for everything from homes to appliances to cars, and even food staples. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has only exacerbated the systemic failures supply chains were already experiencing, and also created a rush for oil and wheat on global markets. Despite the promises made by global leaders in 2021, like Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell who said that supply-chain disruptions and inflation would be "transitory," the glitches in the system are becoming more frequent instead of going away, and those same leaders are now scrambling to address the relentless surge in consumer prices.
To make things even worse, in China, issues that were only seen before during the peak of the health crisis in 2020 are emerging once again. Thousands of factories are being shut down, container ships are stuck at sea while cargo piles up on land, and blank sailings are making a comeback as the country faces its biggest virus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with strict lockdowns and quarantine measures halting the delivery of goods in and out of the nation.
That’s leaving logistics operators extremely worried that like in 2020, today’s paralyzed supply chains will suffer from widespread chaos once lockdowns are lifted and the backlog of goods in Chinese factories and warehouses will turn into a flood of products bound for the US and many other countries all over the world.
On top of the new wave of infection cases in China, Toll Group Managing Director Thomas Knudsen sees a combination of factors in play, which are likely to take the supply chain crisis to a whole new level. That includes persistent congestion on the US west coast and a possibility of a port labor strike, and a shortage of new container capacity coming into the market, which will, in turn, prolong disruption and keep shipping rates at record highs.
Talking about how long the disruptions are expected to continue, Knudsen said: “If you're optimistic, another 12 months, if you're not, it could be all of 2023. I'm sure rates will remain elevated, and you'll keep on not being able to rely on a seamless supply chain”.
In short, that means our supply chains are in a very risky position. And the US's enormous reliance on exports from other nations is going to aggravate shortages and hit domestic production. The inflationary spiral we’re witnessing will continue to escalate until we have a full-blown nightmare on our hands. Making ends meet is going to become increasingly harder than already is, and the shortages and the price hikes are just going to escalate in the months ahead."
"This Ends Badly, Housing Crash Worse Than 2008; Escaping California; Retail Sales Slammed"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/14/22:
"This Ends Badly, Housing Crash Worse Than 2008;
Escaping California; Retail Sales Slammed"
“A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit”
“A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit”
by Brian Maher
“Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” says Matthew - “but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” Today we lower our ax upon the root of America’s corrupt money tree… and expose its evil fruit… the fiat dollar.
You may be aware of the corruption. If you are a regular reader you are likely aware of the corruption. Yet a man must occasionally recall himself to obvious truths. The nose upon his face is so obvious he scarcely notices the protuberance. It would do him well to remember at times.
Turn now to the $20 bill nesting within your wallet. It is an asset to you, its holder. It represents a legal claim upon goods and services. But this $20 bill of yours lives a dual existence - one seen - one unseen. That is because your $20 asset is at once a $20 liability. You see the asset. You do not see the liability.
Today All Money Is Debt: All money in present circulation - all bills, coins, all checking and savings deposits, the lot of it - was borrowed into existence. That is, all money in existence represents a debt… taken sometime… somewhere… by someone. That debt may not be your debt. But it is someone’s debt. This is the inner secret of the lovely $20 bill within your wallet.
Poor Andrew Jackson: Imagine poor Andrew Jackson fuming in his bleak Tennessee grave. Imagine how he spins and spins and spins. For this is the man who shuttered the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 - the central bank - and retired the national debt for the first and only occasion in history. And here is Old Hickory with his hawkish visage fronting the debt-created $20 bill. He has been dragooned posthumously into the very banking system he loathed.
Let us now ponder the staggering realities of today’s debt-based money…
$88 Trillion Into Thin Air: Recall, all money constitutes an expression of debt. The asset merely represents the reverse side of the liability. We must therefore conclude: If all dollar-based debt were retired - all $88 trillion, public and private - each dollar would vanish into the nonexistence whence it came.
Can you imagine it? Now lift your jaw from the floor. Now rediscover your footing. Now recover your shaken wits. Here we do not speculate. We read directly from the book…
The Fed’s Open Confession: Mr. Marriner Eccles bossed the Federal Reserve in May 1941. At that time he sat down in front of the House Committee on Banking and Currency. A bewildered congressman - Patman, by name - asked Eccles how the Federal Reserve had acquired the funds to purchase $2 billion of Treasury bonds in 1933. Our minions have fished up this exchange from the Congressional Record:
"ECCLES: We created it.
PATMAN: Out of what?
ECCLES: Out of the right to issue credit money.
PATMAN: And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government’s credit.
ECCLES: That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money."
“The Tragic Absurdity of Our Hopeless Situation Is Almost Incredible”: Did Mr. Eccles botch the facts? He did not. Here is the credit manager of the Federal Reserve’s Atlanta outpost, Mr. Robert Hemphill: "If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible - but there it is." There it is indeed.
“All Money Would Disappear”: Mr. G. Edward Griffin is the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island." That creature is of course the Federal Reserve. Its Dr. Frankensteins assembled on Georgia’s Jekyll Island in 1910 to plot its birth. Here Griffin gets in back of Messieurs Eccles and Hemphill: "It is difficult for Americans to come to grips with the fact that their total money supply is backed by nothing but debt, and it is even more mind-boggling to visualize that, if everyone paid back all that was borrowed, there would be no money left in existence. That’s right, there would be not one penny in circulation - all coins and all paper currency would be returned to bank vaults - and there would be not one dollar in anyone’s checking account. In short, all money would disappear…"
Every dollar that exists today, either in the form of currency, checkbook money or even credit card money - in other words, our entire money supply - exists only because it was borrowed by someone; perhaps not you, but someone. Let us now strike at the root of today’s corrupt money tree…
Don’t Forget About the Interest: A bank loans a man $10,000. He must repay the $10,000 at a future date - with a bit of interest into the bargain. Assume the $10,000 comes tethered to a 5% rate of interest. Assume further the bankman thunders at his door five years hence, calling in his loan. The debtor must hand the fellow $12,762.74 That is, the principal plus the $2,762.74 in accumulated interest.
Where will this sap secure the $2,762.74 to service the interest? The larger question: Must the Federal Reserve issue increasing quantities of money to service all outstanding debt - $88 trillion in the case of the United States? Mr. Griffin: "One of the most perplexing questions associated with this process is “Where does the money come from to pay the interest?” If you borrow $10,000 from a bank at 9%, you owe $10,900. But the bank only manufactures $10,000 for the loan. It would seem, therefore, that there is no way that you - and all others with similar loans - can possibly pay off your indebtedness.
The amount of money put into circulation just isn’t enough to cover the total debt, including interest. This has led some to the conclusion that it is necessary for you to borrow the $900 for the interest, and that, in turn, leads to still more interest. The assumption is that the more we borrow, the more we have to borrow, and that debt based on fiat money is a never-ending spiral leading inexorably to more and more debt."
This is a partial truth. It is true that there is not enough money created to include the interest, but it is a fallacy that the only way to pay it back is to borrow still more. A partial truth? What is the entire truth, sir?
The Exchange Value of Labor: “The assumption fails to take into account the exchange value of labor.” Please elaborate: "Let us assume that you pay back your $10,000 loan at the rate of approximately $900 per month and that about $80 of that represents interest. You realize you are hard-pressed to make your payments so you decide to take on a part-time job…
The decision then is made to have the bank’s floors waxed once a week. You respond to the ad in the paper and are hired at $80 per month to do the job. The result is that you earn the money to pay the interest on your loan, and - this is the point - the money you receive is the same money which you previously had paid. As long as you perform labor for the bank each month, the same dollars go into the bank as interest, then out the revolving door as your wages and then back into the bank as loan repayment."
Just so. You serve the interest by serving your master. But what if you decline to wax the bank’s floors, if you fail to serve your master? It is not necessary that you work directly for the bank. No matter where you earn the money, its origin was a bank and its ultimate destination is a bank. The loop through which it travels can be large or small, but the fact remains all interest is paid eventually by human effort.
Modern Serfdom: What - then - are we to conclude from the foregoing? The significance of that fact is even more startling than the assumption that not enough money is created to pay back the interest. It is that the total of this human effort ultimately is for the benefit of those who create fiat money. It is a form of modern serfdom in which the great mass of society works as indentured servants to a ruling class of financial nobility.
This conclusion appalls us. Yet we hazard Mr. Griffin draws a fair overall sketch. And so this question: Shall we strike the chains of bondage from our wrists? That is, should we all repay each dollar we owe - all $88 trillion? Should we call in all money from circulation?
The question is theoretical, of course. We can no more afford to break the chains of debt than we can afford to break our necks. They will snap once they can no longer endure the relentless weight pressing upon them. Not because we choose to snap them. On that bright and glorious day, however distant, we shall finally be free… Free - without one penny to our name."
Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"
Full screen recommended.
Strong Language Alert!
Gerald Celente, 4/14/22:
"Trends In The News"
Gregory Mannarino, "The 10yr Yield Jumps! Risk In The Market Is Rising. This Is What You Need To Know Now"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/14/22:
"The 10yr Yield Jumps! Risk In The Market Is Rising.
This Is What You Need To Know Now"
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images."
"Something Like Reverence..."
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
"Sometime In Your Life..."
"Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even."
- Daniel Berrigan
The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”, "We Were Made For These Times"
“In These Times”
“In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
May we may have courage
To turn aside from it all,
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home.”
~ John O’Donohue,
from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
○
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"
“My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.”
○
“Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Jungian psychiatrist and post trauma recovery specialist, writes this to social activists. Estes is perhaps most famous for her book, "Women Who Run With the Wolves." This letter appears, in part, on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ blog. The date of the original letter is unknown.
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