Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
"The Biggest Act Of Mass Terrorism Since September 11th"
George Galloway, 9/18/24
"The Biggest Act Of Mass Terrorism Since September 11th"
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o
George Galloway, 9/18/24
"Chris Hedges: ‘I’m Terrified For What Comes Next.’"
"We’ve all seen the provocations by Israel, says Chris Hedges. The consequences of this latest one on people’s pagers and electronic devices could be catastrophic. Middle East war looms."
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Jeremiah Babe, "Grocery Store Worker Tells Me Shocking News"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/18/24
"Grocery Store Worker Tells Me Shocking News;
The FED Cuts Rates Big Today, Hyperinflation Next"
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Gregory Mannarino, "FED Cuts Deep And Sets The Stage For A Massive Dollar Devaluation Cycle"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/18/24
"FED Cuts Deep And Sets The Stage
For A Massive Dollar Devaluation Cycle"
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Judge Napolitano, "Phil Giraldi: Intel, Assassinations, and War Crimes"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/18/24
"Phil Giraldi: Intel, Assassinations, and War Crimes"
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"Breaking News! IPhones, Radios, Watches, Solar Now Exploding! 'Nuclear Like' Explosion In Russia!"
Canadian Prepper, 9/18/24
"Breaking News! IPhones, Radios, Watches,
Solar Now Exploding! 'Nuclear Like' Explosion In Russia!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "Is Boeing Going Out of Business? - Insider Tells All"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/18/24
"Is Boeing Going Out of Business? - Insider Tells All"
"Is Boeing on the brink of bankruptcy? Tune in as I allegedly dive deep into the insider scoop behind Boeing’s looming crisis! With exclusive details from a Boeing insider, I'm uncovering the unexpected strikes in Seattle and the company’s desperate measures to preserve cash. From halting capital expenditures to pausing promotions, Boeing's situation is dire. Join me as we explore if this aviation giant can navigate through this turbulent time or if it’s headed for a nosedive. The CFO of the company had issued a report to stop spending money. This is bad."
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Bill Bonner, "Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter"
"Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter"
The Fed almost always favors more credit at lower interest rates,
resulting in more debt. The need to service the debt
subtracts from the amount of money available for other things.
by Bill Bonner
Dublin, Ireland - "The big news - the rate cut expected from the Fed - will come to light in a few hours. But what a circus. Here’s the Financial Times: "Wall Street has raised its wager on the Federal Reserve making an aggressive half-point cut to US interest rates when it meets this week, with traders now putting the odds of a jumbo cut at about 64 per cent. Since late last week, investors in the futures market have steadily ramped up expectations of a bigger cut from central bank officials at this week’s meeting concluding on Wednesday — rather than the more traditional 0.25 percentage point change. The increased expectations come in the wake of US economic data that has shown the labour market slowing and inflation cooling. The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Fed was facing a close call on whether to cut rates by a quarter point or half point."
All up and down the internet, people are making predictions... making bets... and making fools of themselves over the Fed’s next move. Anticipating more ‘money printing,’ both gold and bitcoin are on the rise, MarketWatch: "The largest cryptocurrency was up more than 5% on Tuesday to around $60,945, the highest level since Aug. 27, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Bitcoin is up 45% year-to-date, while it is still 17.6% lower than its record high of $73,798 reached in March. "
And here’s Elizabeth Warren asking the Fed not for just a 25 basis point cut... nor even a 50 point cut... but a whopping three-quarter of a percent cut. Her letter to Powell warns: "If the Fed is too cautious in cutting rates, it would needlessly risk our economy heading towards a recession. A number of economists have warned of this risk since July. Former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bill Dudley, wrote, “dawdling now unnecessarily increases the risk. The Committee must consider implementing rate cuts more aggressively upfront to mitigate potential risks to the labor market. Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Poor thing... she sounds like an economist! But a real economist would know better. It is absurd for the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee to think it knows exactly what interest rate millions of savers, borrowers, spenders and manufacturers need. It is even more absurd for Ms. Warren to butt in. Should the key rate be higher... or lower? How would she know? And if she knows how much credit should cost. How about eggs? How about houses?
Of course, she doesn’t know. And neither does anyone else. Prices are information. And the information is only useful if it comes to you untainted... unbent... and un-suborned. You can’t force it. You just have to listen... and discover it, from the voluntary bid and ask in the debt markets. The market tells us how much credit is available... and how much demand there is for it. No group of arrogant economists... nor grandstanding politicians…can possibly know better.
As we have seen, the Fed almost always favors more credit at lower interest rates, resulting in more debt. The need to service the debt subtracts from the amount of money available for other things. Then, the feds then are forced to cut back... or ‘print’ more money.
The real problem in America, as we suggested yesterday, is that there is too much [fake] money... lent at [fake] rates that are almost always too low. People borrow money to buy things they don’t really need and can’t really afford. Companies borrow money to buy back their own shares... figuring, correctly, that they will get more in dividends from their own earnings than they will pay in interest. The US government borrows too - nearly $2 trillion per year. Yes, they’re adding to the nation’s debt at an alarming rate; but maybe that will be someone else’s problem?
The deluge of money pollutes the wells... swamps the fields... and soaks carpets throughout the country. Bright, ambitious young people go to Wall Street, rather than into useful careers... because that’s where the money is. Mega-rich donors aim for control of the nation’s politics - because it is politics that controls the flow of money. Manufacturing gets shipped overseas, simply because when you are loaded up with EZ, printing press money - it is easier to buy things from the foreigners than make them ourselves. And now... today... the Fed will add more ‘liquidity’ to a saturated, rotting system."
Research Note, by Dan Denning: "With financial market near all-time highs, valuations off the charts, and inflation above target, the Federal Reserve looks set to cut interest rates later today. One effect: lower borrowing costs for a US government already over $35 trillion in debt. The chart below from The Daily Shot shows the correlation between US public debt and the inflation-adjusted gold price. Conclusion: the higher the debt goes, the higher the gold price goes."
"To the Israeli Soldier Who Murdered Aysenur Ezgi Eygi"
"To the Israeli Soldier Who Murdered Aysenur Ezgi Eygi"
by Chris Hedges
"I know you. I met you in the dense canopies in the war in El Salvador. It was there that I first heard the single, high-pitched crack of the sniper bullet. Distinct. Ominous. A sound that spreads terror. Army units I traveled with, enraged by the lethal accuracy of rebel snipers, set up heavy .50 caliber machine guns and sprayed the foliage overhead until your body, a bloodied and mangled pulp, dropped to the ground.
I saw you at work in Basra in Iraq and of course Gaza, where on a fall afternoon at the Netzarim Junction, you shot dead a young man a few feet away from me. We carried his limp body up the road.
I lived with you in Sarajevo during the war. You were only a few hundred yards away, perched in high rises that looked down on the city. I witnessed your daily carnage. At dusk, I saw you fire a round in the gloom at an old man and his wife bent over their tiny vegetable plot. You missed. She ran, haltingly, for cover. He did not. You fired again. I concede the light was fading. It was hard to see. Then, the third time, you killed him. This is one of those memories of war I see in my head over and over and over and never talk about. I watched it from the back of the Holiday Inn, but by now I have seen it, or the shadows of it, hundreds of times.
You targeted me, too. You struck down colleagues and friends. I was in your sights traveling from northern Albania into Kosovo with 600 fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, each insurgent carrying an extra AK-47 to hand off to a comrade. Three shots. That crisp crack, too familiar. You must have been far away. Or maybe you were a bad shot, although you came close. I scrambled for cover behind a rock. My two bodyguards bent over me, panting, the green pouches strapped to their chests packed full of grenades.
I know how you talk. The black humor. “Pint sized terrorists” you say of the children you kill. You are proud of your skills. It gives you cachet. You cradle your weapon as if it is an extension of your body. You admire its despicable beauty. This is who you are. A killer.
In your society of killers, you are respected, rewarded, promoted. You are numb to the suffering you inflict. Maybe you enjoy it. Maybe you think you are protecting yourself, your identity, your comrades, your nation. Maybe you believe the killing is a necessary evil, a way to make sure Palestinians die before they can strike. Maybe you have surrendered your morality to the blind obedience of the military, subsumed yourself into the industrial machinery of death. Maybe you are scared to die. Maybe you want to prove to yourself and others that you are tough, you can kill. Maybe your mind is so warped that you believe killing is righteous.
You are intoxicated by the god-like power to revoke another person’s charter to live on this earth. You revel in the intimacy of it. You see in fine detail through the telescopic sight, the nose and mouth of your victim. The triangle of death. You hold your breath. You pull slowly, gently on the trigger. And then the pink puff. Severed spinal cord. Death. It is over.
You were the last person to see Aysenur alive. You were the first person to see her dead.
This is you now. And now no one can reach you. You are death’s angel. You are numb and cold. But, I suspect, this will not last. I covered war for a long time. I know, even if you do not, the next chapter of your life. I know what happens when you leave the embrace of the military, when you are no longer a cog in these factories of death. I know the hell you are about to enter.
It starts like this. All the skills you acquired as a killer on the outside are useless. Maybe you go back. Maybe you become a gun for hire. But this will only delay the inevitable. You can run, for a while, but you cannot run forever. There will be reckoning. And it is the reckoning I will tell you about.
You will face a choice. Live the rest of your life, stunted, numb, cut off from yourself, cut off from those around you. Descend into a psychopathic fog, trapped in the absurd, interdependent lies that justify mass murder. There are killers, years later, who say they are proud of their work, who claim not a moment’s regret. But I have not been inside their nightmares. If this is you then you will never again truly live.
Of course, you do not talk about what you did to those around you, certainly not to your family. They think you are a good person. You know this is a lie. The numbness, usually, wears off. You look in the mirror, and if you have any shred of conscience left, your reflection disturbs you. But you repress the bitterness. You escape down the rabbit hole of opioids and alcohol. Your intimate relationships, because you cannot feel, because you bury your self-loathing, disintegrate. This escape works. For a while. But then you go into such darkness that the stimulants you use to blunt your pain begin to destroy you. And maybe that is how you die. I have known many who died like that. And I have known those who ended it quickly. A gun to the head.
Between 1973 and 2024, 1,227 Israeli soldiers committed suicide according to official statistics, but the actual number is believed to be far higher. In the U.S. an average of 22 veterans commit suicide every day.
I have trauma from war. But the worst trauma I do not have. The worst trauma from war is not what you saw. It is not what you experienced. The worst trauma is what you did. They have names for it. Moral injury. Perpetrator Induced Traumatic Stress. But that seems tepid given the hot, burning coals of rage, the night terrors, the despair. Those around you know something is terribly, terribly wrong. They fear your darkness. But you do not let them into your labyrinth of pain.
And then, one day, you reach out for love. Love is the opposite of war. War is about smut. It is about pornography. It is about turning other human beings into objects, maybe sexual objects, but I also mean this literally, for war turns people into corpses. Corpses are the end product of war, what comes off its assembly line. So, you will want love, but the angel of death has made a Faustian bargain. It is this. It is the hell of not being able to love. You will carry this death inside you for the rest of your life. It corrodes your soul. Yes. We have souls. You sold yours. And the cost is very, very high. It means that what you want, what you most desperately need in life, you cannot attain.
Then one day, maybe you are a father or a mother or an uncle or an aunt, and a young woman you love, or want to love as a daughter, comes into your life. You see in her, it will come in a flash, Aysenur’s face. The young woman you murdered. Come back to life. Israeli now. Speaking Hebrew. Innocent. Good. Full of hope. The full force of what you did, who you were, who you are, will hit you like an avalanche.
You will spend days wanting to cry and not knowing why. You will be consumed by guilt. You will believe that because of what you did the life of this other young woman is in danger. Divine retribution. You will tell yourself this is absurd, but you will believe it anyway. Your life will start to include little offerings of goodness to others as if these offerings will appease a vengeful god, as if these offerings will save her from harm, from death. But nothing can wipe away the stain of murder.
Yes. You killed Aysenur. You killed others. Palestinians who you dehumanized and taught yourself to hate. Human animals. Terrorists. Barbarians. But it is harder to dehumanize her. You know, you saw it through your scope, she was no threat. She did not throw rocks, the paltry justification the Israeli army uses to shoot live rounds at Palestinians, including children.
You will be overwhelmed with sorrow. Regret. Shame. Grief. Despair. Alienation. You will have an existential crisis. You will know that all the values you were taught to honor in school, at worship, in your home, are not the values you upheld. You will hate yourself. You will not say this out loud. You may, one way or another, extinguish yourself.
There is a part of me that says you deserve this torment. There is a part of me that wants you to suffer for the loss you inflicted on Aysenur’s family and friends, to pay for taking the life of this courageous and gifted woman.
Shooting unarmed people is not bravery. It is not courage. It is not even war. It is a crime. It is murder. You are a murderer. I am sure you were not ordered to kill Aysenur. You shot Aysenur in the head because you could, because you felt like it. Israel runs an open-air shooting gallery in Gaza and the West Bank. Total impunity. Murder as sport.
You will, one day, not be the killer you are now. You will exhaust yourself trying to ward off demons. You will desperately want to be human. You will want to love and be loved. Maybe you will make it. Being human again. But that will mean a life of contrition. It will mean making your crime public. It will mean begging, on your knees, for forgiveness. It will mean forgiving yourself. This is very hard. It will mean orientating every aspect of your life to nurturing life rather than extinguishing it. This will be your only hope for salvation. If you do not take it, you are damned."
o
"US Doctor Reports Numerous Palestinian
Children With Headshot Sniper Wounds"
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
"Alert! Thousands Of Casualties; Cyber WW3; Russian Nuke Test Soon; Massive Explosion Deep In Russia"
Full screen recommended,
Canadian Prepper, 9/17/24
"Alert! Thousands Of Casualties; Cyber WW3;
Russian Nuke Test Soon; Massive Explosion Deep In Russia"
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Gerald Celente, "Occupy Peace, Get On Board"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 9/17/24
"Occupy Peace, Get On Board"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Jeremiah Babe, "Be Cautious, Trouble Is Right Around The Corner"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/17/24
"Be Cautious, Trouble Is Right Around The Corner"
Comments here:
A Blues Musical Interlude: Foy Vance, Ed Sheeran, "Make it Rain"
Foy Vance, "Make it Rain"
The original, Ed Sheeran's version is the cover.
○
Ed Sheeran, "Make it Rain"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”
The Poet: Mark Strand, "Dreams"
"Dreams"
"Trying to recall the plot
And characters we dreamed,
What life was like
Before the morning came,
We are seldom satisfied,
And even then
There is no way of knowing
If what we know is true.
Something nameless
Hums us into sleep,
Withdraws, and leaves us in
A place that seems
Always vaguely familiar.
Perhaps it is because
We take the props
And fixtures of our days
With us into the dark,
Assuring ourselves
We are still alive. And yet
Nothing here is certain;
Landscapes merge
With one another, houses
Are never where they should be,
Doors and windows
Sometimes open out
To other doors and windows,
Even the person
Who seems most like ourselves
Cannot be counted on,
For there have been
Too many times when he,
Like everything else, has done
The unexpected.
And as the night wears on,
The dim allegory of ourselves
Unfolds, and we
Feel dreamed by someone else,
A sleeping counterpart,
Who gathers in
The darkness of his person
Shades of the real world.
Nothing is clear;
We are not ever sure
If the life we live there
Belongs to us.
Each night it is the same;
Just when we’re on the verge
Of catching on,
A sense of our remoteness
Closes in, and the world
So lately seen
Gradually fades from sight.
We wake to find the sleeper
Is ourselves
And the dreamt-of is someone who did
Something we can’t quite put
Our finger on,
But which involved a life
We are always, we feel,
About to discover."
- Mark Strand
"Yet Now..."
“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”
- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”
6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”
“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”
by Nicolas Perrin
“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
“It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity. With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.
What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted to entertain these fear-based thoughts like a Hollywood blockbuster, and as you may know, what you focus on expands. Before I knew it, my body was in a state of complete anxiety and fear. I literally felt my cognitive and creative centers shutting down. I felt completely powerless, a hostage to my own mind. My body felt paralyzed, and I felt disconnected from my talents and gifts. I felt separate, isolated, and vulnerable. I became a victim of the fear. In this moment I realized the powerful impact thoughts can have on how we feel, mentally and physically. Here is what unfolded through me, and the lessons I treasured from this experience.
Fear is a closed energy, referred to as inverted faith. Fear exists when we do not trust our connection to the infinite part of who we are and buy into a story about what’s unfolding in our life. The emotions we feel are created from the thoughts that we choose to focus on, consciously or unconsciously. The emotions act as markers to let us know if we are focusing on expansive, empowering thoughts or fearful, limiting thoughts.
If I were to relate this in a story, it may be like a pilot believing he no longer had any guidance or support from the airport control tower in a large storm, and no instruments on board to detect if he was on a collision course with another airplane. If the control tower represents the infinite part of who we are, which always knows what’s best for us, it can be understandable why the pilot with no other guidance except for his own eye sight would be fearful of the situation at hand. An alarm on the plane beeping at the pilot would represent the emotions. The alarm’s purpose is to get the attention of the pilot so he can focus and realize he is off the path. Once our emotions start to take a grip of our physical body, what can we do to move from a state of limitation and fear into an open, tranquil, peaceful state?
1. Come back to the present moment. The first step is to bring your awareness to the present moment. To do this, take three deep breaths through your nose and exhale through your mouth. After the air has filled your lungs and you’ve felt your stomach rise, exhale through your mouth by forcing the air through your teeth, as if you were hissing out loud. This detoxifies your body from the heavy emotions you’re experiencing and brings you back into the present moment. When I do this, I place my awareness into my feet so I am in a feeling space within my body, rather than being in my mind, entertaining the stories that swirl around with vigor, like a dangerous hurricane. Imagine that all your emotions are in a large sludge bucket. This breathing technique will empty the bucket out so you are empty and free.
2. Put things in perspective. Now that you are present, acknowledge the experience and ask yourself this question: “What is the worst case scenario that can happen to me?” Once we can accept this and realize we will be okay if that happens, we are free from the fear. When I realized I’d blown things out of proportion with my fears, I was able to detach from the story and put things into perspective. I like to imagine that in every moment I have two wolves I can feed (per the Native American myth): the fear wolf or the love wolf. The one that gets stronger and wins is the one I feed.
3. Become an observer of your thoughts. What has served me well in moments like this is to say, “I’m not these thoughts. I’m not these emotions. I’m not this body. I’m an infinite being having a human experience.” In saying this, we immediately detach from the story and allow ourselves the choice of suffering or to become the observer. Imagine that your life is represented in a book, and the story you are living out comes from the words on the page. We can change the words of the story at any point in time.
4. Change your experience. The fourth step is to place your awareness and your right hand on the heart center, which is located near the sternum. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and make the following command: “I am now connected to the infinite part of who I am, which already knows how to be whole and complete. I take full responsibility and accountability for this creation, I recognize how it has served me, and I am now ready to let it go. I command that the fear energy be transmuted into unconditional love now. Thank you. It is now done.” This process is incredibly empowering. We allow ourselves the opportunity to experience being our own inner master and a co-creator of our reality.
5. Prevent your mind from sabotaging you. Visualize a stone being thrown into a pond. Observe the ripples it creates when it enters the water. This is to simply distract your mind and allow the process to unfold without doubt or self-sabotage. It is only our mind that can interfere with our own healing.
6. Be grateful. Express gratitude and appreciation for the integration and healing you have received. The key to happiness is awareness. When we become aware that our mind is wandering, we can gently bring it back to the present moment. It’s only in the present moment that we are empowered and can consciously choose the thoughts we engage with. The thoughts we focus on will determine where our energy flows, and thus what is created in our life. Each thought has a vibration, which is reflected by the feeling we experience in our body. To be able to move from a fear-based experience to an open, peaceful experience we must first take full responsibility and accountability that on some level we created the experience, and nobody else is to blame. The choice is truly ours. Do we choose to experience a fearful, limited life or do we choose a happy joyful life?"
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Reduce fear, good. Reduce stress also...
Full screen recommended.
Marconi Union, "Weightless"
"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"
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Think more clearly...
"Cognition Enhancer For Clearer and Faster Thinking -
Isochronic Tones"
Full screen recommended.
"This session stimulates Beta, SMR and Alpha to train your
brain for better cognition, such as clearer and faster thinking."
"You Must Be..."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat.
"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll,
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll,
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
Oh, I know, I know lol...
Thanks for stopping by!
"Plato's Cave"
Full screen recommended.
"Plato's Cave"
by Phil Williams
"Orson Welles’s psychedelic 1973 adaptation of Plato’s timeless allegory of the cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” two parables of the human condition.
"It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death."
– Plato’s "Republic", Book 7
"Plato’s allegory of the cave thought-experiment ponders the experience of prisoners shackled in a cave from birth, only able to see the shadows of objects projected onto a wall. The text then traces the journey of a prisoner who is set free from the cave, given the opportunity to experience reality in the glow of the Sun and, upon returning to the cave, is met with laughter by the other prisoners, who think him a fool for struggling to readjust to his old existence. A simple story yielding complex commentaries on the nature of reality and wisdom, Plato’s timeless allegory is built into the foundations of modern philosophy and, more than two millennia later, still stirs debate. Carried by a rich narration from Orson Welles, this rarely seen 1973 animated adaptation of Plato’s words populates the tale with haunting human figures, bringing retro-surreal life to the parable."
Comments here:
"Exposing the Federal Reserve's Inflation Deception"
"Exposing the Federal Reserve's Inflation Deception"
by Nick Giambruno
"The Federal Reserve is in the news as its rate hiking farce has come to its predictable end. With any discussion about the Fed and central banks, it is essential to keep the basics in mind. You have to start with the most fundamental concept here: central planning doesn’t work. That’s the first principle.
Central planning of shoes doesn’t work. Central planning of wheat doesn’t work, and central planning of (fake) money doesn’t work. Central banks in general - and the Fed in particular - are on a mission impossible. They don’t know what the interest rate should be. Nobody does. That’s an exclusive function of a voluntary market of savers and borrowers.
A politburo can’t centrally plan interest rates any more than they can potatoes. They’re inevitably going to fail and cause significant damage. It’s also important to remember central banks have NOTHING to do with the free market. They’re actually the antithesis of the free market. In Karl Marx’s "Communist Manifesto", central banking is the 5th plank. The lying media portrays central bankers as selfless bureaucrats who are just trying to save the economy. It’s a load of BS. Central bankers are the enemy of the average person.
Now, back to the rate hiking charade. The Fed had embarked on one of the steepest rate hike cycles in history in 2022. They did so because price increases were spiraling out of control after the Fed inflated the money supply by around 40% - a staggering amount - amid the Covid mass psychosis starting in 2020. In other words, they were forced to embark on this steep rate hike cycle to combat the inflation that they caused in the first place.
At the time, I knew they would never be able to tame inflation because of the skyrocketing federal debt load. If the Fed was able to raise interest rates to the point where it would actually defeat inflation, the rising interest expense on this exploding pile of debt would have bankrupted the US government. The federal debt’s interest cost is already higher than the defense budget. Soon, it could exceed Social Security and other entitlements and become the number one item in the federal budget.
For context, the last time inflation was raging, Fed Chair Paul Volcker needed to raise interest rates above 17%. However, that was in the early 1980s, when the US debt-to-GDP ratio was around 30%. Today, it’s north of 123% and rising rapidly.
Today’s higher debt load and accompanying interest expense are why the Volcker option is not on the table. There’s no way the Fed could raise rates any near 17%. They barely took rates above 5% this time before capitulating - not even 1/3 of what Volcker did.
In short…The federal interest expense exceeded $1 trillion for the first time recently. The federal interest expense has recently exceeded national defense spending for the first time and is poised to become the largest item in the budget. The US government is now borrowing money to pay the interest on the money it has already borrowed. Considering all of this, Fed Chair Powell’s recent announcement that the rate hike cycle is officially over shouldn’t have been a surprise. Now, we’re going back to monetary easing.
The Fed’s Propaganda Victory: The Fed and its apologists in the lying media are trying to gaslight you and tell you inflation has been defeated, which is absurd. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the most politically manipulated statistic in all of government. That is saying something because a lot of government statistics are completely manipulated, but inflation, as measured by the CPI, is probably the most manipulated.
The CPI is a basket of prices trying to measure the average price changes for 340 million Americans. It’s an impossible task because every individual has a different price basket. Consider someone who lives in New York City compared to someone who lives in rural Montana. They have totally different price baskets. Using the CPI as a measure of price increases for 340 million people is even more preposterous than taking the average temperature across 50 states in the US as a meaningful statistic to determine what clothes you should wear today.
Further, the government gets to cherry-pick what items go in the CPI basket and their weightings. It’s like letting a student grade his own paper. In short, the CPI is a worthless statistic. It’s misleading government propaganda intended to conceal the government’s atrocious currency debasement.
So, according to their own rigged CPI metric, has the Fed accomplished its inflation goal. Nope. They didn’t even reach their totally arbitrary 2% CPI target before they declared a fake victory. By the way, targeting 2% inflation is a nonsensical concept. Inflation is poisonous at any level. Think of it like a bucket that continuously leaks 2% of the water it carries. That’s the kind of outcome the clowns at the Fed are trying to engineer for the economy - but they couldn’t even do that. In short, the Fed’s narrative that inflation has been defeated is so laughably ridiculous that the only explanation is deliberate deception.
Here’s a way to think of it. Imagine you used to weigh 180 pounds in 2019. In 2020, you gained 10 pounds and are now 190 lbs. In 2021, you gained 25 pounds and are now 215 lbs. You tell concerned friends and family not to worry about your weight gain because it’s just "transitory." In 2022, you go on a diet but still gain 20 pounds. You are now 235 lbs. In 2023, you continue on your diet and gain 10 pounds. You are now 245 lbs. In 2024, you have gained 5 pounds so far and are now 250 lbs. The rate at which you gain weight is down, but your weight has increased around 40%, from 180 lbs to 250 lbs. You now declare victory, end your diet, and go back to the lifestyle that caused the weight gain surge in the first place.
This is the same kind of "victory" the Fed is declaring with inflation and the money supply, which also grew around 40% over a similar period. In short, they are gaslighting people and spewing propaganda. So, why are they attempting to deceive people? Nobody knows for sure except them. But if I had to guess, they are desperately trying to conceal the massive economic destruction they have already caused and the coming destruction they will cause, which could be much worse than anything we’ve seen so far.
It could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty. It will result in an enormous wealth transfer from savers to the parasitical class - politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them."
"Get Your Stuff Together..."
“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.” - Quincy Jones
Freely download "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart -
Thirty True Things You Need To Know Now" here:
"All Hell Breaks Loose On Kensington Avenue"
Full screen recommended.
Narcotropolis, 9/17/24
"All Hell Breaks Loose On Kensington Avenue"
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"The Long Dark"
"The Long Dark"
by Chris Floyd
"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.
We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.
We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.
We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.
These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”
So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.
And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?
What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.
Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."
"How It Really Is"
"Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?''
- Thomas Sowell
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"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell
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"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." - Will Durant
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"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
- Thomas Sowell
Adventures With Danno, "Strange Prices At Walmart!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 9/17/24
"Strange Prices At Walmart!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Walmart and are noticing some strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices as it is getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "Why Nothing Lasts Anymore - Broke-Flation!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/17/24
"Why Nothing Lasts Anymore - Broke-Flation!"
"Ever wondered why nothing lasts anymore? Join me, Dan from IAllegedly, as we dive into the shocking reality of "broke-flation" and how everyday items like washers, dryers, and even cars are falling short on quality. Inspired by Sheila's eye-opening experience with a faulty appliance at Lowe's, this episode unpacks the decline in craftsmanship that affects us all. From the struggle of finding durable tools to the unpredictable lifespan of modern gadgets, we're living in unprecedented times! "
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"Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 9/17/24"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/17/24
"Indisputable Proof!
A Ballistic Inflationary Nightmare Situation!"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/17/24
"Tomorrow The Destroyer Cometh!"
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