Full screen recommended.
Robin Williams,
"Greatest Speech in Movie History"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, September 26, 2024
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Is this one galaxy or two? The jumble of stars, gas, and dust that is NGC 520 is now thought to incorporate the remains of two separate disk galaxies. A defining component of NGC 520 - as seen in great detail in the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope - is its band of intricately interlaced dust running vertically down the spine of the colliding galaxies. A similar looking collision might be expected in a few billion years when our disk Milky Way Galaxy to collides with our large-disk galactic neighbor Andromeda (M31).
The collision that defines NGC 520 started about 300 million years ago. Also known as Arp 157, NGC 520 lies about 100 million light years distant, spans about 100 thousand light years, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). Although the speeds of stars in NGC 520 are fast, the distances are so vast that the battling pair will surely not change its shape noticeably during our lifetimes."
"I'd Still Swim..."
“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was
a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.”
- Abraham Maslow
The Poet: W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
"September 1, 1939"
"Defenseless
under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out
wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."
- W.H. Auden
○
"On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people."
○
And here we are, on the brink of a nuclear World War III with Russia,
having learned... nothing...
"This Is Bad! Homeless In The Middle Of The Desert! People Are Becoming More Desperate!"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/26/24
"This Is Bad! Homeless In The Middle Of The Desert!
People Are Becoming More Desperate!"
Comments here:
"Noli Timere: The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”
"Noli Timere:
The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”
by Ryan Holiday
"While Seamus Heaney, the world-famous Irish poet and Nobel Prize Winner, was being rushed to the operating room he sent a single text message to his wife with just two words: "Noli Timere ." This Latin phrase when translated to English means 'Be not afraid.' Heaney passed away not long after.
There was no virtue more important to the Stoics than courage, particularly in times of stress or crisis. In scary times, it’s easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car. Something could even happen with your kids. Of course we’re going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?
Even the Stoics, who were supposedly masters of their emotions, admitted that we are going to have natural reactions to the things that are out of our control. You’re going to feel cold if someone dumps a bucket of water on you. Your heart is going to race if something jumps out from behind a corner. These are things the Stoics openly discussed.
They had a word for these immediate, pre-cognitive impressions of things: phantasiai. No amount of training or wisdom, Seneca said, can prevent us from having these reactions. What mattered to them, and what is urgently needed today in a world of unlimited breaking news about pandemics or collapsing stock markets or military conflicts, was what you did after that reaction. What mattered is what came next.
There is a wonderful quote from Faulkner about this very idea. “Be scared,” he wrote. “You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. Being afraid is an ongoing process. Fear is a state of being. The alertness that comes from being startled might even help you. It wakes you up. It puts your body in motion. It’s what saves prey from the tiger or the tiger from the hunter. But fear and worry and anxiety? Being afraid? That’s not fight or flight. That’s paralysis. That only makes things worse.
Especially right now. Especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. They’re certainly not going to solve themselves. And inaction (or the wrong action) may make them worse, it might put you in even more danger. An inability to learn, adapt, to embrace change will too.
There is a Hebrew prayer which dates back to the early 1800s: כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל. “The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.” The wisdom of that expression has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song that was broadcast to troops and citizens alike during the Yom Kippur War. It’s a reminder: Yes, things are dicey, and it’s easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward. Fear will not help.
What does help? Training. Courage. Discipline. Commitment. Calm. But mainly, that courage thing – which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue. One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. “It’s not like astronauts are braver than other people,” he says. “We’re just, you know, meticulously prepared…” Think about someone like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, whose heart rate never went above a 100 beats per minute the entire mission. That’s what preparation does for you.
Astronauts face all sorts of difficult, high stakes situations in space – where the margin for error is tiny. In fact, on Chris’ first spacewalk his left eye went blind. Then his other eye teared up and went blind too. In complete darkness, he had to find his way back if he wanted to survive. He would later say that the key in such situations is to remind oneself that “there are six things that I could do right now, all of which will help make things better. And it’s worth remembering, too, there’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse also.” That’s the difference between scared and afraid. One prevents you from making things better, it may make them worse.
After the stock market crash in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted ten years. Banks failed. Investors were wiped out. Unemployment was some 20 percent. Herbert Hoover, who’d only been in office barely six months when the market collapsed, tried and failed repeatedly for the next 3.5 years to stem the tide. FDR, who succeeded him, would have never denied that things were dangerous and that this was scary. Of course it was. He was scared. How could he not be? Yet what he counseled the people in his now-legendary first inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice, it was the real enemy to be fought. Because it would only make the situation worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions.
And today, whether the biggest problem you face is a new coronavirus pandemic or the impending total economic and social collapse and it's implications – or maybe it’s both those things plus a faltering marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a lawsuit – you have to know what the real plague to avoid is.
This life we’re living – this world we inhabit – is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose the heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. You don’t make good decisions. You don’t see or think clearly.
The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t get distracted with the worst-case scenario on top of the worst-case scenario on top of the collision of two other worst-case scenarios. Because that doesn’t help us with what’s right in front of us right now. It doesn’t help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it’s on a spacewalk or a tough business call. It doesn’t help us slow our heart rate down whether we’re re-entering the earth’s atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock portfolio. It doesn’t help us remember that we’ve trained for this, that there is a playbook for how to proceed.
Remember, Marcus Aurelius himself faced a deadly, dangerous pandemic. His people were panicked. His doctors were baffled. His staff and his advisors were conflicted. His economy plunged. The plague spanned fifteen years of his reign with a mortality rate of between 2-3%. Marcus would have been scared – how could he not have been? But he didn’t let that rattle him. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t relinquish his ability to lead. He got to work.
“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,” he wrote to himself, as it was happening. “Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.” The crisis could have crippled him. But instead he stood up. He not only endured it, but he was a hero. He saved lives. He prevented panic from turning the battle into a rout.
Which is what we must do today and always, whatever we’re facing. We can’t give into fear. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over again: It’s OK to be scared, just don’t be afraid. We repeat: The world is a narrow bridge and I will not be afraid.
We have to focus on the six things, as Chris Hadfield might say, that we can do to make it better. And we can’t forget that there are plenty of things we can do to make things worse. Foremost among them, giving into fear and making mistakes. Rather, we have to keep going. Now is the time for everyone to show courage, like the thousands of generations who have come before us. Because time marches in only one direction – forward.”
The Universe
"Life is not what you see, but what you've projected. It's not what you've felt, but what you've decided. It's not what you've experienced, but how you've remembered it. It's not what you've forged, but what you've allowed. And it's not who's appeared, but who you've summoned. And this should serve you well until you find what you already have."
- The Universe
“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”
- www.tut.com
- www.tut.com
"Fentanyl America On Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia"
Full screen recommended, if you can stand it.
Narcotropolis, 9/26/24
"Fentanyl America On Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia"
Comments here:
Nationwide, 150,000 fentanyl overdoses in the last 12 months...
o
Ray Charles, "America The Beautiful"
Gregory Mannarino, "Live! The Worst Depression Of All Time Is Not Far Off"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/26/24
"Live! The Worst Depression Of
All Time Is Not Far Off!"
Comments here:
Greg Hunter, "UN Takeover with Chaos & Crisis"
"UN Takeover with Chaos & Crisis"
by Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com
"Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” has been warning of plans by the United Nations for total tyrannical control of your life. This past weekend at UN headquarters in New York City, all countries sealed the deal to hand over your freedoms to these demonic monsters. Newman explains, ” This is probably the most important story of the decade. Every world leader was there. Joe Biden was there. Almost every world leader on the planet was there. Every president, king and dictator were all there, and they are all signing what the UN calls the “Pact for the Future.” This, in their own words, is going to morph the United Nations into the “UN 2.0.” When you read the text of this agreement that was adopted by every government on earth, every government agreed to this, and they said they are going to strengthen the UN. They want the Secretary General of the UN to explore how he will take over everything during a complex global shock. They want every nation in the world to be under the authority of the International Court of Justice. They want international cooperation on taxes. They want to tax high net worth individuals. The list of things in here is absolutely mind blowing. This was adopted by every government in the world. Don’t take my word for it, read the article yourself and see if I am not telling the truth. They are turbo charging the UN. .Every area of your life is going to be affected by this agreement. Until this was approved, there was not a peep from the fake media in the United States.”
How will the UN take control? The World Economic Forum brought up where this was going in 2023. They talked about a ‘polycrisis’ where you would have multiple crises or one polycrisis that would basically upend society and require a total transformation. Where we are headed if these evil doers are not stopped is an economic crisis, a geopolitical crisis, possibly including a major conflict or war, a pandemic or health crisis of some sort with the World Health Organization (WHO), and a whole bunch of other simultaneous crises such as a cyber pandemic.”
If this is enacted, Newman says that the Secretary General of the UN would end up being a global dictator. Some good news is 26 Republican governors say they will not comply with this agreement. Newman says when more people learn about the agreement, that would never pass as a treaty, the more pushback is going to be generated. The Lying Legacy Media lied by omission again on this important story that will affect everyone on the planet. Newman thinks this is too stupid to be stupid. Newman says, “I asked people at the summit why is the American media not covering this? The only thing I can think of is there was a decision made at a high level that they did not want the American people to get wind of this because if they figure out what we are doing, there will be an outcry that you have never heard before.”
Where does President Trump fit in to all of this? Newman contends, “They were able to dupe Trump on a couple of things like Warp Speed and the MCA, but they absolutely despise this man on what he did on the globalist front. This creation of this global economic, political and religious system is the top priority. Everything else are parts of the big picture which is creating this one world system. All of this is to move us to this one world economic, political and religious system. Trump got us out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement to deindustrialize America. Trump gets out of UNESCO, the UN education agency entirely focused on brainwashing your kids to be good global citizens in a one world totalitarian religious, political and economic order. When Trump was in office, he was a one-man wrecking ball to this global governance. Newman thinks this is a big reason why Trump is dodging assassination attempts.
Newman contends the Deep State wants people to give up and give into evil tyrannical control. Newman says, “The Deep State wants to unleash all the chaos and crime they can to have crises on many fronts. The former head of the CDC is talking about a Bird Flu that would kill 20% to 50% of the people that it infects. Then, combine that with a collapsing dollar, a collapsing stock market and a World War III. Imagine the terror this would cause in people, and then the evil doers come in and say we can make all this stop. All you have to do is have your leaders sign on the dotted line.”
In closing, Newman quotes Psalms 2 of the Bible, “‘The kings of the earth and the rulers are taking counsel together or conspiring together against the Lord and His anointed.’ That’s exactly what they are doing. But here’s the really good news. ‘He who sits in heaven laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. He will speak to them in His wrath and terrify them in His fury’. God is not concerned in the slightest. He is laughing at them. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that.” There is much more in the 40-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumbleas he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the runaway best-selling new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death.”
For Newman’s breakdown on the major freedom killing
Judge Napolitano, "Scott Ritter: Israel Suicidal for Invading Lebanon"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/26/24
"Scott Ritter: Israel Suicidal for Invading Lebanon"
Comments here:
Travelling with Russell, "The Future of Russian High Speed Trains in 2024"
Meanwhile, in a sane civilized society...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 9/26/24
"The Future of Russian High Speed Trains in 2024"
"Moscow Transport recently unveiled the ‘Bely Krechet’ (‘White Gyrfalcon’) a new future high-speed train that will run between Moscow and St. Petersburg at speeds of up to 400 km/h. Discover with me what the future of Russian high-speed trains will look like."
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Would You Pay This?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/26/24
"Would You Pay This?"
"Would you pay $2,500 for a wedding invite? Join me, Dan from IAllegedly, as we dive into the outrageous world of wedding bills that leave guests footing the bill for the big day! Jack's story from the UK will blow your mind - imagine being asked to cover your "fair share" for the venue, food, and more, only to be slapped with extra charges for drinks and staff tips! It's insane, right?"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Gunning Up"
Guernica, Pablo Picasso
"Gunning Up"
From the corner of our eyes... we see more than just financial
threats. All over the world, nations are ‘gunning up.’
Our guess is that they will soon be gunning for each other.
by Bill Bonner
"Bomb, bomb, bomb...
Bomb, bomb Iran."
- Based on "Barbara-Ann" by The Regents,
and used by Sen. John McCain and others.
"We keep watch on the money. But from the corner of our eyes... we see more than just financial threats. All over the world, nations are ‘gunning up.’ Our guess is that they will soon be gunning for each other. So, today... we go back to the roots of our newsletter industry... to the days when intrepid writers provided ideas and opinions that mainstream media didn’t want to publish and the public didn’t want to hear.
Patrick Maitland, the 17th Earl of Lauderdale, was a pioneer in the newsletter genre. In 1937, he established the Fleet Street Letter in London. Then, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from the Munich Conference with Hitler, he announced that there would be ‘peace in our time.’ And the newspapers and radio stations spread the good news. But Maitland wasn’t so sure. He set out for Europe to talk to other sources. And when he came back, he had a distinctly different message. Peace was a comforting illusion, he told readers; brace yourselves... gird your loins... for war.
We regret that today we bring a similar message. War is coming. Get ready for WWForever. First, let’s check with public sources. Then, we’ll tell you what we think is going on. Bloomberg tells us that the Ukraine war has already ‘escalated’: "Putin Is Already Escalating His War on the West."
Biden shouldn’t worry about giving Ukraine long-range missiles when Russia is upping its sabotage in Western Europe and aid to terrorists in the Middle East. Since the war in Ukraine started, avoiding escalation - a leap into a larger, more globally consuming conflict - has been US President Joe Biden’s abiding preoccupation. But nearly three years in, the reality is that the war has already sprawled and escalated, just not quite in the ways many observers might expect.
And here’s Reuters: "China 'firmly supports' Lebanon in safeguarding its security." "China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday that China firmly supported Lebanon in safeguarding its sovereignty and security and strongly condemned violations after Israel's large scale airstrike.
Israel's military said it launched airstrikes against Hezbollah sites in Lebanon on Monday, which Lebanese authorities said had killed 492 people and sent tens of thousands fleeing Wang said no matter how the situation changes, China would continue to stand on the "side of justice and on the side of Arab brothers, including Lebanon."
On one side is ‘the West’ - NATO/Europeanized nations led by the US, with frontiers in the Ukraine and Israel. On the other side, the Muslim, Asian, Slavic and African bloc is slowly congealing. Giving the two sides a quick up and down glance, we see that the West has the wealth and technology. The East has more people...more output…and faster economic growth. Broadly, the West has the edge in firepower. The East leads in manpower.
The mainstream media serves up the ‘news’ in a form that the public finds easiest to swallow. So, the West is portrayed as fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’ against the evildoers of the East. But even Donald Trump is not that simpleminded. LA Times: "Trump claims Ukraine is 'dead' and dismisses its defense against Putin's invasion, touts prowess of Russia. Trump painted Ukraine as a country in ruins outside its capital, Kyiv, short on soldiers and losing population to war deaths and neighboring countries. He questioned whether the country has any bargaining chips left to negotiate an end to the war.
"Any deal - the worst deal - would’ve been better than what we have now," Trump said. "If they made a bad deal it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.” This led a group calling itself Republicans Against Trump to denounce him as a ‘despicable traitor.’ But Trump is like a badly-written novel. Almost everything he says is foolish or fiction; but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in it.
The average Ukrainian probably would have been a lot better off if Zelensky had settled up with Putin back in May 2022, when both were reportedly ready to end the war. So would the average Russian and the average American. But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev. His mission? To stop the peace talks. The West didn’t want the war to stop. Why not? More to come..."
"Martin Armstrong Says Prepare for World War 3"
Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network, 9/25/24
"Martin Armstrong Says Prepare for World War 3"
"Kerry Lutz sits down with renowned economist and financial analyst Martin Armstrong to discuss pressing global economic issues and their future implications. Armstrong shares his thoughts on inflation, the debt crisis, and central bank policies, explaining how these factors are influencing the global financial landscape. He also delves into geopolitical risks and the chances of the Neocons starting World War 3 before Trump is elected. Martin's unique perspective on how current tensions between major world powers could affect global markets and currencies and how it will affect you."
Comments here:
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Canadian Prepper, "Holy S#!+! Russia's 'Final' Nuclear Warning; Trump Threatens WW3 With Iran"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/25/24
"Holy S#!+! Russia's 'Final' Nuclear Warning;
Trump Threatens WW3 With Iran"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble.
The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”
The Poet: Wendell Berry, "The Circles Of Our Lives"
"The Circles Of Our Lives"
"Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon,
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.
Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return,
Within the circles of our lives..."
- Wendell Berry
○
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust,
swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity.
Life is Eternal.
We have stopped for a moment to encounter
each other, to meet, to love, to share.
This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”
- Paulo Coelho
○
"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
- Thornton Wilder
"No Smooth Road..."
"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere
of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,
till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."
- W. C. Doane
The Universe
“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”
“Tallyho,”
The Universe
“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”
Jeremiah Babe, "Another Attempted Home Invasion - Springfield, Ohio Is Coming To Town"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/25/24
"Another Attempted Home Invasion -
Springfield, Ohio Is Coming To Town"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "I Don't Even Know Where To Start, This Was Terrible"
Adventures With Danno, PM 9/25/24
"I Don't Even Know Where To Start, This Was Terrible"
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "Politicians Embracing Slaughter... We Are On The Verge Of Nuclear Annihilation"
Gerald Celente, 9/25/24
"Politicians Embracing Slaughter...
We Are On The Verge Of Nuclear Annihilation"
"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."
Comments here:
"The Difference..."
"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."
- Robert Fulghum
"If Our Cities Already Look Like They Belong In “Grand Theft Auto”, What Will They Look Like Once The Economy Implodes?"
"If Our Cities Already Look Like They Belong In “Grand Theft Auto”,
What Will They Look Like Once The Economy Implodes?"
by Michael Snyder
"As you will see below, video footage that was just captured on the streets of Philadelphia looks like it could have been pulled out of an extremely violent video game. If this is what our streets look like now, what are they going to look like once economic conditions become very harsh in this country? Just a few days ago, I wrote about the tremendous chaos that is erupting in cities all over America. When I wrote that article, I wasn’t even aware of the drama that had just played out in the city of Philadelphia. From late on Saturday night through the early hours of Sunday morning, there were multiple clashes with police as authorities attempted to break up a series of illegal street takeovers…
"Philadelphia continues its spiral into chaos under Democratic leadership, with violent mobs once again taking to the streets, this time attacking police officers and patrol cars in a brazen display of lawlessness. According to reports from 6 ABC, hundreds of cars and massive crowds participated in illegal car meetups, causing widespread chaos that lasted from 9:30 p.m. Saturday until 4:30 a.m. Sunday. At least 11 meetups took place, six of which turned into violent confrontations with police. The mayhem resulted in the hospitalization of one officer, while five police cars were heavily damaged."
These kids are completely and utterly out of control. One of them even had a flamethrower that he used to create a ring of fire in the middle of one major intersection. And when the police arrived at these events, these kids were not afraid to attack them at all… “Everything they do is disruptive, they’re ruining the quality of life. At one point, they had a flamethrower -yes, there’s video with a flamethrower.” They’re able to disperse quickly and then reform at other locations. That’s why we have officers dedicated. It’s playing wack-a-mole. We hit them at once, and they move to another,” he added.
“It was the aggressiveness at some of the locations - the incident outside of City Hall was aggressive. They physically went after our officers,” Cram said. “They don’t care about your safety, their own safety. You’ve all seen the videos of their behavior. How much chaos can they cause?”
Isn’t it odd how the word “chaos” just keeps popping up all over the place these days? As you can see in this video footage, the streets of Philadelphia really do look like they belong in “Grand Theft Auto”…
Of course Philadelphia is far from alone. At this point, there are millions of Americans that are literally afraid to leave their own homes because violent crime has become so pervasive.
In a “tiny Wisconsin community”, a member of the Tren de Aragua gang was just arrested for “sexually assaulting a mother and abusing her daughter”…"A member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang was arrested in a tiny Wisconsin community for allegedly sexually assaulting a mother and abusing her daughter after he had been arrested and released earlier this year in Minneapolis.
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, whose grandchildren live less than a mile away from the Prairie du Chien home where the mother and daughter were held against their will and repeatedly victimized, told Fox News Digital that it was only a matter of time before tragedy would strike the community amid the White House’s open-border policies and sanctuary city initiatives."
All of this chaos is going to play a major role in how these swing states vote. People are afraid of what they see in the streets, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. If things are this bad now, what is our society going to look like once economic conditions get really bad?
Yes, economic conditions are not good at all right now. This is something that I have documented extensively. But as bad as things are at this moment, the truth is that this is going to look like rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming.
Sadly, there are lots of signs that the economy is starting to move in the wrong direction quite rapidly now. For example, it is being reported that U.S. consumer confidence just dropped by the largest amount in over three years…"Consumers’ view on the economy tumbled in September, falling by the largest level in more than three years as fears grew about jobs and business conditions, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.
The board’s consumer confidence index slid to 98.7, down from 105.6 in August, the biggest one-month decline since August 2021. The Dow Jones consensus forecast was for a reading of 104. By contrast, the index had a reading of 132.6 in February 2020, a month before the Covid pandemic hit. Each of the five components the organization samples fared worse on the month, with the biggest fall coming among those aged 35-54 and earning less than $50,000."
And banks continue to permanently shut down more branches at a staggering rate…"US banks have closed more than 50 branches in just two weeks, as the march towards online banking continues to decimate local services. Wells Fargo, Chase, and Fulton were among the banks who closed locations between August 19 and September 7. Bank of America and Chase gave notice to close the most locations, notifying the regulator that they will shut a further twelve of their branches each."
Every week, more branches are disappearing, and that should deeply alarm all of us. Of course the exact same thing could be said about retail stores. Sadly, the very last full-size Kmart store in the continental United States is about to close forever…"The last full-size Kmart store in the continental United States is set to close in October, leaving only one downsized location remaining, reports say. The department store chain, which once operated around 2,300 locations in the early 1990s, will shutter the full-size store in Bridgehampton, New York, on Oct. 20, Newsday is reporting, citing an employee there. That means a smaller Kmart store in Miami will become the last one remaining in the U.S. Kmart, which is now owned by Transformco, also has three stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands."
As economic conditions deteriorate, millions of impoverished people that inhabit our major cities are going to become extremely desperate. And extremely desperate people do extremely desperate things. We are already seeing so much chaos all over the nation, but what is ahead is going to be so much worse."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Bank Cracks Down on Meat Eaters"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/25/24
"Bank Cracks Down on Meat Eaters"
"Did you know banks are now tracking your meat purchases? Welcome back to IAllegedly, it's Dan here bringing you the latest on how NatWest Bank is spying on what you eat! Insane, right? From encouraging vegan choices to controlling our energy usage, it seems like privacy is under attack."
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Tuesday, September 24, 2024
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
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"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?"
"What Is Hope?"
"What Is Hope?"
"What is hope? It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe. That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual; and in a miraculous and unexplained way, life is opening creative events which will light the way to freedom and resurrection. But the two - suffering and hope - must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair. But hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté and drunkenness.
So let us plant dates even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. That is the secret discipline. It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience, and it is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope."
- Rubin Alves
"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"
Strong language alert!
Full screen recommended.
"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"
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Gerald Celente, "Israel War + Ukraine War = Nuclear War"
Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 9/24/24
"Israel War + Ukraine War = Nuclear War"
"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, "Warning: We Now Have A Major Debt Crisis On Our Hands, People Can't Afford To Live"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/24/24
"Warning: We Now Have A Major Debt Crisis On Our Hands,
People Can't Afford To Live"
Comments here:
"The US Government's Debt Crisis: Why Bankruptcy Is Unavoidable and What It Means for You"
"The US Government's Debt Crisis:
Why Bankruptcy Is Unavoidable and What It Means for You"
by Nick Giambruno
"The US government can no longer delay or disguise its impending bankruptcy. The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace. First, let me put some crucial numbers and concepts into perspective.
You often hear the media, politicians, and financial analysts casually toss around the word "trillion" without appreciating what it means. A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number. The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. The image below shows stacks of $100 bills and a human for reference.
That's one trillion. Here's $30 trillion when the national debt was "only" $30 trillion:
Suppose you had a job that paid you $1 per second, or $3,600 per hour. That amounts to $86,400 per day and about $32 million per year. With that job, it would take you 31.5 years to earn a billion dollars. With that job, it would take you over 31,688 YEARS to earn a trillion dollars. Suppose you earned $75,000 a year, which is the typical household income in the US. It would take you over 13 million years to make a trillion dollars. If you had a trillion one-dollar bills, you could cover the surface area of Delaware twice over.
If you stacked a trillion one-dollar bills on top of each other, it would reach 67,866 miles high, about one-fourth of the distance from Earth to the moon. If you took that same trillion one-dollar bills and instead stacked them end-to-end, the length would exceed the distance between the Earth and the sun. So that’s how enormous a trillion is.
When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, they are in dangerous territory. And that is precisely what the fiat currency system has enabled the US government to do. Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic and is over $35 TRILLION.
To put that in perspective, if you earned $1 a second 24/7/365 - about $31 million per year - it would take over 1,109,080 YEARS to pay off the US federal debt. And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing. In short, the US government can’t repay its debt. It can’t even pay the interest expense without going into further debt. Default is inevitable.
It Will Not Be an Explicit Default: The US government is out of options and cannot repay what it has borrowed. Therefore, the question is not whether the US government will default but how.
Consider the recurring debt ceiling farce in the US Congress, which has been raised over 100 times since 1944 to avoid an explicit default. When faced with a choice, politicians always choose the most expedient option. In this case, that means issuing more debt rather than making tough budget decisions or explicitly defaulting.
That raises an important question: who will buy all this debt (Treasuries)? Historically, there has been a vast foreign appetite for Treasuries, but not anymore. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever. The US government and its allies froze around $300 billion of the Russian central bank’s reserves - the nation’s accumulated savings. It was a stunning illustration of the political risk associated with the US dollar and Treasuries. It showed that the US government could deny access to another sovereign country’s reserves at the flip of a switch.
Then, in April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the REPO Act into law. It allows the US government to seize frozen Russian state assets and transfer the funds to Ukraine. In short, the US dollar and Treasuries have become weaponized in a way they had not before. They are now clearly not neutral assets worthy of forming the bedrock of the international financial system but political tools for Washington to coerce others.
The rising political risk attached to Treasuries has made them even less attractive as a store of value. Many countries are undoubtedly wondering if the US government will seize their savings if they run afoul with Washington in even the most trivial ways. China is one of the largest holders of US Treasuries, and it indeed took note of what is happening. Since 2022 - when the US froze Russian state assets - China has sold about 25% of its Treasuries, an enormous change in such a short period. Even US allies, like Japan, have cut their Treasury holdings.
There are numerous other examples. The bottom line is that it’s clear the world isn’t hungry for US debt right now as supply is exploding. In the bond market, when demand for a bond falls, the interest rate rises to entice buyers and holders. However, the US government cannot allow interest rates to rise because the skyrocketing interest expense has become an urgent threat to its solvency. The interest expense on the federal debt is already bigger than defense spending and is set to become the largest item in the US government’s budget in months.
If higher interest rates are off the table and cannot entice more natural buyers, who will buy all this debt? The only entity capable of doing this is the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with dollars it creates out of thin air. Here’s the bottom line. The US government can’t pay off its debt. They won’t explicitly default. They can’t entice a meaningful amount of new Treasury buyers by allowing interest rates to rise. That means currency debasement is their only practical option.
Fed Chair Powell’s recent pivot to monetary easing and rate cuts is compounding the situation. That means the Fed has given up on bringing inflation down… even though it remains well above their target. It’s an incredible failure and will have ENORMOUS investment implications for the US dollar and gold. If the gold price is already hitting record highs, imagine what will happen when the Fed flips back to easing with even more currency debasement than the previous rounds of stimulus.
I think the gold price could skyrocket. The last time the US experienced runaway inflation was in the 1970s. Then, gold skyrocketed from $35 per ounce to $850 in 1980 - a gain of over 2,300% or more than 24x. I expect the percentage rise in the price of gold to be at least as significant as it was during the 1970s. While this megatrend is already well underway, I believe the most significant gains are still ahead."
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