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Sunday, October 11, 2026
Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can Predict the Future - It's Not Pretty"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/11/26
"You Can Predict the Future - It's Not Pretty"
"Can you predict where the economy is heading? On today's iAllegedly, Dan Golka connects the dots between inflation, wages, rising household debt, fuel prices, mortgage rates, housing affordability, and declining consumer confidence. From the cost of groceries and gasoline to rising HOA fees, home insurance, retirement expenses, and health insurance, the financial pressures facing Americans are connected. We also look at artificial intelligence and jobs, bank earnings, the bond market, interest rates, gold and silver, and what these economic changes could mean for your personal finances."
Comments here:
"Divide and Conquer"
"Divide and Conquer"
by Martin Armstrong
"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."
- Benjamin Franklin
"This strategy includes the termination of free speech which is what we are seeing. For example, a letter of self-proclaimed 270 experts wanted the Swedish audio streaming service to terminate “The Joe Rogan Experience” show, claiming he was spreading disinformation. I do not listen to his show, but the very idea of a free society means that we must tolerate those opinions we disagree with. To demand silence from the opposition leads only to communism.
Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff (1892-1938) was a Russian economist. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kondratieff, an economics professor, was called upon by the new government to create the first Soviet Five-Year Plan. Kondratieff was thus given the opportunity to draw the economic plan for Russia, he assumed, upon a blank slate. He explored the past to gather empirical data upon which to construct the new economy. What he observed was the cyclical nature of society through its booms and busts, and that knowledge would later cost him his life.
In 1926, Kondratieff published his conclusions after investigating history, entitling his work "Long Waves in Economic Life". Kondratieff discovered that there were progressive wave formations running spans of 50 to 60 years in length. He had reviewed historical events beginning in 1789 up to the date of his publication in 1926 and described three great waves, with highs of around 1820, 1864, and 1920 that were closely linked to wars. During this time period, the economy, even in the United States, was largely about 70% agrarian. By 1929, the United States’ economy was still about 40% agrarian, and this naturally provided an undertone to his work.
Even without war, adding the maximum time span of one of Kondratieff’s cycles of 60 years to 1920 brings us to 1980, the peak in OPEC oil and gold. Kondratieff effectively reached the conclusion that the economy was driven by cyclical activity, and thus this was implicitly against Hegel and Marx to the extent that no government would be able to reach some perfect state of synthesis. For this reason, Kondratieff’s work was seen as a criticism of Stalin’s goals. He was arrested in July 1930 and accused of being a member of the non-existent “Peasants’ Labour Party,” and was imprisoned for eight years. Stalin wanted him dead and expressed this in a letter dated August 1930. When his eight-year sentence was complete, he was put on trial again under new charges during the Great Purge and sentenced to ten years in prison.
However, upon his sentencing on September 17, 1938, he was taken outside and shot at the age of 46. Kondratieff died as a political prisoner, the government has done its best to destroy his research and to prevent its influence.
The powers in New York already tried to exterminate me. I have no doubt at some point they will think assassinating ANYONE or imprisoning them on fake charges will silence their opposition to the Great Reset. They will assume that silencing anyone who opposes them ensures their success. It will not. What they are doing is exterminating human rights. This is a standard agenda that has been played out countless times throughout history. It is what Patrick Henry explained: “Give me liberty or give me death!” Indeed, I saw the world they are creating behind the Berlin Wall. Death is preferable to living like that and being afraid to speak to anyone. There is no other way to judge the future than to look at the past."
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Click image for larger size.
"The Fourth Turn, Turn, Turn"
"The Fourth Turn, Turn, Turn"
by Charles Hugh Smith
Excerpt: "The cycles of The Fourth Turning, Fischer and Turchin are all in alignment at this point in history. The 1997 book "The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy" proposed a cyclical pattern of four 20-year generations which culminate in a national crisis every 80 years. The book identifies these dates as Fourth Turnings: 1781 (Revolutionary War), 1861 (Civil War) and 1941 (global war). add 80 years and voila, 2021.
I use the term Fourth Turning generically to describe an existential crisis that decisively changes the course of national identity and history. In other words, we don't have to accept the book's theory of generational dynamics to accept an 80-year cycle. There are other causal dynamics in play that also tend to cycle: they credit (Kondratieff) cycle, for example. While each of the previous existential crises were resolved positively, positive outcomes are not guaranteed: dissolution and collapse are also potential outcomes.
David Hackett Fischer's book "The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History" proposes another cycle: humans expand their numbers and consumption until they've exploited and depleted all available resources. As resources become scarce, societies and economies unravel as humans do not respond well to rising prices generated by scarcities.
The unraveling continues until consumption is realigned with the resources available. In the past this meant either a mass die-off that drastically reduced human numbers and consumption (for example, The Black Plague), a decline in fertility that slowly reduced population to fit resources, mass migration to locales with more resources or the discovery and exploitation of a new scalable energy source that enabled a new cycle of rising consumption.
The 14th century Black Death reduce Europe's population by roughly 40%, enabling depleted forests to regrow and depleted agricultural land to restore fertility. Once the human population regained its numbers and consumption in the 17th century, wood was once again under pressure as the key source of energy, shipbuilding, housing, etc.
The development of steam power and the technologies of mining enabled the exploitation of coal, which soon replaced wood as the primary energy source. Oil and natural gas added to the energy humans could tap, followed (at a much more modest level) by nuclear power. Despite gargantuan investments, the recent push to develop solar and wind energy has yielded very modest results, as globally these sources provide about 5% of total energy consumption. (See chart below)
It's self-evident that despite breezy claims of endless expansion of consumption, the global human population has now exceeded the resources available for practical extraction. Energy, fresh water, wild fisheries and fertile soils have all been exploited and the easy/cheap-to-extract resources have been depleted. So once again it's crunch-time: either we proactively reduce consumption to align with available resources, or Nature will do it for us via scarcities."
View this complete, illustrated, article here:
"I Have Accepted The Fact..."
“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”
“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”
- Henry Miller
'Don't Wonder..."
"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
"Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization"
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"Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization"
by International Man
"International Man: The decline of Western Civilization is on a lot of people’s minds. Let’s talk about this trend.
Doug Casey: Western Civilization has its origins in ancient Greece. It’s unique among the world’s civilizations in putting the individual - as opposed to the collective - in a central position. It enshrined logic and rational thought - as opposed to mysticism and superstition - as the way to deal with the world. It’s because of this that we have science, technology, great literature and art, capitalism, personal freedom, the concept of progress, and much, much more. In fact, almost everything worth having in the material world is due to Western Civilization.
Ayn Rand once said "East minus West equals zero." I think she went a bit too far, as a rhetorical device, but she was essentially right. When you look at what the world’s other civilizations have brought to the party, at least over the last 2,500 years, it’s trivial. I lived in the Orient for years. There are many things I love about it - martial arts, yoga, and the cuisine among them. But all the progress they’ve made is due to adopting the fruits of the West.
International Man: There are so many things degrading Western Civilization. Where do we begin?
Doug Casey: It’s been said, correctly, that a civilization always collapses from within. World War 1, in 1914, signaled the start of the long collapse of Western Civilization. Of course, termites were already eating away at the foundations, with the writings of people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. It’s been on an accelerating downward path ever since, even though technology and science have been improving at a quantum pace. They are, however, like delayed action flywheels, operating on stored energy and accumulated capital. Without capital, intellectual freedom, and entrepreneurialism, science and technology will slow down. I’m optimistic we’ll make it to Kurzweil’s Singularity, but there are no guarantees.
Things also changed with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Before that, the US used gold coinage for money. "The dollar" was just a name for 1/20th of an ounce of gold. That is what the dollar was. Paper dollars were just receipts for gold on deposit in the Treasury. The income tax, enacted the same year, threw more sand in the gears of civilization. The world was much freer before the events of 1913 and 1914, which acted to put the State at the center of everything.
The Fed and the income tax are both disastrous and unnecessary things, enemies of the common man in every way. Unfortunately, people have come to believe they’re fixtures in the cosmic firmament. They’re the main reasons - there are many other reasons, though, unfortunately - why the average American’s standard of living has been dropping since the early 1970s. In fact, were it not for these things, and the immense amount of capital destroyed during the numerous wars of the last 100 years, I expect we’d have already colonized the moon and Mars. Among many other things.
But I want to re-emphasize that the science, the technology, and all the wonderful toys we have are not the essence of Western Civilization. They’re consequences of individualism, capitalism, rational thought, and personal freedom. It’s critical not to confuse cause and effect.
International Man: You mentioned that the average American’s standard of living has dropped since the early 1970s. This is directly related to the US government abandoning the dollar’s last link to gold in 1971. Since then, the Federal Reserve has been able to debase the US dollar without limit. I think the dollar’s transformation into a purely fiat currency has eroded the rule of law and morality in the US. It’s similar to what happened in the Roman Empire after it started debasing its currency. What do you think, Doug?
Doug Casey: All the world’s governments and central banks share a common philosophy, which drives these policies. They believe that you create economic activity by stimulating demand, and you stimulate demand by printing money. And, of course, it’s true, in a way. Roughly the same way a counterfeiter can stimulate a local economy.
Unfortunately, they ignore that, and completely ignore that the way a person or a society becomes wealthy is by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. That difference, savings, is how you create capital. Without capital you’re reduced to subsistence, scratching at the earth with a stick. These people think that by inflating - which is to say destroying - the currency, they can create prosperity. But what they’re really doing, is destroying capital: When you destroy the value of the currency, that discourages people from saving it. And when people don’t save, they can’t build capital, and the vicious cycle goes on.
This is destructive for civilization itself, in both the long term and the short term. The more paper money, the more credit, they create, the more society focuses on finance, as opposed to production. It’s why there are many times more people studying finance than science. The focus is increasingly on speculation, not production. Financial engineering, not mechanical, electrical, or chemical engineering. And lots of laws and regulations to keep the unstable structure from collapsing.
What keeps a truly civil society together isn’t laws, regulations, and police. It’s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation, and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western Civilization is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that’s being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society. There are regulations on the most obscure areas of life. As Harvey Silverglate pointed out in his book, the average American commits three felonies a day. Whether he’s caught and prosecuted is a subject of luck and the arbitrary will of some functionary. That’s antithetical to the core values of Western Civilization.
International Man: Speaking of ancient civilizations like Rome, interest rates are just coming off the the lowest levels they’ve been in 5,000 years of recorded history. Trillions of dollars’ worth of government bonds trade at negative yields. Of course, this couldn’t happen in a free market. It’s only possible because of central bank manipulation. How will artificially low interest rates affect the collapse of Western Civilization?
Doug Casey: It’s really, really serious. I previously thought it was metaphysically impossible to have negative interest rates but, in the Bizarro World central banks have created, it’s happened.
Negative interest rates discourage saving. Once again, saving is what builds capital. Without capital you wind up as an empty shell - Rome in 450 A.D., or Detroit today - lots of wonderful but empty buildings and no economic activity. Worse, it forces people to desperately put their money in all manner of idiotic speculations in an effort to stay ahead of inflation. They wind up chasing the bubbles the funny money creates.
Let me re-emphasize something: in order for science and technology to advance you need capital. Where does capital come from? It comes from people producing more than they consume and saving the difference. Debt, on the other hand, means you’re living above your means. You’re either consuming the capital others have saved, or you’re mortgaging your future.
Zero and negative interest rate policies, and the creation of money out of nowhere, are actually destructive of civilization itself. It makes the average guy feel that he’s not in control of his own destiny. He starts believing that the State, or luck, or Allah will provide for him. That attitude is typical of people from backward parts of the world - not Western Civilization.
International Man: What does it say about the economy and society that people work so hard to interpret what officials from the Federal Reserve and other central banks say?
Doug Casey: It’s a shameful waste of time. They remind me of primitives seeking the counsel of witch doctors. One hundred years ago, the richest people in the country - the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, and such - made their money creating industries that actually made stuff. Now, the richest people in the country just shuffle money around. They get rich because they’re close to the government and the hydrant of currency materialized by the Federal Reserve. I’d say it’s a sign that society in the US has become quite degraded.
The world revolves much less around actual production, but around guessing the direction of financial markets. Negative interest rates are creating bubbles, and will eventually result in an economic collapse.
International Man: Negative interest rates are essentially a tax on savings. A lot of people would rather pull their money out of the bank and stuff it under a mattress than suffer that sting. The economic central planners know this. It’s why they’re using negative interest rates to ramp up the War on Cash - the push to eliminate paper currency and create a cashless society.
The banking system is very fragile. Banks don’t hold much paper cash. It’s mostly digital bytes on a computer. If people start withdrawing paper money en masse, it won’t take much to bring the whole system down. Their solution is to make accessing cash harder, and in some cases, illegal. That’s why the economic witch doctors at Harvard are pounding the table to get rid of the $100 bill. Take France, for example. It’s now illegal to make cash transactions over €1,000 without documenting them properly.
Negative interest rates have turbocharged the War on Cash. If the central planners win this war, it would be the final deathblow to financial privacy. How does this all relate to the collapse of Western Civilization?
Doug Casey: I believe the next step in their idiotic plan is to abolish cash. Decades ago they got rid of gold coinage, which used to circulate day to day in people’s pockets. Then they got rid of silver coinage. Now, they’re planning to get rid of cash altogether. So you won’t even have euros or dollars or pounds in your wallet anymore, or if you do, it will only be very small denominations. Everything else is going to have to be done through electronic payment processing.
This is a huge disaster for the average person: absolutely everything that you buy or sell, other than perhaps a candy bar or a hamburger, is going to have to go through the banking system. Thus, the government will be able to monitor every transaction and payment. Financial privacy, even what’s left of it today, will literally cease to exist.
Privacy is one of the big differences between a civilized society and a primitive society. In a primitive society, in your little dirt hut village, anybody can look through your window or pull back the flap on your tent. You have no privacy. Everybody can hear everything; see anything. This was one of the marvelous things about Western Civilization - privacy was valued, and respected. But that concept, like so many others, is on its way out…
International Man: You’ve mentioned before that language and words provide important clues to the collapse of Western Civilization. How so?
Doug Casey: Many of the words you hear, especially on television and other media, are confused, conflated, or completely misused. Many recent changes in the way words are used are corrupting the language. As George Orwell liked to point out, to control language is to control thought. The corruption of language is adding to the corruption of civilization itself. This is not a trivial factor in the degradation of Western Civilization.
Words - their exact meanings, and how they’re used are critically important. If you don’t mean what you say and say what you mean, then it’s impossible to communicate accurately. Forget about transmitting philosophical concepts.
Take for example shareholders and stakeholders. We all know that a shareholder actually owns a share in a company, but have you noticed that over the last generation shareholders have become less important than stakeholders? Even though stakeholders are just hangers-on, employees, or people who are looking to get in on a shakedown. But everybody slavishly acknowledges, "Yes, we’ve got to look out for the stakeholders." Where did that concept come from? It’s a recent creation, but Boobus americanus seems to think it was carved in stone at the country’s founding.
We’re told to protect them, as if they were a valuable and endangered species. I say, "A pox upon stakeholders." If they want a vote in what a company does, then they ought to become shareholders. Stakeholders are a class of being created out of nothing by Cultural Marxists for the purpose of shaking down shareholders."
Editor’s Note: This is going to be the most turbulent decade in US history…The 2020s will be more dangerous than the 1930s, the 1940s, and even the 1860s. That's because severe crises are brewing on multiple fronts and converging. The whole system will have a complete reset, and soon. It could be the BIGGEST thing since the founding of the USA."
"Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?"
"Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?"
by John Wilder
"When I look at the war in Ukraine and other world events, I see evidence of Sir Halford John Mackinder. It would have been cool if he was the frontman for a 1910s version of Judas Priest, but no. Mackinder was a guy who thought long and hard about mountains, deserts, oceans, steppes, and wars. You could tell Mackinder was going to be good at geography, what with that latitude. The result of all this pondering was what he called the Heartland Theory, which was the founding moment for geopolitics.
What’s geopolitics? It’s the idea that one of the biggest influencers in human history (besides being human) was the geography we inhabit. Mackinder’s first version wasn’t very helpful, since he just ended up with “Indonesia” and the rest of the world, which he called “Outdonesia”.
Mackinder focused mainly on the Eurasian continent. Flat land with no obstacles meant, in Mackinder’s mind, that the land would be eventually ruled by a single power. Jungles and swamps could be a barrier, but eventually he thought that technology would solve that. Mountains? Mountains were obstacles that stopped invasions, and allowed cultures to develop independently. Even better than a mountain? An island.
There’s even a theory (not Mackinder’s) that the independent focus on freedom flourished in England because the local farmers weren’t (after the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Mormons, and Vikings were done pillaging) subject to invasion and were able to develop a culture based on a government with limited powers, along with rights invested in every man.
Mackinder went further, though. He saw the combination of Eurasia and Africa as something he called the World Island. If the World Island came under the domination of a single power, he thought, it would eventually rule the rest of the world – it would have overwhelming resources and population, and it would have the ability to outproduce (both economically and militarily) everything else. “Pivot Area” is what Mackinder first called the Heartland.
Mackinder, being English, had seen the Great Game in the 1900s, which in many cases was a fight to keep Russia landlocked. The rest of Europe feared a Russia that had access to the sea. Conversely, Russia itself was the Heartland of the Mackinder’s World Island. Russia was separated and protected on most of its borders by mountains and deserts. On the north, Russia was protected by the Arctic Ocean, which is generally more inaccessible.
Russia is still essentially landlocked. The Soviet Navy had some nice submarines, but outside of that, the Russians have never been a naval power, and the times Russia attempted to make a navy have been so tragically inept that well, let me give an example: The sea Battle of Tsushima between the Japanese and Russians in 1905 was a Japanese victory. The Japanese lost 117 dead, 583 wounded, and lost 3 torpedo boats. The Russians? They lost 5,045 dead, 803 injured, 6,016 captured, 6 battleships sunk, 2 battleships captured. The Russians sank 450 ton of the Japanese Navy. The Japanese sunk 126,792 tons of the Russian fleet. Yup. This was more lopsided than a fight between a poodle and a porkchop.
Mackinder noted that the Heartland (Russia) was built on land power. The Rimlands (or, on the map “Inner Crescent”) were built on sea power. In the end, almost all of the twentieth century was built on keeping Russia away from the ocean, and fighting over Eastern Europe. Why? In Mackinder’s mind, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland (Russia); Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” In one sense, it’s true.
Mackinder finally in 1943 came up with another idea, his first idea being lonely. I think he could see the way World War II was going to end, so he came up with the idea that if the United States were to team up with Western Europe, they could still command the Rimlands and contain the Soviet Union to the Heartland.
There are several reasons that the United States has responded with such an amazing amount of aid to Ukraine. $360 billion dollars? Some people don’t work a whole year and get that much money. No, the idea is to bleed Putin as deeply and completely as they can. Why? If they’re following Mackinder, this keeps Russia vulnerable. It keeps Eastern Europe from being under Russia’s control – if you count the number of “Battles of Kiev” or “Battles of Kharkov” you can see that it’s statistically more likely to rain artillery in Kiev than rain water.
This might be the major driver for Russia, too. A Russian-aligned (or at least neutral) Ukraine nicely plugs the Russian southern flank. And this is nearly the last year that Russia can make this attempt – the younger generation isn’t very big, and the older generation that built and can run all of the cool Soviet tech? They’re dying off. Soon all their engineers with relevant weapons manufacturing experience will be...dead. If Russia is going to attempt to secure the south, this is their only shot. Depending on how vulnerable the Russians think they are, the harder they’ll fight. NATO nations tossing in weapons isn’t helping the famous Russian paranoia.
I think that the United States, in getting cozy with China in the 1970s, was following along with Mackinder’s theory – I believe Mackinder himself said that a Chinese-Russian alliance could effectively control the Heartland and split the Rimland, given China’s access to the oceans. And that’s what China is doing now, with the Belt and Road Initiative. Remember Mackinder’s World Island? Here’s a map of the countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative:
Spoiler alert: It’s the world island."
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Full screen recommended.
"Halford Mackinder, Heartland Theory and Geographical Pivot 1"
by Geopoliticus
"In this presentation we discuss the theory for Geographic Causation in Universal History proposed by Sir Halford Mackinder in his paper - "The Geographic Pivot of History" delivered as a lecture in 1904. The theoretical propositions in the paper regarding how natural geography controls the flow of history of civilizations - with nature acting as a stage for man to act upon - was the most relevant contribution of Halford Mackinder towards developing a philosophic synthesis between geography, history and statesmanship, leading to the development of modern geopolitics.
In this part we see how he proposes the beginning of a new era in the international system from the 1900s, predicts (in a way) the break out of the First World War, and builds a unified model based on Geo-history for understanding the emergence and evolution of European civilization."
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Full screen recommended.
"Halford Mackinder, Heartland Theory and Geographical Pivot 2"
by Geopoliticus
"In this presentation we view Mackinder’s historical analysts by looking at the interactions between different Geographic zones, seeing how the Mongols used land power to unify the core of the World Island and how Europeans circumvented nomadic heartland power by investing in sea power. The core idea of Halford Mackinder’s Thesis was that in the beginning of the 20th century, geographers needed to develop a philosophical synthesis of geographical conditions and historical trajectories of nations over long ranges of time.
He attempted to do this for the history of Eurasia, which he called, the World Island. According to his theoretical model, there was a link between geographical conditions and the nature of geopolitical order, for one, but for further depth in understanding historical trajectories we need to do a wider scale analysis of interactions between different geographically influenced political orders by building a model of Heartland-Rimland interactions across history."
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Freely download "The Geographical Pivot of History",
by HJ Mackinder, April 1904, here:
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Why is this important? Consider history, from which we learn nothing...
"The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace." An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings.'"
The lower figure is more plausible, but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total. Primitive warfare is estimated to have accounted for 15.1% of deaths and claimed 400 million victims. Added to the aforementioned figure of 1,240 million between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, this would mean a total of 1,640,000,000 people killed by war (including deaths from famine and disease caused by war) throughout the history and pre-history of mankind. For comparison, an estimated 1,680,000,000 people died from infectious diseases in the 20th century."
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"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human
race proved to be nothing more than the story of an
ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump."
- David Ormsby-Gore
"How It Really is"
The greatest little whorehouse, well, anywhere...
o
"Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels;
two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons."
– H.L. Mencken
o
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself."
"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,
and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."
"The smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes."
"The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a
thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether -
Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress."
"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
- Mark Twain
Joel Bowman, "Pink Tide Ebbs"
Click image for larger size.
"Pink Tide Ebbs"
by Joel Bowman
"This week, we dared notice something positive… an entire continent moving away from dread socialism. Check out this above handy map, from Tuesday’s Note. Terminally fashionable among miseducated campus denizens north of the equator, socialism has a long and sordid history down this End of the World. From Alvarado’s Peru to Allende’s Chile… Morales in Bolivia to the Chavistas in Venezuela… Big Government Peronists in Argentina to Lula’s long arm here in Brazil…the continent has suffered enough collectivist brain-rot to make any sentient being recoil in horror. From the late ‘90s through the late 2010s, the so-called “Pink Tide” flowed over the land, so that at its peak, roughly 350 million people – some three-quarters of the population – lived under one form of far-left lunacy or another.
Then, beginning with the election of Javier Milei in our adopted country of Argentina, back in late 2023, the tide began to turn. As you can see from the map above, the shift has been non-trivial. Should Brazil turn away from Lula’s grip a couple of weeks from now, as is widely expected following his defeat in the first round of voting, 92% of South America’s population and 95% of its GDP will fall under conservative and/or anti-socialist governments. Call it a Liberty Spring at the end of the world.
Ah, but what about the scene here on the ground? Brazil is a big place, to be sure... and we claim no special insights beyond what we see with our own ears and hear with our own eyes. And even then we are often confused. “This place has become a real ‘digital nomad’ destination,” our cheerful host, a semi-retired physician, explained. “The woman renting the next casita next door, she’s a lawyer. A Porteña [from Buenos Aires]. She works online a few hours in the morning, then spends her days on the beach and teaching yoga classes.
“Down the hill there’s a young couple who are ‘in tech.’ I’m not exactly sure what they do,” she continued, “but they seem to spend a lot of time in the water. We get all kinds coming through, really. They stay for a month or two, then flit off to some other tropical clime…” Hmm… uber chic… young… hip… The astute reader has already begun to wonder… “What on earth are you doing there, Joel?”
Touché, dear reader. Now you know it is dear wifey who books our family vacations. Your editor, who moonlights as the family porter, is grateful to pick up a few extra shifts, schlepping the bags down to the beach of an afternoon… which is where we’re heading presently. More next week.
In the meantime, do check out this past week’s Notes below, including our beach chair coverage of Brazil’s “far right tsunami,” as it was reported in the press… plus guest columnist, Lau Vegys’s excellent analysis of Trump’s inflation gambit. Now that POTUS is officially leaning into fiat debasement (as he flatly stated in a recent interview with Time Magazine), what does it mean for the dollars in your pocket? "
"Brazil’s 'Far Right Tsunami'”
by Joel Bowman
“When we look at how the political color of the map of the
region has changed, one is clearly filled with hope.”
~ Javier Milei, speaking at the Winds of Change conference in Sept. 2026
Excerpt: Pipa Beach, Brazil - "Are you paying attention, dear reader? Another domino teeters and wobbles down this End of the Americas. But first... We came to Brazil to take a break, to read and relax, to work on our pre-award winning novel, and to escape the scourge of modern politics for a couple of weeks. Perhaps we should have looked at the calendar: The very first weekend we arrived, the Brazilians went to the polls for their general elections. On the ballot (we assume): “The future!” “Our children!” “Democracy itself!” Oh well, we mused, the spectacle of modern politics is usually worth a good chuckle. So we grabbed a beach chair, ordered a stiff caipirinha, and settled in for the show...
As it happens, we were here (also by mistake) for the country’s last general election, back in 2022, when lifelong socialist goon, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, nosed out the incumbent (and father of the current contender), Jair Bolsonaro. At the time, there were credible accusations of widespread voter fraud, ballot stuffing, and systemic corruption on both sides... in other words, a presidential election in South America.
Naturally, Bolsonaro Sr. was jailed after his election loss – par for the course in this part of the world. This past weekend’s election pitted Jair’s eldest son, Flavio, against Lula the Undead. Four other members of the Bolsonaro family also ran for election in various other governmental races.
To the shock of absolutely nobody, the long-disgraced legacy media... the pollsters and the insiders... thought leaders and quackademics... the usual list of suspect experts and expert suspects... all lined up behind their man in office, one of the last holdouts against a streak of conservative victories that has been sweeping the continent (more about which in a moment)... Ah, but wait... what’s this? A wrinkle in the script?"
Full, highly recommended article is here:
"If..."
If you were facing a firing squad, and we all are...
wouldn't you at least want to know why?
And who stood you against the wall?
o
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
- Hunter S. Thompson, “The Great Shark Hunt”
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.
Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?
So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).
Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:
1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...
2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.
3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.
4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?
5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.
6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.
7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.
8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.
Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest. The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.
By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."
"The Coliseum!"
"The Coliseum!"
by Eric Peters
"Back in the ’90s, there was this cheesy movie called "Best of The Best." It was about underground fight-to-the-death matches. Wayne Newton – if you remember him – was the ring announcer. His signature line was "and you love it!" Cue the roar of approbation from the crowd of rich degenerates who’d come to watch a man be killed and – perhaps – be splashed by some blood.
It is no longer underground – and the degenerates hold public office. Pete Hegseth, the very-credibly-accused rapist, drunk and End Times Christian Secretary of War, announced the other day that the execution of Nidal Hasan, the army officer who killed 12 people at Ford Hood back in 2009, will be live-streamed. “He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth told Jack Posobiec on Real America’s Voice. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public – because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” As opposed to rape – and starting wars by assassinating the other side’s negotiating team and killing 160 little girls on Day One of the war.
But that’s not what people need to understand. What they need to understand is that Hegseth (and presumably, Trump) want people to gloat and smack their lips, just like the degenerates in the audience in "Best of the Best." It is not enough execute Nidal. His execution must be reveled in, so as to rouse the blood lust of the population as well as to desensitize it. To whet their appetite for more. And more could be you – or me.
Hasan is a killer and so deserving of death but Hegseth has said that mere criticism of Trump’s war is “treason” and “national betrayal.” Well, what is the usual punishment for treason? Yes, exactly. Death. Hegseth has very plainly telegraphed that he believes critics of the war – presumably, any war – are no better than Hasan and just as deserving of the same end, live on TeeVee. He did not technically say this. But connect the dots. The live-streamed execution of Hasan is meant to connect them. To convey understanding.
A long time ago, there was an Austrian postcard painter who proclaimed himself the “Supreme Justiciar” of the German people; he held life and death in the palm of his hand. Emphasis on his. As in him personally. He (not the courts) ordered his political enemies – including his friend, Ernst Rohm, the head of the storm troopers (SA) – rounded up and executed, which they were. Along with a number of others who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He – like Hegseth – claimed the executed people had all committed “treason.” In Rohm’s case, because he had privately criticized the Austrian postcard painter but really he was considered a potential threat to his power.
What do you suppose Trump and Hegseth think about people they see as threats to their power? Like the Austrian postcard painter, these two are capable of anything; both have already demonstrated this. Who will stop them? Who will cheer them?
A former member of the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps who is now a law professor at Texas Tech – Geoffrey Corn – blandly says the live-streaming of Hasan’s execution “raises significant moral questions, above and beyond the questions related to the death penalty generally.” Indeed it does. What it is, of course, is the state baring its fangs – but it is also more than just that. It is the state egging on the worst in people.
It is very easy to get caught up in this, because Hasan is not a sympathetic character. He murdered nine people. It is easy to want to see justice served. It is also easy to give in to the desire to see him suffer. To revel in his suffering. This crosses a kind of Rubicon, one side of which is justice – and on the other, savagery. The lust to see others suffer and die, not for justice but for pleasure. The pleasure that dissipates (temporarily) the anger; the raging impotence felt by many on account of their circumstances, over which they instinctively feel they have little if any control. It is not a random thing that most new cars look furious. It is not just happenstance that millions of adults invest enormous emotional energy in the outcome of professional athletic contests, which when you think about it are just one step removed from professional gladiatorial contests of the sort depicted in "Best of the Best."
Or in the history books. The ancient Romans went to the actual Coliseum, to revel in the deaths of animals and human beings. The Caesars put on these shows – which sometimes lasted for weeks – to satiate the Roman people’s need to exult in their spectatorhood. As bad as things might be for the average plebe, they were far worse for the men in the arena who were about to be torn to pieces by animals or by each other. The spectators left the arena spent in an almost post-orgasmic way.
“Turning the execution of such a penalty into some type of public spectacle echoes of the past we seemed to have put behind us,” says Corn. One that is about to be put back in front of us – and many will welcome it. Hegseth and Trump are resurrecting the barbarism of the ancient world. Its cruel crowds and even more cruel imperators. They want and need to hear the crowds cheer, to be complicit in their orgy of death and gore. To want more and worse. Which they’ll get."
Saturday, October 10, 2026
"Alert! UK Mobilizing 'Citizen Army'; Russia Ground Nuclear Detonation Training; WW3 Tunnels"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/10/26
"Alert! UK Mobilizing 'Citizen Army';
Russia Ground Nuclear Detonation Training; WW3 Tunnels"
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"The Next Global Financial Crisis Is Erupting Right Now As Bond Yields Skyrocket All Over The World"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/10/26
"The Next Global Financial Crisis Is Erupting Right
Now As Bond Yields Skyrocket All Over The World"
"The global bond market is starting to crack, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is coming. On Wednesday, October 7th, the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury closed at 5.684 percent, and the 10-year hit 5.307 percent, its highest level since 2002. For years, Washington borrowed as if the money would never run out. Now the Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of 1.8 trillion dollars this year, and net interest on the debt is heading toward about 970 billion dollars, climbing to 2.1 trillion dollars a decade from now. When yields skyrocket, bond prices crash. That is really bad news for U.S. banks, which are holding roughly 4.81 trillion dollars in Treasury and agency securities. You might remember what happened to Silicon Valley Bank in the spring of 2023. And this is not just an American problem. French 10-year yields have soared by more than 100 basis points since the start of 2026, and French public debt has reached about 3.596 trillion euros, a ratio not seen since 1946. In Britain, the 30-year gilt briefly hit 6.029 percent, its highest level since 1998. In Japan, gross public debt is projected at about 203 percent of GDP.
Needless to say, ordinary families are going to pay for all of this. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 7.28 percent on October 1st, the highest level since November 2023. On a 400,000 dollar loan, the monthly payment jumps from about 2,486 dollars to about 2,737 dollars. Governments that spent decades piling up debt can no longer borrow gigantic sums at rock-bottom rates, and the pain is going to spread in the coming months. Will France be the first domino to fall? Nobody knows for certain. But the time to get your household ready is now, before the next wave hits."
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