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"I'm Joe B. and I... I forget. Monica! What?! Oh, that's right, sorry, sorry...
Kamala! What am I doing here? Oh, ok.
"Endorse" this message! I do indeed... I think..."
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, October 15, 2020
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/15/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/15/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Gregory Mannarino,
AM Oct 15, 2020:
"ECONOMIC COLLAPSE.
Stock Market To DROP At The Open"
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Updated live.
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10/15/2020 - 10:05: "'Temporary' Layoffs Turning Into Permanent Job Losses"
OCT 15, 2020 8:34 AM: "Almost 900,000 Americans Filed For First-Time Jobless Benefits Last Week But California Chaos Continues"
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Daily Update (October 14th to 15th)
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Not yet? Hold on, it's arriving now. Think it's been bad so far?
Oh, Good Citizens, as the old rock song proclaimed,
"You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" We will. Watch and see...
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And now. The End game...
"America Is On The Brink Of A Major Bank Collapse! Be Ready For The Coming Apocalyptic End Game"
"America Is On The Brink Of A Major Bank Collapse!
Be Ready For The Coming Apocalyptic End Game"
by Epic Economist
A threatening banking collapse is unfolding right before our eyes and experts alert this might spark the worst financial crash and the deepest housing collapse in history. Months in a deep, challenging recession, we've already seen several damaging disruptions to our economy such the record unemployment, failing small businesses, and the broken supply chain. However, lockdown repercussions are still triggering further threats to our already beaten economic scenery, and those might be silently sitting on the balance sheets of the big banks. According to specialists, a looming banking collapse is unfolding, and its effects could be cataclysmic.
Their warnings have generated a heated debate over whether a banking crisis in the same mold as that witnessed during the 2008 global financial crisis is just around the corner. That's why today, we decided to investigate what has been going on in this industry to understand the implications of this broad-spectrum meltdown. So stay with us, don't forget to give this video a thumbs up, share it with friends, and subscribe to our channel to keep updated with the next chapters of the 21-century depression.
A while ago, Berkeley law professor and ex-Morgan Stanley derivatives structurer Frank Partnoy released an article explaining how a banking crisis has been quietly developing in the US economy background, and its effects could potentially lead to a much more dramatic disaster than the one unfolded in 2008. “You may think that such a crisis is unlikely, with memories of the 2008 crash still so fresh. But banks learned few lessons from that calamity, and new laws intended to keep them from taking on too much risk have failed to do so,” Partnoy disclosed. “As a result, we could be on the precipice of another crash, one different from 2008 less in kind than in degree. This one could be worse.”
You may be wondering why this time around things could be worse? Haven't banks learned their lessons from prior crises and tightened regulations? Well, according to Partnoy, they did learn some lessons, but that doesn't mean they won't make the same mistakes."
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
"Antifa Is Real. It’s Violent. And You Need to Plan For It"
"Antifa Is Real. It’s Violent. And You Need to Plan For It"
by Simon Black
"American diplomat George Messersmith found himself in an awkward situation while attending a luncheon in Kiel, Germany in August of 1933. As lunch came to a close, the attendees erupted into song with arms outstretched in the Nazi salute. First they belted out Germany’s national anthem, followed by the anthem of the Stormtroopers – the paramilitary ”Brownshirts” who violently enforced Germany’s new social rules.
Messersmith was the US Consul-General overseeing America’s diplomatic ties with Germany, so he politely stood at attention. But he did not salute or sing along. Germans were required by law to render the Nazi salute, especially during the anthem; Hitler had been awarded supreme executive authority only a few months before, and he made the mandatory salute law of the land. Foreigners, however, were explicitly exempt from saluting or singing the anthem. But that didn’t help Messersmith.
Even though he was legally excused from making the Nazi salute, angry Brownshirts menacingly glared at him for not participating in their rituals. Messersmith later wrote in his memoirs that he felt threatened, as if the Brownshirts were ready to attack him. “I felt really quite fortunate that the incident took place within doors. For if it had been in a street gathering, or in an outdoor demonstration, no questions would have been asked as to who I was, and that I would have been mishandled is almost unquestionable.”
Messersmith was one of the few US officials who grasped just how dangerous the Nazis were in 1933. Others had to witness it first hand before they understood. A similar event unfolded when a US radio host and his family found themselves amidst an impromptu Nazi parade in Berlin. And in order to avoid Hailing Hitler, they turned their backs to the parade and gazed into a store window. But several Brownshirts quickly surrounded the family and demanded to know why they did not salute. The family explained that they were from the US and didn’t know the customs in Germany. But the Brownshirts didn’t care. The family was assaulted as police officers watched… and did nothing to stop the violence.
News of these sorts of incidents quickly made their way overseas, and foreigners read the about Americans traveling in Germany being savagely beaten or threatened for not engaging in Nazi rituals.
But more surprising is that many foreigners actually sided with the Nazis. Even the daughter of the US Ambassador to Germany defended the Nazis and their Brownshirt enforcers. She said that news reports of these assaults and beatings were “exaggerated by bitter, close-minded people” who ignored the “thrilling rebirth” Hitler had ushered in for Germany.
Of course, we know in retrospect that these early warning signs were not at all an exaggeration. They were a small preview for what would come next. Today we are obviously in a different time dealing with totally different circumstances. But it would be foolish to ignore the early warning signs and pretend as if what’s happening now is not a preview for what could come next.
This is perhaps best illustrated by a CNN reporter in Kenosha, Wisconsin back in August who stood in front of burning cars and buildings, with a violent mob all around him, yet declared the protests “fiery but mostly peaceful.”
This willful ignorance of the undercurrent coursing its way through the Western world will not save anyone from the destruction it brings. For example, just this past Monday, “peaceful protesters” in Portland, Oregon celebrated Columbus Day with an “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage.” They weren’t even pretending to be peaceful. They called it what it is: RAGE. That’s literally the name they gave to their own actions.
Hundreds of people dressed in all black, covered their faces, and armed themselves with shields and nightsticks. They marched their way through the city, smashed windows, and forced any witnesses to stop filming and delete photographs. A man who filmed from his apartment’s terrace had lasers shined in his eyes and was doused in some sort of liquid.
The protesters tore down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. They smashed the windows of the Oregon Historical Society building, and unfurled a banner that said “stop honoring racist colonizer murderers.” Police did not even attempt to intervene until the rioters had been on the streets for hours and had already caused havoc and destruction.
Ironically, much of the mainstream media still refuses to acknowledge that this group ‘antifa’– the fascists who call themselves anti-fascists – even exists. It’s obvious that a small, fringe, ideological minority has started to take control. They have squashed civil discourse and free speech. Dissent is met with violence and intimidation. And if you dare to speak out, you become a target. That could mean being “cancelled” by the Twitter mob. Or being accosted in public and forced to raise your fist. Several people have already been killed in protests across the nation.
When people like the former CEO of Twitter are calling for capitalists to be “lined up against the wall and shot,” it’s time to take the threat seriously. This is far from the first time in history that a tiny fraction of the population has resorted to violence and extremism to force their agenda on an entire nation.
But you don’t have to watch helplessly as the born-again Brownshirts destroy everything you have worked for.The first step is to recognize that the radical movement will not simply go away on its own. This has been growing for some time, and history tells us that it could become much worse.
Second, have a rock solid Plan B. This means deciding – in advance, when you’re still calm and rational – what steps to take in order to secure your family’s safety, your prosperity, and your freedom in a worst case scenario. After all, you don’t want to be thinking about your next move when some antifa thug ‘peacefully’ hurls a molotov cocktail through your window."
“US Banks Not Safe; Economy Getting Sicker; Restaurant Business Hammered; Wall St. Loves You”
Jeremiah Babe,
“US Banks Not Safe; Economy Getting Sicker;
Restaurant Business Hammered; Wall St. Loves You”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using three different telescopes.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100513.html
The Poet: William Stafford, "The Gift"
"The Gift"
"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.
It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.
It's a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."
- William Stafford
"The Consequences Of Our Choices..."
“Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.”
- Richard Bach, “Running From Safety”
"Why We're Doomed: Our Delusional Faith In Incremental Change"
"Why We're Doomed: Our Delusional Faith In Incremental Change"
by Charles Hugh Smith
When times are good, modest reforms are all that's needed to maintain the ship's course. By "good times," I mean eras of rising prosperity which generate bigger budgets, profits, tax revenues, paychecks, etc., eras characterized by high levels of stability and predictability.
Since stability has been the norm for 75 years, institutions and conventional thinking have both been optimized for incremental change. This is an analog of natural selection in Nature: when the organism's environment is stable, there's little pressure to favor random mutations, as these can be risky. Why risk big changes when everything's working fine as is?
Absent any big changes in their environment, organisms' genetic programming remains stable. Unlike natural selection's process of generating random mutations and testing their efficacy and advantages over the existing programming, human organizations quickly habituate to stable eras by institutionalizing incremental changes as the only available process for reform/change.
Radical reforms are not just frowned on as 1) unneccesary and 2) needlessly risky, there is no institutionalized process to propose, test and adopt radical changes because there is no need for such a process.
Nature has such a process: punctuated equilibirium. When faced with a rapidly changing environment, organisms face intense evolutionary pressure to adapt or die. Mutations which confer a significant advantage in the new environment become part of the species' genetic programming as those with the adaptation bear offspring who carry the advantageous adaptation. Those without the advantageous adaptation die and those with the adaptation thrive and multiply.
Once the environment stabilizes in "the new normal," the evolutionary pressure lets up and the species returns to the stability of relatively few changes in its genetic programming. Organisms which have lost the ability to adapt to rapid change die off once they encounter instability. Species that constantly face instability and rapid change will selectively favor genetic traits which optimize rapid evolution. Nature tends to retain a basement closet full of fast-evolution tricks just in case the organism faces novel challenges.
Alas, human organizations and conventional thinking have no such closet of fast-evolution tricks. Rather, human organizations and conventional thinking marshal formidable forces to suppress anything which threatens the status quo, because why risk upsetting the feeding trough unless it's absolutely necessary?
Therein lies the fatal problem: radical adaptation is never absolutely necessary in human organizations and conventional thinking until it's too late - and even then, the leadership and conventional thinking will fatalistically accept oblivion rather than opt for a risky strategy of testing every mutation and fast-tracking whatever has promise, even though the odds of failure are high since 1) the challenge is novel and therefore unpredictable and 2) most mutations will fail to provide the radical advantages needed to meet the challenge.
In other words, what's absolutely necessary to human organizations and conventional thinking is the suppression of potentially dangerous novel ideas because the worst-case scenario is that the novel ideas upset the feeding trough all the insiders have come to depend on.
Unfortunately for human organizations and conventional thinking, novel challenges demand precisely what they're incapable of: risky rapid evolution. The risks will never seem worth it because some insiders might lose their spot at the feeding trough. Since this loss is viewed as catastrophic by those at risk, they will fight with everything they have to stymie any radical reforms. Ironically, their resistance to rapid evolution only guarantees the demise of the entire organization/status quo, including the spot at the trough they were so eager to defend at all costs.
As the crisis deepens, the default setting in organizations and conventional thinking is that incremental changes and reforms will be enough, because they've been enough for four generations. I call this entirely natural default setting the delusional faith in incremental change because this faith isn't guided by history or the logic of causality; it's simply convenient and easy. Nobody gets fired or demoted for agreeing to do more of what's failed spectacularly.
I've prepared a chart of the delusional faith in incremental change showing how each new crisis is met by incremental institutionalized defaults that are completely inadequate to the novel challenges that have arisen. The blindness to the need for radical adaption has been institutionalized as well: this is what worked in the past, so it will work now. Why risk everything when we have procedures that have worked well?
Each stage of the crisis draws whatever conventional response causes the least pain. First, the "rainy day fund" is drained to keep everyone at the feeding trough. Studies of options are funded, and so on. The recommendations are either too timid and clearly inadequate or they're too bold and risky. So incremental policy and budget tweaks are adopted as acceptable institutional defaults.
But rifts open in the leadership as the farsighted few demand rapid, radical adaptations and the conventional risk-averse crowd digs in their heels. The farsighted few are pushed out or quit / retire, eliminating the only people who had the ability and experience to actually pull off a radical change of course. A reshuffling of leadership evokes hope that the modest reforms will work magic. Alas, incremental tweaks only work in eras of stability. They fail miserably in unstable eras of rapidly-evolving challenges.
As everything runs to failure, the only acceptable path is to do more of what's failed spectacularly, a default to low-risk incrementalism that only accelerates the final inevitable collapse. The delusional faith in incremental change guarantees systemic failure. Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured. This is why our status quo is doomed:
Gregory Mannarino, "With No Economic Recovery In Sight, The FED Is Calling For More Debt"
Gregory Mannarino,
"With No Economic Recovery In Sight, The FED Is Calling For More Debt"
"A Herd Animal..."
“Of course, we doubt if many public prescriptions are really intended to solve problems. People certainly believe they are when they propose them. But, like so much of what goes on in a public spectacle, its favorite slogans, too, are delusional – more in the nature of placebos than propositions. People repeat them like Hail Marys because it makes them feel better. Most of our beliefs about the economy – and everything else – are of this nature. They are forms of self medication, superstitious lip service we pay to the powers of the dark, like touching wood….or throwing salt over your shoulder. “Stocks for the long run,” “Globalization is good.” We repeat slogans to ourselves, because everyone else does. It is not so much bad luck we want to avoid as being on our own. Why it is that losing your life savings should be less painful if you have lost it in the company of one million other losers, we don’t know. But mankind is first of all a herd animal and fears nothing more than not being part of the herd.”
- Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva, “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets”
"In Search of Santiago’s Aunt – Part II"
"In Search of Santiago’s Aunt – Part II"
By Bill Bonner
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "Tomorrow, we’ll return to our usual focus on the world of money. There have been a couple of interesting developments, for example, in the COVID Lockdown story. Stay tuned…
Discovering Cortaderita: Meanwhile… When we left you yesterday, we were describing our trip out beyond the Apacheta mountains. Improbably, there is an oasis far out in the bleak and barren mountains behind us. Santiago, a man who works at a neighboring farm, but whom we know because he is related to many of our own farm hands, told us about a visit some 20 years ago to his aunt who lives there. Was she still there? Was she still alive? Had it become a hippy colony? No one seemed to know. So, on Sunday, we set out on an expedition to find out.
We arrive at a house.
Having set off before dawn, and after six hours on the trail, we arrived at the place called Cortaderita. Someone was living there. Santiago called out. “Hola!”… But there was no answer. We sat on our horses, eager to dismount. “Hola!” Santiago tried again. Meat hung from a wire, drying. The dogs barked. The chickens scratched the ground. A curious young guanaco came over to take a look.
A curious guanaco.
Happy Reunion: Finally, a man emerged from the house. A few minutes later, the house disgorged another person, a woman. The man was dressed in dirty cotton clothes. The woman, too. He wore a baseball cap. She wore a multi-colored Andean bonnet. They appeared to be in their 50s or 60s. They looked puzzled. They walked towards Santiago, who had dismounted. The man smiled. He had all his teeth, which is rare in the area, with two long, sharp incisors that made him look a little like Dracula. The woman smiled, too… but with more of a look of concern on her face. “Who were these people?” “What did they want?” she seemed to be thinking.
She came on more cautiously. Her dark red skirt was covered with an apron. She was missing teeth. We didn’t like to think about how the teeth had been taken out. When was the last time they had a visitor? A month ago? A year ago? Who would make the trip? Why? Santiago approached the woman. “I’m Santiago Guantay, son of your sister, Josefa.” The woman looked more puzzled than ever, as if she were trying to remember. She hesitated. Then, she reached out… and hugged him. Tears formed on her cheeks.
Lunch at Cortaderita: While Santiago embraced his aunt, the rest of us dismounted. We took the horses over to a hitching post, tied them up, and loosened their cinches. Ramón checked his horse’s leg. “The white legs are always weaker than the brown ones,” he said. The saddlebags were removed. And introductions continued. “This is Señor Bonner; he’s the owner of San MartÃn.” “My name is Anacleto,” the man said, still smiling. “This is my wife, Alejandra.”
Our bona fides established, we sat down at a table under a plastic tarp. We each took out what we had brought for lunch and put it on the table to share with the others. Sausages. Milanesas. Cheese. Bread. A bottle of wine. We had also brought some walnuts and raisins to leave with our hosts.
We hadn’t known what we would find. Santiago’s family had not heard from his aunt in two decades. Had she moved away? Had she died? No one knew. There was a rumor that the outpost had been taken over by hippies. They went about naked, it was said… growing an ultra-puissant variety of marijuana in the high, mountain sun. It would have made a good place for them. They wouldn’t have to worry about visits from the authorities; no one would know – or care – what they were up to.
Unrelenting Misery: But the oasis was smaller than we expected. There was water; it was sweet and reliable. “It runs just like that all year round,” explained Anacleto. But there was probably only enough to support a single, small family. It almost never rains in this area. And all their food had to be produced here; there was no way to get supplies from town. The spring water had to be used to water animals and crops, too.
A steady stream of water ran into a small pond. From there, the water leaked over to a small orchard, with unpruned pear, plum, and peach trees. And they had carved tiny irrigation ditches to carry the water to a field of beans not far away. Anacleto said they grew corn, too, but we saw no evidence of it. Nor was there a vegetable garden. It would have been easy to grow a few heads of salad, some onions, and some beets. But there were none. Apart from the fruit trees, which looked like relics from an earlier era, there was nothing to break the unrelenting, windblown misery of the place.
Another Era: The water did not run into the house. It would have been easy to put in a plastic pipe to get running water; but they must not have thought about it, or cared. They carried water in buckets. The house had no TV. No telephone signal reached them. No microwave. No dishwasher. No clothes washer. There were no electric appliances of any sort. No water heater. No heating at all, other than a cooking fire in the kitchen. They had no transportation, either. No mules. No horses. If they went anywhere, they went on foot. There was one sheep and a lamb in the yard.
A survivor…
“That’s all that’s left,” Anacleto explained. “The others were killed by puma. “But we still have about 30 goats… and as many cows.” “What do the cows eat?” we asked, looking out at the barren valley. There was no pasture anywhere. “They find things up in the hills.” We were about as high “up in the hills” as we could get. But mountain cattle find little clumps of grass… and tiny pools of water. Somehow, like the people in front of us, they survive.
“Have you been down to the valley recently?” we wondered. “No… Not for about six months. We heard they had the plague (the peste, he called it) down there.” Of all the world’s 8 billion people, these two were probably the least likely to get the coronavirus. They have almost no contact with the outside world.
Family Connections: Anacleto seemed a little awkward. Uncomfortable. He got up from the table and stood by himself, wondering what to do. We posed questions in our más o menos Spanish. He often didn’t understand what we were saying… “He’s asking you…” Santiago interpreted. Between Santiago and Ramón, there was practically not a single stranger in the entire Calchaquà Valley. So the whole family tree was soon established. Anacleto’s brother worked down in the valley. He worked for so-and-so, who had a cousin who was married to so-and-so…
As for his wife, Santiago’s aunt, she was related to almost everyone we knew in the area. Santiago brought her up-to-date on the family. But she was curiously passive. Almost indifferent. She asked no questions. She seemed almost in shock, as if she didn’t know what was going on. Maybe she had lived in this strange, isolated place for so long, she had lost interest in the outside world… even in her own relatives. Not once did she suggest that she might like to visit them… or that they should visit her.
Anacleto and Alejandra
Want for Nothing: While the story of humanity is generally a tale of progress, anthropologists sometimes find isolated tribes that have gone backward. They lose their skills. They abandon their gods. Their myths, rules, and rituals are forgotten. We wondered whether the couple in front of us had not slipped. “Do you have any children?” “Yes, we have two… a son and a daughter. The son lives about three hours away, near the uranium mine. Our daughter went to the city.” “When was the last time you saw them?” Anacleto made a gesture with his hand… as if it had been a while and he couldn’t remember.
The two had nothing. But perhaps they wanted nothing. They paid no rent. No electricity bill. No telephone bill. No gas bill. No insurance bill. No medical bills. No food bills. But they had sunshine every day. Water. Food.
“And what if either one of them should have a health emergency?” Ramón asked on the ride back. “Here, they have no access to anything. They’re completely on their own.” Ramón is a practical man. Farming in the Calchaquà Valley isn’t easy. And he’s done it all his life. There is almost never enough water. Machines break down; parts need to be ordered from Europe or America. The government makes life difficult. Inflation comes and goes. Workers come and go, too.
For him, the forlorn romance of Cortaderita – isolated… with a stunning view over a desert valley – was overshadowed by problems. How could they get supplies? How do they know what’s going on in the world? Why would anyone want to live like that?
Last Goodbye: We finished our lunch and said our goodbyes. It was already 3 p.m… we only had about four more hours of daylight. Alejandra grasped Santiago’s hand. Both knew it would probably be for the last time. She sent her regards to her sister and her brother. We said goodbye. Elizabeth took a photo. “There’s a better way to go back,” Anacleto advised Santiago. Take the trail to the west after you pass the pond.” When we got to the pond, we let the horses drink.
The horses having a drink before the long trek home.
Then, we continued, turning to the right, as Anacleto had suggested. The first part of the trail was rough. We had to go up and over the crest of the mountain… and then down a steep hillside, all the way to the arroyo at the bottom. After that, it was easy riding… along the sandy quebrada, all the way back through the Apacheta… and out onto the wide slope down to the Calchaquà itself.
The long journey home.
Sticking It Out: “They really ought to leave there,” Ramón concluded. “They live as though it were 100 years ago… or 1,000 years ago. They don’t have anything but hand tools. “My father brought the first tractor to the valley… but that was more than 70 years ago. And they still don’t have anything that is mechanized. No generator. No internal combustion engines. They don’t even have a mule to pull a plow.”
But they looked healthy. Weather-beaten, but still sturdy. And it looked like – whatever the reason – they were prepared to take it to the end. “That’s what Marta Sandoval did. And it’s what Eleena wants to do,” Elizabeth reminded us. Marta lived alone at a remote outpost, not as far away as Cortaderita, but almost impossible to get to. We visited her when she was in her eighties. She already had something wrong – an abscess in her jaw. “Can we take you down to the city?” we had asked. “Wouldn’t you like to live closer to doctors and services?” She, too, had nothing… no electricity, no running water… nothing but a few goats. But she stuck it out. Her grandson went to check on her a year later… and found her dead.
Eleena lived with her husband at a very pretty outpost called Coralito. Her husband died two years ago. Her daughter dragged Eleena down to the local town to live with her. But she didn’t want to stay. She wanted to go back to her mountain outpost. And there she is, alone. In her eighties. Spry, but withered. Fortunately, she’s easier to visit. A farm road takes you up to the base of the mountains. From there, it’s an hour and a half on foot. Her grandson checks on her each weekend. She intends to stick it out, too… to the end.
“I’ve been here all my life,” Ramón concluded. “Sooner or later, the valley makes everyone a little loco. Including me.”
Getting close to the end of the trail.
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/14/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/14/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Gregory Mannarino,
AM Oct 14, 2020:
"Prices Continue To Rise In a DEAD Economy"
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Updated live.
○
Daily Update (October 14th to 15th)
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"Notice Anything Odd?"
Click image for larger size.
Oct 11, 2020, 1:57 PM:
"These are the BLM arrested last night. Notice anything odd?"
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Related, presented in full here, without comment:
You should be careful what you ask for, you just might get it...
Greg Hunter, "Unlimited, Endless, Infinite Amount of Dollar Creation"
"Unlimited, Endless, Infinite Amount of Dollar Creation"
Merry-Go-Round of Money Printing Madness
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Financial writer and precious metals expert Craig Hemke has made many correct predictions over the years. Hemke studies hard and pores over detailed information to make his calls. Hemke points out his biggest call is easy to see when considering the massive money printing going on at the Federal Reserve and historic spending in Congress. The latest stimulus offer in Congress is a staggering $1.8 trillion. Keep in mind, that is on top of trillions of dollars already spent in 2020 fighting CV19. Hemke explains, “That’s $1.8 trillion! When I was in college 35 years ago, the Reagan budget deficit was $250 billion, and, oh gosh, it was the end of the world! How can they do $250 billion? ‘Trickledown’ economics and all this stuff, and now we are talking 10 times that, and it’s like, yeah, whatever. The moral of the story is there is no going back. The Fed is telling you they are going to do whatever it takes to prompt inflation and to flush as much cash out there as possible to prop up their system. The politicians are going to give them the debt to monetize. If Trump wins, you are going to get this $1.8 trillion in new spending, but if Biden wins, you are not only going to get that, you are going to get the Green New Deal, universal healthcare and all this other jazz.”
But no matter who wins in November, the Fed is going to fight debt destruction, or so-called deflation. That means massive money printing to buy bonds and everything else. Hemke says, “Fed Chairman Jay Powell, and all the other central bankers, are telling you they are going to do everything they can to keep that from happening. Powell is begging for new Treasury debt to monetize. If you look at Powell’s speech in Jackson Hole at the end of August, he was saying we are not going down this path of deflation because it becomes a vicious cycle. That’s where you get deflation, and you expect more deflation and that brings about more deflation, and you get even higher expectations of deflation. That’s what Japan has been doing the last 30 years. Powell has said we are not going to do it even if it means unconventional policy like helicopter money. You have heard this bantered about now, and it’s just putting straight cash into your bank account. These things are all coming.”
What is Hemke telling people to do in the face of guaranteed massive money printing such as the country has never seen before? Hemke says, “Don’t get cute here. Don’t sit there and think gold is going to pull back to $1,800 (per ounce), so I am going to wait. No man, buy some today, and then if it pulls back, buy some more. We are on this merry-go-round of madness that is not going to slow down. It’s just going to spin faster and faster, and your only protection, your only financial protection is to not save in their phony baloney fiat money, the dollar. Your protection is to save in sound money. Money that cannot be devalued with the stroke of a pen is gold and silver. That’s what I advise. This financial political complex is going to try to keep all of these plates spinning as long as they can. The only way they can do that going forward from 2020 on is an almost unlimited, endless, infinite amount of dollar creation.”
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with financial writer and
precious metals expert Craig Hemke, founder of TFMetalsReport.com.
"Facts Do Not Matter To The Covidian Cult"
"Facts Do Not Matter To The Covidian Cult"
by CJ Hopkins
"One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not just a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror,” or even a myth like the “American Dream.” A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, etc., each with its own psychotic official narrative, i.e., Helter Skelter, Christian Communism, Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, and so on.
Looking in from the dominant culture (or back through time in the case of the Nazis), the delusional nature of these official narratives is glaringly obvious to most rational people. What many fail to understand is that to those who fall prey to them (whether individual cult members or entire totalitarian societies) such narratives do not register as psychotic. On the contrary, they feel entirely normal. Everything in their social “reality” reifies and reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it is perceived as an existential threat.
These narratives are invariably paranoid, portraying the cult as threatened or persecuted by an evil enemy or antagonistic force which only unquestioning conformity to the cult’s ideology can save its members from. It makes little difference whether this antagonist is mainstream culture, body thetans, counter-revolutionaries, Jews, or a virus. The point is not the identity of the enemy. The point is the atmosphere of paranoia and hysteria the official narrative generates, which keeps the cult members (or the society) compliant.
In addition to being paranoid, these narratives are often internally inconsistent, illogical, and… well, just completely ridiculous. This does not weaken them, as one might suspect. Actually, it increases their power, as it forces their adherents to attempt to reconcile their inconsistencies and irrationality, and in many cases utter absurdity, in order to remain in good standing with the cult. Such reconciliation is of course impossible, and causes the cult members’ minds to short circuit and abandon any semblance of critical thinking, which is precisely what the cult leader wants.
Moreover, cult leaders will often radically change these narratives for no apparent reason, forcing their cult members to abruptly forswear (and often even denounce as “heresy”) the beliefs they had previously been forced to profess, and behave as if they had never believed them, which causes their minds to further short circuit, until they eventually give up even trying to think, and just mindlessly parrot whatever nonsensical gibberish the cult leader fills their heads with.
Also, the cult leader’s nonsensical gibberish is not as nonsensical as it may seem at first. Most of us, upon encountering such gibberish, assume that the cult leader is trying to communicate, and that something is very wrong with his brain. But the cult leader’s intention is not to communicate. His intention is to disorient and control the listener’s mind. Listen to Charlie Manson “rapping.” Not just to what he says, but how he says it. Note how he sprinkles bits of truth into his stream of free-associated nonsense, and his repetitive use of thought-terminating clichés, described by Robert J. Lifton as follows:
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
- "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", 1961
If all this sounds familiar, good. Because the same techniques that most cult leaders use to control the minds of the members of their cults are used by totalitarian systems to control the minds of entire societies... Milieu Control, Loaded Language, Sacred Science, Demand for Purity, and other standard mind-control techniques. It can happen to pretty much any society, just as anyone can fall prey to a cult, given the right set of circumstances.
It is happening to most of our societies now. An official narrative is being implemented. A totalitarian official narrative. A totally psychotic official narrative, no less delusional than that of the Nazis, or the Manson family, or any other cult.
Most people cannot see that it is happening, for the simple reason that it is happening to them. They are literally unable to recognize it. The human mind is extremely resilient and inventive when it is pushed past its limits. Ask anyone who has struggled with psychosis or has taken too much LSD. We do not recognize when we are going insane. When reality falls apart completely, the mind creates a delusional narrative, which appears just as “real” as our normal reality, because even a delusion is better than the stark raving terror of utter chaos.
This is what totalitarians and cult leaders count on, and exploit to implant their narratives in our minds, and why actual initiation rituals (as opposed to purely symbolic rituals) begin by attacking the subject’s mind with terror, pain, physical exhaustion, psychedelic drugs, or some other means of obliterating the subject’s perception of reality. Once that is achieved, and the subject’s mind starts desperately trying to construct a new narrative to make sense out of the cognitive chaos and psychological trauma it is undergoing, it is relatively easy to “guide” that process, and to implant whatever narrative you want, assuming you have done your homework.
And this is why so many people - people who are able to easily recognize totalitarianism in cults and foreign countries - cannot perceive the totalitarianism that is taking shape now, right in front of their faces (or, rather, right inside their minds). Nor can they perceive the delusional nature of the official “Covid-19” narrative, no more than those in Nazi Germany were able to perceive how completely delusional their official “master race” narrative was. These people are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have been successfully initiated into a cult, which is essentially what totalitarianism is, albeit on a societal scale.
Their initiation into the Covidian Cult began in January, when the medical authorities and corporate media turned on The Fear with projections of hundreds of millions of deaths and fake photos of people dropping dead in the streets. The psychological conditioning has continued for months. The global masses have been subjected to a constant stream of propaganda, manufactured hysteria, wild speculation, conflicting directives, exaggerations, lies, and tawdry theatrical effects. Lockdowns. Emergency field hospitals and morgues. The singing-dancing NHS staff. Death trucks. Overflowing ICUs. Dead Covid babies. Manipulated statistics. Goon squads. Masks. And all the rest of it.
Eight months later, here we are. The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO has basically confirmed an IFR of 0.14%, approximately the same as the seasonal flu. And here are the latest survival rate estimates from the Center for Disease Control:
Age 0-19 … 99.997%
Age 20-49 … 99.98%
Age 50-69 … 99.5%
Age 70+ … 94.6%
The “science” argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over so-called “cases” (which now includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example, in this segment on ARD, one of the big mainstream German TV channels.
And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria.
I’m not going to go on debunking the narrative. The point is, the facts are all available. Not from “conspiracy theorist” websites. From mainstream outlets and medical experts. From the Center for F***ing Disease Control.
Which does not matter in the least, not to the members of the Covidian Cult. Facts do not matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party. Which means we have a serious problem, those of us to whom facts still matter, and who have been trying to use them to convince the Covidian cultists that they are wrong about the virus... for going on eight months at this point.
While it is crucial to continue reporting the facts and sharing them as widely as possible (which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and social media), it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological movement. A global totalitarian movement … the first of its kind in human history.
It isn’t national totalitarianism, because we’re living in a global capitalist empire, which isn’t ruled by nation-states, but rather, by supranational entities and the global capitalist system itself. And thus, the cult/culture paradigm has been inverted. Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it.
I wish I could be more optimistic, and offer you some sort of plan of action, but the only historical parallel I can think of is how Christianity “converted” the pagan world, which doesn’t really bode so well for us. While you’re sitting at home during the “second wave” lockdowns, you might want to brush up on that history."
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