"I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting. "
"The problem with pushing a pendulum to its maximum extreme on one end is that it will swing back to the other extreme minus a tiny bit of friction. America has pushed wealth/income inequality, unfairness and legalized looting to the maximum extreme. Now it will experience the swing back to the other extreme. This will manifest in a number of ways, one of which is a self-organizing populist war on wealth and the wealthy.
To say the system is rigged to benefit the already-wealthy and powerful is a gross understatement. Take the tax code as an example - thousands of pages of arcane tax breaks and giveaways passed by a thoroughly corrupted Congress and thousands more pages of arcane regulations and legal precedents.
How many pages apply to the bottom 95% of American taxpayers? Very few. There's the standard deductions for mortgage interest, healthcare costs, etc., but virtually no other tax breaks. Very few pages apply to even the 99% - go talk to a CPA and you'll find there are no more tax breaks for a sole proprietor making $500,000 in earned income than than there are for a sole proprietor making $50,000.
99.9% of the tax code benefits the top 0.1% and the corporations, LLCs and philanthro-capitalist foundations and trusts they own/control. Stripped of artifice and spin, America's tax code is nothing but legalized looting. This is only one small slice of the entire pie of legalized looting, of course, but it's one we can all understand.
A sole proprietor pays 15.3% in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Why don't America's billionaires pay 15.3% in Social Security and Medicare taxes? Aren't Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid the bedrock social safety net programs of the American people? Then why does a struggling sole proprietor pay 15.3% tax to support these essential programs and billionaires pay essentially zero?
There's a term for this disparity/injustice/unfairness: legalized looting. The super-wealthy pay essentially zero percent of their income and wealth to the programs that provide basic economic security for the disabled/elderly citizenry, while Jose the sole proprietor pays 15.3% of every dollar he earns.
So explain to us again why Mr. Buffett can't afford to pay 15.3% of every dollar of his income to help fund basic economic security for the disabled/elderly. In a system of even the most basic fairness, every dollar of income would be taxed at the same rate. In a system of even the most basic fairness, those with incomes of $100 million would pay the same 15.3% Social Security and Medicare tax as the sole proprietor earning $100,000. Needless to say, if this most basic fairness was applied to America's wealthy and powerful, these programs would not be facing insolvency.
If Joe the sole proprietor hits the bigtime, he pays 32% federal tax over $165,000, 35% over $210,000 and 37% over $524,000. If we add 15.3% to 37%, we get 52.3%. How many of America's super-wealthy / billionaires pay 52% in Social Security-Medicare and income taxes? Zero.
Could America's super-wealthy/billionaires afford to pay 52%? Of course they could - they own the majority of all financial assets and skim the majority of all income. But they won't, because the system is rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many via legalized looting.
It isn't just the inequality of ownership of capital and power that enrages the oppressed; it's the blatant unfairness of our neofeudal/neocolonial system. As I explained in "Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model" (May 24, 2012) and "Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants!" (October 21, 2016), the Financial Nobility have "come home" and applied the same rapacious exploitation they perfected in colonialism to the domestic populace.
Here's looking at you, Federal Reserve - thanks for perfecting legalized looting and neofeudalism in America.
The gulf between the lavishly praised American ideals and the putrid, corrupt reality of America's neofeudal system is wider than the Grand Canyon. As the pendulum accelerates to an extreme equal but opposite to the current extremes of unfairness, exploitation and legalized looting, those who have suffered the consequences of this systemic inequality will find expression in whatever ways are available.
Since it's difficult to get to the protected compounds of the super-wealthy, the signifiers of the merely wealthy will offer readily available targets. The new Tesla won't just get keyed; it will be "reworked," to the great satisfaction of the "workers."
Please note that I am not promoting a war on wealth and the wealthy, I am merely pointing out that it is as inevitable as the gravity pulling the pendulum. The war on wealth and the wealthy will manifest politically, socially and economically. It won't be a tightly controlled, top-down movement. It will be spontaneous, self-organizing and unquenchable."
"Experts have been warning that the stock market could be set for an extraordinary crash in case of a favorable result for Democrats, since it would probably scare investors away and prompt a major sell-off, which could then lead to another dramatic stock market crash , and put an end to the era of incredibly overvalued assets, finally popping the stock bubble. That's what we're going to examine in this video.
The Georgia Senate runoff will be decisive for what happens next in both Main Street and Wall Street. Republican David Perdue is taking on Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, while Republican Kelly Loeffler faced Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock. Now, Democrats are counting on Ossoff to win, so that the Senate would have a 50-50 split, meaning that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would have the crucial deciding vote that could push through Biden's priorities as soon as he takes office.
The results are expected to have enormous impacts on the financial markets. If Democrats win both of the seats, they will effectively have control over the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House. That is to say, for the first time since the Obama's administration, the Democrats would have an opportunity to advance their agenda without compromising with the Republicans.
Yesterday, the day voters in Georgia headed to the polls, former Trump senior economic adviser Steve Moore argued in an interview that a Democratic sweep could drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average to decline by 1,000 points. According to Oppenheimer chief investment strategist John Stoltzfus, a blue win could trigger a stock market sell-off of up to 10%. He alerted that it could cause the U.S. broad equity market to experience a downdraft of anywhere between 6% and 10%.
For the past four years, big corporations and large conglomerates were thrilled by Trump’s tax cuts, but Biden has repeatedly stated throughout his campaign that he had plans to roll back Trump’s Tax Cuts. A Democratic victory would also mean the incoming president would have more flexibility to implement other plans of his agenda, including the expansion of the payroll tax for Social Security, new tax credits, and fewer deductions, as well as another round of massive government spending. Needless to say, all of these changes won't be appreciated by investors.
At the moment, what we do know is that Democrat Raphael Warnock has already guaranteed his Senate seat after defeating incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler. With so much on the line, the level of spending on both runoffs has been unprecedented. Advertising Analytics data pointed out that nearly $404 million was spent on advertising in the Perdue-Ossoff race, making it the most expensive Senate race ever recorded.
As for the stock market, at this point, the main concern surrounding a blue wave is that very soon more fiscal spending could be launched, therefore, Fed rates would surge faster than expected, which would resonate in the amount of easing and in the strength of the dollar. The election result could be the trigger event that would pop the enormously-inflated market bubble, but at this stage of the crisis, stock prices have been at such absurdly inflated levels for so long, that it wouldn't take much for us to be witnessing a catastrophic collapse. We have never experienced before a market that is so perfectly primed for a meltdown. It's just impossible to sustain the current valuations for much longer, and several market watchers have been signaling a sharp stock market crash in the coming weeks or months.
As the race remains close, and there are no evident odds of who is ultimately going to be the winner, our financial and economic future remains uncertain. For now, we keep on watching the next developments of the Georgia elections, as they can determine the destiny of our country. But we can't forget that many other pivotal events are about to be unfolded, and they are going to completely change the course of the United States history."
"What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 below and took a dive. Dubbed the Porpoise Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction.
A burst of young blue stars forms the nose of the porpoise toward the right of the upper galaxy, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like a penguin protecting an egg. Either way, intricate dark dust lanes and bright blue star streams trail the troubled galaxy to the lower right. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in unprecedented detail was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope last year. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation, coincidently, of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy."
“If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning – a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”
But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.
Glory to the world, that good teacher.
Among the swans there is none
called the least, or the greatest.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Also in singing,
especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
As for the body,
it is solid and strong and curious and full of detail;
it wants to polish itself; it wants to love another body;
it is the only vessel in the world that can hold,
in a mix of power and sweetness:
words, song, gesture, passion, ideas, ingenuity,
devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
- Mary Oliver
•
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for! To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless - of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer: That you are here - that life exists, and that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
“Yes, the times change with the tides; yet the tales, like the surf, sound on in familiar perpetuity and with steady repetition. In the modern era, during the great clash of civilizations currently underway, there will be no new, great and ghastly crusades. Only resistance or surrender. In America, just as her tide recedes from the world, in the end it may become Man overboard, and every man for himself. The sun rises. The sun sets.
As sand through an hour-glass, or waves rolling over every shore, so too, do our journeys mark passageways through time; and, in the end, our navigation may, indeed, depend upon guidance, like stars, shining down from heaven upon what we know, over the decisions we make; on the destinies we choose. And, of course, there will be losses incurred during the storms.
So, we raise our sails and pray for the prosperous winds of Providence to guide our ways and guard our lives through uncharted seas. Perhaps it’s true that fortune finds and favors the faithful above all. Even still, those who believe, and those who doubt, and those who sleep, all do drift and blow by the same breeze. The winds of change are on us. They’ve always been here, steadfast and old as time itself. Like the earth. Nothing new under the sun.”
"We had your f*****g back, but we ain’t got your back no more!"
– Trump supporter to D.C. police
WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "We’re spending this week in the morgue. That is, we’re cutting open the dead year – 2020 – to better understand the new, live one. So far, we’ve seen that the brain and heart were both diseased. In the brain, people were delusional… living in a fantasy world, where they thought they could shut down the wealth-producing economy and then make up for it by printing bits of paper, calling it “money.” And the rot appears to have spread to the heart, where the fake money was used to reward cronies, bail out mismanaged businesses, and pay off the elite.
That’s how former Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen – now in the bullpen, warming up to be our next Treasury Secretary – came to earn $7 million in fees for delivering forgettable speeches. The $7 million was merely chump change. While Ms. Yellen was at the Federal Reserve, from 2010 to 2018, the money-printers added $2.2 trillion, doubling the Fed’s balance sheet… with almost all of it going to Wall Street. That’s a 31,000 times return, far more than the money spinners would get from honest capitalism.
Modest Reveal: Today, we continue our unkind cuts. What happened in 2020? What does it mean? And since this is Epiphany… today, we offer a modest “reveal.”
Last year, the feds completed a trifecta of major, catastrophic “mistakes.” We put the word mistakes in quotes, signaling that there is something fishy about them. Indeed there is. These “mistakes” cost the public dearly… But they served the elite well. In 2001, George W. Bush might have left the police to deal with the 9/11 miscreants. At trivial cost, those who were still alive might have been brought to justice. Instead, he made a federal case of it. Cost? $7 trillion and as many as a million lives.
Consequence? Millions of refugees… a much more dangerous and unstable Middle East… more potential “terrorists” than ever before. And a much deeper Swamp… filled with lobbyists, lawyers, and apologists for the U.S. military/industrial/surveillance industry.
Huge Distortion: Then, after 2008, the Bush and Obama administrations – along with the Bernanke/Yellen Fed – might have let markets do their thing. Mortgage finance companies, big banks, and common households had over-bought the housing market. Many were on the brink of bankruptcy. But instead of letting the chips fall where they ought, the feds bailed out Wall Street – at a cost of $3.6 trillion.
Doing so, they distorted the whole ball of capitalism’s wax. American stocks, for example – as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average – rose from under 8,000 in 2009 to over 28,000 10 years later. These prices no longer tell us what the companies were worth; they just show how willing the Fed was to push their stock prices up.
Bad Situation Made Worse: And finally, in 2020, the attack of the COVID-19 bug might have been treated like a medical challenge. Again, at very little cost, those most likely to die – the sick, the old, and the medically vulnerable – might have been protected. Instead, the elite flexed its muscles. 60 million jobs were lost… thousands of businesses went bust… and the whole economy was transformed in ways no one anticipated.
In addition, according to epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski, locked-down populations were turned into slow-motion virus incubators, resulting in more deaths, not fewer. And then, to make a bad situation worse, the feds flooded the economy with fake money, as if that would offset the real damage.
These three “mistakes” – made over the course of the last 20 years – sealed America’s fate. The feds are condemned in their own cockamamie prison. For now, not just Wall Street, but Main Street, too, with its 300 million mouths to feed, look to the feds for their daily bread. They count on the feds’ fake money to pay rent and mortgages… to pay for holidays and autos… and even to put food on the table.
Today’s news reports tell us that Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow $2,000 giveaways might have cost the GOP the Senate. Won’t the handouts soon become routine?
All-Round Failure: And so, the year 2020 ended in disgrace. Donald Trump didn’t make America great again. The Federal Reserve didn’t make it more prosperous. The Supreme Court didn’t make it honest. The news media didn’t make it better informed. The universities didn’t make it smarter. The medical industry didn’t make it healthier. The tech industry didn’t lead us into a glorious future.
Our elite institutions failed. Congress, for example, is a laughingstock. (Yesterday, it passed a new rule eliminating the use of gender-based terms such as “mother” or “aunt.” That should do it… we’re all equal now!)
The universities act as training camps for the elite, prohibiting free speech and closing minds. More and more, what they teach is politically correct propaganda, not free inquiry.
The press blissfully reports what the elite wants us all to believe, favoring more war, more government spending, and more official meddling.
Wall Street no longer allocates real capital to deserving businesses; it merely grabs the fake dollars for itself.
And poor Main Street, left behind by financialization, fake money, offshoring, and claptrap economics, now clamors for bread and circuses…
Someone who would never win a spelling bee scrawls “Weres my money” on Mitch McConnell’s door, blaming him for blocking the $2,000 giveaway.
And today, die-hard MAGA fans, left behind and betrayed by the elite, gather in Washington, fantasizing that Donald Trump will lead an uprising against them.
Yes, that’s just the way the empire’s cookie crumbled in 2020. Badly. But what’s ahead? Stay tuned…"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."
"As a naturally optimistic person, it vexes me that the word catastrophe has echoed in my mind since early March 2020. It’s the word the great smallpox eradicator Donald Henderson used in his 2006 prediction of the consequences of lockdown, a word that wasn’t around then. His masterful article addressed the idea of travel restrictions, forced human separation, business and school closings, mask mandates, limits on public gatherings, quarantines, and the entire litany of brutality to which we’ve been subjected for nearly a year, all summed up in the word lockdown.
Dr. Henderson warned against it all. This is not how you deal with disease, he said; at a minimum society needs to function so that medical professionals can do their work. Diseases are managed one person at a time, not with grand central plans. That was the old wisdom in any case. Under the influence of vainglorious modelers, ideological resetters, and politicians hoping to make names for themselves, most of the world tried the lockdown experiment anyway.
Here we are nearly a year since I wrote my first article warning that governments presumed themselves to possess the quarantine power. They could use it if they wanted to. I didn’t expect they would. I wrote this piece as a “for your information” public service just to let people know how terrible governments could be.
I had no idea that quarantines would be only the beginning. At this point we know what we did not know then. They are capable – by they I mean even governments in presumably civilized countries with functioning democracies – of the unthinkable, and they are capable of persisting in the unthinkable for an appalling amount of time.
Now the lockdowns are our life in the US, unless you are lucky enough to live in Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, South Carolina, and perhaps a few other places. Here in these outposts of what we used to call civilization, life seems normal. Our readers in these states don’t even think about the virus much, and they read my articles and find them overwrought, like I’m describing life on another planet.
The US seems to have two economies, one open and one closed. You see the difference on social media: people at the beach, malls, living life more or less normally. Meanwhile, in the lockdown states, businesses are shuttered, people are demoralized, fights over masks are breaking out in stores, the arts are wrecked, and multitudes are still cowering in their homes. The unemployment differences between the two reveal exactly what’s going on.
We are experiencing what is a migratory demographic shift that could compare to 19th century legend. From what is being reported by U-Haul and other moving companies, people are fleeing from closed to open. Reports United Van Lines: “Among the top inbound states were South Carolina (64%), Oregon (63%), South Dakota (62%) and Arizona (62%), while New York (67%), Illinois (67%), Connecticut (63%) and California (59%) were among the states experiencing the largest exoduses.” And this all happened since the summer when it became unbearably obvious that the bastards were not going to stop tormenting their people.
Moving, however, is not a panacea. Normal life seems to be breaking down. The government mails are running 2 to 3 weeks behind. Companies can’t even close their books because the tempo of life has dragged to a crawl. Tech support takes many hours on hold. Accountability for failure to deliver on services seems to be evaporating. Groceries experience sporadic shortages in unpredictable ways. We no longer know the rules and yet fear breaking them.
Health care is not functioning normally, with non-Covid patients hurled out too soon while positive tests land you in ICU whether you need it or not. (My own 81-year-old mother was hospitalized with a serious condition and then thrown out because she didn’t test positive for SARS-CoV-2). Vaccine administration has been mostly chaos because society is not functioning normally. Weddings and funerals are still out. We are being socialized to treat everyone, including ourselves, as nothing but pathogenic disease vectors.
The hatred and threats of violence in online venues are out of control. Society has never been more angry or divided in my lived experience. Tech giants are still censoring dissent, trying to force everyone to believe the pronouncements from the World Health Organization even though they change week to week, as if they are working hard to realize Orwell’s vision of the future. The blue check marks and people with access daily advocate trampling on the rights of those who can’t live their lives online.
The mainstream media that most people once trusted continues to pretend as if this catastrophe is a result of the pandemic rather than the pandemic response. Just look at the number of headlines that begin “Pandemic Has Caused….” and then fill in the blank with any one of the many terrible things happening now: a third of restaurants bankrupt, opioid deaths, alcoholism, suicide ideation, female unemployment, demoralized and abused children missing a whole year of schooling, loved ones separated by borders, murder rates soaring, vaccinations missed, cancer screenings forgone, and so on. It’s all the pandemic, they say.
Why won’t the media name the lockdowns as the culprit? It’s not just denialism. The implication is that we had no choice but to shatter life as we know it. Lockdown is just what one does in a pandemic. It’s utterly not. Nothing like this has ever taken place, never in history. This remains an egregious attack on fundamental rights, liberties, and the rule of law. The results are all around us. That the news media refuses to name the reason feels like gaslighting, except that we know they are lying, they know they are lying, and they know that we know they are lying. It’s just an unwritten rule in journalism now: never name the lockdowns (unless you bury it in the 13th paragraph of an otherwise boring article).
And even after a full year, the public remains mostly deeply ignorant of the age/health gradient of Covid-19 fatalities, even though we’ve known this since February of last year! According to the CDC – even conceding the accuracy of testing and exigencies of fatality classification – it’s 99.997% for 0-19 years, 99.98% for 20-49 years, 99.5% for 50-69 years, and 94.6% for 70+ years. It’s nursing homes that have been a main vector for disease outcomes. The threat to school-age kids approaches zero. The more information we get the more normalized the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen seems, a respiratory and flu-like illness we have seen become pandemic before it became endemic just like another dozen times in the last hundred years. We didn’t shut down society, and, for that reason, we managed them just fine.
Is it that numbers like the above are just too abstract to mean anything to people? More likely, the numbers mean something but that meaning is overwhelmed by the nonstop panic porn one sees on the media each day. People can no longer distinguish these various terms that media pundits throw around to signal how terrible this disease is: outbreaks, cases, outcomes, deaths, spread, infection rates, hospitalizations – it’s just a huge and blurry blizzard of terrible.
Citing a bit of reality-based data cannot make a dent in the pathological Munchausen Syndrome that has been unleashed. Primal fear has swamped rationality for the better part of 10 months. So people douse themselves in sanitizer for fear of the enemy they cannot see, and presume everyone else is trying to infect them. They put up with attacks on their rights under the belief that it is for their own good.
The fiscal and monetary policy response has been equally egregious, all premised on the idea that money printing and spending – it all goes together these days – can possibly be a substitute for private investment and actual people buying and selling things. That combined with continued protectionist measures in the last days of the Trump administration make for the worst combination of policy malpractice in generations, or perhaps ever. The pain of recovery will be monstrous.
Many of us spend a good part of our days poring over the latest research, which reveals their terrible toll of the lockdowns, the inescapable horror that it is the lockdowns not the pandemic that has done this. It shows the absence of any relationship between lockdowns and lives saved. It shows that a significant number of excess deaths are due not to disease but to drug overdoses, depression, and suicide. It shows the tremendous problems with PCR testing, the nondriver of “asymptomatic transmission,” the incredible proliferation of disease misclassification, and the absurdity of the idea that political solutions can intimidate and arrest a virus.
We do all this research every day, and then turn on the TV to find the nation’s top medical spokesman (a certain Dr. Fauci of fame and fortune) knows nothing and cares nothing for any of the research. He is a performance artist who just likes being on TV, being fawned over while he advocates the permanent overthrow of our rights and liberties. And yet even his colleagues and others in the profession, who know his long-running racket very well, dare not call him out for fear of losing grant money, being ostracized within their institutions, and trolled on Twitter. He is a scary man with the power to make or break careers, so rather than take the risk, others just shake their heads and turn the channel.
Sheer cowardice explains most of the dearth of dissent. It’s easy to forget how cravenly careerist people become when they are afraid. Most people would rather lie or be silent than risk facing disapproval of friends and colleagues. Cancel culture makes this worse. Doctors who dare talk about natural immunities or the talisman of masks and distancing find themselves investigated by medical boards. Academics who speak out are accused of encouraging superspreaders, blasted by colleagues including students. It’s way beyond witch hunts at this point. As a result, you can easily get the impression that everyone agrees with the desperate need to dismantle civilization as we know it.
None of this is sustainable. When it was “14 days to flatten the curve,” I feared for the future of investment, public confidence in government, lost revenue for small and medium-sized businesses, and their permanent shock that would come from the realization that government can and will do something this horrible. Another two weeks went by and we were writing furiously to warn the world of the deadly consequences of this course. April 13 came and AIER released the most strongly worded editorial then in print: we need complete liberation now. The Wall Street Journal followed and said the same two days later.
In those days, the prevailing theory of the virus was that you cannot stop it but you can slow it down. Tall or short, the area of the curve is the same. Why prolong the pain? The talking point at the time was to preserve hospital capacity. But over time, this plausible idea mutated into a full suppressionist agenda. Slow the spread became stop the spread. It was a small step until the “experts” defaulted to a medieval view of disease: run away! Actually, that’s too flattering: it was a gradeschool view of cooties that became the new and thoroughly fake science.
Then we arrived at the current moment in which professional virus fighters, having failed miserably to suppress the virus, have turned against the public, blaming those who do not comply with complete enthusiasm. Fauci says some version of this daily on TV: if everyone would just comply, we won’t have to lock down anymore. Unless morale improves, the beatings will continue.
After two weeks, there was still time to undo major parts of the damage of lockdowns. After 10 months, not so much. There will be loss of life for many years to come plus population-wide psychological, social, and economic damage. The catastrophe has not been averted. It is far worse than any of us could ever have imagined at this time last year. The world has shifted and drastically, and the pain and suffering are unspeakable. Our governments are the pathogens that have done this to us. They were aided and abetted by fake news, fake experts, fake intellectuals, fake science, and a fake view of life.
At this late date, we’ve lost confidence in most of what we used to trust and think was normal. Despair is taking over. Many of those who were willing to fight in the spring and summer have given up, tired of writing, tired of protesting, tired of yelling. The attempt to demotivate the opposition is working. This is a huge error.
What, then, is the path to the future? We can stay on the present catastrophic course or we can reverse it. The sooner governments wise up and stop hurting everyone like this the sooner the healing can begin. It will take years, decades, but a version of the rule of medicine from the ancient days pertains: first stop doing harm."
"The U.S. restaurant industry has been facing coup after coup since lockdowns and indoor dining restrictions were instituted all over the nation, forcing several owners to permanently close their doors. The meltdown of the industry led more than 100,000 eateries to close in 2020 and many more are still on the brink, as the health crisis narrative is still lingering in America. Authorities are constantly being criticized for imposing draconian bans that they don't even follow, as well as enabling the downfall of hundreds of thousands of businesses without properly measuring the consequences this will have on the economy.
While these businesses are shut down for good, more employees are being laid-off, aggravating the labor market crisis and its prospects to keeping adding workers back to their posts. Additionally, the commercial real state market has been absorbing the impacts of these closures since all of the space that is being emptied probably isn't going to be occupied at the same rate ever again. In short, the collapse of the restaurant industry is setting the stage for a commercial real state collapse of epic proportions, and that's what we talk about in this video.
Every day it passes by, more announcements of restaurant closures keep popping on the news. Prior to 2020, The United States used to have over 660,000 restaurants across its territory. In a recent op-ed piece, Adam Piper has affirmed that unreasonable, unnecessary, and hypocritical actions have pushed more than 100,000 restaurants to close and endangered countless others. At this stage of the collapse, according to Bloomberg, the current figure for restaurant closures is even bigger. A new survey released by the National Restaurant Association disclosed that from September to December, 10,000 more closures were registered, totaling a nationwide tally of over 110,000 permanent or long-term closures, which means one in six U.S. eateries is now gone. The Association is warning that there will be more carnage in the months ahead as the industry grapples with the devastating impacts of the health-crisis-induced recession.
The mass closures portray a clear picture of what an economic depression looks like. And now that hundreds of thousands of restaurants are sitting empty, while tens of thousands of others aren't making enough revenue to afford their rent, the stage has been set for a commercial real estate disaster of epic proportions. Evidently, the restaurant vacancies are added to the millions of square feet of office and retail space that are also not being productive due to new work-at-home arrangements and the growing online shopping trend that triggered the bankruptcy of hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar retailers. That's why this imminent commercial real estate nightmare is being called by financial analyst Lee Adler as “a monster in the room”.
According to Adler, the losses some of these sectors are about to face will be the final blow to their survival. He said to believe that even though big institutions of the industry are overpriced and overvalued right now, they will produce enough income to get by. But office and retail will never again generate the income they did before people began moving to online shopping. Most will need to be repurposed. Many will be demolished. Their value is land only, and even that is depreciating. Adler projects that office buildings that are now only 50% occupied might lose 100% of their value Even at 75% occupancy, property owners won’t be able to pay the mortgages. Consequently, banks will also face enormous losses, just as it happened in 1988-92, "only this time, there will be no recovery," he noted.
Markets that once were more on the affordable side are becoming increasingly less affordable as prices are fast climbing. An Attom Data Solutions study has found that by the end of 2020, the average price of homes in 55 percent of the counties in the nation was considered less affordable to the average wage earner than they have been historically. Another of the Fed’s unintended consequence of hurting those that are least able to afford it. This situation already exposes the effects of hyperinflation in prices. Although the Fed has been massively purchasing bonds to try to keep the markets afloat, its money printing-frenzy has backfired and now we're in the middle of the most splendid real market bubble this country has ever seen. Considering policymakers will continue to launch more money into the system, this bubble will only inflate further and further, which will, of course, make the crash much more disastrous in scope and size. Everywhere we look, we can see that the dominoes are starting to fall, but we're still in the very early chapters of this ravaging economic collapse."
“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.”
"How the Elite Use Hypnosis to Control the Masses"
by Joe Jarvis
"On July 20, 2012, James Holmes opened fire inside a theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing twelve people, and injuring dozens more. The attack was elaborate and well coordinated, Holmes even left explosives rigged to blow at his apartment. And yet when he showed up in court, the media reported that Holmes “seemed dazed and largely unaware of his surroundings.” Holmes would later tell a fellow inmate that an “evil therapist programmed me to commit mass slaughter.”
And strange enough, some of the evidence submitted at trial conveniently included a journal belonging to Holmes, found in a university mailroom, addressed to his campus psychologist, confessing all sorts of evil, violent fantasies. The fellow inmate claims that Holmes said he felt like he was in a video game while he carried out the shootings, and mentioned neuro-linguistic programming, a form of psychotherapy or hypnosis.
Now, clearly this man was crazy, so you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. But it does make you wonder– the FBI, for instance, has been known to approach unstable mentally ill people, and entice them into agreeing to carry out a terrorist plot. The FBI supplies their target with fake explosives, and then arrests them at the scene of the crime. This allows the FBI to claim they foiled a terrorist attack, when in reality, the culprit would have been mentally incapable of planning and committing the crime without the FBI’s guidance.
So when you hear that Holmes was a neuroscience student, obsessed with mind control, confessing his deepest, darkest secrets to a therapist… suddenly it doesn’t sound so crazy that he could have been set up as the patsy in a larger plot.
Of course this theory hinges around the idea that someone could be hypnotized to carry out such an atrocity. Hypnotists are not magicians, but they are experts on tapping into the thought currents already running through the subject’s mind, to both ride the wave, and direct the flow of the subject’s brainwaves.
Your brain operates at measurable frequencies, that correspond to what state of mind you’re in. For example while in deep, dreamless sleep, your brainwaves are in a Delta state, firing at 1-3 hertz. The Beta brain state operates between 12-28 hertz, and occurs when awake, alert, or focusing on a task. But when you are meditating or daydreaming, you are operating in an Alpha state, around 7-13 hertz. And when you are in a light sleep, dreaming vividly, that is called Theta, from about 4-7 hertz.
Hypnotism is really just a matter of finding the right triggers to put your mind into a highly suggestible state, such as Alpha or Theta. They do this by piggy-backing on your preconceived notions, existing mental archetypes, and psychological “shortcuts” we use to save brain capacity. Right from the start, the hypnotist establishes authority by calling himself a hypnotist. This begins the process of hypnosis, because we all carry in our minds an idea about what a hypnotist looks and acts like, and what hypnosis is. You are getting sleepy…
Research shows that children as young as 10 already have a mental picture of a hypnotist etched into their minds. It doesn’t matter that we all picture slightly different things, nor does it make a difference that the hypnotist doesn’t know exactly what our particular impression of a hypnotist is. What matters is that we have already started preparing ourselves to enter a different mental state. We are thinking about hypnotism, perhaps wondering if it is real, maybe imagining times we went to a hypnosis show. Or your anxiety or excitement could be rising, in anticipation.
You start thinking, can I really be hypnotized? What can he make me do? Will I lose free will? Can my mind be controlled? Now you are primed, so the hypnotist starts to push you a little further. He says he has a test to see if you’d be a good subject to be hypnotized. He is confident, in charge, and says, pay attention to me, which of course, you were already doing. This reinforces that he is in control, and you are doing as he says.
He’s using a particular cadence to speak, like the lines on a highway flickering past your headlights and causing highway hypnosis. He’s leading you down a path, you’re already starting to drift under his influence, before he even begins. Then the test starts.
It will be something like, hold out your arm, tense it as much as possible, tighter, tighter, flex those muscles, your arm is a steel beam, its cannot bend, it will not bend, keep it tense, a metal bar runs from your shoulder to your hand, making it impossible to bend, it cannot bend, it will not bend, now try as you might, you cannot bend your arm. Of course if you are following his instructions to keep your arm tense, flexed, and firm, that’s the real reason you cannot bend your arm.
But if you don’t mentally process this fact, it feels like the hypnotist has taken over some part of your free will. And this feeling is what allows him to take the hypnosis one step further. Now you believe that he can control your mind with words, and hypnosis becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now the hypnotist will look to reinforce this control. If your breathing has become shallow, he will say, “Your breathing is becoming shallow now,” and boom, there is more proof that he can control your body. This generally culminates in him squeezing your shoulder and saying, “sleep” and you slumping in the chair.
From there, most hypnotists will give you a little meditation spa treatment, by putting you into a deep state of relaxation, telling you that all your cares will lift out of your body and evaporate, until you have not a worry in the world. Can he really make you relax? No, but you can make yourself relax. You’ve allowed yourself to be put into a deep state of meditation. In this state, all on your own, you can implant ideas, better attitudes, and healing. But in the case of hypnosis, you are allowing the hypnotist to do the implanting.
Most people don’t really feel like they have that kind of power over their own mind. It is much easier for them to abandon control, and cede it to an “expert” like hypnotist. And when he starts the session by putting you into a deep state of relaxation, this allows the subject to drift further under his control, because it is already a rewarding experience. How often do you get to feel truly relaxed, free from all responsibilities of a sentient, rational mind?
Hypnotists reward you by allowing you to let go, to cede control to them, to finally turn off, and relax, and not have to worry or plan. Finally, you can just exist, with no expectations, no discomfort, just stillness.
If you’re at a hypnotist show, this is the stage when the crazy stuff starts happening. They make you think you’re a duck, or forget your name. Or they convince you to become a loyal devotee to support their quest to overthrow every oppressive government and replace them with a private governing system, devoid of coercion, with ultimate respect for each individual’s freedom… for example.
In real life, this is the stage of hypnosis when they make you bow to the woke mob, and abandon all sense of reason. It feels good. It feels so nice to stop questioning, abandon rationality, to sink under their control, and to become a properly programmed part of the collective. People underestimate that appeal, of surrendering all sense of self, and all responsibility to someone else– a hypnotist, an expert, a politician, a scientist. And what makes the allure all the more powerful, is that sometimes it can be healthy.
For instance, the deep spiritual healing of Ayahuasca or mushroom trips can only occur when you abandon control, and allow yourself to fall under the hallucinogens’ spell. With mushrooms, Ayahuasca, or LSD, all you have to fear is what the substance brings out in your own mind. But when you abandon your self control to another human being, you are entrusting that they have no ulterior motives, and nothing to gain from your obedience.
If you have a trustworthy, competent therapist, they could help implant ideas they think will help you overcome mental hardships… or, perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, they could reinforce the worst of your nature, and bring our more sinister elements of your psyche. Personally, I believe that at least on some level, all hypnosis is self hypnosis. You have to allow yourself to be hypnotized. Under normal circumstances, no one can seize your mind without your permission.
Remember, the hypnotist is working with what is already in your head. But a particularly gifted hypnotist could probably reach some pretty deep corners you might not even know were there… Which is why meditation can help you protect yourself from this type of influence, by making sure you are the first one to explore your subconscious mind, and get a feel for the place.
How the elite use the power of hypnosis: You have probably already noticed elements of how hypnosis applies to the way the elites control society. You can’t deny that they have great branding: we refer to them as elites. Already their status is heightened in the mind. Just like hypnotists, we all have a different idea of what exactly an elite is. But that idea will generally share some common elements: power, status, secret societies, wealth, control of government and other institutions. Others may associate the term with elite athletes, or elite schools.
“Elite” seems out of reach, exclusive, too powerful to resist. Something is going on behind he scenes, out of reach, which we cannot control. This is also how the government prefers to be seen, as I discuss in my video on the “traps” which keep us from freeing ourselves. Posturing as “elite”– or an expert, or a leader– cuts down most opposition before it even starts. They marry the elements of hypnosis with marketing. Edward Bernays hypnotized America by associating cigarettes with women’s empowerment, and by finding doctors who would say bacon and eggs is the best breakfast you could have.
Obviously, the elite benefit from controlling large centralized institutions which can team up to hypnotize us into believing the experts. Random volunteers will deliver electric shocks until it appears the subject has passed out or died… all because a man in a lab coat told them to keep going. That was the Milgram Experiment on obedience to perceived authority.
And indeed, most people go through life in some level of hypnosis. Take the belief that a government, with a monopoly on security and justice, which allows no competition, and forces people at the point of a gun to fund them, is the most peaceful way to run society.
Never-mind that the single biggest cause of death in 20th century was government. Most people are under such a spell that they cannot conceive an alternative way to organize society. Simply the thought entering the mind that we might not need a government, as we currently know it, makes people defensive, confused, and angry. It’s almost as if someone instructed them, while in a deep state of hypnosis, that when they wake up, they will violently reject the idea that their captors are not their saviors. Some call this Stockholm Syndrome. But most call it good citizenship.
The media is the most obvious mass-hypnosis machine. They often report real news, but framed in such a way that it supports their narrative. But most hypnosis is reinforced by our peers, in a mental shortcut called social proof. For example, a college degree has mattered for so long, that your own parents will try to hypnotize you into borrowing six figures for a gender studies degree.
Of course the Universities were taken over by the Marxist hypnotists long ago. They present their conditioning as education. And their subjects react violently to ideas which contradict their conditioning. That is why they need safe-spaces, hate free speech, and cancel anyone who dares to present a dangerous idea.
The banks hypnotize customers into believing they are a safe institution to keep your money in, when in reality they are on the brink of collapse, use your money gamble in instruments like derivatives, work as spies for the government to report “suspect” financial transactions.
Fiat currency itself is a huge hypnotism move. Paper money, printed by government, made valuable by decree and nothing else but mass hypnosis.
There are too many examples of hypnotism being used on society evert day, so please comment with more examples. But all these institutions cannot be entirely useless– some research is real and beneficial, some news is relevant and helpful, some education is worthwhile, a medium of exchange is necessary, and so are many products created and sold by corporations. The real trick is convincing people these are the only ways to learn, govern, and spend in an advanced economy. It’s like when the hypnotist tells you to flex your muscles, stiffen your arm, and then try to bend it.
Obviously while the government has a near monopoly on security, other alternatives atrophy. They seize control of policing, courts, and say– just try to stay safe without us, try to bend your arm while flexing, try to protect yourself while it is against our rules to protect yourself. You can’t do it, can you? Well I guess we need them, I guess they do control me, I guess I am powerless.
But trust in all these institutions is crumbling. That’s a good thing, although the elites still try to frame it as a bad thing. We still believe that a society must rest on certain foundations, and the loss of those institutions can still make us uncomfortable. Most people are waiting for a prompt from the hypnotist, and cannot conceive of alternatives on their own. Once this is overcome, the elite have lost their game.
And in fact if you understand the message of this video, the elites have already lost their power over you. I would encourage everyone to use meditation to recognize and dissolve those artificial barriers and walls erected in our minds by society’s hypnotists. In a sense, self hypnosis gives you control over your mind, and makes it much harder for others to implant harmful ideas."
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.
You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami
“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
