Thursday, July 29, 2021

Free Download: Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:
Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:

"What Are The Facts?"

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
- Robert A. Heinlein

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
- Carl Sagan

And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

Hey, who lied and told you any of this was easy?

"2021 - The Year Of The Mass Poisoning" (Excerpt)

A Comment: The conclusions drawn in this lengthy article will shock, horrify and enrage you, seemingly so mind-numbingly insane that they couldn't be possible. Incredibly, astonishingly, I personally believe this narrative to be the truth. Please research this yourself and draw your own informed opinions as to its validity. - CP

"2021 - The Year Of The Mass Poisoning" (Excerpt)
by Clive Maund

"We have come to the end of a Grand Supercycle that was marked by both debt and population being stretched to their absolute limits. With the debt bubble set to implode after a desperate last gasp run into hyperinflation, the world population which had been enabled to grow to extreme levels by debt expansion, is set to crash and it is clear from their actions of the past couple of years that the ruling elites have decided to take full control of this process and accelerate it dramatically with lockdowns designed to destroy the world economy and a genocidal forced experimental mRNA gene therapy program intended to eliminate a large percentage of the world population.

2021 will go down as one of the darkest, if not THE darkest year in the entire history of the human race for this is the year when the narrow clique of plutocrats who have acquired immense wealth and influence and now control the planet actively implement their long formulated plan to exterminate a large percentage of the population and transform those who survive into compliant transhuman slave bots who can be remotely controlled, with ownership of the assets of the entire population being in due course transferred to the elite ruling class.

Human history and not just human history but the history of the world itself is defined by epochs which are long periods having unique characteristics that don’t change very much, which eventually end by transitioning into another epoch, sometimes suddenly, a simple example being the epoch of the dinosaurs being abruptly ended by the impact of a massive meteor. We have just witnessed the end of such an epoch which ran from the end of the 2nd World War up to the end of 2019 when it was terminated by the activation of the global elites’ Master Plan. This last epoch which ran for almost 75 years was an era of unprecedented freedom peace and prosperity for many, especially across the Western world, that has now ended, and we are now in a cathartic transition phase into a new epoch that many will not live to see. 

The precipitating factors leading to this transition are the critical instability resulting from a global economy fuelled by unsustainable debt expansion coupled with massive overpopulation which are both set to implode and collapse. What is happening is that the global ruling class have decided to take control of this implosion and collapse, hence their euphemistic, lofty and endearing term for it “The Great Reset”. What we are now seeing unfold is the collapse of civilization into a barbaric brutal dystopia, with the resurrection of a feudal society which in many respects will be much worse than the Middle Ages because of the level of control available to the ruling class through technology that will allow round the clock non-stop control of the minds and bodies of the surviving peasants. If Kenneth Clarke were still around he could make a sequel to his epic TV series called “Civilization” which would be named “The Collapse of Civilization” although it probably wouldn’t need to run to 13 episodes like the original.

In this article I am going to refrain from adopting the usual “them and us” approach which is the custom of most writers and instead attempt to adopt an impartial objective approach as if we are curious visitors from another planet attempting to figure out what is going on. Thus, we will strive to see things from the perspective of those in control of society and also from the larger perspective of the Earth itself and the future of its plants and animals and general ecosystems. Henceforth we will refer to the elite ruling class of plutocrats as the NWO, short for New World Order both for brevity and because that is what they have long stated that they want to create."
Please view this complete, lengthy, critically important article here:
Related, essential:

The Daily "Near You?"

McAlester, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Life's Funny..."

"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
- Alysha Speer

"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."
- Scott Turow

"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
- Andrew Klavan

"With Us or Against Us"

"With Us or Against Us"
by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – “Je n’embrasse plus,” said an old friend when she came to visit. An exchange of kisses is customary in this part of France. But Chantal is taking no chances. And so, the world changes. Fear… anger… shaming… coercion – sinister emotions slip like snakes under an old door.

Final Truth: We are exploring the Brave New World of a “mission economy.” We fear it is a dark place. A mission economy is one where private needs and desires are subordinated to “public purpose.” Unfortunately, the public purpose is decided, not by the public, but by the same elite schemers, incompetents, and jackasses who control the rest of government.

They give us the War on Drugs… the War on Poverty… the War on Terror – all missions accomplished! And now, it is time to draft us for a war against a virus? We’ve seen that almost all public health measures designed to stop the virus – lockdowns, masks, etc. – have failed. It doesn’t seem to matter what you did… the results are uncorrelated. Now, vaccines are supposed to do the trick. But nobody really knows whether universal vaccination is a good thing or a bad thing.

Statistically, a person under the age of 44 has very little chance of dying from the dreaded disease. He might just as likely die from a traffic accident. Should such low-risk people go about their business and build up a natural “herd” immunity… or should the whole herd, young and old, at risk or not, get a shot in the arm with a drug that didn’t even exist a year ago?

And a report this week from a hospital in Leiden, in the Netherlands, tells us that 85% of its new COVID-19 cases were already vaccinated. Alas, nobody has the Full and Final Truth. At least, we don’t.

Colds and Opinions: Typically, people are allowed their own opinions… and get to decide for themselves what they put into their bodies. They enter shopping malls and restaurants, carrying their colds and opinions with them. The germs spread… some people succumb. But most build up a resistance. And the human race survives. But when a society gets into mission mode, contrary opinion is no longer allowed.

“Vaccinated America Has Had Enough,” writes editor David Frum in The Atlantic magazine, picking up the “anger” theme we explored yesterday. To fully understand where this is coming from, you have to connect the dots. Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. It was he who came up with the preposterous “Axis of Evil” epithet. Back then, his mission was to gin up support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. You were either “with us or against us” said George W., perhaps reading Frum’s words on a teleprompter. Let us back up the tape and take a closer look.

Anti-American:Following the 9/11 attack, Congress rushed to judgement. In a hasty vote on 9/14, the pols gave Bush a blank check to “use all necessary and appropriate force” to bring the “bad guys” to heel. Only a single member of Congress – Barbara Lee from California – had the good sense and cool head to vote no. She pointed out that the resolution gave a “blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events - anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit… “A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed.”

But the nation’s blood was up. Now, it had a mission! Poor Ms. Lee got death threats and was accused of being “anti-American,” even by the normally sober Wall Street Journal. So great was the vitriol that she needed around-the-clock bodyguards to protect her. But she was right. The wars created by the Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney team… and jingoed up by David Frum… were disasters.

Breaking Point: Continuing with his “us vs. them” theme today, Frum divides the country in two. There are the virtuous good citizens in “Biden’s America.” And there are the nay-sayers… the unvaccinated… the unclean… the untouchables in “Trump’s America.” The good ones are running out of patience. Have they reached the “breaking point,” he asks? He thinks it’s time to get tough: "The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate, train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination…"

They would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do. Then comes the criminal accusation: "In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet."

Yes… Now it’s coming clear… the anti-vaxxers are terrorists! Frum does not suggest it, but shouldn’t they be hunted down… like religious heretics or fanatical bomb throwers? More to come…"

"Have You Seen the Olympics? Probably Not. FYI, It’s Not About Sports Anymore"

"Have You Seen the Olympics? Probably Not.
FYI, It’s Not About Sports Anymore"
by Simon Black

"Late in the evening of October 17, 1534, a small group of protestant activists swept across the five biggest cities in France, posting anti-Catholic propaganda posters all over town in major public squares. The activists even managed to brazenly nail one of their posters to the bedroom door of King Francis I, himself a Catholic. (There were even rumors that the activists slipped their literature into one of the King’s pockets as he slept.)

Francis was furious. He had always been tolerant of protestants in his country and allowed people to worship freely… at a time when religious tolerance was quite rare in Europe. But he felt the activists had gone too far. So he had them all tracked down and burned at the stake.

This was merely an opening salvo in what would eventually become a full blown civil war in France, known as the “Wars of Religion” between Catholics and Protestants. In retrospect this may be one of the most pointless and idiotic civil wars in the history of western civilization. Both sides were French– a kingdom that had existed for centuries and enjoyed a strong national identity since at least the mid 1400s. Both sides spoke the same language, shared similar values. Even religiously, they both worshiped the same God. They both had faith in Jesus Christ. They both believed in heaven and hell.

Their differences were minor. They had different customs and rituals. And they disagreed on small details – like predestination, the infallibility of the pope, or the supreme authority of the bible over the authority of the church. Yet despite standing on the same ground on virtually 95% of everything, their 5% disagreement led to one of the deadliest wars in European history. More than 3 million died as a result of this pointless conflict. And it took decades for the violence to stop and the French economy to finally recover.

I’ve thought about this history quite frequently over the past several months as a historical metaphor for our own time. That’s not because of the level of violence; our own modern social conflict is “mostly peaceful”, after all. But what I find most irritating about the extreme level of tension today is that, like the Catholics and Protestants from French history, people tend to agree on most things.

For example, the vast majority of people in a civilized society today probably agree that racism is stupid and shouldn’t exist. It seems like THAT should be the most important point, and obvious common ground. Yet one side tells the other side, ‘If you’re not 100% on board with everything in our doctrine, then you’re a White Supremacist.’ And then crazy conflict ensues.

School boards try to reinvent the entire education system and indoctrinate children with hardcore, woke literature. Angry digital mobs swarm all over non-believers trying to ruin lives and destroy businesses. And angrier mobs have rampaged through the streets, taken over government buildings, and even declared their own autonomous zones.

This is utterly ridiculous behavior when you consider how closely aligned most people are on the most important points of the issue. Yet that small 5% difference has caused one side to completely spiral out of control and engage in de facto acts of terrorism – stoking fear through violence, threats, and intimidation, in an effort to unilaterally dictate national policy. Compromise is out of the question. Discussion is off the table. The fact that most people agree on probably 95% of the issue is totally irrelevant. Their only tactic is conflict. And every woke fanatic has enlisted as a foot soldier to wage a nonstop campaign of propaganda, fear, and public spectacle. And that includes celebrities, ‘journalists’, and athletes.

Just take a look at the Olympics. No seriously, take a look. Because if you’re like most people, you probably haven’t been watching. TV ratings for the Olympics are at their lowest level in decades… because everyone knows it’s not about sports anymore. If you can manage to stomach the extreme lunacy of Japan’s Covid protocol theater, you then have to put up with a never-ending display of political protests. And if you haven’t vomited all over yourself by then, you’ll then have to suffer the indignity of the NBC broadcast team’s groveling and virtue signaling.

For example, we’ve seen one country’s female (can you still use that word?) gymnastics team change their competition uniform to skin-tight onesies with flesh-colored plunging necklines. To them, this new sultry uniform is a protest against the sexualization of female gymnasts. The media, of course, is eating it up, and praising these gymnasts for their bravery and courage. Seriously? Has the bar for courage been set so low that you get a gold star for putting on a sequined unitard?

Then there were judo competitors from two different countries (Sudan and Algeria) who refused to face an Israeli opponent, citing the Israeli government’s activities in Palestine.(Ironically, this is also the same reason why Ben & Jerry’s wants to stop selling ice cream in Israel. No soup for you!)

But these examples don’t even scratch the surface of the athlete protests. Of course there’s going to be a lot of kneeling during national anthems. That’s so commonplace it’s almost passé now. NFL teams routinely take a knee for the national anthem, if they bother taking the field at all. And even if you try to ignore it, the game announcers keep at-home viewers informed in real time, telling us which players are standing, and which are kneeling.

The NBA is even worse, where athletes flat-out refuse to play as a form of protest. In completely unrelated news, NBA ratings are also at their lowest levels in decades. In fact the most recent NBA finals averaged fewer than 10 million viewers… which is about 30% fewer people as watched a typical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation back in the 1990s. It’s also a fraction of what the NBA finals viewership used to be even a few years ago.

Major League Baseball refuses to be left out of this terminal decline in viewership. You may recall that the MLB’s recent all-star game was supposed to have been played in Atlanta earlier this month. But the league decided to move the all-star game to Denver in order to protest a voting law passed by the state of Georgia, which had been called ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ by a bunch of people who didn’t bother to actually read the text of the legislation. Had anyone bothered to read the law, they would have seen that it drastically expands voting and makes it much easier for people to cast their ballots.

But that doesn’t matter. Any voting law changes in 2021 are ‘Jim Crow’ and ‘UnAmerican’. So baseball jumped on board the ignorance train and staged its woke protest. Unsurprisingly, viewership of the all-star game plummeted to a record low. And this is good news. These dismal ratings are proof that ultra-woke loudmouths only constitute a tiny minority of the population.

The bad news, however, is that they’ve managed to take over prominent institutions, like education, media, technology, and big corporations. And they refuse to see that the majority of people are good, decent, and level-headed who agree on the most important points of the issue, i.e. racism is stupid and shouldn’t exist. But 95% agreement isn’t good enough for them. So they refuse to compromise. And just like the wars of religion in French history, the inability to compromise could make this ridiculous social conflict last for years… if not decades to come."

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannerino, "7/29/21: Updates"

Gregory Mannerino, AM 7/29/21:
"Important Updates"
Gregory Mannerino, PM 7/29/21:
"Inflation Continues To SURGE Higher As The Economy Craters"

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

"The Fed Stays the Course as You Get Destroyed - Inflation Ignored"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 7/28/21:
"The Fed Stays the Course as You Get Destroyed - Inflation Ignored"
"The Fed and Jerome Powell stayed its course and did not raise interest rates. This economy is detached from all reality. Inflation is skyrocketing around us and you need to earn money. It’s time to start a side hustle."

"The FED Is Creating A Horrific Economic Crisis; Interest Rates Will Rise; Bank Runs - Fake People"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/28/21:
"The FED Is Creating A Horrific Economic Crisis; 
Interest Rates Will Rise; Bank Runs - Fake People"

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire, Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, 
"Divenire, Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The rim of the large blue galaxy at the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. AM 0644-741 is known as a ring galaxy and was caused by an immense galaxy collision. When galaxies collide, they pass through each other and their individual stars rarely come into contact. The large galaxy's ring-like shape is the result of the gravitational disruption caused by a small intruder galaxy passing through it. When this happens, interstellar gas and dust become compressed, causing a wave of star formation to move out from the impact point like a ripple across the surface of a pond. 
Other galaxies in the field of view are background galaxies, not interacting with AM 0644-741. Foreground spiky stars are within our own Milky Way. But the smaller intruder galaxy is caught above and right, near the top of the frame taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ring galaxy AM 0644-741 lies about 300 million light years away toward the southern constellation Volans."

"Return of Kabuki – If We Let It"

"Return of Kabuki – If We Let It"
by Eric Peters

"To understand why the Face Diapers are coming back it is necessary to understand why they appeared in the first place. More precisely, why they were forced onto faces. Last year around this time, it was necessary to create the image of a “pandemic” and more than that, the image of near-universal agreement that there was a “pandemic.” Both were achieved by forcing practically everyone to walk around with a thing around their faces formerly seen only on the faces of the mentally ill – outside of surgical suites. It gave the visual of a national Hantavirus ward, sans the Hantavirus.

And of course, sans the bodies stacking up like cordwood. “The cases! The cases!” were stacked up instead.
The problem with that was – and remains – that there are still a lot of people who can distinguish between a “case” and a corpse. These people could see that the bodies weren’t stacking up like cordwood, that hospitals were not overflowing with dying supplicants.

They also knew – as in knowledge, a thing distinct from belief, as in religion – that if they weren’t sick, they couldn’t transmit sickness and that it is sick (in the head) to walk around with a rag over their faces pretending to be sick or pretending to be in dread of sickness or because others are crippled by hypochondria – an obsessive fixation on and fear of getting sick.
They also knew that even if they did get this putative sickness, unless they were over 70 and not in good health, they stood a 99.8 percent chance of not dying.

To live – and look – as if they were over 70 and not in good health made no sense to them. It would be like a not-handicapped person using a cane or a competent driver limiting his driving to no faster than 25 MPH and only down to the corner store and back because some old people can’t see very well anymore and they lack the skills to competently drive 75 on the highway.

In addition, they also knew – once again, as opposed to believing – that wrapping a dirty old bandana around their faces doesn’t impede viral particles any more than a chain link fence thwarts mosquitos – and for that matter, neither does the “mask” that most of the population has been wearing, these things being dust masks of the sort used by people on construction sites and even if of the N95 variety, poorly fitted or fiddled with by fingers all day long – and after all day long suffused with schnott and far more disgusting than palliative.

These people, if given the free choice, would choose not to perform this sick kabuki – it being disgusting and absurd – and by not performing it, the sight of them would have prevented the image of a “pandemic” and the appearance of near-universal belief in the existence of one – each reinforcing the other – from ever having successfully implanted.

Which would have thwarted all of the evil impositions visited upon the people of this country, most especially little kids – who (unlike some adults) are more easily terrorized and traumatized and also much more helpless, in that they have to do what the adults tell them to do. Thus they were denied the usual childhood normalcy of friends and school, “locked down” like lepers and taught by the sick adults around them to regard others as lepers. The damage done in this regard is nothing shy of catastrophic and will take years to undo, if it ever is undone.
Some of the more suggestible would of course have Diapered up, regardless. But the sight of lots of faces – and no bodies stacking up – would have tempered the fear of many of these, who probably would have removed their Diapers, too.

None of that could be tolerated. It is why Diapers were “mandated.” And it is why Diapers are about to be “mandated” again – and already have been, in places like Los Angeles and St. Louis.

This time, because there are lots of people who know that the “vaccines” being pushed on them are – like the Face Diapers – of dubious value (people who have taken them are still getting sick) as well as known to be more dangerous than any other “vaccine” ever allowed into general circulation, having already caused thousands of deaths as well as thousands of serious complications and who knows what else in the months and years to come.

They know the “vaccine” pushers have an enormous profit motive and they know the “vaccine” manufacturers are legally immunized from the consequences of any harms their “vaccines” cause. They are rightly cautious on account of all of that and rightly suspicious of the used car salesman/time-share condo hard-sell. They are also sick of the lip-snarling and threats – increasingly overt – that they’d better roll up their sleeves, or else. It makes a thinking person wonder what these drug pushers are up to.

Thus, millions of prudent, sensible people have not rolled up their sleeves – and so, the Diapers are to be re-imposed. As a punishment – and as a cudgel.

The punishment is obvious. Most people loathe being made to walk around – and go to work – with a disgusting and degrading rag over their faces. The resumed wearing thereof – and accompanying restrictions – will be the “incentive” used to coerce the rolling-up of sleeves. The renewed social pressure of seeing everyone, almost, wearing the disgusting, degrading things will be deployed to demoralize and thus, defeat, the populace by wearing them down. But there is a new element, this time.
The “vaccinated” will also be forced to Diaper Up and this will infuriate them. They will regard – they are being told to regard – those who have not rolled up their sleeves as the source of their woes and of their sickness (it does not occur to them, apparently, to ask why they are still getting sick if the “vaccine” works).

They are being egged-on by the TeeVee and horrid people like the governor of Alabama and the mayor of New York and of course, above them all, the horrible little docktor who stands at the apex of all of this, to loathe and despise the people who have not rolled up their sleeves. The Diapered-vaccinated will demand “action.” And “action” they will get. It is a pogrom in the making.

We are standing precariously on the razor’s edge. Things could go either way. They will go the sane way if enough people simply refuse to kabuki this time. The last time, it was perhaps understandable why they kabuki’d. They didn’t know. They may have been afraid. Many just didn’t want to raise a fuss and figured if they didn’t this would pass.
It will be forever, if they kabuki this time.

It cannot be overstated. Do not put on a Face Diaper this time. Refuse to do it and don’t be ashamed to not do it. Do not give in to the fear – or the pressure. Even at the risk of your job. Your job will not matter if they succeed. Arizona Cardinals receiver DeAndre Hopkins understands this. He has announced his job is not worth his rights – or his life: “Never thought I would say this, but being put in a position to hurt my team because I don’t want to partake in the vaccine is making me question my future in the NFL.”

And if we succeed, there will always be another job – one that doesn’t require abominable obedience rituals as the price of employment.

Not one inch. Give no ground on this. Stop deferring to other people’s hystericized feelings. Refuse to be cowed by their neurotic assertions about the harms not being caused. Insist on your right to not be harmed for the sake of their fears. The time for tolerance is ended. Enough is enough. This madness has got to stop. We have it in our power to stop it. We can have our lives back – if we don’t let them take them away. By refusing, this time, to put the god-damned thing on."

The Daily "Near You?"

Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.
Thanks for stopping by!

Chet Raymo, “Thinking About Thinking”

“Thinking About Thinking”
by Chet Raymo

“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he was right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outwards. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic- this awareness- we create a soul.

At this moment, as I sit at my desk on a hillside in the west of Ireland, I try to be aware. Sunlight streams across my computer keyboard; eight minutes ago these photons were on the surface of the sun. A Pholcus phalangioides spider spins its web under the shelf above the desk; I touch the web with a pencil point and the spider does a dervish dance. Outside the window, clouds scud in from the Atlantic; there will be rain in the afternoon.

Continuous awareness: It can be exhausting. Which is why, I suppose, we sometimes wish for the mind to go blank, for the windows of the soul to close, for darkness to fall. Fortunately, the one thing we don't have to attend to is awareness itself. The brain does its thing without the least bit of conscious control on our part. And a good thing, too; if we had to attend to what is going on in the brain when we attend to the world, we'd... We'd go nuts.

Nothing we know about in the universe approaches the complexity of the human brain. What is it? A vast spider web of neurons, cells with a thousand octopuslike arms, called dendrites. The dendrites reach out and make contact at their tips with the dendrites of other cells, at junctions called synapses. A hundred billion neurons in the human brain, with an average of 1,000 dendrites each. A hundred trillion octopus arms touching like fingertips, and each synapse exquisitely controlled by the cells themselves, strengthening or weakening the contact, building webs of interlinked cells that are knowledge, memory, consciousness- self.

A hundred billion neurons. That's more brain cells than there are grains of salt in 1,000 one-pound boxes of salt. A roomful of salt grains, floor to ceiling. Each in contact with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others. The contacts flickering with variable strength. Continuously. Unconsciously. Never ceasing. Remembering. Forgetting. Feeling joy. Feeling pain. Thinking. Speaking. Lifting a foot, moving it forward, putting it down again. Flickering. A hundred trillion flickering synapses. Just thinking about it is exhausting.

Neuroscientists are busy trying to figure it all out. Some folks would say that bringing the scrutiny of science to bear upon the human soul is the height of presumption. Others would say that the more we learn about what makes our brains tick, the more we stand in awe at the mystery of soul.

The sheer complexity of the human brain makes any adequate description a daunting task. Which is why some neuroscientists choose to work with simpler organisms- sea snails, for example- to get a grip on the basic structure and chemistry. In recent years, new scanning technologies enable neuroscientists to watch live human brains at work. Active neural regions flicker on the screens of computer monitors as subjects think, speak, recite poems, do math. Continuous awareness, displayed on the screen of a scanning monitor, can look like a grass fire exploding across a prairie.

Still other scientists attempt to model the brain in silicon, building electronic circuits called neural networks that mimic the activity of the brain as it creates constantly changing webs of neurons. So far, no electronic network begins to approach the complexity of the human brain, but the time is not far off when silicon brains will rival brains of flesh and blood. Just trying to make it happen teaches us a lot about how human brains work.

Perhaps the most exciting research is that of the scientists who study the biochemistry of neurons: How do the cells regulate synaptic connections to build new neural webs? One big surprise is just how much of the "thinking" of neurons is done by the dendrites, those hundreds of spidery arms that connect neurons to one another. DNA in a neuron's nucleus sends messenger RNA down along the dendrites to active synapses, where they are translated into proteins that regulate the strength of synaptic connections. Tiny protein factories in the dendrites are apparently key to learning and memory. Once the regulation of these protein factories is understood, drugs that ameliorate some kinds of hereditary mental retardation might be possible. As will drugs that help all of us to learn and remember. Are we ready for "smart" pills? Memory pills?

What all this amounts to is awareness of awareness. For the first time in the history of consciousness, the machinery of awareness has been turned upon itself. As neuroscientists have discovered, thinking about thinking is not easy. Thank goodness we don't have to think about thinking to think.”

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"
by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about filler, which is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."
"There is only one basic human right, 
the right to do as you damn well please.
And with it comes the only basic human duty,
 the duty to take the consequences."
- P. J. O'Rourke

"How It Really Is"

"Mission Disaster"

"Mission Disaster"
By Bill Bonner

NORMANDY, FRANCE – "We’re exploring the Brave New World ahead. In preview, we don’t think you’re going to like it. You’ll recall that a free economy does what individuals, families, businesses, and investors want it to do. It responds to these billions of different private purposes, aggregating them into the “economy” that we see. A “mission economy” is a different thing. It does what it is told – by the elite few who control the government. Inevitably, the mission is a disaster.

Big and Bold: In his many speeches in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler laid out a “big and bold mission” for Germany. He was prefiguring economist Mariana Mazzucato (author of "Mission Economy") – along with le president de la France, Emmanuel Macron… the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde… as well as The Atlantic editor David Frum…and assorted members of the U.S. Democratic Party – by nearly a century.

Hitler made it clear that the purpose of an economy was to serve the interests, not of the individual, but of “the Volk,” whose collective desires were channeled by Nazi Party chiefs, the Reich, and most importantly, himself. The economy thus became the servant of the elite who controlled the German government… and of their “mission.”

Of course, Hitler was far from alone. Earlier in the century, the Soviets had put their economy to work on a collective mission, too – to destroy capitalism and build a workers’ paradise on the debris. That worked about as well… but with an even higher body count. Yet, comparing anybody with Hitler… or any other government program with his monstrous mission… is considered not just bad taste, but a sin worthy of de-platforming or defenestration.

And as far as we know, neither Ms. Mazzucato, Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, or Christine Lagarde have begun to grow a mustache. The only thing they have in common with the Fuhrer is an idea. That is the idea we were wondering about as we sat in a café in Paris on Saturday…

False God: Nature Magazine lauded Ms. Mazzucato’s book, "Mission Economy," because it “put public purpose first.” The problem with the “public purpose” is, however, that it is not of the public’s choosing. Did the German public see its mission as invading Poland, the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and North Africa? Did the Russians want 70 years of crushing Soviet central planning? Did Americans really want to spend 20 years and $2.3 trillion getting their butts kicked in Afghanistan?

And isn’t that the Big Bamboozle… the false god who stabs us in the back, over and over…? The Bonaparte who rallies his troops on the banks of the Rhine… or the Hitler on the banks of the Oder… for a great campaign of conquest? Isn’t that the Vladimir, the Che, the Hugo, or the Mao who reorganize society completely (for the benefit of the people, of course)? Or the Oliver Cromwell, Pope Urban, or Osama bin Laden… who make it their mission to destroy the infidels… and be done with the non-believers?

And isn’t it the darkness settling over the planet once again… its shrouds laid out by the woke and the witless… who are ready to depress, deport, and de-platform anyone who gets in their way?

New Contagion: Getting in their way now are the unvaccinated. And here, The New York Times snuffs a few more candles: "As Virus Cases Rise, Another Contagion Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger". "As coronavirus cases resurge across the country, many inoculated Americans are losing patience with vaccine holdouts who, they say, are neglecting a civic duty or clinging to conspiracy theories and misinformation even as new patients arrive in emergency rooms and the nation renews mask advisories.

The country seemed to be exiting the pandemic; barely a month ago, a sense of celebration was palpable. Now many of the vaccinated fear for their unvaccinated children and worry that they are at risk themselves for breakthrough infections. Rising case rates are upending plans for school and workplace reopenings, and threatening another wave of infections that may overwhelm hospitals in many communities."

Yes, here they are again – good versus evil. The obedient people take their medicine. And the hold-outs… the non-conformists… do not. They are beyond the pale… beyond reason… pariahs… outcasts… to be shunned and dissed. Tomorrow, what happens to dissenters when the economy gets into mission mode. Stay tuned…"

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - Isochronic Tones"

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - 
Isochronic Tones"
by Jason Lewis - Mind Amend

"Ambient electronic space music with low-intensity beta and alpha wave tones for clear focus. Headphones are NOT required for this video. You can listen to this track with your eyes open while studying, reading or doing other activities which require a good level of concentration.

This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. If brainwave entrainment is a new concept for you, there is some information about it here: https://www.mindamend.com/
This works, as simple as that, and might give you an understanding edge in surviving what's happening, which will get much, much worse. There is no escape. Prepare yourself... - CP

"The Danger of Forgetting the Lessons of the Past"

"The Danger of Forgetting the Lessons of the Past"
By Bill Bonner

"We refer to Planet Earth, 2021. It is not even safe for cats! Think of all we’ve discovered. Over many, many centuries… in hundreds of very disturbing and illuminating real-world experiments… and with millions of people suffering lives of poverty and early death to carry them out… we must have learned something.

What exactly? That you can’t get rich by spending more than you earn. That you can’t just “print” fake money without distorting and destroying the real economy. That if you want to be prosperous, you must respect property rights and contracts… and keep taxes, inflation, and government under control…That capitalism – which is really nothing more than accumulated experiments condensed into a vernacular of rules, customs, and institutions – works. Central planning, on the other hand – with major capital allocation and distribution decisions made by people with no “skin in the game” – does not. When you forget these basic lessons, you risk destabilizing your society and setting off a runaway chaos that makes you poorer and less safe.

Painful Lessons: But despite their treasure of experience and insight, people try hard to forget. And in last month’s issue of The Bonner-Denning Letter, our coauthor Dan Denning described a world gripped by a major bout of amnesia. [Paid up Bonner-Denning Letter subscribers can catch up here.  To subscribe, click here.] 

It has forgotten where it came from and how it got to where it is. And now, it is condemned to relearn thousands of years’ worth of painful lessons. Its money is fake. Its interest rates are determined by bureaucrats and experts, not by buyers and sellers of credit. Its governments spend far more than they can afford. Its leading economists and politicians live in a fantasy world, where they think they can command markets to do whatever they please. And its world-improvers are bound and determined to remake our whole society according to their own claptrap ideas.

Prepare to suffer! Your earnings (both from selling your time and saving your money) will be repressed, says Dan. Your costs, meanwhile, will rise mercilessly.

Clumsy Ideologues: Want to know what it might be like? Just look at Venezuela. Once the richest people of Latin America, desperate Venezuelans have been reduced to gnawing on cats and dogs, by some accounts. The Miami Herald reports: "In the city’s dump, more evidence of hunger-driven desperation: dismembered dogs, cats, donkeys, horses and pigeons have been found since last year, all skinned or plucked, with signs of having been eaten, according to the city’s garbage teams. “Sometimes we only find the animal’s heads, guts and legs. We used to see this very little in the past, but this practice is now out of control and on the rise,” said Robert Linares, who works in waste disposal at the dump for the city."

And now… despite the compiled wisdom of generations’ worth of trial and error… and the example of Caracas, right in front of our eyes… much of the modern, developed world seems to want to re-run the experiment.

Coming soon, to garbage dumps near you, is more proof of what we know already Рthat money and economies are too delicate to be manhandled by clumsy ideologues. Yes, we are a long way from feline fricass̩e in the U.S. But looking ahead, we may want to begin sharing recipes."

"Of All Tyrannies..."

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. "
- C.S. Lewis

Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 7/28/21

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/28/21:
"Today Is FED Day, And The Big Secret 
That You Are Not Supposed To Know"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/28/21:
"Freefall: The FED To Maintain Emergency 
Monetary Policy For Foreseeable Future"

“The Paradox Of Time”

“The Paradox Of Time”

“Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go; 
Or else, were this not so, 
What need to chain the hours, 
For Youth were always ours? 

Time goes, you say? – ah no! 
Ours is the eyes’ deceit 
Of men whose flying feet 
Lead through some landscape low; 
We pass, and think we see 
The earth’s fixed surface flee - 
Alas, Time stays, – we go! 

Once in the days of old, 
Your locks were curling gold, 
And mine had shamed the crow. 
Now, in the self-same stage, 
We’ve reached the silver age; 
Time goes, you say? – ah no! 

Once, when my voice was strong, 
I filled the woods with song 
To praise your ‘rose’ and ‘snow’; 
My bird, that sang, is dead; 
Where are your roses fled? 
Alas, Time stays, – we go! 

See, in what traversed ways, 
What backward Fate delays 
The hopes we used to know; 
Where are our old desires? 
Ah, where those vanished fires? 
Time goes, you say? – ah no! 

How far, how far, O Sweet, 
The past behind our feet 
Lies in the even-glow! 
Now, on the forward way, 
Let us fold hands, and pray; 
Alas, Time stays, – we go!”

- Henry Austin Dobson
“Time passes in moments. Moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life, just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen? To consider whether the path we take in life is our own making, or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed? But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes? Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?”
- Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, “The X-Files”

Musical Interlude: Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"; "Sounds Of Silence"; "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"
Simon & Garfunkel, "Sounds Of Silence", 1966
Simon & Garfunkel, "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Greg Hunter, "Complete Collapse of Everything"

"Complete Collapse of Everything"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Analyst, financial writer and professional trader Rick Ackerman points out that you cannot underestimate the extreme amount of debt and money printing propping up the economy. Ackerman thinks, “It’s an inflationary bubble, and that’s why I think it’s going to bust. I think it’s going to last as long as the bull market lasts. Companies go out and borrow money to buy back their own shares. It feels like a perpetual motion as far as a bull market in stocks, but even that ends. It’s created a bubble, and bubbles only pop.”

Ackerman warns, “The inflationary juggernaut is going to eventually unwind. The biggest one is a derivatives market with a conservatively estimated value of $2 quadrillion. Any way you cut it, it’s probably around ten times the size of trade in goods and services. So, the question is why do you need a financial machine of that size to support real goods and services that is only 10% of that? The obvious answer to that is because the business of planet earth is not making things and selling services, it’s shuffling paper. So, we’ve leveraged everything to death, and where does that go? Eventually, it has to collapse. When it collapses and we wipe quadrillions of dollars of phony inflated financial wealth off the books, what kind of inflation are we going to have then? It’s a complete collapse of everything, yes, everything.”

Ackerman contends other areas that will also collapse are “Social Security, pension funds and health care.” Ackerman goes on to say when it comes to pensions, for example, like the bankrupt pensions from the State of Illinois, Ackerman says, “You are not talking about inflating financial assets. You are talking about sending out millions of checks every month to every single State of Illinois employee. That truly is money from trees. You’ve got to ask yourself, how long can that go on? That’s real money. That’s not bull twaddle money pumping up stocks. It’s checks being mailed out every month. When Illinois gets bailed out, you’re going to have another 22 states in almost as bad of shape coming with their hands out saying where’s ours? It can’t happen. It can’t happen politically, it can’t happen monetarily, it simply just can’t happen. So, what you have in the pension system, and this applies to Social Security too, you have this enormous deflator. It basically means we are not going to get paid all the benefits that we paid into.”

What should the common person invest in? Ackerman says, “Take the things everyone hates, and set one against the other. I like Treasury bonds (cash) and gold. Any disaster scenario or even a bullish scenario is not going to hit gold and bonds both. In all scenarios, it’s hard to see a way for both of those to crash, and I think you have good upside potential with gold and Treasuries going up at the same time. You have to have bullion in your portfolio I think.” In short, not losing in a severe market meltdown is a big win when everybody else is being destroyed. Ackerman likes silver, too."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with analyst
Rick Ackerman, who is a professional trader famous for “Ricks Picks.”

"Economic Growth is Completely Fake - Imminent Collapse Coming"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 7/27/21:
"Economic Growth is Completely Fake - 
Imminent Collapse Coming"
"Things are very precarious in this fake market right now. Bad news does not mean a thing anymore. People need to get ready because the stock market cannot continue at the pace that is going. They collapse is imminent. I am in Laguna Niguel California right now."

Gerald Celente, "The Trends Journal": "Idiot's Delight - Duh! I do what they tell me."

Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, "The Trends Journal":
"Idiot's Delight - Duh! I do what they tell me."
"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."