"I am back in San Diego, CA. I just returned to the Gaslamp District. The restaurant industry is completely decimated right now. There are huge supply chain problems and inflation on every single aspect of the restaurant. And the worst part is they can’t get a good staff."
"The Afghan army wasn’t real. The Afghan Civil Authority was never real. They never collected taxes. There were no courts outside of police robbing people. None of it ever existed... it was just a big jobs program funded by American money, and the moment it looked like the money would go away, everyone went home."
– Former U.S. soldier Graham Platner, interviewed by "The Jerusalem Post"
POITOU, FRANCE – "What a jolly, schadenfreudian week. The American elite have had their noses rubbed in their most precious delusions and pretensions. They spent $2.2 trillion, equal to $55,000 for every person in the nation, building a modern, democratic Afghanistan (and coincidentally, enriching themselves). And now, instead of receiving polite “thank you” notes, they are chased from the country in appalling scenes of disorganization and incompetence.
And this was not just the “military-industrial complex” that president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against. If this was a “ship of fools,” the universities, think-tanks, media, liberals, conservatives… Republicans as well as Democrats… do-gooders and world improvers – all were in the first-class cabins.
They imagined that they were bringing the indisputable virtues of the American way of life – with its unlimited fake-dollar spending, Prozac, and transgender bathrooms – to the ancient lands south of the Hindu Kush. And it was all a fraud, marked by lies and deceit over 20 years.
Meanwhile, the rest of the nation begins to wonder. If the elite could be so wrong for so long about that... What else are they wrong about? And when will the next appalling collapse occur?
Infallible Dr. Fauci: But today, we give up on earnest analysis and turn to reckless sarcasm. If only the infallible Dr. Anthony Fauci had directed the withdrawal, rather than the Pentagon’s maladroit crisis managers. Yes… Dr. Fauci is someone we can trust. A man of science and facts. He’s a public servant you can trust to give you the low-down… to tell it to you straight. Except, of course, when he’s lying.
In December 2020, he famously admitted that he fibbed about herd immunity. The New York Times reported at the time: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” he said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”
Earlier, he admitted to a “noble” lie – telling the public it didn’t need to wear face masks in March 2020 because (he claimed later) he was afraid the face masks would disappear from the shelves, leaving health professionals without them. Emails from Fauci allegedly show that while telling the public that face masks didn’t matter, privately, he was telling others to put them on. And the only hard evidence we have (comparative death rates) suggests (nothing can be proven) that mask mandates didn’t make much difference anyway.
Kaboom and Kabul: So, is the COVID-19 response – the shutdowns, masks, vaccines – America’s next Afghanistan? Or how about the whole “green” agenda? Are the experts wrong about global warming? Are the elite telling “noble” lies to bend the public in its direction?
We don’t know. Our beat is money. What we do know is that America’s economic elite are at least as malign… and at least as dumb… as its warmongers. And like those responsible for Afghanistan, they are wrong about almost everything…The fake stimulus… the fake money… the fake interest rates… the fake growth and fake Wall Street stock prices… the fake 2% inflation target – the whole fake shebang, in other words. And when their errors and lies are finally revealed… it will be a far more disgraceful and painful mess than the debacle in Afghanistan.
In the stock market alone, the loss is likely to be nearly 10 times the loss in the Afghan adventure. The loss to the economy – in the coming scenes of crash and inflation – will be many times that amount. And if the chaos leads to a political/social breakdown, as often happens when the public realizes it has been betrayed… well… prepare for Kaboom… and Kabul!
Antediluvian Beasts: Yes, Afghanistan is now in the hands of brutish, religious fanatics, well-supplied with U.S. arms and materiel. This week, we saw the photos… a whole bunch of gun-toting, night-shirt-wearing ruffians in the Presidential Palace in Kabul… and not a one with a face mask! Unbelievable… don’t they know they might be spreading the dreaded disease?
And there are other shocking photos, too – of them driving all over the countryside in their Toyota trucks… and filling the air with CO2. Don’t they know about global warming? Don’t they know that they need to switch to electric vehicles?
But wait… there’s more… yes, a revelation so outrageous… so barbaric… we can hardly believe it. Sit down, Dear Reader. Are you ready for this? The Taliban are NOT feminists! They think there are two types of human – men and women – and that they are meant to play different roles. Heaven forfend… What kind of antediluvian beasts are these? Do they have tails? Do they walk upright?
Stern Warning: The Biden Administration has surrendered to them. But at least one member of Congress is holding onto her gun. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a stern warning: "The Taliban must know that the world is watching its actions. We are deeply concerned about reports regarding the Taliban's brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls.
As we strive to assist women, we must recognize that their voices are important, and all must listen to them for solutions, respectful of their culture. There is bipartisan support to assist the women and girls of Afghanistan. One of the successes of U.S.-NATO cooperation in Afghanistan was the progress made by women and girls. We must all continue to work together to ensure that is not eroded."
So, you see… It was worth it after all. Progress was made. (Ms. Pelosi neglected to say that approximately 25,000 girls and women were killed in the war, by our estimates.) And now… watch out, you Talibanos. If one of you so much as lays a hand on a bare shoulder… or pinches a single derrière…Well… you’ll have the U.S. Army to reckon with!"
“Joe Biden” will interrupt his moveable vacation - for now, back in Wilmington, DE - to speak to the nation early this (Friday) afternoon. Will he dig himself deeper into the hole that the Taliban tossed him in, or just throw in the towel on running the executive branch of the government (if that’s what he’s been doing)?
Let’s face it: “Joe B’s” actual doings in the White House these seven months are as mysterious as last week’s blitzkrieg through Afghanistan by the Taliban. What does Ol’ White Joe actually do all day after his managers “call a lid” on his official duties at 8:30 in the morning? Gab with Hunter about family business on a secure phone? Watch Joy Behar and her gang on TV? We-the-people are unaware that the “president” has any hobbies or avocations. Golf? Apparently not. Stamps? Please! Or does he just sit in a comfortable chair on the second-floor casting what is left of his mind back on those dear dead days of his fabled Scranton boyhood?
Can you really imagine Kamala Harris in the Oval Office? I doubt Kamala herself can. Anyway, someone up and dispatched her off to Singapore and Vietnam this week, as if on-cue (get her outa town, pronto…things will be a little hairy around here). Presumably she will return to the USA in the fullness of time, without any untoward accidents involving Air Force Two. But what if the veep, for reasons of her own (say, “nerves”), throws in a towel, too? Who else happens to be constitutionally in-line for Commander-in-Chief in case the whole 2020 ticket bows out? Why, the Speaker of the House, of course, Ms. Nancy Pelosi, the world’s leading model of outfit-matching face-masks. What a career-capper that will be! Better stock up the White House freezer with Jeni’s-brand mango-cheesecake swirl gourmet ice-cream and gird your loins for a fusillade of executive orders making outlaws of everyone living between the Falls of the Potomac and the Embarcadero.
The news media may wonder whether Afghanistan is heading back into twelfth century, but many of us here are wondering whether this country will remain in the twenty-first. The cable TV channels crackle with existential angst. The USA seems to have made itself the chump of chump nations. We are so easily faked-out! Our gazillion-dollar military and Intel Community got owned by savages in sandals, for Gawdsake! Ten-thousand Americans (or more!) sit stranded in Kabul while Pashtun horsemen joyride above the city in purloined Blackhawk helicopters! We abandon our allies and obligations! We are not to be trusted (even by ourselves). What is to be done?
Nobody knows, or if they do, they’re not telling. One senses a descent into a season of extraordinary national disorder. One hears whispers of an alt.military Trump-leaning cabal lurking at the margins, waiting to seize power. What else is there? Appeal to Pakistan to call off their dogs? Because, after all, it was Pakistan who virtually created the Taliban, and who planted Osama Bin Laden in Kandahar, and then harbored him in Abbottabad after the Yanks arrived next door in 2001 to root him out of some mythical cave (and failed to, having sub-contracted the actual job to the Pashtun mounties, an outfit with certain motivational problems).
Jimmy Carter was undone by a mere fifty-two hostages in Iran, 1979, but this fiasco is orders of magnitude greater. The Taliban could easily put an end to the whole question of extracting the thousands of Americans stuck in Af-stan just by firing a few RPG rounds onto the runway of Hamid Karzai International Airport. After that, would they go about the grisly business of beheading any Afghani who so much as took a stick of gum from an American?
“Graveyard of Empires,” indeed. Rome waited a few centuries to collapse but America seems to be demonstrating we can git’er done in just a couple of years. And, beyond these questions of global hegemony, there is the matter of what happens here in the so-called Homeland. The Covid-19 vaccine-and-masking hysteria is coming to a head. The school boards are getting an earful about race-based everything in the curriculum. Certain state governors and mayors seem determined to destroy what remains of small business. A mutiny is brewing against Bill de Blasio’s new semi-lockdown in New York City. Gavin Newsome is about to be tossed into the North Pacific Gyre. Any moment, the Arizona election audit will issue a preliminary report, said to be shocking. Financial markets are in the wobble-zone. Supply lines are down for many parts of things needed to run daily life in this land. And millions are wondering anxiously now: what really are the latent effects of those jabs?
Things are shaking loose all over the place. As Bob Dylan once said, the order is rapidly fading (and he’s even older than “Joe Biden.”) Everyone I know has got the heebie-jeebies. Nobody is at the controls of this outfit as we sail into the fog."
"What Is America Going To Look Like If This Continues?"
by Michael Snyder
"You can’t have a civilization without civility. We may possess technology that is more advanced than any previous generation of Americans has had, but when it comes to how we treat one another and how we conduct ourselves, we are the worst generation in U.S. history by a very wide margin. We have truly become a “Hollywood culture”, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The average American spends 238 minutes a day watching television, and it is inevitable that putting so much garbage into our minds is going to result in garbage coming out. Most Americans learn how to express themselves by emulating what they see on their screens, and so now we have tens of millions of extremely crude people running around all over the place.
If you spend any time in public at all, you know exactly what I am talking about. Most Americans dress like slobs, act like pigs and endlessly spew profanity wherever they go. This is something that Mark H. Creech discussed in an article that he published this week: "While at the grocery store this week, a woman was ahead of me in the checkout line using the word, “Mother F&*#@%.” To the left of me, in another line, was a different woman on her cell phone. I could overhear her saying to someone, “F&$#” this, and “F*#@” that. I felt that I was drowning in a cesspool of profanity.
Recently, my wife said she was in the checkout line at Walmart, and a man was using such language without any inhibitions. Not being the kind of person to hold back, Kim said to him, “Sir, would you please not use that language? There are children present.” To which the man defiantly replied, “No!” His companion then backhanded him on the arm and said to, “Cut it out.” That was the end of it."
Sadly, it has gotten to a point where even our national leaders are not afraid to use profanity. Earlier this week, it was being reported that Kamala Harris used profanity while engaged in a heated discussion about the crisis in Afghanistan: "Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly refused to stand alongside Joe Biden as he addressed the nation on the Afghanistan chaos, allegedly saying “you will not pin this shit on me” despite her massive role in Biden’s US troop withdrawal decision.
Before Biden gave an 18 minute speech to justify his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country, Kamala Harris reportedly refused to stand alongside him as he spoke. “You will not pin this shit on me,” Harris reportedly said. However in April, Harris had bragged that she played a key role in Biden’s decision to withdraw, as was reported by Politico. She even confirmed that she was the last person in the room with the President during the major discussion regarding his decision to pull out US troops by September 11."
And profane language that Joe Biden once used about Afghanistan received renewed attention this week because of the drama unfolding in Kabul: "According to Holbrooke, when Biden was asked about America’s obligation to maintain their presence in Afghanistan to protect vulnerable civilians, he scornfully replied by referencing the US exit from southeast Asia in 1973. ‘**** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.’"
Of course foul language is not just limited to one side of the aisle. Our leaders like to consider themselves the pinnacle of civilization, and they have often criticized the Taliban for tearing down historical statues and forcing women to wear masks. But over the past year, far more statues have been torn down inside the United States than the Taliban ever dreamed of tearing down, and at this point we are forcing everyone to wear masks.
Critics say that the Taliban does not allow freedom of speech, but when Taliban officials were asked about this they simply pointed out that Facebook is even worse when it comes to freedom of speech. And they are right.
Critics say that the Taliban treats women horribly, and that is certainly true. But women are treated shamefully in our nation too. Here is one example: "A creep groped a woman on a Brooklyn street this week - and then pummeled her when she tried to fight back, disturbing new video shows. The 26-year-old woman was walking at the corner of South 4th Street and Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg around 2:15 a.m. Saturday when a stranger approached from behind and grabbed her buttocks, video released by cops early Tuesday shows. When the woman attempted to slap the suspect, he socked her in the face multiple times, the clip shows."
And here is another example: "The woman and her boyfriend were on their way to the Chicago Transit Authority Red Line subway at State Street and Jackson Boulevard Saturday night. They were waiting for the elevator at ground level to go down to the platform. But they never made it. Instead, trouble found them, surrounded them, and attacked them. They were viciously assaulted by a large gang of teens, and the woman was pummeled so badly that she actually needs plastic surgery… “I need plastic surgery, because the bones are broke, and still bleeding inside,” the woman said." The scars and bruising are concealed behind the shades the woman now wears over her eyes. But the pain is deeper.
Murder rates were way up all over the country last year, and they are way up again all over the country this year. We have become a brutal, violent, blood-soaked country, and that is because we have a brutal, violent, blood-soaked culture. At one time the U.S. could lecture the rest of the world about morality because we lived in a civilized society. But now we have lost whatever moral high ground we once possessed, and at this point we need the rest of the world to lecture us.
So what is going to happen as the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis continues to steadily disappear? I am deeply, deeply concerned about our future, and this is a theme that I explored in my new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse”. We are in a highly advanced state of social decay, and it is getting worse with each passing year.
In recent days, I have heard so much criticism of the Taliban’s culture, and many of those criticisms are right on target. But our culture is detestable too, and it has become that way because of the choices that we have made as a society."
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” (public library) and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
"Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, wrote to Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C. provincial health officer, in April 2021 with serious concerns about COVID-19 vaccines. One of his patients died after the shot, and six others had adverse effects. While their small town had no cases of COVID-19, Hoffe said the vaccine was causing serious damage and he believed “this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than COVID-19.”
Hoffe was quickly accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and local health authorities threatened to report him to the licensing body, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. He was also told by government health authorities that he could not say anything negative about the COVID-19 vaccine, but the issues Hoffe was seeing compelled him to speak out anyway.
Blood Clot Formation With mRNA Vaccines ‘Inevitable’: In each dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are 40 trillion mRNA - or messenger RNA - molecules. Each mRNA “package” is designed to be absorbed into your cell, but only 25% stay in your arm at the site of the injection. The other 75%, Hoffe says, are collected by your lymphatic system and fed into your circulation. The cells where mRNA is absorbed are those around your blood vessels - the capillary network, which are the tiniest blood vessels in your body.
When the mRNA is absorbed into your vascular endothelium - the inner lining of your capillaries - the “packages” open and genes are released. Each gene can produce many COVID-19 spike proteins, and your body gets to work manufacturing these spike proteins, numbering in the trillions.
Your body recognizes the spike protein as foreign, so it begins to manufacture antibodies to protect you against COVID-19, or so the theory goes. But there’s a problem. In a coronavirus, the spike protein becomes part of the viral capsule, Hoffe says, but when you get the vaccine, “it’s not in a virus, it’s in your cells.” The spike protein, in turn, can lead to the development of blood clots: “So it therefore becomes part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium, which means that these cells, which line your blood vessels, which are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly, now have these little spiky bits sticking out.
So it is absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form, because your blood platelets circulate around in your vessels and the purpose of blood platelets is to detect a damaged vessel and block that damage when it starts bleeding. So when a platelet comes through a capillary and suddenly hits all these covid spikes that are jutting into the inside vessel, blood clots will form to block that vessel. That’s how platelets work.”
62% of Recently Vaccinated Patients Have Evidence of Clotting: Hoffe spoke with Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a retired professor, microbiologist and infectious disease and immunology specialist who, along with several other doctors and scientists, formed Doctors for COVID Ethics. Bhakdi has also warned that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets. The subsequent activation of the platelets can lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), i.e., a pathological overstimulation of your coagulation system that can result in abnormal, and life threatening, blood clotting, as well as thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and hemorrhaging.
While some of the blood clots you may have heard about associated with the COVID-19 vaccines are the large variety that show up on MRIs and CT scans, Hoffe states that the variety he’s referring to are microscopic and scattered throughout the capillary network, so they won’t show up on any scan. The only way to find out if this predictable mechanism of clotting is happening is with a test called D-dimer. D-dimer is a protein fragment produced by the body when a blood clot dissolves. It’s typically undetectable or present only at very low levels, buts its level may significantly rise when the body is forming and breaking down blood clots.
According to Bhakdi, “Now a number of German doctors have been measuring the D-dimers in the blood of patients before vaccination and days after vaccinations and with respect to the symptoms they have just found out that triggering of clot formation is a very common event with all vaccines.”
Hoffe has been conducting the D-dimer test on his patients within four to seven days of them receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and found that 62% have evidence of clotting. While he’s still trying to accumulate more information, he said: “It means that these blood clots are not rare. The majority of people are getting blood clots and they have no idea that they even have them. The most alarming thing about this is that there are some parts of your body, like your heart and your brain and your spinal cord and your lungs, which cannot regenerate. When those tissues are damaged by blocked vessels, they are permanently damaged.”
‘The Worst Is Yet to Come’: As Bhakdi explained, post-vaccination it’s possible to end up with so many blood clots throughout your vascular system that your coagulation system is exhausted, resulting in bleeding (hemorrhaging). Hoffe now has patients who get out of breath much more easily than they used to because “they’ve clogged up thousands of tiny capillaries in their lungs.” This is only the first problem, as it can lead to more significant, permanent damage. Hoffe noted: “The terrifying thing about this is not just that these people are short of breath and can’t do what they used to be able to do. Once you block off a significant number of blood vessels to your lungs, your heart is now pumping against a much greater resistance to try to get the blood through your lungs.”
The end result can be pulmonary artery hypertension, which is basically high blood pressure in your lungs, because the blood can’t get through due to the many vessels that are blocked. “People with this usually die of right-sided heart failure within three years,” Hoffe said. “So the huge concern about this mechanism of injury is that these shots are causing permanent damage and the worst is yet to come.”
As he noted, while some tissues, like your liver and kidneys, can regenerate, others, like your heart, cannot. An increased risk of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, has already been seen among young males who receive an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. “They have permanently damaged hearts,” Hoffe explained, adding: “It doesn’t matter how mild it is, they will not be able to do what they used to do because heart muscle doesn’t regenerate. The long-term outlook is very grim, and with each successive shot, it will add more damage. The damage is cumulative because you’re progressively getting more damaged capillaries.”
Because of the risk of the formation of blood clots in your vessels, Bhakdi went so far as to say that giving the COVID-19 vaccine to children is a crime: “Do not give it to children because they have absolutely no possibility to defend themselves; if you give it to your child you are committing a crime.”
Spike Protein Damages Human Cells: The key causative agent causing damage from COVID-19 vaccines appears to be the spike protein. Scientists from the University of California San Diego created a pseudo virus, or cell surrounded by the spike proteins that did not contain a virus. Using an animal model, the researchers administered the pseudo virus into the lungs and found the virus was not necessary to create damage. Instead, the spike protein was enough to cause inflammation, damage to vascular endothelial cells and inhibited mitochondrial function.
Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology, has also spoken out about the dangers of the spike protein used in COVID-19 vaccines. In its native form in SARS-CoV-2, the spike protein is responsible for the pathologies of the viral infection, and in its wild form it’s known to open the blood-brain barrier, cause cell damage (cytotoxicity) and, Malone said, “is active in manipulating the biology of the cells that coat the inside of your blood vessels - vascular endothelial cells, in part through its interaction with ACE2, which controls contraction in the blood vessels, blood pressure and other things.” Bhakdi also described this as “a disastrous situation” paving the way for clotting. “This is a disastrous situation, because the spike protein itself is now sitting on the surface of the cells, facing the bloodstream. It is known that these spike proteins, the moment they touch platelets, they active them [the platelets], and that sets the whole clotting system going.
The second thing that should happen, according to theory, is that the waste products of this protein that are produced in the cell, are put in front of the ‘door’ of the cell, and is presented to the immune system. The immune system, especially the lymphocytes, recognize these and will attack the cells, because they don’t want them to make viruses or viral parts. And the viral parts are now being made in locations where viral parts would never, ever reach [naturally], like the vessel wall in your brain.
If that ‘tapestry’ of the wall [i.e., the lining of the blood vessel] is then destroyed, then that is the signal for the clotting system to [activate], and create a blood clot. And this happens with all of these vaccines because the gene [the instruction to make spike protein] is being introduced to the vessel wall.”
Physicians Forbidden From Countering Narrative: Equally as disturbing as the potential harm caused by experimental mRNA vaccines is the censorship going along with it, such that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), which regulates the practice of medicine in Ontario, issued a statement prohibiting physicians from making comments or providing advice that goes against the official narrative - basically anything “anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown.”
The statement was released, according to CPSO, because physicians, in isolated incidents, have been spreading blatant misinformation via social media, which is undermining “public health measures meant to protect all of us.” But if a physician is unable to speak freely, the independent relationship between doctor and patient ceases to exist, and so does the doctor’s ability to act in the best interest of the patient.
Hoffe certainly experienced this but is still speaking out, putting his patients first and trying to get the word out that, he believes the COVID-19 vaccination program should be stopped until the causes of the many injuries and deaths are understood. The tragic question is, how many others with similar concerns have been intimidated into remaining silent?"
"Perspectives on the Pandemic: 'Blood Clots and Beyond'"
by Journeyman Pictures
"In February, 2021, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, M.D. and a number of his colleagues warned the European Medicines Agency about the potential danger of blood clots and cerebral vein thrombosis in millions of people receiving experimental gene-based injections. Since then, two of the four injections have been suspended or recalled in Europe and the United States for just that reason. In this episode of Perspectives, Professor Bhakdi explains the science behind the problem, why it is not just limited to the products already suspended, and why in the long term we may be creating dangerously overactive immune systems in billions of unwitting subjects."
"Master, what gnaws at them so hideously their lamentation stuns the very air?"
"They have no hope of death," he answered me..."
- "The Inferno," Dante Alighieri
"Thucydides in the Underworld"
by JR Nyquist
"The shade of Thucydides, formerly an Athenian general and historian, languished in Hades for 24 centuries; and having intercourse with other spirits, was perturbed by an influx into the underworld of self-described historians professing to admire his History of the Peloponnesian War. They burdened him with their writings, priding themselves on the imitation of his method, tracing the various patterns of human nature in politics and war. He was, they said, the greatest historian; and his approval of their works held the promise that their purgatory was no prologue to oblivion.
As the centuries rolled on, the flow of historians into Hades became a torrent. The later historians were no longer imitators, but most were admirers. It seemed to Thucydides that these were a miserable crowd, unable to discern between the significant and the trivial, being obsessed with tedious doctrines. Unembarrassed by their inward poverty, they ascribed an opposite meaning to things: thinking themselves more “evolved” than the spirits of antiquity. Some even imagined that the universe was creating God. They supposed that the "most evolved" among men would assume God’s office; and further, that they themselves were among the “most evolved.”
Thucydides longed for the peace of his grave, which posthumous fame had deprived him. As with many souls at rest, he took no further interest in history. He had passed through existence and was done. He had seen everything. What was bound to follow, he knew, would be more of the same; but after more than 23 centuries of growing enthusiasm for his work, there occurred a sudden falling off. Of the newly deceased, fewer broke in upon him. Quite clearly, something had happened. He began to realize that the character of man had changed because of the rottenness of modern ideas. Among the worst of these, for Thucydides, was that barbarians and civilized peoples were considered equal; that art could transmit sacrilege; that paper could be money; that sexual and cultural differences were of no account; that meanness was rated noble, and nobility mean.
Awakened from the sleep of death, Thucydides remembered what he had written about his own time. The watchwords then, as now, were "revolution" and "democracy." There had been upheaval on all sides. "As the result of these revolutions," he had written, "there was a general deterioration of character throughout the Greek world. The simple way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion."
Thucydides saw that democracy, once again, imagined itself victorious. Once again traditions were questioned as men became enamored of their own prowess. It was no wonder they were deluded. They landed men on the moon. They had harnessed the power of the atom. It was no wonder that the arrogance of man had grown so monstrous, that expectations of the future were so unrealistic. Deluded by recent successes, they could not see that dangers were multiplying in plain view. Men built new engines of war, capable of wiping out entire cities, but few took this danger seriously. Why were men so determined to build such weapons? The leading country, of course, was willing to put its weapons aside. Other countries pretended to put their weapons aside. Still others said they weren't building weapons at all, even though they were.
Would the new engines of destruction be used? Would cities and nations be wiped off the face of the earth? Thucydides knew the answer. In his own day, during an interval of unstable peace, the Athenians had exterminated the male population of the island of Melos. Before doing this the Athenian commanders had came to Melos and said, "We on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us - a great mass of words that nobody would believe." The Athenians demanded the submission of Melos, without regard to right or wrong. As the Athenian representative explained, "the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept."
The Melians were shocked by this brazen admission. They could not believe that anyone would dare to destroy them without just cause. In the first place, the Melians threatened no one. In the second place, they imagined that the world would be shocked and would avenge any atrocity committed against them. And so the Melians told the Athenians: "In our view it is useful that you should not destroy a principle that is to the general good of all men - namely, that in the case of all who fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing. And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world."
The Athenians were not moved by the argument of Melos; for they knew that the Spartans generally treated defeated foes with magnanimity. "Even assuming that our empire does come to an end," the Athenians chuckled, "we are not despondent about what would happen next. One is not so much frightened of being conquered by a power [like Sparta]." And so the Athenians destroyed Melos, believing themselves safe - which they were. The Melians refused to submit, praying for the protection of gods and men. But these availed them nothing, neither immediate relief nor future vengeance. The Melians were wiped off the earth. They were not the first or the last to die in this manner.
There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong. And they were weak, he thought, because they had learned to be bad by the example of others. There was nothing novel about them, although they believed themselves to be original in all things.
Thucydides reflected that human beings are subject to certain behavioral patterns. Again and again they repeat the same actions, unable to stop themselves. Society is slowly built up, then wars come and put all to ruin. Those who promise a solution to this are charlatans, only adding to the destruction, because the only solution to man is the eradication of man. In the final analysis the philanthropist and the misanthrope are two sides of the same coin. While man exists he follows his nature. Thucydides taught this truth, and went to his grave. His history was written, as he said, "for all time." And it is a kind of law of history that the generations most like his own are bound to ignore the significance of what he wrote; for otherwise they would not re-enact the history of Thucydides. But as they become ignorant of his teaching, they fall into disaster spontaneously and without thinking.
Seeing that time was short, and realizing that a massive number of new souls would soon be entering the underworld, the shade of Thucydides fell back to rest."
It may look like total complicated chaos in Afghanistan, but journalist Lara Logan, who lived there covering the war, says it’s all being allowed to happen. Why is the Taliban being allowed to take over? Logan says because this is the outcome the Biden Administration wants. Logan points to the actions that are “too stupid to be stupid,” like turning over big air force bases to the Taliban without a fight. This is part of the reason the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 11 days. The U.S. just evacuated in the middle of the night, and that left people only one choice–to evacuate. That is the Kabul Airport that is surrounded by Taliban forces. Logan says, “The U.S. military could have easily stopped this, but they don’t. “It’s because the Biden Administration wants the Taliban in control of Afghanistan.” It’s that simple.
The dark powers keep pushing masks and forced vaccinations with the experimental CV19 jab. Who cares if half of Americans already have natural immunity, and the science says they don’t need the experimental jab? Who cares if there are cures that the medical community is withholding? Who cares if they are killing people by withholding that treatment? Who cares that big Pharma, the FDA and CDC withheld proven scientific treatments to force people to have an experimental jab that allows Big Pharma to have insane profits for a so-called vaccine that now needs a third booster shot? The vax is a scam, and they withheld real cures to sell a vax that was unneeded and is proven dangerous for many, but who cares?
Don’t kid yourself, the economy is rotten from the inside out, and the Fed is just masking risk. This is what Peter Schiff says, and that idea is hard to dispute. Cycle analysts, like Bo Polny, say the U.S. dollar is going to fall soon, and it’s going to be ugly. Data mining analyst Clif High says the Biden Administration will collapse in the fall because of hyperinflation. It’s hard to imagine that people like High and Polny will be wrong at the same time, but we are going to find out soon. I would not bet against either of them. If they are only half right, very hard times are coming, especially for the U.S. dollar."
“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.
Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."
Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.
And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."
The Biggest Stock Market Crash In World History Is Coming!"
by Epic Economist
"All factors are aligning; economic and financial indicators are signaling; experts are warning that an epic stock market crash is near. At this moment, the S&P 500 and the Dow are at all-time highs despite the huge selloff that happened on Tuesday. The Nasdaq is also close to record levels, and all three indexes went up between 14% and 18% just this year. It's when the market hits its peak that things start to crumble, and September, historically known as the worst month for stocks, is right at the corner. Right after that comes October, which is remarkably known for the devastating stock market crashes in 1929, 1987, 2008, and, most recently, 2018. And if you haven't noticed yet, there is a series of determinants weighting upon Wall Street and worrying investors right now. The worsening of the health crisis due to the emergence and fast spread of the Delta variant is one of them, along with concerns about the alarming growth of inflation and how the Federal Reserve will handle it. On top of all that, chaos is looming all over the world with rising threats of civil disorder and social conflicts. All of these factors are adding major pressure to the markets and putting the market's bull run at risk of derailing.
That's why investors have been increasingly scared that stocks may soon experience a sizable crash from recent highs. Stocks haven't faced a reckoning since the first round of lockdowns in March 2020, which resulted in a brief bear market and triggered a 20 percent crash from prior peak levels. But many are still ignoring the fact that the Delta variant could lead to another wave of mass shutdowns and push the economy to another recession. Overvalued stocks and an unrealistic economic outlook are setting the stage for what could be the worst financial catastrophe of the century. The notable investor and personal-finance guru Robert Kiyosaki is alerting that financial markets are moving toward their worst crash ever. In a recent Yahoo Finance interview, the "Poor Dad Rich Dad" author pointed out a number of reasons why we might soon witness a stock market crash like no other. He started by stressing that the US government borrowed too much and debased the dollar, trumpeted the value of debt to investors, and encouraged young people to start businesses without offering the right conditions for them to actually stay in business.
"Build a business that does well in crashes, booms, or busts. Young people shouldn't go to school and become employees. They should become entrepreneurs and capitalists, and build businesses that create jobs. I'm not saying that having a stock portfolio is right or wrong, but there are other alternatives. Just open your eyes and see how the rich are really getting richer," he outlined. He also revealed that currently his stock portfolio is empty and he is mainly focusing on Bitcoin. The founder of Rich Global and Rich Dad Company also reminded investors that the entire financial system is changing very fast. His decision to step away from stocks is rooted in a growing concern that investors are becoming too complacent and taking the bull market for granted. "Everyone says the market will stay up two more years. What if bottom falls out tonight? Will you be richer or poorer?" he asked.
Kiyosaki acknowledged that economic booms and surging asset prices, and the thrill of joining the upward path of a bubble can be electrifying, but cautioned that the subsequent downturns are horrifying to live through. "Booms are fun. Everyone is excited," Kiyosaki wrote on Twitter. "Busts are terrifying. Crashes are terrifying." For that reason, Kiyosaki has been sounding the alarm on a massive sell-off. "The next [stock market] crash is basically an avalanche waiting for the last snowflake," he says. "Since 2008, all the federal government has been doing is piling more debt on the mountainside, and they're just waiting for the next snowflake to hit. It's going to be the biggest crash in world history," warned the expert.
Kiyosaki is just one of several high-profile experts who have been sharing their concerns about the current market. The "Big Short" investor Michael Burry and the GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham both see the greatest bubble ever formed now on the brink of bursting. Likewise, billionaire investors Leon Cooperman, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Jeffrey Gundlach don't believe the speculative frenzy can last for much longer. All signs are pointing to a stock market crash of unprecedented proportions, and if your assets are on the line, you should run for the exits before it's too late."
