Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/21/21:
“Where Is The Money? Chicago Has Imploded;
Pension Collapse Imminent; States Are Broke”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Covid Hoax: "Dr. Shaun Brooks Speaks To Ohio School Board"
"Dr. Shaun Brooks Speaks To Ohio School Board"
"Sends a chilling warning about the experimental vax-zine,
how many more specialists will be ignored? Share far and wide!"
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Related, essential:
"Who REALLY Runs The World and How to Protect Yourself"
Gerald Celente & Jay Martin,
"Who REALLY Runs The World and How to Protect Yourself"
Gerald Celente, Founder of the Trends Institute, delivers a scathing criticism of big banks, pharma, tech, politicians, and the military industrial complex - along with his rules to prepare and protect yourself from the powerful. Gerald talks about the death of ingenuity in the US and the rise of China through the rest of this century stating; "the business of America is war, the business of China is business."
With a 40-year track record of identifying, tracking, and forecasting trends, Celente is world-renowned as today’s #1 Trend Forecaster. Celente has earned the reputation as a trusted name in trends for his many accurate forecasts; among them the 1987 Stock Market crash, Dot com bust, “Gold Bull Run,” the “Panic of ‘08,” the rise of organic foods, and the popularity of gourmet coffee long before Starbucks was a household name.
Celente, who developed the Globalnomic methodology to identify, track, forecast, and manage trends, is a political atheist. Unencumbered by political dogma, rigid ideology, or conventional wisdom, Celente, whose motto is “Think for Yourself,” observes and analyzes current events forming future trends for what they are – not for how he wants them to be."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured here, was captured in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole.
Light takes about 60 million years to reach us from NGC 1672, which spans about 75,000 light years across. NGC 1672, which appears toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), has been studied to find out how a spiral bar contributes to star formation in a galaxy's central regions."
"A Companion..."
"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, that reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we live it. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
"Do You Believe..."
"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools? "
"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?"
- Voltaire
"The Great Unraveling"
"The Great Unraveling"
by Jim Kunstler
"I guess we had to find out the hard way that Afghanistan is not like Nebraska. Let others be cruel about it (and there’s plenty of that right now, elsewhere).
The last ostensible hegemon who tried occupying the place before us was the Soviet Union, which discovered painfully that Afghanistan was not much like its Kemerovo Oblast, either, and shortly after it withdrew its troops in 1989, the Soviet Union commenced to collapse - which prompts one to wonder: How much is the USA of 2021 like the Soviet Union of those years? There are clearly differences, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. But there are also similarities.
We’ve become an ossified, administrative nomenklatura of Deep State flunkies as the Soviets were, and lately we’re just as lawless as they used to be, constitution-wise - e.g., the abolition of property rights via the CDC’s rent moratorium… the prolonged jailing in solitary confinement of January 6 political prisoners… the introduction of internal “passports.”
Economically, the Soviets were running on fumes. The U.S. may not be on fumes just yet, but the tank is getting pretty darn low. And our dominant party leadership has aged into an embarrassing gerontocracy, rule by the geriatrics. Is it our turn to collapse?
Rough Days Ahead: Kind of looks like it. The days ahead are liable to be a rough ride. Surely China has taken the measure of our Woke military and is weighing the seizure of Taiwan in our moment of weakness. No more computer chips for you, Uncle Sam! Do we come to Taiwan’s defense with guns blazing, or perhaps nukes? And what if that doesn’t work out so well?
I’ll tell you what: a major geopolitical reordering of things, leaving us… where? Unable to enforce our will around the world as has been the case for eighty years. Floundering. Friendless. Broke. Broken. But Woke!
Of course, the domestic situation in our land has not been so fraught and overwrought since 1861. Everything is politicized, which is to say: used as a club to beat-up adversaries and, let’s face it, mostly in the sense of Left against Right. This is especially true for the Covid-19 soap opera, which more and more pits the sanctimoniously vaccinated “progressives” against the recalcitrant conservative no-vax free-choicers - that is, coercive government trying to force supposedly free citizens to accept a pretty dubious experimental medical treatment.
Not for nothing, but since when did the American Left become so pro-tyranny, and how’d that even happen?
What Ever Happened to Questioning Authority? I have friends and relatives - you may, too - who knocked themselves out in the 1960s protesting against the war, the government, the FBI, and the CIA… who fought in the streets for free speech and raged against official propaganda. “Question authority,” they’d say - but today they can’t get enough of coercing, punishing, brain-washing, and cancelling their fellow citizens.
Maybe because they are the authority now? Let’s face it, every major institution of society, from the media to the entertainment industry, to corporations, to education, to government bureaucracies, has been captured by the political Left. They’re going so far now as to engineer their vicious narrative to brand their opponents as “domestic terrorists.” Think that’s going to work? I doubt it.
And the fall of Afghanistan is sure to spark a resentful reaction among the many ex-soldiers who paid a heavy price pulling tours of duty in that hapless venture over twenty years. There’s a lot of them out there in Red America, and they were already angry about the pernicious nonsense being jammed down their throats by the minions of Wokesterism:
The race-and-gender hustles, the off-the-charts rise of violent crime, the wide-open border, the off-shoring of jobs, the Covid lockdowns and wrecking of small business, the MMT experiment launching inflation, and the new politicization of the armed forces they served and suffered in.
They’ve laid rather low through years of this, just watching the scene in wonder and nausea, but you may see them turn more active now. And consider, they’ve been well-trained in weaponry and tactics.
Scandalous Revelations Ahead? Unsettling discoveries are in the offing going forward. The Wall Street Journal lately detected signs of life in the John Durham investigation, reporting that matters have gone to a grand jury. That means crimes are being prosecuted. We may soon become reacquainted with names that almost slipped down the memory-hole - the likes of Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Pete Strzok… who else…?
This may also lead to a catastrophic discrediting of the mainstream news media - who were fully in on the RussiaGate con - to the degree that some companies end up utterly wrecked and with many careers washed up.
Hard information about what actually went down in the 2020 election is also coming out, and not necessarily to the credit of the ruling regime that supposedly triumphed in that contest. Some of that info may concern the issue of China’s involvement in our affairs, and beyond mere election meddling to the wholesale buying-off of the U.S. political class. The pathetic thing is we already know several very prominent figures on-the-take from China, including Eric Swalwell, Dianne Feinstein, and most conspicuously, Hunter Biden (and family), but the ranks of the known-to-be bought-off could swell dramatically. We’ll see.
Sometimes Years Happen in Weeks: Finally, there’s the fate of President “Joe Biden.” As Kabul fell, he remained in his Camp David gopher hole. Observers conjecture that he’s had a few “bad days” lately, meaning he is not presentable. Not to be overly dramatic, but it could potentially be curtains for Ol’ Joe… resignation-time. Never before has a U.S. president faced such a daunting loss of legitimacy, and hardly just on account of Afghanistan. And then consider who’s next-in-line for that position. (Did you shudder?)
Sometimes, Vlad Lenin observed, events take decades, and sometimes years happen in weeks. This looks like one of those times for the USA. Heads will soon be spinning like the little girl’s in The Exorcist, releasing a pea-soup spewage of shocking revelation. The old narratives will fall apart before our eyes. Minds will have to get right. Prepare for a whole lot of strange days rolling out."
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, “Be Angry at the Sun”
“Be Angry at the Sun”
“That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you.
Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate Man plays his part;
the cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar.
You are far from Dante’s feet,
but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.”
- Robinson Jeffers, 1941
"Always The Hope..."
“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio
"Doug Casey on the Death of Privacy"
"Doug Casey on the Death of Privacy"
by Casey Daily Dispatch
"Casey Daily Dispatch: Doug, I came across a pretty alarming article that says China is now using millions of Zimbabwean citizens to improve facial recognition accuracy. What are your thoughts on this? Is this just China’s latest step in trying to gain world supremacy?
Doug Casey, founder, Casey Research: Well, I’ve said for years that China is in the process of taking over Africa. In fact, that was a subtheme in my first novel Speculator, about the gold mining industry and bush war in Africa. Some years ago, a Chinese high government official said that their plan was to move 300 million people from China to Africa. That’s an incredible number of people; the Chinese think big. But it wasn’t really picked up anywhere in the press. Over the years, every time I go back to Africa I see more Chinese, and when they’re working on an industrial or a mining project, they’re all dressed in the same color jumpsuits. Almost like the Chinese in Goldfinger, if you remember.
From a long-term point of view, China is taking over Africa. It’s a very intelligent plan – and an unspoken part of their “One Belt, One Road” program. They loan money to one African government to build a port, a railroad, and an airport, or what have you. The Africans can almost never pay those loans back, so the Chinese – as part of the deal – take over the facility and staff it with their own people. This is actually going on today. If the African leaders don’t like it – unlikely since they’ve pocketed millions under the table for facilitating the deal – they will likely find their lives are in danger. If that doesn’t work, the country may have a visit from the Red Army.
I suspect that this facial recognition thing in Zimbabwe is just part of a much bigger plan that relates to the social credit system that is instituted in China now.
Dispatch: What are your thoughts on facial recognition in general? Is this a good thing or a bad thing that China’s doing?
Doug: It’s not just China. It’s everywhere. As you probably heard, in several major U.S. airports, the U.S. government – in cooperation with the airlines – is doing facial scans on people. As a replacement for boarding passes.
This isn’t just happening in China and the U.S. – but everywhere. And simultaneously, all over the world, hundreds of millions of unobtrusive cameras are in place to watch everybody all the time. On street corners, in restaurants, in airports, absolutely everywhere. It’s not just the occasional photo snapshot triggered by a radar gun pointed at your car. That’s bad enough. Unobtrusive cameras are monitoring faces all the time. And it’s not just faces, it’s your gait – the way you walk – and other indicators.
We live in a world that Ira Levin, the famous science fiction writer, drew in his novel "This Perfect Day." He had governments requiring everybody, when they passed by an electronic monitor, to run their hand over it, so a chip in their hand could be read. But today’s technology is much more sophisticated and devastating. Because your presence is recorded automatically, whether you know it or not. It’s actually much more dystopian than what Levin projected in his book.
Now, although the average human doesn’t appear to mind it, I don’t like the idea of Big Brother monitoring everyone. I’m a believer in privacy. Incidentally – just as a tangent – I find it interesting that we no longer use the word “secrecy” – as in bank secrecy for instance. It’s become a very non-PC word. You’re not supposed to be secret about anything. In fact, you can’t even be “private” anymore.
Everything is now supposed to be an open book, as if you’re living in a primitive village. In pre-industrial times, pre-capitalist times, there was no privacy; walls were paper thin, and everybody could see and hear exactly what you were doing. If you were private, your neighbors and rulers assumed you were up to no good. The world seems to be reverting to primitive global village status. The trend is quite retrogressive… and anti-personal freedom.
On the bright side, ubiquitous surveillance might reduce some forms of crime. If people know that they may be watched or overheard anywhere, they may be more prone to stay legal. On the other hand, criminals are noted for their inability to foresee the consequences of their actions; perhaps the result won’t be less crime, just a higher conviction rate. The general population will probably like more surveillance. Even if it means being treated more like domestic animals. Safety first, after all.
Dispatch: I agree. And while some of these technological advances are great for our future, people seem to be forgetting the downside that comes with it…
Doug: The problem is that technology is always a double-edged sword. Whenever a new technology is developed, it’s always the rulers, the state, and the elite who get it first and use it to lord over the common people. Eventually, however, it filters down and the tables are turned. In the long run it’s liberating for the common man. It always has been.
Take the discovery of gunpowder, a huge positive for the freedom of the average guy. Why? Because now a peasant with a gun could take down an armored knight, something which was previously hard to impossible. Gunpowder was a liberator – although at first the rulers monopolized it, and it actually increased their control. The printing press was another huge liberator, because it made knowledge available to everybody, not just the priests and other elite who wanted to keep it to themselves.
In my third novel, "Assassin", I deal with exactly this. How a whole suite of technologies today is being used to oppress, but will very quickly turn the tables on the state and the ruling class. Incidentally, I hate to use a term like “the ruling class”… It sounds so Marxist, and I’m very anti-Marxist. Still, it’s an accurate description of what’s going on and who these people are.
Dispatch: Is being tracked by the government completely unavoidable? What should people do… ditch their cell phones?
Doug: I have an iPhone 7, but the only time I even keep it charged is when I’m traveling – pay phones no longer exist. Or if I’m at a conference where I need to constantly keep updated on appointments. The cell phone is a very useful tool, but it’s a mistake to allow any tool to become a central figure in your life. If you look around you on a street, everybody is on their electronic device. Many people are umbilically attached to these things, like dogs on a leash.
Dispatch: Yeah, I saw a man walk right into another man the other day out on the sidewalk here. He was completely distracted. Head down, glued to the screen…
Doug: Yes. Even at dinner tables… People will sit, have dinner together, and they won’t talk to each other. They’ll be on their little devices. It’s not only impolite – which they don’t seem to realize – but it’s destructive of relationships. It says: “You’re less important than some random person out in the ether.” The things are especially dysfunctional for kids – that’s a whole other subject. It can be argued that these electronic devices are very dangerous in many ways. Not just from the point of view of the State always knowing where you are and being able to track you should they wish to. They’re destructive of people’s basic psyches.
I don’t, however, mean to sound negative on cell phones in principle. Their advantages hugely outweigh their risks. We’re just going through the teething stages of this evolution, as we once did with gunpowder and the printing press, and for that matter the computer itself. When only governments and the elite have a technology, it’s very dangerous. Once a technology is democratized, once everybody has it, it’s liberating. The cell phone allows any one of the seven billion people on the planet to communicate directly, quickly, and cheaply with anyone else. That’s fantastic.
But there are problems. One of them is becoming evident in China, Sweden, and a number of other places. People no longer use cash. They pay for things using their cell phones. And people think, “Well, this is very convenient.” Yeah, maybe it’s convenient, but it’s also very dangerous because the next step is the disappearance of physical cash – dollar bills, in other words. If everything is electronic, the Authorities will know about absolutely everything you do, everything you buy, everything you sell, and everything that you own. Privacy – forget about secrecy – will be dead.
From there the dollar itself can be replaced with a Fedcoin, a cryptocurrency issued by the government. But why stop there? God forbid you should lose your phone. The next step will be to implant a permanent chip in your body, perhaps at birth. The prospect of being part of the Matrix, or the Borg, isn’t appealing. I presume that hacks will be developed to subvert this trend. But the kind of people who like to control others will be driving it forward as hard as they can.
The bottom line is that your convenient cell phone presents huge dangers from the point of view of personal freedom. It’s something to be aware of. And the Chinese are definitely at the leading edge of all these things.
Dispatch: Intimidating stuff… Thanks for talking with us today, Doug.
Doug: You’re welcome."
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 "
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"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."
Excerpt from "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand.
Full text of Francisco's Money Speech is here:
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"Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality."
- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
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Freely download online "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:
Friday, August 20, 2021
“Walmart Shelves Going Empty? Dollar Stores Booming”
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/20/21:
“Walmart Shelves Going Empty? Dollar Stores Booming”
"Freight Rates Face A Massive Spike As Container Crisis And Port Congestion Goes From Bad To Worse"
Full screen recommended.
"Freight Rates Face A Massive Spike As Container
Crisis And Port Congestion Goes From Bad To Worse"
by Epic Economist
Freight rates have quadrupled since lockdowns started to be implemented all over the world at the beginning of the health crisis in March 2020. That has pushed retail prices to unprecedented levels, affecting businesses that were facing mass shutdowns and store closures, and consumers who were struggling with income losses and higher prices. A series of determinants, such as an extraordinary rise in consumer demand, a historic shortage of containers, port congestion, and a decreased number of ships and dock workers, have all contributed to the worsening of the shipping crisis on almost all trade routes. Now, a new virus outbreak in Asian countries - particularly in India and China - is also compounding concerns on global trade. Given that over 85 percent of the goods trade is transported by sea, soaring freight rates are sending the price of everything to sky-highs, from toys to building materials to furniture to auto parts and components of all types of goods, and even food, including tea and coffee, adding even more pressure on rising inflation.
Port congestion is one of the main issues disrupting supply chains right now. It has been limiting the number of containers each port can efficiently accommodate. At the same time, demand for shipping is largely outpacing the available space in each container. That imbalance pushes prices so high that many companies lose out because they just can't afford to pay them. In some ports, congestion is so severe when new ships arrive, they're unable to dock. That is what is currently happening at Washington State ports in Tacoma and Seattle. At this moment, about 350 containerships that are carrying almost 2.4 million 20ft boxes are waiting off ports around the world, according to VesselsValue. And recent data released by Clarksons Platou Securities shows that congestion is getting worse, hitting 4.6 percent of the global fleet, up from 3.5 percent last month.
The congestion is stretching all across the Pacific Ocean to Long Beach port in Los Angeles, where at least 30 ships are still waiting to get into port to offload, Bloomberg’s data shows. “The container backlog is adding weeks of delay for major export trades from Asia. The situation has become so extreme that one carrier company exposed that it is now costing $32,000 to ship a group of standard containers from Shanghai to Los Angeles, Craig Grossgart, senior vice president at SEKO Logistics, said during a recent briefing. Updated data shows that the median Asia-U.S. West Coast rates are at $19,620, six times higher than a year ago, and the median price for shipping to the U.S. East Coast quadrupled to $22,345 per forty-foot equivalent unit.
The latest data from Sea-Intelligence indicates that the median time it takes for a container to get from a vessel onto a train at the docks is 18 days in Seattle, two weeks in Oakland, and more than a week at the Port of Savannah. At this point, the ocean delays have absorbed about 25% of all trans-Pacific capacity, while demand has jumped by a staggering 25%. Transit times, however, rose to the highest levels on record. From Shanghai to Chicago, transit times via the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach have more than doubled to 73 days from 35 days. In essence, this means that it is now taking 146 days for a container to return to its point of origin, which has been effectively reducing container capacity by 50 percent.
On one hand, shippers of high-value goods whose value is time-sensitive, such as electronics and fashion, are willing and able to pay premium prices to send inventory overseas, while on the other hand, several companies had to pull back their orders because of the soaring freight rates are erasing their profit margins. According to Xenata CEO and co-founder Peter Berglund, customers are now paying $300 million a year just for freight transportation. If big businesses are facing massive losses provoked by shortages, for smaller companies the situation puts them at risk of bankruptcy. “This is the single biggest threat the economy faces at the moment. And it is only just starting to bite,” noted Philip Edge, the chief executive of Edge Worldwide Logistics. “Imagine if oil went up from $20 per barrel to $200 per barrel, then that would be tantamount to what’s happening now," he added. There are certainly not any quick fixes to the problem. As things go bad to worse in global supply chains and more turbulence is emerging all around the globe, consumers must start making some difficult choices too: either they prepare in advance for the chaos that is approaching or they will have to face astronomical price increases in the coming months."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this 10 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation Cepheus the King. Energized by its bluish central star IC 1396 (left) is hundreds of light-years across and some 3,000 light-years distant.
The Poet: Jane Hirshfield, "The Task "
"The Task "
"It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair -
a robe unfurled
in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.
And yes, it is a simple enough task
we've taken on,
though also vast:
from dusk to dawn,
from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
be blinded by the praising.
To lie like a cat in hot
sun, fur fully blazing,
and dream the mouse;
and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch
within the deep rooms of the house,
where the leaf-flocked
sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.
- Jane Hirshfield
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/20/21: "The Odds Of A Major Stock Market Crash Just Went Up!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/20/21:
"The Odds Of A Major Stock Market Crash Just Went Up!"
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