Mason Williams, “Classical Gas”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, September 2, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).
The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble's Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”
Free Download: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”
“The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. “
"Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was a Protestant Lutheran Pastor, theologian, and active in the German resistance to the policies of Hitler and Nazism. Due to his opposition to the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed at the Flossian concentration camp, during the last month of the war."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”
Download or Read Online here:
The Poet: Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”
“The Peace of Wild Things”
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free…”
- Wendell Berry
"Lifes Impermanence..."
"Lifes impermanence, I realized, is what makes every
single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here.
It's what makes it so important that not a single moment be wasted."
- Wes Moore
"Out On The Streets"
"Out On The Streets"
By Bill Bonner
"When I search the faceless crowd,
A swirling mass of grays and black and white,
They don’t look real to me,
In fact, they look so strange..."
– "Salt of the Earth", The Rolling Stones
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "We saw yesterday that the feds “invested” more than $27 trillion between 1980 and today… in wars, bailouts, and boondoggles. Return on investment = negative. This is not to say that some people didn’t make out very well. Stock market investors (the 10% of the country with substantial stock holdings, in the Dow, for example) saw their wealth increase more than 35 times… even as the economy grew only eight times.
As we showed a few weeks ago, an investment in Raytheon, General Dynamics, and other war suppliers rose 10 times just since 2000, while the economy only doubled. And the “educators” running the public school system in Baltimore never missed a holiday or a paycheck… even while, in one third of the high schools there, not a single student was proficient in math. As for the faceless crowd, it ended up with $28 trillion in debt… and nothing to show for it.
What Equality? Our theme this week: How the masses get the Afghan treatment from their own corrupt elite. How do they cheat thee? Let us count the ways. Schools that don’t teach. Wars that can’t be won. Regulations, rules, standards, licenses, controls, restrictions, punishments. And most important, fake money, that makes the rich richer and everybody else poorer.
Our friend David Stockman tells us that over the last 25 years, federal policies have added $30 trillion to the net wealth of the top 1% – or $23 million per household. That works out at just under $1 million per household per year. The bottom 50%, meanwhile, got a total of $1.5 trillion – $23,000 per household, which works out at less than $1,000 per year… a thousand times less than the rich. Equality is a fraud and a myth. But we’d just like a little honesty. And perhaps, if it is not asking too much, a little integrity.
Out on the Street: Yesterday, the eviction moratorium expired. Some 3.5 million Americans are behind on rent and now face put-outs. Goldman Sachs predicts that 750,000 of them will get tossed onto the streets by the end of the year. Who are these people? The CEOs and consultants… the stockholders… the professors… the reporters? Members of Congress? The rich? Nah… Mostly, they are the uncounted heads, the wavering millions… the people the feds say they are trying to help. Well… LOL and thanks a lot!
Since March 2020, their champions, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have told them they don’t have to pay their rent. And now, they need to come up with a big check. Rent of $1,000 a month would mean they would need $17,000 to settle up. Do they have that kind of money to apply to back rent? Not likely.
And rents are rising sharply. According to the Yardi Index, monthly payments for renting a house are rising 13% year to year, and apartments are going up at an 8% rate. Who is responsible for that? Did landlords suddenly become greedy? Nope again. Landlords don’t create inflation; they just respond to it. And what about owning a house? Here’s our sidekick, Dan Denning, writing from Laramie, Wyoming: "Home prices, for example, were up 18.6% in June from the same time last year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Home Price Index. That’s the largest annual gain in the history of the data set, going back to 1987. House prices in America are now 41% higher than they were at the top of the housing bubble in 2007."
Whose wages are rising at an 18% rate? Not those of the working class…
Another Fine Mess: And here’s another fine mess the feds have gotten us into. Here’s economics writer Jeffrey Tucker: "Large corporate buys of homes designed to be flipped into rental properties are rocking the financial markets. Two companies – Invitation Homes (INVH) and American Homes 4 Rent (AMH) – are up 38% for the year. In addition, one in five purchases of homes this year have been corporate, with the intention of turning them into rents. Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Investco have committed some $11 billion to the cause. And there is more money pouring into building new properties designed as rentals."
How come the big corporates are paying so much for houses? Oh, Dear Reader, we can’t believe you’re asking us that question. It’s the Fed. Credit ratings agency Moody’s tells us that the yield on an Aaa corporate bond – the highest rating – is about 2.5%… which is only about half the latest inflation reading. Another big payday for the speculators. They can buy a house for $300,000, using money they borrowed at 2.5%. Already, they’re making 2.5% on the financing, after inflation.
If they rent the house out for $2,500 a month… it gives them a gross yield of 10%, plus the 2.5% financing boost. Then, thanks to the Fed’s money-printing and interest rate suppression, house prices are going up at an 18% rate, giving them a total (very gross) return of 30.5%. Of course, prospective homeowners can borrow, too… But the pros can borrow more cheaply… and they have a lot more money to work with.
More tomorrow… In preview: Say a prayer for the “salt of the Earth.” They’re going to need it."
"How It Really Is"
Reportedly 12 million pending evictions,
30 million (?) people about to be homeless. What then?
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 9/2/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/2/21:
"Must Know Updates"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/2/21:
"Global Food Prices Are Skyrocketing.
Billionaire Bill Gross Says: 'Cash Is Garbage'"
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
"The Media Says 'The Delta Variant Stole Christmas', And Severe Shortages Are Projected To Stretch Long Into 2022"
"The Media Says 'The Delta Variant Stole Christmas', And
Severe Shortages Are Projected To Stretch Long Into 2022"
by Michael Snyder
"Thanks to extreme disruptions caused by the global response to the pandemic, millions upon millions of Americans are going to have a very disappointing holiday season. Supply chains are in a state of complete and utter chaos all over the world, and now we are being told that it will remain this way for the foreseeable future. And that is actually a best case scenario. If a new variant comes along that causes even more global disruptions, the shortages that we are experiencing right now could become even more dire. We are so vulnerable right now, and any unexpected twists or turns could easily make things a lot worse.
Earlier in 2021, the mainstream media was full of optimistic talk about how wonderful the second half of the year would be. But now reality is setting in. The following comes from a Washington Post article entitled “How the delta variant stole Christmas: Empty shelves, long waits — and yes, higher prices”… “I’m afraid there is simply not enough time to get products on the shelf this year,” said Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA Entertainment, the toy giant behind Rainbow High and such popular lines as L.O.L. Surprise and Little Tikes. “The holidays are going to be very tough and, frankly, a lot of families are not going to be able to get the toys they want.”
Mounting challenges — including factory shutdowns, computer chip shortages and clogged ports — are rattling the industry as it prepares for the crucial holiday shopping season, an eight-week window that can account for more than half of a retailer’s annual sales. Didn’t Kamala Harris just give us a very similar warning?
If there are toys that you want to buy, you should try to get them as soon as possible, because the supply crunch is only going to intensify. Even the biggest voices in the mainstream media are now admitting that these shortages are not going to be resolved any time soon. The following comes from a New York Times article entitled “The World Is Still Short of Everything. Get Used to It.”… "Pandemic-related product shortages - from computer chips to construction materials - were supposed to be resolved by now. Instead, the world has gained a lesson in the ripple effects of disruption."
The economic optimists assured us that the economy would be “booming” by now, but instead the shortages are worse than ever. Earlier today, I came across a local news story about the painful shortages that small businesses in western Massachusetts are currently dealing with…"This has everything to do with the supply chains. Businesses all over western Massachusetts are scrambling because they can’t get their hands on the most basic items. Silverware, takeaway containers, food items, you name it, and it’s probably in short supply."
Of course many of the largest corporations in the entire world are dealing with the same headaches. According to Elon Musk, Tesla has been experiencing “super crazy supply chain shortages”… Elon Musk said that supply-chain snags have hindered Tesla’s plans in 2021. “2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn’t matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.
For many companies, one of the biggest sources of pain has been a persistent lack of computer chips. This is a worldwide phenomenon, and it is the reason why game systems like the PS5 and the XBox Series X have been so exceedingly difficult to acquire… "Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for microchips has far exceeded supply, causing problems in every industry that relies on computers. And if you’re a Decoder listener, you know that that is every industry. Right now, major automakers have unfinished cars sitting in parking lots waiting for chips to be installed. Game consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are impossible to find. And even things like microwaves and refrigerators are impacted, because they contain simple controller chips."
We were promised that things would be getting better by now, but instead this crisis just continues to escalate. In fact, Toyota just announced that they are going to be cutting global production by 40 percent because of the shortage of chips… In the face of an enduring shortage of computer chips, Toyota this month announced that it would slash its global production of cars by 40%. Factories around the world are limiting operations - despite powerful demand for their wares - because they cannot buy metal parts, plastics and other raw materials. Construction companies are paying more for paint, lumber and hardware, while waiting weeks and sometimes months to receive what they need."
As bad as things are now, it looks like they are about to get even worse. One prominent shipping company just declared that they expect this crisis to persist “until the first half of 2022”… "From anchorage stats to forward arrivals, ocean bookings, and inventory-to-sales numbers, all the latest data paints the same picture: The U.S. congestion crisis has never been more severe than it is now - and it’s getting worse. Hope for any relief this year has vanished. French carrier CMA CGM is the latest in a long line of market participants to push back its timeline on normalization. Capacity constraints “are expected to continue until the first half of 2022,” CMA CGM warned on Friday."
Alarmingly, America’s import system - which is already stretched to the limit - looks like it will have to handle even higher volumes next month. The likely outcome: Carriers will be forced to cancel more sailings as terminal berths max out and ships get stuck at anchor, even more cargo will get “rolled” (pushed to a future sailing), and importers will face even longer delays and even less slot availability as they scramble to build inventories for holiday sales.
Others are even more pessimistic. Just check out this quote… “There is no end in sight,” said Alan Holland, chief executive of Keelvar, a company based in Cork, Ireland, that makes software used to manage supply chains. “Everybody should be assuming we are going to have an extended period of disruptions.” “No end in sight”? “An extended period of disruptions”?
And what is going to happen if another variant comes along that creates a lot more fear? Just today, the WHO issued a very ominous warning about a variant that is now known as “Mu”… "The World Health Organization has issued a warning about yet another new COVID-19 variant it fears could potentially evade vaccines. That variant, called Mu, was first detected in Colombia in January, and has been announced just as the Delta variant finally appears to be peaking in the U.S.
This “Mu variant” has already spread to over 40 different nations, and there have already been more than 2,000 confirmed cases in the United States… Over 4,600 cases of the variant, whose scientific name is B.1.621, have been spotted since then, and it has spread to more than 40 countries. Almost 2,000 cases of the variant have been detected in the United States."
So how much worse will our supply chain disruptions become if that variant starts spreading across the country like wildfire? Most people don’t realize that we are so close to the sort of extreme economic chaos that I have been warning about. The second half of this year was supposed to be a time when our lives started to go back to “normal”, but that is obviously now out the window. Instead, the rest of 2021 is looking exceedingly bleak, and at any moment another sudden “surprise” could take our problems to a whole new level."
“You Have No Idea What’s Coming; 2008 Crisis Was A Warm Up; Social Security Robbed; Pensions Next?”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/1/21:
“You Have No Idea What’s Coming; 2008 Crisis Was A Warm Up;
Social Security Robbed; Pensions Next?”
"It's Chaos Out There – Shipping Crisis Aggravated As 44 Container Ships Stuck Off Coast Of California"
Full screen recommended.
"It's Chaos Out There – Shipping Crisis Aggravated
As 44 Container Ships Stuck Off Coast Of California"
by Epic Economist
"Port congestion continues to intensify the global supply chain crisis as hundreds of container ships that should be transporting goods around the world are waiting to unload outside key ports for global trade. The situation in the U.S. is particularly worrying because only in California, there are currently 56 cargo ships anchored in the state's two largest ports located in Los Angeles and Long Beach, from which 44 are container ships that have been stock awaiting entry for weeks. That's the highest number recorded since the beginning of the health crisis, it bypasses the infamous record of 40 set in February 2021, according to a report released by the Marine Exchange of Southern California. And the logjam is likely to get much worse as the run-up to the holiday selling season has just begun. Retailers are completely desperate to stock up their inventories before the season starts and before more product shortages emerge. They have been dealing with dwindling inventory levels in many categories, from apparel to electronics to furniture, toys, and food.
The unprecedented backlog is a result of a historic labor shortage, health-crisis-induced disruptions, and higher consumer demand for holiday goods. Port of Los Angeles data reveals that the average wait time for ships rose to 7.6 days. "The normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one," explained Kip Louttit, the executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California. Together, Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle about one-third of all U.S. imports. The California ports operate as a primary source of imports from China and have faced severe congestion throughout the past 12 months.
"Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago. They take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo," Louttit said. The congestion is worsening the global shipping container shortage, given that container ships are being forced to anchor and wait for days, while companies importing and exporting goods to and from Asia are struggling with additional shipping delays.
The shipping crisis is particularly concerning for the US because it threatens to derail the economic rebound despite the rising consumer demand. Considering that the production of many consumer goods has been outsourced to Asian countries, our supply chains have become extremely dependent on exports so that companies can provide their products to customers. And given that many orders aren't arriving in time - which is leading to local shortages and soaring consumer prices - retail sales have started to back off from recent highs, signaling that they might go further down if the crisis worsens over the next weeks and months.
At the same time, the port congestion on the other side of the globe isn't helping that equation. Even though the container terminal at Ningbo resumed operations this week, the enormous backlog of containers at the port, on vessels, with China’s trucking companies and railways, and the chaos it caused in the shipping world, will continue to disrupt the flow of containers and merchandise possibly for months.
Updates released by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors reveal that right now, the average cost to ship a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles soared to a record of $11,362, over five times the typical pre-outbreak rate of around $2,000. From Shanghai to New York, the average shipping cost climbed to $14,136. Drewry’s composite index, which accounts for world container rates, hit a new record of $9,818 per 40-foot container. The index had been running well below $2,000 before the onset of the health crisis. Meanwhile, long-term contracted ocean freight rates skyrocketed by a shocking 85.5% compared to the same period last year. And as container ship operators started reaping record-breaking profits, there appears to be little sign of relief on the horizon.
It seems that the stranded container crisis is the worst nightmare for anyone involved in global trade. Given that we offshored the production of many goods we consume for years and years, and the fact that our country's domestic production has been challenged by a series of accidents and disasters, the pattern of delivery delays never ceases to repeat. And as we move closer to the holiday season, we should all start to get prepared because much more chaos will arise both in supply chains and at stores."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images."
"I Urge All Of You..."
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
- Jim Valvano
"A Wise Man Once Said..."
“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”
- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/1/21: "It's Here, New Variant, The 'MU Flu', Deadliest Of Them All!"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/1/21:
"It's Here, New Variant, The 'MU Flu', Deadliest Of Them All!"
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Related:
"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"
"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"
by Umair Haque
"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”
- Justice William O. Kennedy
"What does it feel like to live in a time really succumbing to tyranny? Would you know it if you were in such a time? Is it like the "Hunger Games", or a "Mad Max" movie? Spectacular, violent, repellent, and unmistakeable? Or is it something subtler? Something that, for example, you might not even know was happening at the very moment it was happening to you? After all, invisible poisons are the most corrosive and dangerous things of all.
Imagine that you're lying down in a park, on the grass, on a perfect summer day, your eyes closed. And from nowhere, from everywhere, a fog begins rolling in. Gentle and white, oddly out place. It washes across the tips of your feet. You feel pinpricks. Your eyes snap open. Your toes go numb. How strange, you think to yourself, as you think about getting up and running away. What is this fog doing here? Why is giving you pins and needles?
But by the time you are thinking all that, processing what is happening to you, the fog is already up to your knees. 'I really should get up!' you think to yourself. You are a little alarmed now. But as you've paused to even think that far, to register it you realize that while your knees are prickling, your feet, calves, ankles, have gone numb. And it's not entirely unpleasant. It's soothing, even, in the way that letting go is. Confused, puzzled, bewildered, you stop to think again.
Yet by now the fog, still rolling, as quiet as winter, has reached the tips of your fingers, blanketed your torso. Ahhh, you murmur. The pinpricks, you realize, only sting you where the fog's cold, icy edge is. The rest of you? It's numb. Cool. Gone. And there is a strange, disquieting peace in that. Nothing makes sense. The world seems to be vanishing and so do you. But it's not entirely a bad thing.
The fog keeps rolling. As it covers all of you, something in you cries out 'Get up!' But there is another part that is overwhelmed, which wishes to surrender to this pleasing, beautiful, gentle numbness. That longs for it. A few pins and needles, that's not much of a price for letting go, is it? After all, isn't that exactly why you were resting in the park on that perfect summer day, eyes closed? To let the whole world, including yourself, fall away?
Authoritarianism isn't what you think it is. A sudden, violent, visible rupture. That's what Americans, especially, have been led to believe by too many TV shows and movies, which are a kind of especially paranoid American annihilation fantasy (the Rapture, the commies, the immigrants.)
But tyranny isn't like that at all. It doesn't feel like that. These days, if we are a little bit educated about it, we call it creeping. but even that fails to convey the feeling, the sense, the experience. My little parable is a way to begin expressing the strange feeling of collapse, not just anxiety and panic, but also, conflicting with it, a kind of yearning for surrender and submission. We'd be foolish, by now, not to understand the dark roots of our own apathy and resignation, wouldn't we? So let me continue.
The thing we misunderstand most about tyranny is that we suppose life becomes one long exercise in rigid, total certainty. You receive your orders, salute, and snap to business. That is what violent rupture implies: one day democracy, the next, a tyrant is there, precisely ordering everyone's last thought and action. But the truth is precisely the opposite.
Tyranny kills with the grey haze, the white fog, of all-pervading uncertainty. An uncertainty so total, that after a time, people will give up all that they love, and everyone they love, to escape it. The fog kills everything it touches and yet, it can't be touched, held, known, captured. You can't fight fog with fists or words or speeches, can you? If you join hands with someone you love, the fog will laugh, and weave itself right between your fingers. So what can fight it? Who can resist it? First, let me explain it a little.
Who will be dehumanized today? Is the law still working? Did they raid that town? Why are those camps rising? Whose door will they knock at today? Am I in danger? Are they going to use my words against me? Should I not speak them? Where are the children? Do you see what I mean by all-pervading uncertainty? The grey haze. The white fog. That, my friends, is what tyranny really is. And you are already knee-deep in it. Only perhaps you don't quite know it yet.
After a time, the uncertainty erases everything. Cleanses everything. Kills everything. All. It covers everything it touches, and leaves nothing revealed. It is total and all-encompassing. Is that a person? Am I? Who is a citizen? What about my friends, family, cousins? Are these words mine? Did I speak them? Are those my friends? Can I trust them? Did they get rid of those people? The fog. The haze. That is how it kills everything it touches, by making all things exactly the same thing. An unanswerable question.
Do you have the sense, lately, that things are unreal? Ah, you see. You are already being blanked by the grey haze, the white fog, of uncertainty. Uncertainty is what you are feeling, only you don't know it. It is that uncertainty that has turned everything unreal. Will they really put people in camps? Then why did they build them? Will women really have to go underground to get abortions? What about my kids? Will they really live without healthcare or education or retirement? You go numb, as any sane person would, having to think these terrible thoughts. Your vision goes blurry. Reality has come apart, because nothing is or isn't anymore. Everything is just the fog.
When all is fog, uncertainty, impossibility, unknowability, reality cannot be processed anymore. That is the point. To create a world where everything, being uncertain, becomes unreal. Nothing exists, or doesn't exist, only just maybe exists, but only if it is allowed to. So nothing can be held, contained, known, and therefore, held onto. Nothing. Not the people you love most. Not yourself. Not tomorrow. Not even today.
Have you ever read stories about how in tyrannies, brothers will betray brothers, husbands wives, and mothers sons? You have always thought that could never happen to me! But why do they do it? It isn't because the tyrant commands them to. He doesn't have to. They will do it for just a tiny morsel of certainty. Here, I am a good person. Let me prove it to you. Let me tell you who is a bad person. Will you reward me now, put me in the good books, give me some certainty, instead of keeping me at the edge? No human being can survive more than a few days in a totally uncertain world. So the fog takes everything, not just from us, but also in us. It takes away, at last, our capacity to feel. When that is gone, we are hollow, empty, numb. And when we are numb, what or whom won't we sell, betray, or abuse?
The tyrant has never lifted a finger. He has only produced the fog, with a conjuring trick. By shifting the sands beneath us, and letting the mist pour out of the cracks. The fog rolls over us, little by little, inch by inch, languorous tendrils whispering. We fall and fall slowly, gently into a long, dreamless coma.
In the end, nothing is left. People are erased. Time stands still. History vanishes. The future looks exactly like the present. Nobody is here at all. There is only the fog, the haze, the white. Nothing can be discerned in it. Nothing can be seen through it. But that is alright. There is nobody left to see nothing, anyways. There is just the white fog. And beneath it, the sleepers. Each one the same, none of them there, or not there.
If just one woke up, looked around, shocked, and roused another, and that one another, and so on maybe they might, together, strain, struggle, and lift one another up above the fog. But none of them ever quite understood that. The fog took them too fast, too invisibly, without a bullet, without a word, without a sound, just like that. It took all the fight in them, and turned it to surrender.
That is what tyranny feels like, my friends. And you might not know it, or you might, but the fog is rolling silently across you now, gentle, languorous, with love, with absolution, with death."
The Poet: John O'Donohue, "In These Times "
"In These Times "
"In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home."
~ John O'Donohue,
from "To Bless the Space Between Us "
"The Worst Investors of All Time"
"The Worst Investors of All Time"
by Bill Bonner
"Let’s drink to the hard-working people,
Let’s drink to the lowly of birth.
Raise your glass to the good and the evil,
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth."
– "Salt of the Earth," The Rolling Stones
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Yes… we are hooting for the salt of the Earth. Saluting the faceless crowd, the lowly of birth… the masses… the hoi polloi… the proles. In a few words: They are getting treated like Afghans. Misled by the U.S. empire, corrupted by its fake money, and then left behind as the elite slip away.
Cost of Empire: Empires are always costly. And the costs are borne, mostly, by the working classes. The Roman Republic was built by the blood and energy of its small farmers. Then, imperial conquests brought booty and slaves back to Rome. These were divvied up among the elite, who established large latifundia – farms run by slave labor. The small farmers were driven out of business, forced to sell their farms to the big producers, and later, often forced to sell themselves and their children into slavery.
America never figured out how to make its empire pay. From the very beginning, it was its own “little guys” who paid. They paid the taxes. They put on the uniforms. They may not have understood what “we” were fighting for, but they were ready to follow the sound of the cannon from San Juan Hill to Mỹ Lai.
The Vietnam War was one of the U.S. empire’s most spectacular fiascos. Your editor spent part of that war onboard a U.S. Navy cruiser… comfortably off the coast of California or at our base in San Diego. Offered the glory of commanding a river boat on the Mekong Delta, he demurred. Even then, it was clear that the war was an expensive and dangerous boondoggle.
Feds Pull a Fast One: So expensive was the war – and another contemporaneous boondoggle, the War on Poverty – that the U.S. couldn’t afford them both. But rather than back up and admit its mistakes, the empire pulled a fast one; it began paying its debts in fake money, a new U.S. dollar that it could reproduce at will.
With that move, in 1971, the working class was now in danger both at home and abroad, in uniform as well as in civvies. For now, U.S. corporations could source their goods from low-cost providers overseas including, some years later, Vietnam. U.S. manufacturing – the backbone of working-class wages – went into a slump. China entered global export competition in 1979, with labor costs less than one-tenth of those in the U.S. American wages, in real terms, have been flat ever since. Measured properly, in terms of the time needed to buy food, transportation, and housing, the working stiff is much worse off than he was in the 1970s.
Costly Wars: Then, the U.S. government began using the fake money to make “investments” on his behalf.
• The War on Poverty, announced in 1964 as an “unconditional” war… escalated. Total cost to date: $25 trillion, est.
• The War on Drugs began in 1971...
• The Gulf War – 1990...
• The War on Afghanistan – 2001...
• The War on Iraq – 2003...
• The War on “Terror”...
• The bailout of Wall Street...
• The War on COVID-19...
• Stimulus to save the economy.
Altogether, these “investments,” grosso modo, have added about $27 trillion to the U.S. national debt since 1980.
Bad Investments: Had they been good investments, they wouldn’t have added to the nation’s debt; they would have paid dividends and added to its prosperity… Less poverty would have meant more people paying taxes. Instead, fewer are paying taxes, with only 39% of eligible taxpayers paying any federal income tax in 2020.
A successful drug war, too, would have meant more people with good jobs, less crime, and less police enforcement. Instead, nearly half a million (mostly young… mostly men) are in prison. Rather than helping support the nation with gainful employment, it costs $50,000 to $100,000 per year to keep them locked up… while drug use continues as before.
And where was the payoff from the $7 trillion “War on Terror”? There was none…
Wasted Stimulus: And the stimulus? How much stimulating did it do? How much in extra tax receipts did the feds collect as a result? Between March 2020 and August 2021, the Federal Reserve stimulated the economy with $4 trillion in new money. It was the greatest “stimulus” program of all time – by far.What did it get for all that money? What was the return on investment? GDP grew by $1.2 trillion – not even a third of the money invested. Tax receipts – the feds’ return on investment – went up, too… but only by an estimated $150 billion. In other words, the feds spent $4 trillion to get back $150 billion… a 96% loss.
None of these bumbling “investments” paid off. They won no war. They bought no useful assets. They built no factories nor rent-paying infrastructure. As far as we know, no investment was made in any productive industry or any fruitful enterprise. It was all wasted.
Extravagant Delusions: And there’s more… As we saw yesterday, the feds are aiming for even bigger deficits… backed by even more extravagant delusions. After earning so many gold medals in the Middle East, the warmongers are “pivoting” to confront China. And after so much success with Amtrak, there’s $1.2 trillion of “infrastructure” investment coming down the tracks, with a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget trailing behind it. Also coming is global weather control… not to mention turning us all into better people, with better race relations and a more “equitable” allocation of wealth!
But wait… How do the tillers of the soil, the factory girls, and the baristas pay for all this? What will these marvelous investments mean to the salt of the Earth? Oh, Dear Reader… you already know, don’t you? Stay tuned."
"This Is What Is Going To Happen Nationwide In The Not Too Distant Future"
"This Is What Is Going To Happen Nationwide
In The Not Too Distant Future"
by Michael Snyder
"When order really starts breaking down in this country, we know exactly what is going to happen. And the reason why we know exactly what is going to happen is because the exact same pattern keeps playing out every time there is a major disaster or crisis in one of our large cities. Just think about it. Over the past couple of years, violent social justice protests in our major cities have often been accompanied by widespread looting. When the Texas power grid went down last winter, there was looting. When wildfires force people from their expensive homes in California, the looters are often the first people that show up. And just about every time there is some sort of a major storm, the looters come out of the woodwork.
And so it should not surprise anyone that New Orleans is being plagued by looters in the wake of Hurricane Ida. One pair of enterprising looters decided to try to break into an ATM machine, but thanks to a drone they now have become famous all over the country… "It is not clear if the pair from the drone video were apprehended or got away with any cash from the ATM machine they are seen in the footage trying to pry open. One of the men in the video is seen toying with the machine. Another stands beside him and sees the drone before turning his back and leaving the destroyed business."
The video, which was posted to Twitter by WXChasing (Brandon Clement), has yielded 19,100 views and is captioned, ‘The moment looters realize a drone is watching them try to break into an ATM [machine] in burned down St. Claude market in the lower 9th ward.’
In other cases, looters were taking a more conventional approach… "In another incident, witnesses used their cell phone to record several people looting a store in New Orleans East."
Looters often take advantage of disasters like Ida and New Orleans is all too familiar with this as it became a hotbed of criminal activity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago. How many times have we seen this sort of chaos break out over the past few years? It is more than I can count, that is for sure.
On Tuesday afternoon, authorities in New Orleans pledged to do their best to try “to deter mass looting”… "New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson held a press conference Tuesday afternoon at City Hall regarding a citywide curfew to deter mass looting and an update on the power situation. Cantrell told reporters, effective immediately (8 pm local time), a citywide curfew will be enforced until 6 am Wednesday. New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has deployed an anti-looting task force with National Guard members to protect business districts."
Sadly, virtually every major city in America is just one major crisis away from a total breakdown of law and order. And when a truly nightmarish national emergency strikes, law and order will break down all over the country. Our blood-soaked culture has become increasingly violent as moral standards have deteriorated across our land, and in many of our core urban areas brutal cold-blooded attacks by groups of heartless criminals have become way too common.
A particularly vile attack that happened in Chicago the other day is a perfect example of what I am talking about… "The video, first posted by the crime website CWB Chicago, initially shows three men beating up another man as traffic crawls past. Another man walks by and is sucker-punched and falls to the pavement. The group keeps attacking the other man until both are down on the pavement. The attackers then rummage through their pockets, walking with a bag, shoes and other items, the video shows. Women dance in the street while people appear to record the fight. More specifically, the women were “twerking” as they celebrated the robbing of the innocent victims."
If hearts are this cold already, what will things be like when economic conditions get really bad in this country? Yes, there are still millions of Americans out there that try to respect the law, but there are also lots and lots of really twisted people out there.
Just today, I came across a news story about how “hundreds of decapitated goats” have been getting dumped into the Chattahoochee River… "Channel 2 Action News is investigating headless goats found floating in the Chattahoochee River. Someone has dumped hundreds of decapitated goats over the past few years. Channel 2′s Dave Huddleston cruised up the Chattahoochee River with Jason Ulseth, who works for the environmental group the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper."
More than one person has got to be involved in this terrible crime, because on one recent Friday a total of 30 decapitated goats were found in the river… "As they approached the Interstate 20 bridge near the Fulton County and Cobb County border, “There’s a goat,” Ulselth said. Channel 2 found a headless goat in the river, then another and another. “Lately it’s become a lot more frequent, and on Friday we were out here and saw 30 of them floating down the river,” Ulseth said."
Why aren’t CNN and the other big networks covering this story? You would think that something like this would be good for ratings. Of course the truth is that it doesn’t fit any of the agendas that they are currently trying to push.
But without a doubt we will hear more about the Delta variant from the major news networks tomorrow, and apparently all of that fear is starting to cause another major run on toilet paper… Please don’t run straight to the supermarket, but some shoppers are buying up all the toilet paper – again. Why is toilet paper always such a high priority when Americans decide that it is time to do some more panic shopping? I will never understand that.
In any event, it is being reported that the fear of new lockdowns is causing many to start hoarding toilet paper “in bulk”… "This latest rebound in toilet paper demand comes as the delta variant drives COVID-19 cases and deaths up across the U.S., with some folks foreseeing another lockdown. Many Americans have used up their stockpiles and some have begun buying again in bulk, The Wall Street Journal reports."
If Americans are going to get this crazy over a relatively minor threat like the Delta variant, what in the world are they going to do when truly apocalyptic events begin to take place? COVID is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Not even close.
If our society can’t even handle COVID, what kind of meltdown would transpire if a much bigger crisis suddenly erupted? You might want to think about that, because many believe that it won’t be too long before we actually find out."
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