So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
"The Truth Virus:
The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
by Dog Poet
"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.
Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually - and sometimes not so gradually - take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.
People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus - and who are not susceptible to catching it - will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.
It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.
The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.
Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?
The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine (nicely recovering from a bad scare) and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.
I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.
With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.
With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.
It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.
There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.
Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.
This virus of mine - and perhaps you have it too - is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."
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Full screen recommended.
"They Live", Seeing The Truth
"For Nothing Is Fixed..."
"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
- James Baldwin
"Inflation is a Tax - Get Less While You Pay More"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 9/21/21:
"Inflation is a Tax - Get Less While You Pay More"
"None of us can avoid inflation right now. No matter how you look at it inflation is attacks. It affects the poor the most. We are getting less while we are paying more. Today I am at the Great Park in Irvine."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/21/21: "What Is Going On Now Is Madness! Very Important Updates"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Your guide, Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/21/21:
"What Is Going On Now Is Madness! Very Important Updates"
"There Is 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
"No So Evergrande After All"
"No So Evergrande After All"
By Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "We’re following a couple of different stories this morning. We tried to find a common storyline… but gave up. So we’ll report them separately. First, yesterday, we were reminded that there is no such thing as “Evergrande.” There is sometimes grande… occasionally not bad… and once-in-a-while fat and sassy. But Evergrande, it ain’t.
At one point yesterday afternoon, the Dow was down about 950 points. The Wall Street Journal somehow managed to channel the anxiety of traders with this intriguing headline: "Stock Market Falls on Chinese Property Fears." How sweet. U.S. investors are so sympathetic! They ended the day down 614 points (1.8%) – out of sympathy for the poor Chinese. Of course, the problem the Chinese have is the same problem Americans have – too much debt. And the federales (at least in the U.S.; as for China, we don’t know) have only one remedy: more debt.
A Debt End Run: The gist of the Evergrande story is that property development has been one of the places the Chinese have “invested” a lot of money over the last two decades. They built entire “ghost cities” in China – with thousands of apartments ready for renters who never came. The biggest single owner/investor was a company called Evergrande, which now carries $300 billion in debt. Trouble is, it’s hard for a landlord to pay down debt when his units don’t sell or rent. And now, word on the street is that Evergrande is broke. Naturally, investors are nervous. Sometimes, all it takes is one high-profile collapse to undermine the whole “Evergrande” fantasy.
You Get What You Pay For: Our second item is a reprise of yesterday’s Diary theme. As we reported, 1 out of every 500 Americans has supposedly succumbed to COVID-19. We say “supposedly” because there are no “facts” in the COVID story. There are only guesses and arguments – even about the cause of death.
Here’s one “fact”: It is more profitable for a hospital to serve a COVID-19 patient than a pneumonia patient. The Kaiser Family Foundation studied hospital admissions and reported: "…the “average Medicare payment for respiratory infections and inflammations with major comorbidities or complications in 2017 … was $13,297. For more severe hospitalizations, we use the average Medicare payment for a respiratory system diagnosis with ventilator support for greater than 96 hours, which was $40,218.”
We assume that in 2020 and 2021, “severe hospitalizations” – and dollars to the medical industry – increased. “You get what you pay for,” are the immortal words of economist Milton Friedman. And since March 2020, the feds have been paying for COVID-19 by reimbursing hospitals for treating uninsured patients… and paying a 20% topper for COVID-19 patients.
Glock 19 vs. COVID-19: But even if the death count really were 1 in 500, is that a big deal? Our guess is that the disease is a big deal to the one guy who dies from it (and his family). As to the others, not so much Everybody’s got to die of something; why not COVID-19?
Here in Baltimore, a young, Black man might have more to fear from the Glock 19 than from COVID-19. The COVID germ may be dangerous, but it lacks the penetration power of 9 mm ammunition. In 2019, it was reported that Baltimore suffered 58 homicides per 100,000 population. But the Glock 19 is even more “racist” than COVID-19. Most of its victims are young, Black males. For them, COVID-19 poses almost no risk. On the other hand, the odds of getting gunned down are probably a lot higher than 1 in 500. Why no bullet-proof vest mandate?
One Plan: What we see in this COVID-19 story is a dangerous shortage of hands. All of the known information tells us there are many different ways to look at it. On the one hand… and on the other hand… But for the problem of too much COVID, as for the problem of too much debt, the federales seem to have only one message… one thought… and one plan, which they are determined to force onto everyone, whether they need it or not.
More tomorrow… on what’s ahead for the U.S. economy… Inflation… deflation… or bust!"
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Related:
"Freedom from Fear: Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"
"Freedom from Fear:
Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
- Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist
"America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.
This plague on our nation - one that has been spreading like wildfire - is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert. Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.
We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.
The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.
Fear makes people stupid.
Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance. Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.
This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.
All the while, those in power - bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations - move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance. Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.
America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored. These threats are not to be underestimated.
Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.
So far, these tactics are working. An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.) - manufactured or legitimate - has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”
Sanchez continues: “I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…
I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…
Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.”
As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes. It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.
A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled. The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:
• The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).
• The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.
• The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.
• The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
• The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.
• The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.
• The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.
• The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.
• The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.
•The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.
The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore. “Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker. “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle - that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.
Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.
For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports: "In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling."
The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”
Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries" fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.
Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.
In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm: "Can human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love - that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?"
“Let Them Eat Kix”
“Let Them Eat Kix”
by Tom Purcell
"I never parted with a $20 bill faster It happened at one of my favorite diners. The Western omelet and Diet Coke I often get wasn’t the $11 it had been for as long as I remember. It was $16. That expense, with my tip for the excellent waiter, consumed my entire $20 bill.
I feel bad for the diner’s owner. He told me that soaring food costs have been killing his profits for months. He’s been forced to raise his prices, yet he’s making half of what he used to. Why? First, his labor costs are up because there is a shortage of workers and he has to pay them a higher hourly wage or they won’t take the job. And second, because he has to charge higher prices, his customer base is dwindling. As wonderful as a diner breakfast is, more people, getting hit by inflation across the board, are choosing to stay home and eat a bowl of Wheaties or Kix instead.
I’m certainly no economist. But I know this: inflation stinks. According to one financial advisor quoted in Forbes, there are a few driving factors behind our current spike in prices – high demand and low supply. COVID-19 lockdowns caused Americans to sit on their money for months but lately they’ve been injecting those dollars back into the economy with abandon.
The nearly zero-percent mortgage interest rates we’ve been enjoying since March 2020 are driving up the demand for houses – and therefore their sales prices. And global supply chains for many products are all goofed up because of the pandemic’s disruptions.
For instance, due to a shortage of vehicles for sale - new vehicles are being held back by car makers because of a shortage of computer chips - new and used car prices are ridiculously high. I bought a new Toyota Tacoma Off Road truck in December of 2019 and it’s done something no other vehicle I’ve bought has ever done in my life: gone up in value. Kelly Blue Book tells me that my truck with 11,100 miles on it is worth $3,000 more than I paid for it brand new.
That is one of the few upsides to inflation. Owning property is another. If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, but the dollar “value” of your home keeps rising, you at least keep pace with inflation. But if you are retired, as my parents are, and living on a fixed income, inflation is an invisible tax that nibbles at the buying power of your money.
Your limited dollars buy fewer groceries and other increasingly expensive basic items you need to sustain yourself. I trust in the efficiency of the many very talented business people in our mostly free economy to adjust to inflation and get our markets running smoothly again. But I don’t trust our government leaders who have been spending recklessly for years and are currently attempting to ram a massive, ridiculous spending bill down our throats that could make high inflation a lasting problem.
I fondly remember the Clinton presidency when, for a blip in time, our government actually took in more money than it spent. But since 2001 Presidents Bush ($6 trillion), Obama ($9 trillion) and Trump ($6 trillion) have reversed that trend and added trillions to our total debt. Way too few people in Washington seem to care about our $28 trillion national debt or the inflation they’ve caused. They don’t care a whit about struggling diner owners or cash-strapped patrons who now eat cereal for breakfast.”
Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21: "Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21:
"Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"
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Related:
Monday, September 20, 2021
"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized; Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"
Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/20/21:
"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized;
Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"
"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"
Full screen recommended.
"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing
Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"
by Epic Economist
"The world is facing an unprecedented labor shortage that is threatening to derail the global economic rebound as it is sparks widespread business bankruptcies and pushes the price of several supplies, including food, to sky-highs. It's the first time in modern history that the entire planet is facing a severe shortage of workers. At this point, it is estimated that about 10 to 15 million people are still out of their jobs and facing long-term unemployment. Even though government benefits have expired at the beginning of this month, people are still not coming back to the labor force. At least not at the pace most economists were expecting.
One ominous aspect of this crisis is the impact it is having on global food supply chains. Recent reports describe that, in some countries, the shortage of workers is getting so serious that government officials are having to harvest crops themselves before they spoil and result in local food shortages and steep economic losses. In the U.S., meatpackers are trying to attract new employees by offering Apple Watches, and fast-food chains are offering sizable bonuses. But despite their efforts, staff levels are still incredibly low, and food prices are on the rise. Many can still clearly remember how chaotic it was last year's unemployment crisis. At this stage, employers were expecting to see hordes of people desperate to find a new job. But even now that employees have options to choose from, it seems like they have simply disappeared from the workforce.
Today, food industry executives say that there aren't enough people to grow, process, and transport our food, and this is threatening to push several small farmers and producers to the brink of financial ruin, while smaller food processing companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. In August, prices went up by 33 percent compared to the same time a year ago, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. And they're about to surge even more given that that agriculture is one of the world’s least-automated industries.
For many businesses, passing along those costs is a matter of survival - especially considering that they didn't have a proper opportunity to financially recover from last year's recession. This should be a matter of concern for everyone. This disruption affects every person, business, and industry, and it is only aggravating with each passing month.
To make things even worse, at a time millions of businesses are hanging by a thread, our health care system is completely overwhelmed and social tensions are rising in every corner of the country, the federal government decided to impose strict work restrictions on millions of workers who decided not to take the vaccine.
For several reasons, whether it's a medical concern, a lack of trust in government measures, or a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccine, millions of Americans have chosen not to be vaccinated. And now the new administration may exacerbate the labor shortage as they enforce vaccine mandates to several workers. When these mandates are in full effect, we could see a national crisis of unimaginable proportions. One example of how dangerous these vaccination orders can be lies in the fact that law-enforcement officials reportedly rather be fired than comply with the mandates.
A local report outlines that, in San Diego, 65 percent of the city's officers said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. Moreover, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate. The force currently has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, fifty percent of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city would inevitably collapse into chaos. The same is happening in the health care sector, where thousands of workers are quitting the workforce because they disagree with the government's mandate.
And the timing couldn't be worse, since the delta variant is fast spreading all across the nation. That's why the new administration's measures are not only ineffective but also harmful for our people and our economy. But still, no one seems to be concerned about the consequences this can have on our future. And what is happening in the U.S. is just a hint of what is going on all over the globe. We should all be prepared for even darker times because the near-term outlook is only getting grimmer and risker."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21: "STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21:
"STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image.
Distant background galaxies also lurk on the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring view spans over two full moons on the sky, or 17 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251.”
Chet Raymo, "Lessons"
"Lessons"
by Chet Raymo
"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":
"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."
Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of The Poems this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.
Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.
Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."
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Freely download "Poems" by WB Yeats here:
Free Download: T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"
“Little Gidding”, Excerpt
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree.
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
- T.S. Eliot
The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets,"
which you may freely download here:
"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 9/20/21:
"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"
"The signs are everywhere. We are experiencing a worldwide economic slowdown. As we see international inflation, we are also seeing supply chain problems globally. Today I’m at Laguna Regional Park in southern CA."
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