Full screen recommended.
"It's A Wonderful Life - The Ending"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, December 24, 2021
"The Christmas Pines" Peaceful Instrumental Christmas Music
Full screen recommended.
Tim Janis,
"The Christmas Pines",
Peaceful Instrumental Christmas Music
"Merry Christmas"
"And that, of course, is the message of Christmas.
We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest,
the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent..."
- Taylor Caldwel
"26 Popular Traditional Christmas Carols w Festive Art by Thomas Kinkade"
Full screen recommended.
"26 Popular Traditional Christmas Carols w
Festive Art by Thomas Kinkade"
"The Christmas Truce of 1914"
Full screen recommended.
"The Christmas Truce of 1914"
by IWN
"At Christmas 1914, an event occurred that was not repeated again during the First World War. An unofficial, spontaneous truce took place along some parts of the Western Front. It often started with a ceasefire as Christmas Day approached. German Army officer Walther Stennes recalled how, initially, this caused some concern.
"On Christmas Eve at noon, fire ceased completely – on both fronts. Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so. But anyhow everyone is awake, no one is sleeping and the sentries are still on duty. So I think it’s alright.’"
British private Marmaduke Walkinton explained how the close proximity of the enemy led to increased communication between the two sides. "We were in the front line; we were about 300 yards from the Germans. And we had, I think on Christmas Eve, we’d been singing carols and this that and the other, and the Germans had been doing the same. And we’d been shouting to each other, sometimes rude remarks more often just joking remarks. Anyway, eventually a German said, ‘Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot. So then we began to pop our heads over the side and jump down quickly in case they shot but they didn’t shoot. And then we saw a German standing up, waving his arms and we didn’t shoot and so on, and so it gradually grew."
For Colin Wilson of the Grenadier Guards, the truce also started with carols. This was then followed by an invitation from the German troops opposite. "We heard a German singing Holy Night of course in German, naturally. Then after he’d finished singing there were all sorts of Christmas greetings being shouted across no man’s land at us. These Germans shouted out, ‘What about you singing Holy Night?’ Well we had a go but of course we weren’t very good at that. Anyway they said, ‘Meet us and come over in no man’s land.’ Well after a time we were allowed – a limited number of us – our officers allowed a limited number of us to go into no man’s land."
The attempts at fraternization by German soldiers did not always meet with success. Clifford Lane remembered how he and his battalion, the 1st Hertfordshire Regiment, ignored such overtures. "Later on in the night there was a great deal of commotion going on in the German front line which was about 100, 150 yards away I suppose. And after a few moments there were lighted objects raised above the German parapet looking like Chinese lanterns to us.The Germans were shouting over to our trench, there’s no doubt about that at all, and before we could take any action or do anything we were ordered to open rapid fire you see. Which we did. The Germans did not reply to our rapid fire they simply carried on with their celebrations, ignored us completely and were having a very fine time indeed. We never did anything else but simply continue in our wet trenches trying to make the most of a bad job."
On Christmas Day, Allied and German troops met in no man’s land. German artillery officer Mr Rickner described celebrating with French soldiers. "I remember very well Christmas, I remember the Christmas Day when the German and the French soldiers left their trenches, went to the barbed wire between them with champagne and cigarettes in their hands and had feelings of fraternization and shouted they wanted to finish the war and that lasted only 2 days 1 and a half really and then strict order came that no fraternization was allowed and we had to stay back in our trenches."
The 6th Gordon Highlanders also took part in the truce, J Reid among them. "When we were on the line at Sailly, Christmas 1914, there was a bit of a truce there you know and the Germans stopped firing, we stopped firing. And we came out of the line and they came out of the line. And we were swapping tins of bully for their tins of meat and the padre was out having a talk with them, they were burying any dead that was there and we were burying any dead – this carried on for about a couple of days."
When the two sides met, they often exchanged gifts and souvenirs. George Jameson recalled what his men returned with. "Keith and Philip Ridley, two of my section, came dashing into the billet during the morning and said, ‘What do you know, the Jerries are out on the top; they’re walking about, they’re dishing out drinks and cigarettes – there’s no fighting going on!’ Well we’d noticed the place was very quiet. I said I don’t believe it. I said well I can’t go I’m duty bloke for the morning but hop off and see what you can find. So Keith and Philip and Lesley Wood went off and they arrived back around about lunchtime, Keith with one of the Landwehr hats on – the grey thing with the red band round the button – Philip had a water bottle. They’d had drinks, they’d had smokes and they’d been walking about. He said, ‘You just wouldn’t believe it!’
British soldiers who took part in the truce often remembered their conversations with the Germans. Archibald Stanley enjoyed speaking to them. "I tell you what happened on Christmas Day 1914, and people don’t believe it. We had this unofficial truce. We met in no man’s land on Christmas Day 1914. We shook hands – they were Saxons – and I heard one fellow talking English. I said to him, ‘You speak English?’ You know what he said? ‘Cor blimey mate,’ he said, ‘I was in a London hotel when the war broke out!’ I thought that topped it. He’d got the London accent…"
Others had more serious exchanges, such as Henry Williamson of the London Regiment. "I talked to an officer the next day – because the truce went on for several days – and he said, ‘You know, we could not have gone on in the First Battle of Ypres because you had so many reserves in your woods and so many automatischer pistol.’ I said, ‘Were your machine guns gone, all knocked out?’ He said, ‘Oh no, automatischer pistol’ – it was our 15 rounds rapid. We also learned that many of the German mass attacks were made by boys, German students of 16/17, arm in arm with one rifle among three."
The high commands on both sides ordered an end to the truce when they heard of it. George Ashurst described how unpopular this made them. "We got orders come down the trench, ‘Get back in your trenches every man,’ by word of mouth down each trench; ‘Everybody back in your trenches,’ shouting. The generals behind must’ve seen it and got a bit suspicious so what they did, they gave orders for a battery of guns behind us to fire, and a machine gun to open out and officers to fire their revolvers at the Jerries. ‘Course that started the war again. Ooh we were cursing them to hell, cursing the generals and that, you want to get up here in this stuff never mind your giving orders, in your big chateaux and driving about in your big cars. We hated the sight of the bloody generals."
The legend that built up around the truce over the years made some sceptical about it, including Harold Lewis of the Royal Field Artillery, stationed in Britain at Christmas 1914. "Although it would be arrogant to say that the thing didn’t actually take place, I very much doubt whether anything of the nature or magnitude that have been claimed for it took place at all. And particularly because the two armies concerned, the German with that rigid discipline and our own with the finest discipline of a fighting force there was, are not likely to break that tradition. And if anybody tried, what were the NCOs doing? What were the officers doing? I think the whole thing borders on the fairytale and may be classed with the Russians with snow on their boots and the Angels of Mons."
Although the truce faded out after Boxing Day, on New Year’s Eve H. Williams of the London Regiment encountered one German soldier still unwilling to return to a state of war. "This runner came along when I was on this fatigue job and said, ‘You’re wanted again to interpret.’ I said, ‘What is it this time?’ He said, ‘There’s a drunk German in our trenches and he won’t go back!’ So I went up and saw our platoon officer there and he said, ‘Williams, there’s this chap here, he’s drunk. I don’t mind it’s all very well to meet them in no man’s land, but he’s actually in our trenches.’ Anyway this chap was standing there with a couple of bottles of beer wanting us to drink the health of the New Year and all the rest of it. He said, ‘Tell him he’s got to go back.’ So I told him. He wouldn’t take any notice he didn’t want to go back. And this officer said, ‘Well if he stops here, he’s got to be made prisoner, ask him if he wants to be made prisoner!’ So I did. ‘Oh, was, Gott nein!’ he said. He understood that, but he wouldn’t go back. Eventually, the officer detailed another chap and me to take him back, so he was escorted there – one on each side and this chap staggering about and singing at the top of his voice. Well we got up to the German wire and I thought, ‘Well I don’t think I’ll go right into their trenches, they might not be as lenient as we are.’ Anyway we found a gap in the wire, headed him in the right direction and left him to it!"
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Full screen recommended.
"Christmas Truce of 1914"
"Digital Assets Will Be A Digital Disaster; FED Will Bankrupt You; New Home Sales Tank; Family Pets"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/23/21:
"Digital Assets Will Be A Digital Disaster; FED Will Bankrupt You;
New Home Sales Tank; Family Pets"
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! The Economy Is In MELTDOWN. The Worst Is Yet To Come"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/23/21:
"Alert! The Economy Is In MELTDOWN. The Worst Is Yet To Come"
A Christmas Musical Interlude: Placido Domingo and the Vienna Choir Boys, "Ave Maria"
Full screen recommended.
Placido Domingo and the Vienna Choir Boys
"Ave Maria", Composed By Franz Schubert
The original German words by boys choir and tenor.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.
Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
○
"Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"
"A Vision..."
"I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not - that none of us - are alone! I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope. But... that continues to be my wish."
- "Ellie Arroway", "Contact" by Carl Sagan.
"It's Like In The Great Stories..."
Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something."
Frodo: "What are we holding onto, Sam?"
Sam: "That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- Samwise Gamgee,
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
"If All Of This Seems Familiar, That Is Because We Have Seen It All Before…"
"If All Of This Seems Familiar,
That Is Because We Have Seen It All Before…"
by Michael Snyder
"It is often said that history repeats itself, but usually it doesn’t happen quite so quickly. If you are getting a sinking feeling because current events bear such a close resemblance to early 2020, you are definitely not alone. All over the globe, the Omicron variant is causing a wave of tremendous fear that is unlike anything that we have seen since the first half of last year. And based on the response so far, it appears that we haven’t learned much since then. We are witnessing so many of the exact same patterns play out, and that could have very important implications for the year ahead of us. Interestingly, many on social media are now reminding us that 2022 is pronounced “2020 too”, and that is certainly quite a depressing thought.
Do you remember all of those ominous projections that “the experts” were giving us back at the very start of the COVID pandemic? Well, it is happening again. Researchers at the University of Washington made headlines all over the world this week when they warned that there could be 140 million new COVID infections in the United States in January and February… "Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine revised its COVID-19 modeling to include updated information about the omicron variant. They found the U.S. may see a total of about 140 million new infections from Jan. 1 to March 1, 2022, peaking in late-January at about 2.8 million new daily infections."
Wow, that sounds really bad. But of course we have seen similar projections before, and every time they were dead wrong. And just like when the pandemic first began, New York City is the epicenter for this new wave of infections… "New York once again smashed COVID records on Wednesday, with the new Omicron variant blamed for an all-time high of 28,924 cases reported across the Empire State.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the numbers at a news conference Wednesday – the fifth day in the last six where New York has broken its prior COVID diagnosis records, and the sixth day in a row that there has been more than 20,000 cases across the state."
Doesn’t it seem odd that New York City just keeps setting new record after new record even though so many New Yorkers have been “fully vaccinated”? In fact, it has been reported that a whopping 85 percent of all New York City residents have received at least one injection. Is there someone out there that can explain to me what is going on?
Another parallel to the early days of the pandemic is that Bill Gates is starting to make lots of noise again. He says that he has canceled most of his holiday plans because of Omicron, and he is warning that the “worst part of the pandemic” could be right in front of us… "Bill Gates said he called off his holiday plans as the omicron variant ushers in what he predicts could be the “worst part of the pandemic.” He also predicted, however, that the current surge in COVID-19 cases could be over within months, and the pandemic itself may end next year “if we take the right steps.” “Just when it seemed like life would return to normal, we could be entering the worst part of the pandemic,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “Omicron will hit home for all of us. Close friends of mine now have it, and I’ve canceled most of my holiday plans.”
That is funny, because he originally told us that if we did everything that he was urging us to do that things would be much better by now. But guys like him will never admit that they were wrong.
Thanks to all of the fear that is being generated, we are starting to see major sporting events being canceled just like we did in early 2020. For example, the NHL has decided to “pause” their entire season… "The headlines on Monday night were stark, if unsurprising: The NHL was going to pause the 2021-22 season Wednesday, and resume after Christmas break, amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. This followed a flurry of team shutdowns that left a diminishing number of games on the schedule." In the aftermath, we’re left with several questions: How will teams get “unpaused”? Will there be a change in protocols? How does this impact the Olympics and All-Star Weekend?
And The Gator Bowl is in danger of not being played because Texas A&M decided to pull out of the game at the last minute… "Texas A&M will not participate in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl because of COVID-19 issues and season-ending injuries within the program, leaving Wake Forest without an opponent as officials try to find a replacement team, it was announced Wednesday. “It is unfortunate, but we just don’t have enough scholarship players available to field a team,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher said.
If Omicron continues to spread rapidly, will there soon be a tsunami of cancellations such as we witnessed during the early portion of last year? Let us hope not. Initially, Americans were being told that life would “return to normal” once everyone got their shots. But now health authorities are telling us that “boosters” are needed because immunity wanes “3 to 6 months” after the initial injections… "Breakthrough cases demonstrate how effective vaccines are and can also show how that protection changes over time. Immunity from initial vaccinations wanes 3 to 6 months later, health experts say, so boosters are crucial to fighting off the new variant."
If you keep complying, there is always going to be another injection for you to take for the rest of your life. And for many of you, “the rest of your life” is going to be a whole lot shorter than you originally thought.
There is so much fear in the air right now, and it appears to be completely unnecessary. In fact, a very large study just determined that Omicron appears to be much less dangerous than Delta is… "The real-world analysis, of more than 160,000 people, comes ahead of a similar UK Government report expected to show Britons are also less likely to be severely ill with the variant. Omicron sufferers were also 70 percent less likely to be admitted to ICU or put on a ventilator compared to those with Delta, according to the study led by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD)."
But of course our leaders are not going to be swayed by real scientific studies such as this. Instead, they are just going to keep smashing the panic button because that is what the “experts” are telling them to do. A fresh round of restrictions, mandates and lockdowns would be absolutely devastating for the global economy, and it would certainly set the stage for so many of the things that I have been warning about. Sadly, even though they have seen the damage that they have already caused, our politicians seem determined to create even more chaos.
Very dark times are now upon us, and I have a feeling that they are about to get even darker."
"We Learn Wisdom..."
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do;
and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”
- Samuel Smiles
Gerald Celente, "Markets Up, Omicron Fear Down. Will It Be A Happy New Year?"
Full screen recommended.
STRONG LANGUAGE ALERT!
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal":
"Markets Up, Omicron Fear Down. Will It Be A Happy New Year?"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"6 Million Face Evictions And Foreclosures As Rental Prices Rising To The Highest Level In Decades"
Full screen recommended.
"6 Million Face Evictions And Foreclosures As
Rental Prices Rising To The Highest Level In Decades"
by Epic Economist
"A devastating eviction crisis is rapidly worsening all around the country, and it is threatening to push millions of families out of their homes this holiday season. Even though there was a brief pause in evictions after the moratorium ended in September, that didn't happen because the number of filings had decreased, but because courts were extremely overwhelmed with a record backlog of unprocessed filings. Now, housing advocates are saying that the number of evictions has started to rise at an alarmingly high pace in many parts of the United States. Courts have just started to catch up on the backlog of eviction cases. The latest upsurge highlights the limits of federal emergency rental assistance in places where distribution remains slow and safety nets for tenants are incredibly weak. Soaring housing prices in many markets also are playing a role, as landlords rush to evict non-paying tenants to sell their properties at record prices.
Recent data released by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University has shown that eviction rates have been escalating in all of the 31 cities and six states where it collects data. Evictions in September jumped by 10.4 percent from August. In October, the month-to-month rate climbed to 38 percent. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, in November, the number of households claiming they weren’t confident in their ability to pay next month’s rent went up from about 5 million to 6.3 million in the latest data. The biggest problem is that government officials aren't assessing the severity of the problem. The federal government believes it has already done everything in its power to prevent an eviction tsunami. In fact, officials are truly convinced that the poorly distributed rental assistance program has effectively averted a disaster.
But the truth is that mass evictions didn't occur all at once because many courts were only running part-time due to mandates related to the health crisis, and they still have an enormous excess of cases to litigate and millions of hearings to make while the number of filings continues to pile up. Ben Martin, the senior researcher at Texas Housers, a nonprofit focused on housing issues, said that he was particularly disturbed by the initial commentaries issued by government officials after the moratorium ended, saying that "well, there wasn’t a tsunami so we don’t have an eviction crisis on our hands”. “That initial narrative was somewhat misleading. What we are seeing now is a reflection of reality, which is that evictions take time to work their way into and through the court system,” Martin stressed.
As we move towards the end of the year, there are plenty of signs that eviction cases will keep rising. With millions of children already homeless in America, housing advocates just released some shocking statistics suggesting that an additional 500,000 households with children are under threat of eviction this winter. While the number of homeless children in America is estimated at 1.6 million, many studies indicate the number could be far higher, as homeless statistics are often under-reported at the city, county, and state levels.
"When you’re struggling to pay rent or have an eviction notice hanging over you, the worry can be consuming," explains Polly Neate, chief executive of a homeless shelter. "Oftentimes, it’s impossible to hide it from your kids, even though these are adult fears no parents want their child to experience". "Millions of parents will spend sleepless nights this Christmas worrying about the eviction notices coming, where they will go, and if their next ‘home’ is going to be a gloomy hotel," Neate added, saying that her shelter's emergency helpline is receiving more calls about eviction than it did at the peak of the health crisis, as thousands of families fight to keep a roof over their heads.
To call it a disaster is an understatement. America's housing instability and eviction crisis are becoming a major national emergency that our leaders keep refusing to look at. Our housing crisis is simply catastrophic and we must treat it with seriousness before millions of hard-working Americans are pushed into a poverty spiral that's exceedingly difficult to recover fromThis is going to be a very difficult winter for many families across the country. Things have started to spin out of control, and we should all pay very close attention to the coming events because several challenges are still waiting for us."
"Back to Square One"
"Back to Square One"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"Do you have some sense that we’ve been in this place before? Another variant, another round of panics, more restrictions, models forecasting mass deaths, experts weighing in on all the things you must do, masks, masks, masks, exhortations from discredited experts demanding that you do things again even though they didn’t work the last time.
The great ghoul this time is: OMICRON! A tiny handful of deaths in the entire world have been attributed to it at one step removed. Cases of course are through the roof — and that is because there is a well-established and once-understood tradeoff within this family of viruses between their transmissibility and their severity. More “cases” tend toward fewer deaths.
Yes, health officials around the world have clearly said that it is not serious. It’s not even much of a thing. A cold. It killed no one in the country in which it was discovered. And yet still the whole world is freaking out. But there is no sense in trying to make sense these days. The weary world seems always ready for another round of panic. Nothing has ever really made sense, but now the complete senselessness is on hyperdrive.
Back to the Bad Old Days of 2020: Universities all over the Northeast have closed and gone back to Zoom classes. New York events are being canceled. Israel is blocking its citizens from traveling to some 10 countries, one of which is the U.S. Lockdowns are being imposed all over Europe along with ever more vicious enforcements of masks and vaccine passports. And this is with a vaccine that has been widely adopted and accepted in all the countries that are now locking down. The vaccinated seem especially susceptible to the variant, maybe. I say maybe because all of this is contingent on testing.
The vaccinated now are aware that they are not protected against contracting the virus or spreading it. It is no longer a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The virus does not seem to care that much about the vaccination.
Health authorities in Rhode Island are warning of impending disaster with overwhelmed hospitals and other facilities. This is because vast numbers have quit their jobs. Oh, but we are told this has nothing to do with the vaccine requirement. No, no. It’s because they found better job opportunities elsewhere.
Think about this. The staff and nurses 18 months ago were working like crazy and treated like heroes for exposing themselves to the virus. They obtained natural immunity. But to sell vaccines, the CDC and NIH don’t like to breathe a word about natural immunity. They act like it doesn’t exist. So they demanded that the whole staff get vaccinated on top of existing broad, safe and effective natural immunity.
Big Pharma’s Role: We’ve known about natural immunity for thousands of years. Now it is mostly denied or not spoken about. How can you account for that? Minds go immediately toward the power and influence of the pharmaceutical lobbies. From the points of view of doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, that’s an insult. It’s insulting enough to cause anyone to quit on the spot. So yes, many employees just began feeling demoralized. Here is where we stand and a look at why there is a crisis. Crisis upon crisis.
So yes, they created the health care crisis that they long predicted. And it’s not just Rhode Island. The ICUs are filling up but not necessarily from COVID. These are health problems generated by lockdowns. Cancer. Drug overdoses. Obesity. Broken immune systems.
The Devil Unleashed: For the first time since this crisis began in America in March 2020, I feel a loss of words, an inability to explain or even describe the world in which we live. We are on the precipice of disaster, with the Supreme Court only days away from deciding on the OSHA mandate that could permanently change life in America.
Starting on Jan. 5, 2022, the new terms of service will come into effect for Google, YouTube and Twitter. Millions of videos and accounts are likely to be deleted. These companies have clearly signed up to work for Fauci and company and the deep state generally. They will target their enemies and any thoughts that do not comport with the prevailing line.
Millions of people are now scrambling to find other means of communication: new email accounts, new video platforms, new chat systems, new social media platforms. But there are so many and none has anywhere near the reach of companies like the legacy large companies. So there is a kind of social diaspora taking place, clearly designed to frazzle and confound the enemy.
Many businesses are now fighting for their lives. CEOs of major airlines have pleaded to end the mask mandate that is so awful for their customers flying on their extremely clean planes. Fauci flat out says no. We must wear masks forever, he says. Who elected him? Why is he, of all people, the dictator of our businesses, communities and lives? And it all happened so quickly and shockingly.
The Markets: Finally, the markets have been hit recently, yet again. It’s inflation. It’s fear of lockdowns. It’s cancellations. It’s public panic, which now seems as intense as it was in the spring of 2020. It’s as if we have learned nothing.
We now have major voices such as Jeremy Faust of Harvard writing in his influential column: "Am I willing to give up life as we know it for another year or two? Not particularly (especially once all age groups are eligible for vaccines, which is not yet the case). But am I willing to disrupt certain aspects of life temporarily when necessary to achieve a clearly stated goal? Yes. The key is to define that goal and to implement a strategy that can deliver it. Nobody gets tired of winning. What we’re tired of is losing."
Forget your rights. Now people like Fauci are in charge. And they want to implement the same losing strategies that have already failed us. At what point do we say enough is enough? At some point, this disaster is going to wreck even the financial markets. Not yet, but at some point. Where is the safety in today’s world?
The idea of buying Bitcoin sounds like a good alternative and if civilization is collapsing around us, digital earnings are more useful than nothing. Others might prefer something more tangible: gold. But how much better would be the idea of freedom? That seems like the one word that one cannot say and the one solution no one in the ruling class is willing to consider. To them, freedom for us is the freedom to obey their orders."
"Benedicto"
"Benedicto"
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”
- Edward Abbey
"Fear Is A Childs Vice...
“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”
- Ernest Hemingway, "True at First Light”
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