Jim Kunstler, "You’ve Been Misinformed"

"You’ve Been Misinformed"

by Jim Kunstler

"Isn’t it obvious by now that pervasive dishonesty is the foremost crisis of many crises in Western Civ generally and American life in particular? All our authorities have made themselves false, lying their way into the broad collapse of confidence that drives the nation toward some culminating horror show of strife and loss.

The go-to lever of concerted mind-f**kery has been the term-of-art misinformation, applied especially to things and propositions that are truthful - thereby confounding the public’s ability to discern truth in anything, or to discover how they are being misled in matters of life and death. We’ve allowed the worst in human nature to disgrace ourselves. Satan, Father of Lies, is Western Civ’s paragon of disgrace, and so American life appears more and more Satanic and disgraceful.

All this was epitomized in the operation of Twitter, the cheerful little bluebird of social messaging which evolved in a very few years into an instrument of coercion, punishment, deception, and lying, until it became clear that Twitter’s misinformation was misinformation itself. Half the nation doesn’t believe anything it is told by those in authority and the other half revels in its reckless abuse of authority.

And so, it’s refreshing to see one Elon Musk act to seize control of this Satanic vector of disgrace. Mr. Musk appears motivated to defeat the culture of lying by restoring open debate in the ubiquitous online public arena. It’s a heroic deed. But, you see, it’s not merely Twitter’s management or its biggest shareholders that Mr. Musk is messing with, but malign forces in the US government, which have surreptitiously taken control of Twitter and other social media to work its will on events. If you don’t know that Twitter, Facebook, and Google are proxies serving the US Intel Community, then you have not been paying attention.

Using Twitter to impose that culture of pervasive dishonesty in public chatter is what gave permission for all others to follow the script. Medicine has succeeded completely in disgracing and destroying itself by lying about everything connected to Covid-19, from its origins, to the insanely outlawed treatments for it, to the harmful actions of the vaccines, to the hidden data that might tell us the results of all that lying. Twitter set the tone for that with its censorship policies. Anyone who suggested that lockdowns, masking, remdesivir protocols, and vaccine mandates violated common decency was tossed out of the arena, often with added punishment of losing a career, a professional license, a livelihood, and having to endure the betrayal of colleagues cowed into silence.

Twitter also enabled the suicide of higher education, which has succumbed to a plague of Jacobin craziness that would embarrass the inmates of an old-time locked ward. The failure of authority on campus is cosmic. Can you name a single college president who has raised a voice against such manifest idiocy as men competing in women’s sports, the invention of ersatz fields of study, the re-segregation of dormitories and graduation ceremonies, the shouting down of invited lecturers, the persecution of free-thinking faculty, the kangaroo courts for sex disputes, and a hundred other violations of intellect and decency?

All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse.

Mighty forces are marshalling to prevent Elon Musk from buying up Twitter stock and taking the company private. Black Rock, Vanguard, the prince regent of Saudi Arabia are all principal stockholders in Twitter, with gazillions in capital to theoretically match and overcome Mr. Musk’s moves. Meanwhile, the Tesla boss maintains a prankish self-confidence in this exploit, offering cryptically comic gibes to a news media that is openly vested in opposing him. You have to suppose that he’s gamed out the gamble. He’s looking like someone who has dealt out a hand of cards aiming to shoot-the-moon.

The prospect of an open public arena for ideas is exhilarating all of a sudden, considering how the information-stream got hijacked in service to the wicked. It’s fun to see their tortured casuistry as they plead for “content moderation” - the phrase du jour for censorship, as if it were a good thing rather than the opposite of anything good. This feels like the beginning of something positive after a long siege political degeneracy. Let the sunshine in to disinfect the arena. Cast the Demons back into darkness. You go, Elon!"

- https://kunstler.com/

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"I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies"

"I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies"

by Jim Rickards

"All wars are full of lies. Winston Churchill famously said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

We accept that idea broadly. Secret invasion plans should be closely held. The identities of spies must be kept under wraps. New weapons and defensive tools should not be revealed because enemies will be alerted to their potential and begin offensive workarounds.

Still, just because the government has legitimate reasons to deceive the public in wartime does not mean that citizens don’t have a duty to find the truth to the extent they can. The Russian-Ukraine kinetic war and the broader U.S.-Russian economic war are full of more lies than any public events I’ve seen in my lifetime including Vietnam, Watergate and the Iraq War. That’s how big the lies are.

The Bodyguard of Lies: Here’s the official U.S. narrative as echoed by the mainstream media: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, Putin’s three-day blitzkrieg of Kyiv has failed, Russian forces are bogged down and valiant Ukrainian troops are putting up a powerful defense and regaining lost ground with the help of weapons from NATO. In this version, President Zelenskyy is the new Churchill rallying patriots against an evil dictator. All of that is either entirely or mostly false.

Here’s the real story: Russia’s invasion is the end result of 14 years of provocation by the West, including repeated declarations that Ukraine will join NATO and a U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2014 that displaced a pro-Russian president.

Russia never planned a blitzkrieg on Kyiv. That’s a Western invention intended to make Putin look like a failure. In fact, Russia is slowly and methodically taking territory in the south and east of Ukraine in order to control the seacoasts, eliminate pro-fascist elements in Mariupol and establish pro-Russian autonomous zones in Donbas.

Churchill? Really? A full assault on Kyiv, if it ever comes, is last on the list. Ukraine may reoccupy a village here and there, but they’re losing ground in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Melitopol, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and surrounding areas. Moreover, Zelenskyy is no Churchill. He’s succeeded in presenting himself as a strong wartime leader, standing up to the big, bad Putin. But in reality, he’s a corrupt oligarch with millions of dollars hidden offshore. His acting skills have enhanced his propaganda efforts, but it doesn’t take much training to see how phony he is.

Innocent civilians, including women and children, are dying under his failed leadership and inability to come to terms with Putin before the invasion began. In a nutshell, Zelenskyy bet on support from Biden and the West and lost. There is ample evidence from numerous sources to support this analysis. Some of the best sources come from Switzerland, where military experts are infuriated that traditional Swiss neutrality has been cast aside.

Most tellingly, Pentagon leaks say the same thing. The story from inside the Pentagon is that Putin is not acting recklessly but is being patient and methodical. It also says that, despite some civilian casualties, Putin is actually using a restrained approach. Furthermore, there are no signs he is preparing for the use of chemical or biological weapons.

So what about the economic sanctions? Are they working?

The Most Severe Sanctions in History: Payments in and out of Russia have been blocked. The Central Bank of Russia has been banned from the global dollar payments systems. The same is true for the 10 largest Russian banks and a long list of oligarchs and Russian government officials.

Accounts of Russian targets in Western banks have been frozen. Exports of critical technology and high-tech equipment to Russia have been banned. U.S. and European airspace has been closed to Russian airlines. Secondary sanctions have been imposed so that if another nation like China sells goods to Russia made with U.S. technology or machines, that nation will be punished also. The list goes on.

Economic sanctions of these kinds sound powerful when they’re announced and do have some impact. But in the long run they never work. In the end, the costs are real but the effects of the sanctions are nil. It’s a lose-lose proposition.

Sanctions Against Oligarchs Are Doing Putin a Favor: Some losses are incurred by those whose accounts are frozen or whose businesses are handicapped. A few Russian oligarchs may lose their yachts, but guess what? Putin doesn’t like the oligarchs anyway. We’re actually doing Putin a favor by clipping the oligarchs’ wings. Putin’s power comes from the military and security services, not the oligarchs.

Tellingly, the strategic goals that justified the sanctions are never achieved. At most, they are slowed down temporarily. It’s just a matter of time before the affected parties devise workarounds to the sanctions.

The bottom line is Russia has not stood still. Russian exports of critical strategic metals such as nickel, titanium, palladium and aluminum have been cut off. Russian (and Ukrainian) wheat and other grains have also been cut off. This will result in starvation in certain parts of the world and massive food price inflation everywhere. Given the extent of these sanctions and the retaliation, the damage to world trade, supply chains and even the availability of goods will be massive.

But what about the strategic aims of the sanctions?

Sanctions Won’t Stop the Ukrainian War: Here, the sanctions are a complete failure. They have had zero impact on Russian advances on the battlefield and Russian goals in Ukraine. In fact, Putin has proved to be a master chess player as he runs rings around the sanctions.

When the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian banks, the value of the ruble collapsed. Still, oil and natural gas exports from Russia were allowed because Europe is dependent on them and the world is facing an energy shortage independent of the war in Ukraine. Oil and natural gas are paid for in dollars. In a masterpiece of judo, Putin is now demanding that Russian oil and natural gas bought by states imposing sanctions be paid for in rubles. This mystified many. If Russia needs dollars (they do), why be paid in rubles?

The answer is that the only way for Europe to get rubles quickly is to buy them from the Central Bank of Russia using dollars. Under Putin’s plan, Russia still gets the dollars, still sells oil and natural gas but he has the added benefit of making rubles stronger because Europe has to buy them to pay for the energy exports. Cutting off Russian exports of oil and natural gas is pointless because Russia will just sell the same energy to China and India. But the price will go up. It’s a world market, after all.

Putin’s Many Moves Ahead of Biden: This is how judo works. You use your enemy’s power against him by avoiding the main attack and turning the tables. Putin’s a judo expert in real life and he just demonstrated that he can practice it in economic warfare. The West will now be engaged in propping up the ruble after they did so much to destroy it. Putin thinks many moves ahead on the chessboard while Biden is playing pin the tail on the donkey, blindfolded.

Sanctions ultimately harm everyday citizens and consumers most. Inflation is surging in Russia and the United States because of the sanctions. But the pain on the American people has only begun. It’s about to get much worse. U.S. consumers and investors will suffer as prices soar, growth lags and stocks collapse.

This is all unpleasant news for Western warmongers. But it’s critical to know what’s actually going on in the chaos to come. The best information is that the war in Ukraine will last longer than most expect, will produce supply chain disruptions and will amplify the inflation that’s already present. In the end, Putin will prevail in Ukraine, while the Ukrainian people and Western consumers will pay the heaviest price."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

"Massive Price Increases! When Will It End? - What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 4/15/22:

"Massive Price Increases! When Will It End? - What's Next?"

"In today's vlog we are noticing massive price increases! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

"The Party is Over and the Music is About to Stop"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 4/15/22:

"The Party is Over and the Music is About to Stop"

"From one day to the next, there’s more economic news that concerns all of us. From different countries raising interest rates to our Fed's indecision. The global economy is getting so much worse before our eyes."

"How It Really Is"

"Robert Kiyosaki Last Warning: 50% Of American People Are Going To Be Wiped Out"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, "Robert Kiyosaki Last Warning: 

50% Of American People Are Going To Be Wiped Out"

"Robert Kiyosaki warns about the rising inflation, prices are skyrocketing, people can't afford the lifestyle they've used to. Prepare for the worst!"

"Robert T. Kiyosaki is an American businessman and author. Kiyosaki is the founder of Rich Global LLC and the Rich Dad Company, author of the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" famous book that offers personal finance education to help you learn about cash flow, real estate, investing, and business building."

"The Great Supply Chain Collapse To Continue Into 2023"

Full screen recommended.

"The Great Supply Chain Collapse To Continue Into 2023"

by Epic Economist

"Chaos and panic have become commonplace across global supply chains. At this point, disruptions were supposed to be easing. Instead, experts say that problems are getting bigger and the situation is getting dramatically worse. What they’re witnessing right now is the combination of two years of continued breakdowns in addition to the bottlenecks caused by the Russia and Ukraine crisis, a new round of lockdowns in China, and record congestion at US ports. We’re being warned that in the best-case scenario, the global supply chain nightmare is going to extend until 2023. But lots of things can go wrong until then, so we should all start preparing for the worse.

Over the past 24 months, we have seen shortages of everything from lumber to fertilizer to semiconductors, which have resulted in price increases for everything from homes to appliances to cars, and even food staples. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has only exacerbated the systemic failures supply chains were already experiencing, and also created a rush for oil and wheat on global markets. Despite the promises made by global leaders in 2021, like Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell who said that supply-chain disruptions and inflation would be "transitory," the glitches in the system are becoming more frequent instead of going away, and those same leaders are now scrambling to address the relentless surge in consumer prices.

To make things even worse, in China, issues that were only seen before during the peak of the health crisis in 2020 are emerging once again. Thousands of factories are being shut down, container ships are stuck at sea while cargo piles up on land, and blank sailings are making a comeback as the country faces its biggest virus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with strict lockdowns and quarantine measures halting the delivery of goods in and out of the nation.

That’s leaving logistics operators extremely worried that like in 2020, today’s paralyzed supply chains will suffer from widespread chaos once lockdowns are lifted and the backlog of goods in Chinese factories and warehouses will turn into a flood of products bound for the US and many other countries all over the world.

On top of the new wave of infection cases in China, Toll Group Managing Director Thomas Knudsen sees a combination of factors in play, which are likely to take the supply chain crisis to a whole new level. That includes persistent congestion on the US west coast and a possibility of a port labor strike, and a shortage of new container capacity coming into the market, which will, in turn, prolong disruption and keep shipping rates at record highs.

Talking about how long the disruptions are expected to continue, Knudsen said: “If you're optimistic, another 12 months, if you're not, it could be all of 2023. I'm sure rates will remain elevated, and you'll keep on not being able to rely on a seamless supply chain”.

In short, that means our supply chains are in a very risky position. And the US's enormous reliance on exports from other nations is going to aggravate shortages and hit domestic production. The inflationary spiral we’re witnessing will continue to escalate until we have a full-blown nightmare on our hands. Making ends meet is going to become increasingly harder than already is, and the shortages and the price hikes are just going to escalate in the months ahead."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"This Ends Badly, Housing Crash Worse Than 2008; Escaping California; Retail Sales Slammed"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/14/22:

"This Ends Badly, Housing Crash Worse Than 2008; 

Escaping California; Retail Sales Slammed"

“A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit”

“A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit”

by Brian Maher

“Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” says Matthew - “but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” Today we lower our ax upon the root of America’s corrupt money tree… and expose its evil fruit… the fiat dollar.

You may be aware of the corruption. If you are a regular reader you are likely aware of the corruption. Yet a man must occasionally recall himself to obvious truths. The nose upon his face is so obvious he scarcely notices the protuberance. It would do him well to remember at times.

Turn now to the $20 bill nesting within your wallet. It is an asset to you, its holder. It represents a legal claim upon goods and services. But this $20 bill of yours lives a dual existence - one seen - one unseen. That is because your $20 asset is at once a $20 liability. You see the asset. You do not see the liability.

Today All Money Is Debt: All money in present circulation - all bills, coins, all checking and savings deposits, the lot of it - was borrowed into existence. That is, all money in existence represents a debt… taken sometime… somewhere… by someone. That debt may not be your debt. But it is someone’s debt. This is the inner secret of the lovely $20 bill within your wallet.

Poor Andrew Jackson: Imagine poor Andrew Jackson fuming in his bleak Tennessee grave. Imagine how he spins and spins and spins. For this is the man who shuttered the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 - the central bank - and retired the national debt for the first and only occasion in history. And here is Old Hickory with his hawkish visage fronting the debt-created $20 bill. He has been dragooned posthumously into the very banking system he loathed.

Let us now ponder the staggering realities of today’s debt-based money…

$88 Trillion Into Thin Air: Recall, all money constitutes an expression of debt. The asset merely represents the reverse side of the liability. We must therefore conclude: If all dollar-based debt were retired - all $88 trillion, public and private - each dollar would vanish into the nonexistence whence it came.

Can you imagine it? Now lift your jaw from the floor. Now rediscover your footing. Now recover your shaken wits. Here we do not speculate. We read directly from the book…

The Fed’s Open Confession: Mr. Marriner Eccles bossed the Federal Reserve in May 1941. At that time he sat down in front of the House Committee on Banking and Currency. A bewildered congressman - Patman, by name - asked Eccles how the Federal Reserve had acquired the funds to purchase $2 billion of Treasury bonds in 1933. Our minions have fished up this exchange from the Congressional Record:

"ECCLES: We created it.

PATMAN: Out of what?

ECCLES: Out of the right to issue credit money.

PATMAN: And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government’s credit.

ECCLES: That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money."

“The Tragic Absurdity of Our Hopeless Situation Is Almost Incredible”: Did Mr. Eccles botch the facts? He did not. Here is the credit manager of the Federal Reserve’s Atlanta outpost, Mr. Robert Hemphill: "If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible - but there it is." There it is indeed.

“All Money Would Disappear”: Mr. G. Edward Griffin is the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island." That creature is of course the Federal Reserve. Its Dr. Frankensteins assembled on Georgia’s Jekyll Island in 1910 to plot its birth. Here Griffin gets in back of Messieurs Eccles and Hemphill: "It is difficult for Americans to come to grips with the fact that their total money supply is backed by nothing but debt, and it is even more mind-boggling to visualize that, if everyone paid back all that was borrowed, there would be no money left in existence. That’s right, there would be not one penny in circulation - all coins and all paper currency would be returned to bank vaults - and there would be not one dollar in anyone’s checking account. In short, all money would disappear…"

Every dollar that exists today, either in the form of currency, checkbook money or even credit card money - in other words, our entire money supply - exists only because it was borrowed by someone; perhaps not you, but someone. Let us now strike at the root of today’s corrupt money tree…

Don’t Forget About the Interest: A bank loans a man $10,000. He must repay the $10,000 at a future date - with a bit of interest into the bargain. Assume the $10,000 comes tethered to a 5% rate of interest. Assume further the bankman thunders at his door five years hence, calling in his loan. The debtor must hand the fellow $12,762.74 That is, the principal plus the $2,762.74 in accumulated interest.

Where will this sap secure the $2,762.74 to service the interest? The larger question: Must the Federal Reserve issue increasing quantities of money to service all outstanding debt - $88 trillion in the case of the United States? Mr. Griffin: "One of the most perplexing questions associated with this process is “Where does the money come from to pay the interest?” If you borrow $10,000 from a bank at 9%, you owe $10,900. But the bank only manufactures $10,000 for the loan. It would seem, therefore, that there is no way that you - and all others with similar loans - can possibly pay off your indebtedness.

The amount of money put into circulation just isn’t enough to cover the total debt, including interest. This has led some to the conclusion that it is necessary for you to borrow the $900 for the interest, and that, in turn, leads to still more interest. The assumption is that the more we borrow, the more we have to borrow, and that debt based on fiat money is a never-ending spiral leading inexorably to more and more debt."

This is a partial truth. It is true that there is not enough money created to include the interest, but it is a fallacy that the only way to pay it back is to borrow still more. A partial truth? What is the entire truth, sir?

The Exchange Value of Labor: “The assumption fails to take into account the exchange value of labor.” Please elaborate: "Let us assume that you pay back your $10,000 loan at the rate of approximately $900 per month and that about $80 of that represents interest. You realize you are hard-pressed to make your payments so you decide to take on a part-time job…

The decision then is made to have the bank’s floors waxed once a week. You respond to the ad in the paper and are hired at $80 per month to do the job. The result is that you earn the money to pay the interest on your loan, and - this is the point - the money you receive is the same money which you previously had paid. As long as you perform labor for the bank each month, the same dollars go into the bank as interest, then out the revolving door as your wages and then back into the bank as loan repayment."

Just so. You serve the interest by serving your master. But what if you decline to wax the bank’s floors, if you fail to serve your master? It is not necessary that you work directly for the bank. No matter where you earn the money, its origin was a bank and its ultimate destination is a bank. The loop through which it travels can be large or small, but the fact remains all interest is paid eventually by human effort.

Modern Serfdom: What - then - are we to conclude from the foregoing? The significance of that fact is even more startling than the assumption that not enough money is created to pay back the interest. It is that the total of this human effort ultimately is for the benefit of those who create fiat money. It is a form of modern serfdom in which the great mass of society works as indentured servants to a ruling class of financial nobility.

This conclusion appalls us. Yet we hazard Mr. Griffin draws a fair overall sketch. And so this question: Shall we strike the chains of bondage from our wrists? That is, should we all repay each dollar we owe - all $88 trillion? Should we call in all money from circulation?

The question is theoretical, of course. We can no more afford to break the chains of debt than we can afford to break our necks. They will snap once they can no longer endure the relentless weight pressing upon them. Not because we choose to snap them. On that bright and glorious day, however distant, we shall finally be free… Free - without one penny to our name."

- dailyreckoning.com

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Full screen recommended.

Strong Language Alert!

Gerald Celente, 4/14/22:

"Trends In The News"

- https://trendsresearch.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The 10yr Yield Jumps! Risk In The Market Is Rising. This Is What You Need To Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/14/22:

"The 10yr Yield Jumps! Risk In The Market Is Rising. 

This Is What You Need To Know Now"

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"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."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150513.html

"Something Like Reverence..."

“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”

- Scott Russell Sanders

"Sometime In Your Life..."

"Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even."

- Daniel Berrigan

The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”, "We Were Made For 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;

May 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”

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by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to

TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."

- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"

“My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.”

- https://www.davidpaulkirkpatrick.com/

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“Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Jungian psychiatrist and post trauma recovery specialist, writes this to social activists. Estes is perhaps most famous for her book, "Women Who Run With the Wolves." This letter appears, in part, on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ blog. The date of the original letter is unknown.

"Even This Was A Lie..."

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie – that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all. But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”

- Lauren Oliver

"The Return of the Hawks"

"A person who strongly supports or promotes a war 

or warlike policies but who has never served in the military."

They talk all this tough guy stuff but never quite get to serve themselves...

But how quickly they'll send your child to die.

- CP, Veteran, US Marine Corps

"The Return of the Hawks"

by Sohrab Ahmari

"The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting 

each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."

- Edward Abbey

"Liberal hawks are flying high once more, talons extended for the hunt. For weeks now, Javelins, NLAWs, and other “defensive” arms have been flooding Ukraine, courtesy not just of the Pentagon, but good liberals and social democrats in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon, Madrid, and elsewhere. Hawks dominate TV news and major editorial pages on both sides of the Atlantic, and their propaganda multiplies online, aided by friends in Silicon Valley.

A NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine would lead to a direct and possibly apocalyptic confrontation with nuclear Russia. Nonetheless, some hawks continue to press for it. When even The Guardian publishes claims that a NFZ “shouldn’t be off the table,” it becomes clear that a deep consensus is in formation. Judging by some polls, broad majorities in the West favor a perilously escalatory response to Vladimir Putin’s misbegotten invasion.

At home, war fever manifests in sordid expressions of Russophobia: attacks against Russian businesses, the effective “cancellation” of Russia’s literary and philosophical masters, the firing of Russian artists from Western orchestras and operas. Anyone who dares question the prudence of escalation, or the wisdom and justice of US and NATO policy toward Moscow, faces the usual censure and censorship so characteristic of the “open society.”

In short: It feels like 2002-2003 all over again. That was when Western opinion, with precious few exceptions, cheered Washington as it bombarded Afghanistan and Iraq with democracy. The project’s failure was already apparent toward the end of George W. Bush’s first term, as the Iraqi insurgency hardened and “Fallujah” became synonymous with the grinding brutality of America’s post-9/11 wars. Yet it would take much longer for members of the interventionist uniparty to accept this reality; some never did.

The consequences of those years are familiar enough: hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans and thousands of allied service members killed; ethnic and sectarian wars; statelessness and terror; mass dislocation and migration; warlordism and bacha bazi and a booming opium trade. The dénouement came just a few months ago, when the Taliban dealt a humiliating blow to the liberal imperium, punctuating these two decades of disastrous adventurism. President Biden ignored the hawks’ spluttering—and pulled the plug on the “good war.”

Yet it is springtime again for the “democracy” export industry: for their governmental operatives (Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, ex-Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul), institutions (National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House), and pet theorists (Bernard-Henri Lévy, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Diamond). As for media organs, the hawks’ takeover of mainstream, left-of-center outlets is so thorough as to render the old neoconservative bastions almost superfluous.

How did they pull off this astonishing comeback? One reason is that few of the politicians and pundits who promoted the regime-change wars paid a serious price. Fukuyama published a book-length reassessment in 2007. But penitent hawks were the exception, unreconstructed ones the norm. Even Fukuyama has now re-emerged as something of a hard-line liberal enforcer, overseeing a blog dedicated to fending off challenges to Democracy, Inc.

More typical is Nuland, whose résumé is proof that the existence of the American uniparty is no conspiracy theory - but a plain fact. Launching her career in the Clinton administration, she went on to advise Dick Cheney during the early Iraq War before being dispatched to Brussels as NATO ambassador in the second Bush term, followed by stints as State Department spokeswoman and assistant secretary of state under Obama. Now she is Biden’s pointwoman on Ukraine. In the in-between years - notice which administration she didn’t work for? - Nuland retreated to a think-tank redoubt, at Brookings, where her husband, Robert Kagan, the uber-hawk historian and adviser to the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign, is also a fellow. Partisan differences mean nothing in these circles. What matters is commitment to Democracy, Inc.

“Partisan differences mean nothing in these circles.” To see such figures racking up sinecures and esteem, you wouldn’t know that they presided over an epochal fiasco, a supermassive black hole of imperial hubris and nitwitted idealism that swallowed entire nations, while weakening the United States. If some other state acted as Washington and its allies did under the hawks’ leadership - violating sovereignty willy-nilly, sowing chaos and civil war - the hawks would label that state “rogue” and seek regime change.

If the liberal West were an effective empire - or America a robust democratic republic—people like Nuland wouldn’t go from strength to strength. Yet they do. Following her role in the Benghazi debacle, which earned a gentle senatorial knuckle-rapping, Nuland in 2013 went down to Maidan Square to personally supervise the velvet revolution. The Ukrainians were promised integration, Westernization, NATO-ization - things Nuland and her bosses knew would raise blood pressures in the Kremlin, no matter who sat on the Russian throne. And here we are.

Fact is, Democracy, Inc. works concertedly to see off potential threats. In the aftermath of Trump’s election, for example, men like Carl Gershman, then head of the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House boss Michael J. Abramowitz convened defend-democracy meetings on both sides of the Atlantic. I know, because I was asked to participate as a writer with hawkish sympathies I have since renounced.

The goal, according to the formal documents: to counter threats to “our broad system of liberty from outside our borders and from within.” The external threat emanated mainly from the Kremlin, which many of the attendees believed had installed Trump in the Oval Office; some no doubt still believe it. The internal threat was more or less understood to be Trump himself and his allies, as well as “the rapid rise of digital communication, [which] has posed unique challenges for democracy, including the viral spread of fake news.”

This all sounds innocuous until you realize that by “democracy,” Democracy, Inc. means the liberal Imperium, at home and abroad. And “authoritarianism” refers to Trumpism and similar ballot-box movements across the Atlantic channeling popular discontent with the Imperium. At the time, it puzzled me why one of Google’s main political men, ex-Bush official Scott Carpenter, was ubiquitous at these gatherings. It takes on a more sinister aspect in light of the Big Tech censorship regime that has since gagged everyone from congressional critics of mandatory masking to a former commander-in-chief of the United States.

Half a decade later, in response to the Russian invasion, the coalition organized by Gershman, et al., published a statement urging outsiders to “trust only official sources/of official Ukrainian institutions (national army, president, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, etc).” Nuance, complexity, context, hearing the other side - such things impede liberal interventionism’s grammar of assent. The 2003 déjà vu you’re experiencing is carefully manufactured."

- https://compactmag.com/article/

The Daily "Near You?"

Tucson, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Stocking Up At Kroger Before The Prices Increase Again! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 4/14/22:

"Stocking Up At Kroger Before The Prices Increase Again! What's Next?"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are stocking up on items before the next round of price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

"A Storm is Coming to the Banks and Real Estate"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 4/14/22:

"A Storm is Coming to the Banks and Real Estate"

"Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Bank just announced that he feels that a storm is coming to banking. This is not going to be a storm, this is going to be a hurricane. Banks are going to be destroyed as a result of the higher interest-rates. This will also kill the entire real estate market."

○

Related, highly recommended:

"David Stockman: The Coming 'Biblical' Stock Market Crash"

Gregory Mannarino, "The Economy Continues To Crater- Be Ready For What Is Coming"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/14/22:

"The Economy Continues To Crater- 

Be Ready For What Is Coming"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

Related, highly recommended:

"Yes, It Is Different This Time"

Bill Bonner, "Is Inflation Beaten?"

"Is Inflation Beaten?"

by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina -  "March numbers show producer prices rising at an 11.2% rate. It was the biggest jump in prices since the data series began in November 2010. At that pace, (to give you a hint about where this is headed) the real value of the government’s $30 trillion trash pile of debt will be reduced by $3 trillion this year. And the money shufflers in Washington get to keep on shuffling the cash to their friends, clients... and most important… to themselves.

It’s an ill wind that blows no one good. And as we will see, maybe not everyone wants to ‘whip inflation now.’ But wait… maybe the fight is already over. Is this the ‘peak’ for this round of inflation? MarketWatch is on the story: "Inflation may have peaked in March and there could be some relief on the way, but the U.S. central bank must press ahead with a series of hikes of its benchmark interest rate, said Fed Gov. Christopher Waller on Wednesday. “I’m forecasting that this is pretty much the peak, it is going to start to come back down,” Waller said, in an interview on CNBC."

Higher market interest rates should start to take a bite out of demand, and oil prices have already retreated after spiking when Russia invaded Ukraine, he noted. Inflation hit an 8.5% annual rate in March, the fastest pace since 1981. At the same time, core inflation - excluding food and energy - came in softer than expected in March. Because the core rate is seen as a good predictor of future inflation, some economists have started to talk about a peak of inflation.

A Faux Retreat: Like everything in the world of finance, inflation can be a trickster. In the early ‘70s, the ‘core’ reading for inflation rose over 10%. Then, it retreated… back to 6%. ‘Inflation is beaten,’ said the experts. But inflation wasn’t beaten in 1975. It was just a tactical retreat, not a rout. It backed off, shilly shallied for three years… and then attacked again, this time going up to 13% in 1979.

Responding to the assault, in 1980, Paul Volcker not only took away the punchbowl; he replaced it with the strongest coffee Americans had ever had – a Fed Funds rate that bumped up to 20% and tasted like Draino. Stocks gagged. Unemployment rose. Politicians howled. And the inflation rate went down.

But Jerome Powell is no Volcker. 2022 is not 1979. The Fed’s current one-half of one percent lending rate is a long way from 20%. And 1979’s federal debt – $827 billion – was peanuts compared to today’s $30 trillion. So we wouldn’t buy any long term bonds just yet. As always, there’s more to the story – the important part. Back then, Paul Volcker meant business. He actually wanted to bring inflation under control. Today, Jerome Powell? Maybe not.

The feds appear to be hopelessly dim. Dysfunctional. Incompetent. But could they really be as dumb as they seem? After all, they are still able to front-run the stock market.

We’ve been predicting a rise in consumer prices for years. It is an obvious consequence of money printing. But the Fed governors act like Beavis and Butt-Head with a bad case of cooties. They can’t imagine how they got it. And yet, they ‘printed’ up $8 trillion in extra cash since 1999. The biggest spurt – $4 trillion worth – came in a single 18-month period after March 2020. To this tsunami of ‘demand,’ the feds also weighed in on the ‘supply’ side – shutting down large portions of the economy, thinking it would make the Covid go away. And now they are squeezing the supply side with sanctions on one of the largest oil exporters in the world. Consumer prices had little choice; they had to go up.

Overshooting the Mark: A year ago, the decline of the dollar was about the safest bet on Wall Street. The Fed can push up the price of stocks. It can push down the price of credit. And it can finance whatever loopy wars and domestic boondoggles the feds come up with next. But only by printing more dollars. And as the quantity goes up, the quality (the value) necessarily suffers. That’s why selling the dollar is on the short side of our Trade of the Decade. Whatever else may happen, the decline of the greenback is likely to continue.

All of this was so obvious, you had to be paid not to see it coming, which those Ph.Ds who work at the Federal Reserve apparently were. As recently as 2 years ago, they were still saying that inflation was too low. How they knew precisely how much prices should rise or fall has never been satisfactorily explained; but that’s the way it was.

Then, they said inflation might show up eventually… and it would be a good thing. The Fed would allow it to ‘overshoot’ its 2% target, helping to make up for years of “lowflation.” But the inflation readings soon did ‘overshoot’… like a pilot who aims for LAX and mistakenly lands on the moon. The Fed heads said not to worry; the surprisingly big inflation numbers were just ‘transitory.’

Finally, only about two months ago, Jerome Powell hemmed and hawed, saying that maybe ‘transitory’ meant different things to different people; he then explained that the Fed was indeed reacting to the threat with a 0.25% rate increase. About two weeks later, the Fed chief must have realized that people were laughing at him. His new policy left the Fed Funds rate far below inflation – at MINUS 7.5%, inflation adjusted. It made him look like the Neville Chamberlain of inflation fighters.

It was then that he put a cigar between his teeth and vowed to fight inflation ‘on the beaches... in the streets…’ etc… with a 0.50% hike next month. Based on this week’s figures, that will leave the key rate at MINUS 7.7%.

You can think what you want, dear reader. As for us, this still looks a lot more like appeasement than confrontation. And we suspect that there’s a reason for it that goes far beyond incompetence. Nobody can be that incompetent."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

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Related:

"Shadow Stats 'Corrected' inflation at 17.15% – 

STEEPEST IN 75 YEARS!"

"How It Really Is"

"Leaving California For The South, I'm Done; Massive Store Closures; Spending Money Like Crazy"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/13/22:

"Leaving California For The South, I'm Done; 

Massive Store Closures; Spending Money Like Crazy"

"20 Signs That American Families Are Being Economically Destroyed"

Full screen recommended.

"20 Signs That American Families Are Being Economically Destroyed"

by Epic Economist

"The systematic destruction of the American way of life is happening all around us. But still, most part of our population has no idea what is happening. Once upon a time in America, if you worked hard and managed your spending, you could support a middle-class lifestyle for your entire family with one good-paying job, even if you only had a high school education. We can't say that things were perfect, but back then almost everyone in the country was able to take care of themselves without the need for government assistance. We worked hard, we played hard, and our seemingly boundless prosperity was inspiring for many other economies around the world.

But things started to go downhill over the past few decades. We started to consume far more wealth than we produced, we shipped about 50 million good-paying jobs to foreign countries, we accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and we kept voting for politicians that did not care at all about the long-term future of this nation.

Today, dependence on the government is at an all-time high, and that leaves millions of Americans in a very vulnerable position because we're at the precipice of the next great economic recession. Inequality is soaring. All of the gains from economic growth over the last half-century went to the top one percent of income earners, and incomes in the bottom half of the U.S. income distribution have actually declined when adjusted to the current inflation levels. Kaitlyn Henderson, senior research adviser at Oxfam America, highlighted that "it's shameful that at a time when many US companies are boasting record profits, some of the hardest working people in this country - especially people who keep our economy and society functioning - are struggling to get by and falling behind."

On the same note, according to Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit organization that buys consumer debt from healthcare providers or aggregators for pennies on the dollar, “The system is rigged against the American worker. Medical debt is uniquely American and it’s a by-product of the broken financing of our healthcare system. The majority of medical debt is owned by people who don’t have the money to pay for it,” Sesso explained.

These are incredibly hard times for millions of us - and as opposed to what some say, most people are not in such distressing situations because they want to. Rather, they are victims of our long-term economic decline. The downfall of our system has just begun, and the next recession is going to unleash widespread financial suffering in our country. As we enter that time, we will need a whole lot more empathy and compassion than we are exhibiting right now. Everything is falling apart at the seams in our nation, and life in America is about to change in an irreversible manner. The numbers we're about to share with you are staggering, and you probably fit into one of these categories or faced some of these challenges yourself. Here are 20 Signs That American Families Are Being Economically Destroyed."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"If It Feels Like You’re Being Manipulated, It’s Because You Are"

"If It Feels Like You’re Being Manipulated, 

It’s Because You Are"

by Caitlin Johnstone

"If you’ve got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.

If you feel like there’s been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what’s going on with this war, it’s because that’s exactly what has been happening.

If you can’t recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it’s because you haven’t.

If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it’s because it is.

If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it’s because that is indeed the case.

If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russiagate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we’re seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it’s because it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

If it seems weird to you that so many self-styled leftists are responding to this war by fanatically supporting the extremely dangerous unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, that’s because it is weird. Really, really, really weird.

If it seems a bit hypocritical to you that the empire is blasting us in the face all day with narratives alleging Russian war crimes while that same empire is imprisoning a journalist for exposing its war crimes, that’s because it absolutely is hypocritical.

If something looks wrong about the fact that we’re about to watch a judge sign off on Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States for practicing journalism while that same United States keeps pushing out narratives about the need to protect Ukraine’s freedom and democracy, that’s because it should.

If you’re beginning to get the nagging sense that the mainstream consensus worldview is a construct manufactured by the powerful, for the powerful and everything you were taught about your nation, your government and your world is a lie, that’s definitely a possibility worth considering.

If it’s starting to seem like we’re all being manipulated at mass scale to think, act and vote in a way which benefits a vast power structure that rules over us while hiding its true nature, I’d say that’s a thread worth pulling.

If you’ve a sneaking suspicion that the lies might go even deeper than that, right down to deceptions about who you fundamentally are and what this life is actually about, that suspicion is probably worth exploring.

If you’re feeling a bit like Keanu Reeves in the beginning of The Matrix right before the veil gets ripped away, I’d recommend following the white bunny and seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.

If it has occurred to you that humanity needs to wake up from the matrix of illusion before our sociopathic rulers drive us to extinction via environmental catastrophe or nuclear armageddon, then your notes match my own.

If you believe it’s possible that these existential crises we’re fast approaching may be the catalyst we need to collectively rip the blindfold from our eyes and begin moving in a truth-based way upon this earth and creating a healthy world, then we are on the same page.

If there’s something in you that whispers there’s a good chance we make it despite the long odds we appear to be facing, I will tell you a secret: I hear it too."

- https://caitlinjohnstone.com/

Musical Interlude: Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"

Full screen recommended.

Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"

"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your

mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey.

528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency.

These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind."

Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful

video. Headphones recommended, not required.