Canadian Prepper, 4/26/22:
"A Grim Warning About What's Coming..."
So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Gregory Mannarino, "'We Are Dancing On The Titanic' - Multiple Warnings On The Economy/Market"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/26/22:
"'We Are Dancing On The Titanic' -
Multiple Warnings On The Economy/Market"
"You Think..."
"You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive."
~ Wendell Berry
"The Illusion of Freedom: We’re Only as Free as the Government Allows"
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a
boot stomping on a human face forever."
George Orwell, "1984"
"The Illusion of Freedom:
We’re Only as Free as the Government Allows"
by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.” - George Carlin
"We’re in a national state of denial. For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.
Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to favor a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after a game, the high court let stand a lower court ruling that allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.
Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a death row inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands on him in the execution chamber, it refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time.
For those who have been paying attention, there’s a curious pattern emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant of those who want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that doesn’t challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on a football field or in an execution chamber.
On the other hand, dare to disagree with the government about its war crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police brutality, and you’ll find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded an extremist.
The U.S. government is particularly intolerant of speech that reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest victim of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the Espionage Act for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Even political protests are fair game for prosecution. In Florida, two protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming stating “F—k Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other graphic displays.
The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but don’t mess with the U.S. government. In this way, the government, having appointed itself a Supreme and Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the Constitution.
We’re in trouble, folks. Freedom no longer means what it once did. This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.
On paper, we may be technically free. In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow. We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit. Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do - our very lives - depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. In our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.
Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.
We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs. Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government - the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative - that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.
The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.
As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries", our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people. If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end."
"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
"Pentagon Chief Admits The Real Strategic Goal In Ukraine: Quagmire For Russia"
"Pentagon Chief Admits The Real Strategic Goal
In Ukraine: Quagmire For Russia"
by John Burroughs
"Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin provided a revealing and disturbing glimpse into a darker element of US policy at a press conference held April 25 at the Poland/Ukraine border. The press event followed a trip to Kiev by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Austin.
Austin was asked how he defines "America's goals for success" in Ukraine. He first said that the US wants to see "Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory." But then he added: "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." I had feared that geopolitical strategizing is affecting the US approach, but this is the first public indication of that I have seen.
It cannot be said too strongly: The US government must not be guided by any notion that a quagmire in Ukraine would drain Russian resources, diminish Russian influence and power globally, and possibly lead to regime change. The United States instead should do all within its power to help bring the war to a close rapidly in order to limit suffering; to eliminate risks that the conflict will widen and escalate, possibly to nuclear war; and to limit the negative global economic and food security repercussions.
A broader reason for determined efforts to end the war is the need to work toward restoring a relationship with Russia enabling cooperation on nuclear arms control and disarmament, climate protection, public health, and other vital matters of global concern.
US energy in helping bring the war to a close is also appropriate in view of the political responsibility of the United States, together with NATO, since the late 1990s in helping to create the conditions for a crisis. Actions having this effect included precipitously withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2003, subsequently establishing missile defense facilities in Romania and Poland, and opening the door to Ukraine's membership in NATO in 2008.
In a recent paper, "End the War, Stop the War Crimes", Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy outlines already widely discussed elements of an approach to ending the war. In brief, Russia and Ukraine should quickly agree to a cease-fire to enable negotiation of a settlement.
Negotiations should then aim to end the war immediately and to resolve the overarching disputes concerning governance of the Donbas region and the status of Crimea. A long-term consultative mechanism could be put in place to resolve time-intensive or recurring issues and to help maintain peace and human security. Ukraine appears ready to forswear any possibility of joining NATO, so long as some form of guaranteed neutrality can be established, but seeks to join the European Union. The overall aim should be the preservation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Charter.
We are ruled by idiots. https://t.co/Z2PLZArxYw
- Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) April 26, 2022
In addition to any role they can play, behind the scenes or not, in bringing about a cease-fire and negotiating a settlement, the United States and other states must be ready to lift war-related sanctions and to accept and support some form of neutrality for Ukraine should Ukraine choose that.
Russia's war on Ukraine is already causing appalling suffering and devastation. It is playing with fire - even nuclear fire - to allow the war to go on indefinitely and potentially to widen and escalate, at least partly with the aim of weakening Russia. The right course is to making ending the war on acceptable, if not perfect, terms the highest priority."
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Related:
"'NATO Expansion' In Reality Means Placing
Territories Under US Command: Lavrov"
Russian FM Lavrov: "The risk of nuclear war is real, but there are many who are willing to artificially inflate it."
- Vera Van Horne (@VeraVanHorne) April 25, 2022
“There Was A Tale He Had Read Once..."
“There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.”
- Neil Gaiman
"They Want More..."
"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.”
– Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”
Bill Bonner, "Queen of the Bubbleheads"
"Queen of the Bubbleheads"
by Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - "You don’t necessarily get what you want or expect; but you usually get what you deserve. Corollary: What should happen usually does happen. But not necessarily when it is s’posed to happen.
When the feds went into full moron mode in 2020, it was easy to forecast that inflation would be coming. But it was impossible to know when. In the space of 18 months, the Fed increased its balance sheet by $4 trillion. And the federal government handed out trillions in its various gimme/stimmie programs. Businesses, meanwhile, were closed. Output was discouraged.
Was this not a recipe for inflation? Only a Fed economist wouldn’t have seen it coming. And now, inflation is here… at levels not seen since the 1970s.
Another thing that was obviously going to happen was that the high flying, wealth-destroying tech companies were going to fall to earth. Investors wouldn’t pay extravagant prices for money-losing companies forever. Eventually, the bubble would pop. And it seems to be popping now.
Sinking ARRK: Cathie Wood is the queen of the bubbleheads. Look what’s happening to her. The Wall Street Journal: "Shares of the popular ETF, which is known by its ticker ARKK, have declined 45% so far in 2022 - including 21% in April alone - as rising interest rates punish stocks that are valued on the prospect of robust future growth."
With few exceptions, people do not invest in stocks for fun. They invest to make money. In an honest market, they make money from earnings, either paid out as dividends or retained by the company. But in the fraudulent market of 2009-2022, many billion-dollar companies earned no money at all. They took in capital – either as equity or debt – and gave nothing back.
Zoom, for example, hit it big time when the feds shut down the economy. All of a sudden, ‘zoom’ became a verb! And everybody wanted to do it. They zoomed in the morning. They zoomed at noon. And then they just kept zooming until late at night. With business associates… with family members… with friends. Trapped down in Argentina, we zoomed along with everyone else. But, along with other zoomsters, we paid nothing for the privilege. Zoom was a great service. The challenge for the company was how to make money at it.
As long as the Fed was mainlining credit into Wall Street arteries, it didn’t matter how much money a company earned. Prices rose. And investors hoped to make money from capital gains, not earnings.
Face to Face Losses: But now, the Fed is no longer buying bonds. It is letting its portfolio of bonds ‘run off;’ they are expiring at maturity. And the Fed is also talking tough, threatening to raise interest rates, which would make it harder for these money-losing companies to raise more debt-financing. Also, with the economy returning to normal, zooming is becoming less attractive. Now, we can have meetings face to face.
What should happen in these circumstances? The high fliers should crash. And they have. In terms of price-to-sales, Zoom sold for as much as 124. Now it is available for 7. Palantir was at 46; now at 15. Lemonade at 107, now trading for 9. RobinHood made its reputation by allowing low-cost, rapid stock trading. The price rose to 26 times sales. Now, it’s only 4.
All across the spectrum of promising tech start-ups, the up-and-comers are up-and-coming apart. Teladoc is down 77%. Block, minus 57%. Exact Science has lost 85%. Unity Software has fallen 58%. And Twilio, down 66%.
Another way to look at this is this: people usually get what they’ve got coming. So, we have to ask ourselves: who has what coming next? Stay tuned..."
"Fed Chair Powell Telegraphs the Perfect Storm for Wall Street’s Megabanks: Rapid Rate Hikes Hitting $234 Trillion in Derivatives"
"Fed Chair Powell Telegraphs the Perfect Storm for Wall Street’s
Megabanks: Rapid Rate Hikes Hitting $234 Trillion in Derivatives"
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Excerpt: "The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. It sets monetary policy, including control of the benchmark short-term interest rate known as the Federal Funds rate, or in Wall Street jargon, the “Fed Funds” rate. This is a key rate because it signals the rate at which overnight loans are made between financial institutions and the direction of interest rates in general.
Unfortunately, over time, the Fed has also been granted a supervisory role by Congress over Wall Street’s megabanks alongside its ability to bail them out when its crony brand of supervision fails. There was an epic failure in the Fed’s supervision of the Wall Street megabanks in the leadup to the 2008 financial crash and the September 2019 repo blowup. In both cases, the Fed made trillions of dollars in cumulative loans at below-market interest rates to the trading units of these megabanks in order to resuscitate them and cover up its own failure to properly supervise the banks.
The convulsions the stock market experienced last Thursday and Friday, that investors will continue to witness in the days ahead, are inextricably tied to the failure of Congress to strip the Fed of a supervisory role over these global megabanks.
There is no better snapshot of the Fed’s failure as a banking supervisor than this one fact that is called out every quarter in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s "Report on Bank Trading and Derivative Activities." Table 14 of this report (see page 19) shows that the 25 largest bank holding companies in the U.S. are sitting on $234 trillion notional (face amount) in derivatives but just five bank holding companies are responsible for $200.18 trillion of that exposure or 86 percent of the total. Those mega bank holding companies are: JPMorgan Chase (ticker JPM), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Bank of America (BAC).
The table also clearly shows that the most dangerous form of these derivatives – the same credit derivatives that blew up Wall Street in 2008 – are also concentrated at those same five bank holding companies."
Please view this complete article here
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Related:
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"The Largest Market Crash Will Burst This Year;
David Rosenberg’s Last Warning"
"It seems like everyone in the market right now is really frightened about the coming change in monetary policy. This will be the first time in over a decade that the market will have to say goodbye to all that excess liquidity that made indexes skyrocket to one record high after the other. And don't be mistaken: this loss of liquidity in the market caused by a hawkish Fed will hit more than just winning tech stocks. They aren't the only one leveraged by excess liquidity - the entire market is. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand the consequences. The market is likely to crash by up to 90% when the Fed finally removes all of that easy money from the market. Right now, bubbles are already popping everywhere, showing that intrinsic value matters after all. All signs are there for people to see, and we must start acting before it's too late."
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A market crash of far less than 90% will trigger a tsunami of margin calls of
the $2.4 QUADRILLION derivatives, absolutely bankrupting everyone.
Everyone...
"Las Vegas Gamblers Keep Spending; More FED Magic Tricks; Debt Avalanche Risk; Stock Market Madness"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 4/26/22:
"Las Vegas Gamblers Keep Spending; More FED Magic Tricks;
Debt Avalanche Risk; Stock Market Madness"
"What No One is Talking About - Power and Food Rationing"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/26/22:
"What No One is Talking About - Power and Food Rationing"
"From the economy to bank closures there is so much going on right now. Large stores are rationing cooking oil and limiting some food purchases. Power could be rationed in California."
"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! - This Is Getting Ridiculous!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/26/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! - This Is Getting Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer and are noticing massive 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!"
Gregory Mannarino, "Yellen Calls For Immediate Funding For 'Food Crisis'"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/26/22:
"Yellen Calls For Immediate Funding For 'Food Crisis'"
Monday, April 25, 2022
"Chinese Lockdowns Trigger Panic Across Local Supermarkets As Food Supply Chain Breakdowns Intensify"
Full screen recommended.
"Chinese Lockdowns Trigger Panic Across Local
Supermarkets As Food Supply Chain Breakdowns Intensify"
by Epic Economist
"One thing that we all have definitely learned over the past two years is that things are never calm on the global supply chain. At this point, many were expecting conditions to be returning to normal, but after the latest wave of disruptions, most industry executives believe that this chaos will continue for many years to come. There are so many issues out of the control of those that own and operate the system that a recovery seems very unlikely. In fact, given the extreme congestion currently hitting some of the world’s key ports, we’re being warned that a supply chain disaster and the following collapse of our food systems are now unfolding and will reach crisis levels over the next six months.
After a month of strict lockdown restrictions, Shanghai, China’s most populous city, and home to the world’s largest port, is finally starting to reopen its factories. Last Friday, the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Information Technology, the city’s industrial development authority, announced that the operations of nearly 700 companies, mostly in industries making critical goods, would come back online today. Even though some might think that China reopening factories can help ease supply chain bottlenecks, experts are alerting that “a mad rush of production resumption” will actually make disruption worse, Right now, over 20% of the world’s container ships are currently stuck in congestion across crowded ports worldwide. From those, at least 30% of the global fleet is stuck in China, according to a report from shipping analytics company Windward.
This means trouble to U.S. supply chains, particularly when considering that ports on the West Coast like Los Angeles and Long Beach, handle more incoming cargo from China than any other facilities in the country. On the East Coast, the outlook isn’t any better. “We’re planning for this to go for the entire year,” revealed James McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association. And although restrictions are easing in Shanghai, another lockdown is looming in Beijing, and it threatens to impact food supply chains the hardest. On social media, residents are describing that the new panic-buying wave is leaving empty shelves across a number of supermarkets.
Virus outbreaks, lockdowns, and other unpredictable catastrophes are driving supply chain risks significantly higher for businesses, as noted by Andreas Berger, the Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Solutions at Swiss Re.Data compiled by Swiss Re’s Institute in the latest sigma report showed that catastrophe events in 2021 drove total economic losses of $270 billion and insured losses of $111 billion, the fourth-highest since 1970.
In the U.S., mysterious factory fires are causing catastrophic damages to food production nationwide. This month alone, five facilities have suddenly caught fire leaving authorities scrambling to discover the cause of the incidents. This weekend, an "unidentified small plane" has crashed into the General Mills plant in Covington, Georgia, emergency officials have said. The facility produced several varieties of cereal and snack products and employed several hundred staff. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but production was interrupted indefinitely. Since the start of the year, similar cases have been reported in California, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Maine, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Massive food shortages are coming for Americans, and if you don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a panic-buying frenzy, maybe you should start preparing for the worst right now."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Flame Nebula is a stand out in optical images of the dusty, crowded star forming regions toward Orion's belt and the easternmost belt star Alnitak, a mere 1,400 light-years away. Alnitak is the bright star at the right edge of this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. About 15 light-years across, the infrared view takes you inside the nebula's glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds though. It reveals many stars of the recently formed, embedded cluster NGC 2024 concentrated near the center.
The stars of NGC 2024 range in age from 200,000 years to 1.5 million years young. In fact, data indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the middle of the Flame Nebula cluster. That's the opposite of the simplest models of star formation for a stellar nursery that predict star formation begins in the denser center of a molecular cloud core. The result requires a more complex model for star formation inside the Flame Nebula.”
The Poet: William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
"The Second Coming"
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
- William Butler Yeats, January 1919
“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith
"Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.
The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions. People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases. Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived. The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil. And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits. As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight. Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth. They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”
"I Can't Believe This: A Major Event Is Coming - War?"
Canadian Prepper, 4/25/22:
"I Can't Believe This: A Major Event Is Coming - War?"
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Related:
Must Watch! "It's Much Worse Than You Think As Fake Markets Rebound; FED Trapped; Economy Crashing Down"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/25/22:
"It's Much Worse Than You Think As Fake Markets Rebound;
FED Trapped; Economy Crashing Down"
"Even the Rich Are Getting Worried About the Economy"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/25/22:
"Even the Rich Are Getting Worried About the Economy"
"I’m on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California. This is arguably one of the richest shopping districts in the world, but you can’t help but notice that even the rich can’t keep these retail stores open."
Bill Bonner, "A Casino for Lunatics"
"A Casino for Lunatics"
by Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - "An advertisement appears on the side of our email. It offers us – in Spanish – ‘fashionable clothes for fat women.’ This appears to be a case of logarithmic disorder. The computer coding that was supposed to identify fat mujeres, seems to have stumbled onto a thin hombre. Another ad served up to us often shows a picture of two gay guys, holding hands. It offers “Insurance Programs for Every Lifestyle.” Another logarithm out of tune. The lifestyle it had in mind was not ours.
The promise of the internet was that it could connect an individual more efficiently with what he wants and needs. But we neither want nor need a plus-size summer dress. The ad for an insurance policy that will pay off to a gay ‘partner’ missed its mark too.
But the glories of the internet/metaverse age were always overrated… and over-funded. Too much cheap credit created a monstrously weird and dysfunctional economy, with wealth destroying companies supposedly worth billions, and debt up the gazoo. “Information” – ubiquitous and free – was supposed to make real savings unnecessary. Growth was supposed to accelerate… leading to untold happiness and prosperity beyond our wildest dreams.
Instead, we got Tik-tok, Shibu-ina, NFTs, de-platforming, uber-eats, and a generation of illiterates. But at least now, we don’t have to think… we just have to see what’s ‘trending on Facebook.’ LOL! As for the much-awaited growth, it never showed up. Instead, GDP rates fell and are averaging only about half of those of the pre-internet days. And now, that monstrosity of an economy, created by the Fed’s absurd interest rates, is in trouble.
A Casino for Lunatics: The Dow sold off nearly 1,000 points on Friday. This morning’s futures point to more losses today. The proximate cause, according to the press: the Fed’s long-lost, but now found, desire for more normal interest rates. But the Fed is ‘hoist on its own petarde,’ so to speak. It pushed interest rates down to ultra-low levels… kept them there for way too long… funded the governments jackass gimmie/stimmie programs… and now finds – what a surprise! – prices are rising.
Jerome Powell, Fed jefe, tried to ignore it, tried to dismiss it, and tried to excuse it; but there was no doubt where inflation came from. The artificially low interest rates twisted and disfigured the entire economy. Investors became credit-crazed gamblers. Businessmen became short-sighted profiteers. Households rushed to refinance their homes… again and again, trading up each time. And the feds used the cheap money to support the fantasies, caprices, and skullduggeries of the whole elite class. Sex change operations for active-duty soldiers… a $1,000 a month of guaranteed income to young, unmarried mothers in Baltimore… $30+ trillion in capital gains to the rich – what else could you want!
Wall Street was turned into a casino for lunatics, where people borrowed at below zero real interest rates, to bid up prices on loss-making companies, using money that didn’t exist.
We remind readers that when a company loses money, it makes the whole world poorer. And America’s Silicon Valley losers destroyed more real wealth than any group of companies in history. Zillow, Uber, Airbnb, WeWork, Snap, Pinterest, Peloton, Dropbox, Amazon – the losses were staggering. Even the companies that were profitable were absorbing and destroying capital far beyond what they were actually worth. Capital was so cheap that billions of dollars were invested in companies that – though ‘profitable’ – could never actually repay the money needed to get there.
It was like borrowing a million dollars – without paying any real interest – and using the money to set up a high-tech lemonade stand. Your customers can sit in special booths and play video games… they can use ultra-high speed broadband to check their email. They can use your 15 unisex bathrooms and showers to clean themselves up… and use your state of the art conference room for business. You pay an interest rate on the million dollars (in real terms) of MINUS 5%. Then, you sell one glass of lemonade and announce that you are profitable. But the “profits” bear no relationship to the money that has gone into the enterprise. You are ‘profitable’ but you are still destroying wealth, not creating more of it.
But now, inflation is making life difficult for the Fed. Energy, resources, labor – everything is getting more expensive. And from the looks of producer prices (which will be passed on to consumers) ‘double-digit’ inflation will be here soon.
Bounce Less: So, it’s ‘inflate or die’ time. Either the Fed continues to let the cheap money pervert the economy… or its monstrosity must die.
Wait… here comes another ad: “Bounce less with a better sports bra.” Whatever jiggle it was meant to alleviate is not a concern for us.
And over on our telephone, some rascals seem to have planted a virus. About 5 times a day it warns us that it is going to reveal our “porn history” unless we do something. We’re still waiting. After all, if we’re going to look at porno, we’re not going to do it on a telephone… we’ll want a big screen!"
"Why"; "We Have Met The Enemy..."
"Why does truth carry such a dreadful face? Why does subjugation carry
such a happy mask? It becomes sad when people understand that they
can lead a better life as long as they bow their heads, ignoring the truth."
- Lionel Suggs
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"Chronic Shortages Of A Few Items Now Will Evolve Into Chronic Shortages Of Hundreds Of Products Later In 2022"
"Chronic Shortages Of A Few Items Now Will Evolve
Into Chronic Shortages Of Hundreds Of Products Later In 2022"
by Michael Snyder
"What we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of the story. The global response to the COVID pandemic during 2020 and 2021 created the most epic supply chain crisis in modern times, and now “black swan events” such as the war in Ukraine and the bird flu pandemic are making that supply chain crisis even worse. Unfortunately, more global difficulties are coming. There will be more war, there will be more pestilences, there will be more natural disasters, and even the United Nations is admitting that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II. So if you think that global supply chain problems are severe now, just wait until you see what is coming next.
If you go into most major retailers today, you will notice that stock levels are lower than usual and there are some empty shelves. But most items are still available most of the time, and that is good news.
Of course there are certain product categories that have been experiencing chronic shortages for an extended period of time. For example, supplies of canned pet food have been extremely tight for months on end… The next time you go to the pet store don’t be surprised to see some empty shelves. Many pet stores are facing a shortage on canned pet food. Right now, there just aren’t enough cheap sources of chicken and turkey due to the bird flu pandemic, there is an ongoing shortage of aluminum, and there is a shortage of factory workers. So the canned pet food shortage is not likely to be fixed any time soon.
Another shortage that is going to affect much of the country as we head into the summer months is the growing chlorine shortage. I was not even aware of this shortage until a reader alerted me. Apparently this shortage was originally caused by the destruction of a manufacturing facility in Louisiana by Hurricane Laura…While the pandemic takes its share of the blame, the even larger reason for the current chlorine shortage is that a major chlorine manufacturing plant in Louisiana was destroyed by Hurricane Laura in late 2020. A fire on the premises leveled the facilities and took nearly 40% of the country’s chlorine tablet supply with it. The manufacturing plant is being rebuilt and is currently under construction; it was due to reopen by mid-to-late 2022, but those plans could be pushed back due to the ongoing construction material shortages.
I find it ironic that the nationwide chlorine shortage could be extended thanks to the nationwide construction material shortage. Anyone that is trying to build a home knows how painful the construction material shortage has become, and I anticipate that it will only become more severe in 2023 and beyond.
Meanwhile, the nationwide baby formula shortage just continues to get even worse…"Janis Burnson is one of many parents having to work around a national baby formula shortage. “Go around in our area, St. George, any stores I can, can’t find anything around here. I have friends in northern Utah, they’re having to send me stuff, so I’m having to pay even more,” she says. One local reporter in southern Utah decided to check this out for herself, and when she visited local stores she discovered “bare shelves where baby formula should be.” What a nightmare.
But at least we can be glad that things are not as bad here as they are in Europe. Over there, widespread rationing of certain products has already begun. For example, it was just announced that Tesco is now limiting each customer to three bottles of cooking oil…"If record-high food prices weren’t enough. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has choked off the world of sunflower oil supply, forcing the largest supermarket in the UK to begin rationing. The Guardian reports that Tesco, with more than 4,000 retail stores, placed buying limits of three cooking oil bottles per customer. It follows Waitrose and Morrisons, other supermarket chains that set limits of just two per customer."
This particular shortage is directly related to the war in Ukraine, and David Einhorn is warning that this war is making a whole host of our ongoing problems even worse… "The common refrain about COVID was that it sped up changes and trends that were already happening. We believe the same is true of the war. Inflation, supply chain problems, and shortages of energy, food, raw materials and labor were already issues that the war has now accelerated."
Sadly, he is quite correct, and at this point there appears to be no hope that this war will end any time soon. Russia and Ukraine normally account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports, and we were already facing an unprecedented global food crisis even before the war erupted.
When U.S. Senator Roger Marshall was recently asked about this, he openly admitted that a “worldwide famine” is definitely going to happen…“Did you just say there will be a famine in Europe in the next two years?” Host Maria Bartiromo asked. “This will be a worldwide famine. I think it will be even worse next year than this year. So if 12, 15% of the wheat comes from Ukraine that’s exported, and they’re having problems getting fertilizer, they’re having tractors in the field, all the diesel fuel is going towards their war efforts, right?” the senator said."
Prior to 2022, can you ever remember a time when a sitting member of the U.S. Senate publicly warned us that a “worldwide famine” was coming?
The good news is that nobody is starving to death in the United States right now. But food prices are certainly going up dramatically, and the mainstream media is doing lots of stories about it. For example, the following originally comes from USA Today…"Kevin Tave stretches a pot of spaghetti for three days of meals. Esmerelda Cortez gets eggs and bread from the food bank so she can afford laundry detergent at the store. Donnie Whitfield buys generic cereal instead of the Kellogg’s he prefers."
Although unemployment continues dropping and wages are on the rise, all across the country, low-income people are struggling to put food on the table as skyrocketing inflation and high gas prices take a bigger bite of their already-small paychecks.
Needless to say, as conditions deteriorate it is not a good thing for Joe Biden’s approval ratings…"During Joe Biden’s fifth quarter in office, which began on January 20 and ended on April 19, an average of 41.3% of U.S. adults approved of the job he was doing as president. The latest average is essentially unchanged from the 41.7% in his fourth quarter but significantly lower than his first three quarterly averages."
But what most Americans don’t understand is that it is too late for a political solution to this crisis. No matter what Joe Biden and his minions decide to do, they are not going to be able to prevent the nightmarish conditions which are rapidly approaching. As Senator Marshall admitted, there will be a worldwide famine. There is no avoiding that now. These are such troubled times, and they are only going to become even more troubled as the months roll along."
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