"Luminarium"

"Luminarium"

“I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world, and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: it's life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart's delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.”

- Gottfried Von Strassburg


"A comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration and Eighteenth Century. This site combines several sites first created in 1996 to provide a starting point for students and enthusiasts of English Literature. Nothing replaces a quality library, but hopefully this site will help fill the needs of those who have not access to one.

Luminarium is the labor of love of Anniina Jokinen. The site is not affiliated with any institution nor is it sponsored by anyone other than its maintainer and the contributions of its visitors through revenues from book sales via Amazon.com, poster sales via All Posters, and advertising via Google AdSense.

For all materials, authorities in a given subject are consulted. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English are some of the general reference works consulted for accuracy of dates and details. Many of the materials collected here reside elsewhere. Quality and accuracy are concerns, and all materials are checked regularly. However, "Luminarium" cannot be held responsible for materials residing on other sites. Corrections and suggestions for improvements are encouraged from the visitors.

The site started in early 1996. I remember looking for essays to spark an idea for a survey class I was taking at the time. It seemed that finding study materials online was prohibitively difficult and time-consuming - there was no all-encompassing site which could have assisted me in my search. I started the site as a public service, because I myself had to waste so much time as a student, trying to find anything useful or interesting. There were only a handful of sites back then (read: Internet Dark Ages) and I could spend hours on search engines, looking for just a few things. I realized I must not be the only one in the predicament and started a simple one-page site of links to Middle English Literature. That page was soon followed by a Renaissance site.

Gradually it became obvious that the number of resources was ungainly for such a simple design. It was then that the multi-page "Medlit" and "Renlit" pages were created, around July 1996. That structure is still the same today. In September 1996, I started creating the "Sevenlit" site, launched in November. I realized the need to somehow unite all three sites, and that led to the creation of Luminarium. I chose the name, which is Latin for "lantern," because I wanted the site to be a beacon of light in the darkness. It was also befitting for a site containing authors considered "luminaries" of English literature."

- http://www.luminarium.org/

"Internet Sacred Text Archive"

"About Sacred Texts"

"All ancient books which have once been called sacred by man, will have their lasting place in the history of mankind, and those who possess the courage, the perseverance, and the self-denial of the true miner, and of the true scholar, will find even in the darkest and dustiest shafts what they are seeking for, - real nuggets of thought, and precious jewels of faith and hope."

- Max Müller, "Introduction to the Upanishads" Vol. II.

"This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language.

This site has no particular agenda other than promoting religious tolerance and scholarship. Views expressed at this site are solely those of specific authors, and are not endorsed by sacred-texts. Sacred-texts is not sponsored by any religious group or organzation.

Sacred texts went live on March 9th, 1999. The traffic started to increase when sacred-texts was listed at Yahoo! under 'Society and Religion|Texts'. In its first year of operation sacred-texts had about a quarter million hits. By 2004, it was receiving well over a quarter million hits per day. 

Today, site traffic often exceeds a million hits a day. Sacred texts is one of the top 20,000 sites on the web based on site traffic, consistently one of the top 10,000 sites in Australia, the US and India, and is one of the top 5 most visited general religion sites (source: Alexa.com).

The texts presented here are either original scans from books and articles clearly in the public domain, material which has been presented elsewhere on the Internet, or material included under fair use conditions in printed anthologies.

Many of the texts included here were originally posted in ftp archives or on bulletin boards before the growth of the World Wide Web and have been lost. In some cases, the texts were posted in such a form as to make them unusable by non-technically oriented users. Some of these texts were on the web at some point but have completely disappeared because the site they were posted on has closed. Thus the need for an archive which organizes this material in a persistent location.

From the start, we have had a special focus on remedying the under-representation of traditional cultures on the Internet. The site has one of the largest collections of transcriptions of complete books on Native American, Pacific, African, Asian and other traditional people's religion, spiritual practices, mythology and folklore. While many of these pre-20th century books are flawed due to orientalist or colonialist biases, they are also eye-witness accounts by reliable observers, typically at the moment of contact. These texts are crucial to the study of tribal traditions, and in many cases, the only link with the past. Locked up in academic libraries for decades, sacred-texts has made them freely accessible anywhere in the world.

We have scanned hundreds of books which have all been made freely accessible to the world. A comprehensive bibliography of the texts scanned at sacred texts is available here.

We welcome email regarding typographical or factual errors in any file at sacred-texts. Please write us if you spot an error; include the URL and a few lines of context so we can pin down the location.

While all due care has been taken in the reproduction of the texts here, none of the texts or translations here are represented to be sanctioned by any particular religious body or institution. We welcome advice as to errors of fact or transcription.

Some of the material here may be copyrighted. It is our hope that the copyright holders may allow these texts to be posted here in the public interest. If you are the copyright holder of record of a text which you believe has been archived at this site in error, please contact us at the email address listed at the bottom of this page. We have made a good-faith effort to determine the provenance of each text and apologize if we have posted a text in error. Note: If you are requesting the removal of a file, you must be the copyright holder of the file, and you must specify the exact URL of the file.”

- http://www.sacred-texts.com/about.htm

○

Fabulous, an absolute treasure trove! Enjoy!

The Daily "Near You?"

Concord, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Albert Camus, "Life Changing Quotes"

Full screen recommended.

Albert Camus, "Life Changing Quotes"

Powerful quotations from the great French philosopher Albert Camus.

Narrated by Chris Lines

"14 Videos That Will Make You Want To Scream Out “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

"14 Videos That Will Make You Want To Scream Out 

'ARE YOU KIDDING ME?'”

By Michael Snyder

Excerpt: "Every day we continue to get even more evidence that our society is going completely and utterly insane. I really wish that this wasn’t true. I really wish that we could just hit the rewind button and go back several decades to a time when most people tried to behave normally and there wasn’t rampant corruption all around us. Unfortunately, our social decay has shifted into “turbo mode” over the past several years, and at this point a lot of Americans actually celebrate the evil that is gnawing away at the foundations of our society like cancer. Some of the videos that I am about to share with you are really creepy, some of them are quite funny, and some of them are incredibly alarming. But ultimately they all have something to say about where we currently are as a society. The following are 14 videos that will make you want to scream out “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

Full article with videos is here:

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"It’s Time To Go On Your Own"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 2/1/23:

"It’s Time To Go On Your Own"

"Why is it that we are paying real estate agents so much money to sell our homes? Maybe it’s time to get rid of them completely with this down market."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"700,000 Russian Soldiers Are Causing Ukraine To Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/1/23:

"700,000 Russian Soldiers Are Causing Ukraine To Collapse"

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Redacted News, 2/1/23:

"Scott Ritter: Portugal Just Entered WW3 

And Made A HUGE Mistake, Putin Knows It"

"Portugal just entered WW3 with the dumbest move imaginable sending 1970's era Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Putin says that any escalation by NATO countries would open them up to retaliation by Russia. Portugal famously kept its nose out of WW2 to the best of its ability. Now it appears beautiful and peaceful Portugal has a death wish on its hands by kow towing to U.S. and NATO interests. Portugal needs to tell the U.S. and the E.U. to keep their war away from Iberia."

- https://redacted.inc

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Top US Geostrategic Think-Tank RAND Corp Says 

the US Lost the Ukraine War and Should Surrender"

o

Brutally honest truth that YOU, Good Citizen, and all of us,

 have paid for, tossing at least $121 BILLION onto this bonfire. 

157,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, 20,000 dead Russians...

A good thing there are no problems at all in this country, right?

o

Full screen recommended.

"Shopping At Target! Crazy Egg Prices! What's Next?!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/1/23:

"Shopping At Target! Crazy Egg Prices! What's Next?!"

"In today's vlog we are at Target, and are noticing some price increases on groceries, especially eggs! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and to search for items that have been hard to find in other grocery stores! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

The Poet: Rudyard Kipling, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"

"The Gods of the

Copybook Headings"

by Rudyard Kipling

"As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.

Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn

That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while 

we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,

But they always caught up with our progress, 

and presently word would come

That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, 

or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market 

Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, 

They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, 

that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:

"Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 

"The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, 

there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:

"If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, 

and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled 

and began to believe it was true,

That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings 

limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"

"Chart Of Doom"

"Chart Of Doom"

By Jim Quinn

"It took 215 years to accumulate $7 trillion of debt. We’ve added that much in the last three years. That which is unsustainable will not be sustained. This is the type of chart you see showing what happened to the Wiemar Republic in the 1920s. The only reason our currency hasn’t crashed is because the EU and Japan are in far worse shape. We are still the best looking horse in the glue factory. But even the best looking horse gets turned to glue eventually."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

Greg Hunter, "War, Market Meltdown & More War for 2023"

"War, Market Meltdown & More War for 2023"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned trends researcher and publisher of “The Trends Journal,” Gerald Celente, predicted last February on USAWatchdog.com that “World War III has already started.” Fast forward to today, and the global war is increasing at an alarming rate. Celente says, “American troops are on the ground in Ukraine, they are just not wearing the uniforms. So, we are at war there, and so is NATO. I say send me a hand gun because I want to blow the guy’s brains out across the street. Are you an accessory to the crime? Are you part of it? Of course you are. Look at the budget that Congress just passed. It’s a $1.7 trillion budget, and over half went to the military industrial complex.”

The economy is in big trouble, and that means war is a lock, according to Celente. “The global economy is crashing. It was artificially built up when they started the Covid war. There were countless trillions of dollars that they pumped into it. This thing is going to crash big. When all else fails, they take you to war. What followed the Great Depression? WWII. What followed the dot com bust? The war on terror, and the same thing is going to happen now.”

Celente says the economy is already falling apart, and the tip-off is the mass firing of temporary workers. Add in inflation, and real pain is happening in the economy right now. Celente says, “They bought less in terms of dollars, but it’s way worse because they don’t factor in inflation. In other words, people paid a lot more to buy a lot less.”

Celente also predicts a huge commercial real estate meltdown. The meltdown in residential real estate will be a bit less.

In closing, Celente warns about not just war in Ukraine overheating, but in the Middle East too. Celente explains, “The United States is doing drills with Israel at a level never seen before. If there is a military confrontation with the U.S. and Israel against Iran, you are going to see oil prices spike to above $130 per barrel. That will crash the global economy. If the Ukraine war and the Middle East war explodes at the same time, everything is finished.” There is much more in the 52-min interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with the top trends researcher on the planet, Gerald Celente, publisher of “The Trends Journal” for 2/1/23:

- https://rumble.com/

"Rigging The Game"

                                                                    

"Rigging The Game"

By John Wilder

"It’s a strange, new world. During my childhood, there was an active focus on one concept: we’re all humans, regardless of race. We should all be treated the same, and have the same rules. Sure, there were programs like affirmative action, but the primary impact of those was (for the most part) in making sure that minority candidates were considered for jobs. The rule (generally) remained that the most qualified person got the job. Meritocracy reigned.

I won’t pick the date this changed, because it’s been a continuum, a bit here, a bit there. But if you had seen the following headline in 1980 or 1990, I think the first thought of people would have been, “How can that even be legal?”

The idea isn’t just at Bank of America®, it’s also at Wells Fargo™, too, you can look it up. The concept is that companies attempting to get their ESG (link to my previous post on this monstrosity here) score up are setting up programs like that. To be clear, any loan by any bank that’s not rooted in the ability of the borrower to repay is awful, and immoral. It’s also shenanigans like this that led directly to the 2008 housing bubble and Great Recession. In a related story, I wonder if Pelosi shorted them yet?

If a country is searching for a solid economy, this isn’t it. If a country is looking to make actual equality the measure, this also isn’t it. If it were just this, it would just be (outside of being illegal) just a limited number of bad business decisions, but it’s not limited to just this. How about electric cars? I mean, I’m as much into having children dig for toxic cobalt in the Congo so rich people in California can have electric cars and feel smug about it as the next person, but to create a tax incentive? Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

Not to mention reparations. It’s odd that the people who want to abolish debt for people that borrowed money are also the ones that want to pay people for things that never happened to them. I guarantee that, no matter how much is offered it won’t be accepted. Why? It will never be enough. Ever. Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

What about the Biden family themselves? Is their economy wrecked like they’ve wrecked the nation? No. Joe went from $0 net worth in 2015 to $9,000,000 (latest info I could find) today. How’d he do that? I’m sure he cut back on Starbucks®. According to reports, Hunter asked a donor to set up a job for his “pled guilty to a felony for $100,000 credit card fraud for makeup” niece.

Click image for larger size and vomit bag.

They agreed to hire this felon for $85,000 a year. She refused. She wanted no less than $180,000. To be fair, from the pictures it does look like she needs that much makeup.

Again, that’s small potatoes, when looking at the billions that have already been looted from the open checkbook that is the Ukraine.

And yet, there’s more! I’ll skip over the massive payments for illegal aliens to play computer games and stay in hotels at taxpayer expense while actual Americans are homeless and face bankruptcy to medical bills inflated by donor companies like Pfizer®. I’m sure that doesn’t make anyone mad.

In point of fact, what we are seeing is the looting of an economy. Our economy. I think it’s been going on for years, but the looting wasn’t so visible because it was papered over, literally. After the 2008 Great Recession, there wasn’t really any attempt to make the economy better, rather, the idea was to just keep printing money – Qualitative Easing is what they called, it, which was a fancy way to say that the money would be printed and buy up the weakest assets of the companies that the Fed® had desired to support. Bank of America™ and Wells Fargo© were among them.

COVID-19 was the lynchpin, though. As the tide receded and undulated, we could finally see who didn’t have a swimsuit on. It turned out, it was most of the economy. Now, inflation. And, to top it off, eggs appear to be the 2023 version of toilet paper, so I guess this year that Halloween pranks will actually add value to the house. It also looks like the plan that The Mrs. was brooding on, “let’s get some chickens that lay eggs” will finally hatch. Maybe.

Oddly, it gets even worse. Since 1988, the United States has paid $13 trillion in interest to...use its own currency – the government needs currency, the Treasury prints bonds, the Fed® creates cash, the United States owes interest and pays fees to the Fed™ member banks. That’s weird, because the United States used to just issue its own cash. Without debt. Sure, if you print too much, that causes inflation.

Oh. I see we’re soaking in inflation. And the Fed® actively plans for inflation as a part of the business plan. The looting can’t continue forever. And that’s a good thing. This made-up economy filled with economic nonsense that, at times, makes Lenin look like an economic genius, has a time limit. Merit will return, just as the "Gods of the Copybook Headings" have always predicted. There can be no other outcome."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"Warning! The Whole System is Going to Implode. WW3 on 4 Fronts"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 1/31/23:

"Warning! The Whole System is Going to Implode. 

WW3 on 4 Fronts"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano, 1/31/23:

Douglas Macgregor,

 "The US Wants Russia to Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, "Forced To Eat McDonalds"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/31/23:

"Forced To Eat McDonalds"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"It's Not Just A Car Loan Crisis: This Is A Perfect Storm!"

Full screen recommended.

"It's Not Just A Car Loan Crisis:

 This Is A Perfect Storm!"

by Epic Economist

"What happens in the U.S. auto sector is usually seen by economists and financial advisers as a presage to what will happen in the U.S. economy, and we have to admit that conditions are getting critical right now. Several key datasets are pointing to an ominous inflection point and a crushing auto loan crisis as consumers can’t afford their car payments and the rate of repossessions continues to rise. Experts say this is also an indication that a full-blown recession is near, and that U.S. drivers should brace for a turbulent 2023, with interest rates expected to soar even higher and souring credit conditions at major lending institutions.

Americans are using unprecedented amounts of debt to fund record car prices. Numbers released in December showed a dramatic spike in the number of new car loans, with the average loan increasing by more than $2,000 in a single quarter, from just over $38,000 (a record), to $40,155 (a new record).

Evidently, the reason why new car loans have hit record highs is simply that new car prices have also soared to all-time highs. But the discussion of whether record new car prices are the result of easy record credit, or whether record new car loans are simply following the explosive surge in car prices, seems irrelevant at this point. Instead, let’s focus on something even more alarming: the massive surge in the average interest rate on new 60-month auto loans. According to Bankrate, as of January 27, the rate was just over 6.67%, almost doubling since the start of 2022, and the highest in 12 years.

“It is this surge in nominal auto debt as well as the unprecedented spike in new auto loan rates, that we believe has finally pushed the US car sector to the infamous Wile Coyote point of no return,” wrote financial analysts with ZeroHedge.

Less than a month ago, citing an NBC report, the analysts noted that a soaring number of consumers were falling behind on their car payments. “A trend which will only accelerate in 2023 -- in a sign of the strain soaring car prices and prolonged inflation are having on household budgets,” they wrote. And it looks like their predictions are spot on.

Things have escalated so quickly that today, more Americans are falling behind on their car payments than during the financial crisis, Fitch reports. This month, the percentage of subprime auto borrowers who were at least 60 days late on their bills rose to 5.67%, up from a seven-year low of 2.58% in April 2021. That compares to 5.04% in January 2009, the peak during the Great Recession.

Consequently, the number of car repossessions is rapidly climbing all over the nation. Auto auction company Manheim reveals that the rate of repossessed cars increased 11% in 2022 compared to the prior year, -- “it is still rising fast, and unless something major changes, it will soon overtake most recessionary benchmarks,” the analysts highlighted.

Moreover, credit conditions are souring at major lending institutions as banks brace for soaring delinquencies, defaults, and catastrophic writedowns. New loan originations have also collapsed, not only because of higher loan standards but because most Americans suddenly realize they can't afford monthly payments at the current rates. A tidal wave of delinquencies is on the horizon, and banking institutions are already preparing for the worst. The implosion of the U.S. auto sector is coming, and it is going to be spectacular."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Gerald Celente, "We Are Still In School, Obey Or Be Punished"

Very strong language alert.

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, 1/31/23:

"We Are Still In School, Obey Or Be Punished"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"How did galaxies form in the early universe? To help find out, astronomers surveyed a patch of dark night sky with the Very Large Telescope array in Chile to find and count galaxies that formed when our universe was very young. Analysis of the distribution of some distant galaxies (redshifts near 2.5) found an enormous conglomeration of galaxies that spanned 300 million light years and contained about 5,000 times the mass of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dubbed Hyperion, it is currently the largest and most massive proto-supercluster yet discovered in the early universe.

A proto-supercluster is a group of young galaxies that is gravitationally collapsing to create a supercluster, which itself a group of several galaxy clusters, which itself is a group of hundreds of galaxies, which itself is a group of billions of stars. In the featured visualization, massive galaxies are depicted in white, while regions containing a large amount of smaller galaxies are shaded blue. Identifying and understanding such large groups of early galaxies contributes to humanity's understanding of the composition and evolution of the universe as a whole."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181023.html

Free Download: T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

“Little Gidding”, Excerpt

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time. 

When the last of earth left to discover 

Is that which was the beginning; 

At the source of the longest river 

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree.

Not known, because not looked for 

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always - 

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flames are in-folded 

Into the crowned knot of fire 

And the fire and the rose are one.”

- T.S. Eliot

The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," 

which you may freely download here:

- https://www.fadedpage.com/

"It'll Do..."

Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it Sheriff?"

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: "Well, if it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."

- "No Country For Old Men"

Oh, the mess is here alright...and you ain't seen nothin' yet...

Brace for impact.

And if they act like this over a TV, 

what happens when there's no food?

Robert Palmer, 

"You're Gonna Get What's Coming"

"The Recession Is On It's Way"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/31/23:

"The Recession Is On It's Way"

"The Recession is near. Everything points to catastrophic problems with the global economy. Manufacturing is down and interest rates are up. What is next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Hays, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I'm Only Human..."

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably

excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”

- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...

Everyone says “I'm only human…” compared to what?

“Are You Sane?”

“Are You Sane?”

by Charles Hugh Smith

“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” 

– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”

“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?

The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:

“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays 

The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.

Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom 

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.

Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.

This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. 

In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”

- http://www.theburningplatform.com/

"The Next Stage in Western Escalation" (Excerpt)

"The Next Stage in Western Escalation"

by Batiushka

Excerpt: Introduction: The Story So Far: "So far the US has carried out regime changes and created military conflicts in countries friendly to or important to Russia: Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Georgia, Syria, Libya. All this was to make Russia lose important interests or deploy its own forces. It has also staged PR events such as Litvinenko, Pussy Riot, MH17, Skripals, Navalny, Bucha, the destruction of Nordstream – in order to try and blame Russia and make it into a pariah state.

In particular, in 2014 in the Ukraine it carried out a $5 billion coup with the murder of and terror against Russian-speakers. It then installed a puppet government, promoted Nazism through racist indoctrination, besmirched the historic legacy through rewriting history and toppling memorials, terrorized and banned all opposition, set up US military biolabs, supplied and trained an army, made military threats against Russia, threatened the Crimea, and promised that the Ukraine could soon join the US-puppet NATO and install nuclear weapons."

Full, highly recommended article is here:

- https://thesaker.is/