Full screen recommended.
Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"
Beautiful...
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars.
Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."
"Humanity, I Love You..."
"Humanity, I love you because when you're down
and out you pawn your intelligence for a drink."
- e.e. cummings
"Noli Timere: The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”
"Noli Timere:
The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”
by Ryan Holiday
"While Seamus Heaney, the world-famous Irish poet and Nobel Prize Winner, was being rushed to the operating room he sent a single text message to his wife with just two words: "Noli Timere ." This Latin phrase when translated to English means "Be not afraid. " Heaney passed away not long after.
“There was no virtue more important to the Stoics than courage, particularly in times of stress or crisis. In scary times, it’s easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car. Something could even happen with your kids. Of course we’re going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?
Even the Stoics, who were supposedly masters of their emotions, admitted that we are going to have natural reactions to the things that are out of our control. You’re going to feel cold if someone dumps a bucket of water on you. Your heart is going to race if something jumps out from behind a corner. These are things the Stoics openly discussed.
They had a word for these immediate, pre-cognitive impressions of things: phantasiai. No amount of training or wisdom, Seneca said, can prevent us from having these reactions. What mattered to them, and what is urgently needed today in a world of unlimited breaking news about pandemics or collapsing stock markets or military conflicts, was what you did after that reaction. What mattered is what came next.
There is a wonderful quote from Faulkner about this very idea. “Be scared,” he wrote. “You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. Being afraid is an ongoing process. Fear is a state of being. The alertness that comes from being startled might even help you. It wakes you up. It puts your body in motion. It’s what saves prey from the tiger or the tiger from the hunter. But fear and worry and anxiety? Being afraid? That’s not fight or flight. That’s paralysis. That only makes things worse.
Especially right now. Especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. They’re certainly not going to solve themselves. And inaction (or the wrong action) may make them worse, it might put you in even more danger. An inability to learn, adapt, to embrace change will too.
There is a Hebrew prayer which dates back to the early 1800s: כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל. “The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.” The wisdom of that expression has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song that was broadcast to troops and citizens alike during the Yom Kippur War. It’s a reminder: Yes, things are dicey, and it’s easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward. Fear will not help.
What does help? Training. Courage. Discipline. Commitment. Calm. But mainly, that courage thing – which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue. One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. “It’s not like astronauts are braver than other people,” he says. “We’re just, you know, meticulously prepared…” Think about someone like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, whose heart rate never went above a 100 beats per minute the entire mission. That’s what preparation does for you.
Astronauts face all sorts of difficult, high stakes situations in space – where the margin for error is tiny. In fact, on Chris’ first spacewalk his left eye went blind. Then his other eye teared up and went blind too. In complete darkness, he had to find his way back if he wanted to survive. He would later say that the key in such situations is to remind oneself that “there are six things that I could do right now, all of which will help make things better. And it’s worth remembering, too, there’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse also.” That’s the difference between scared and afraid. One prevents you from making things better, it may make them worse.
After the stock market crash in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted ten years. Banks failed. Investors were wiped out. Unemployment was some 20 percent. Herbert Hoover, who’d only been in office barely six months when the market collapsed, tried and failed repeatedly for the next 3.5 years to stem the tide. FDR, who succeeded him, would have never denied that things were dangerous and that this was scary. Of course it was. He was scared. How could he not be? Yet what he counseled the people in his now-legendary first inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice, it was the real enemy to be fought. Because it would only make the situation worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions.
And today, whether the biggest problem you face is the coronavirus pandemic or the similarly dire economic implications – or maybe it’s both those things plus a faltering marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a lawsuit – you have to know what the real plague to avoid is.
This life we’re living – this world we inhabit – is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose the heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. You don’t make good decisions. You don’t see or think clearly.
The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t get distracted with the worst-case scenario on top of the worst-case scenario on top of the collision of two other worst-case scenarios. Because that doesn’t help us with what’s right in front of us right now. It doesn’t help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it’s on a spacewalk or a tough business call. It doesn’t help us slow our heart rate down whether we’re re-entering the earth’s atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock portfolio. It doesn’t help us remember that we’ve trained for this, that there is a playbook for how to proceed.
Remember, Marcus Aurelius himself faced a deadly, dangerous pandemic. His people were panicked. His doctors were baffled. His staff and his advisors were conflicted. His economy plunged. The plague spanned fifteen years of his reign with a mortality rate of between 2-3%. Marcus would have been scared – how could he not have been? But he didn’t let that rattle him. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t relinquish his ability to lead. He got to work.
“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,” he wrote to himself, as it was happening. “Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.” The crisis could have crippled him. But instead he stood up. He not only endured it, but he was a hero. He saved lives. He prevented panic from turning the battle into a rout.
Which is what we must do today and always, whatever we’re facing. We can’t give into fear. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over again: It’s OK to be scared, just don’t be afraid. We repeat: The world is a narrow bridge and I will not be afraid.
We have to focus on the six things, as Chris Hadfield might say, that we can do to make it better. And we can’t forget that there are plenty of things we can do to make things worse. Foremost among them, giving into fear and making mistakes. Rather, we have to keep going. Now is the time for everyone to show courage, like the thousands of generations who have come before us. Because time marches in only one direction – forward.”
_between_Tannery_Road_and_Cold_Stream_Road_in_Capon_Bridge,_Hampshire_County,_West_Virginia.jpg)
"The Truth About Ukraine’s Failed Counteroffensive"
"The Truth About Ukraine’s Failed Counteroffensive"
by Martin Armstrong
"The American Neocons have been pushing for weapons and everything they can muster. They tell Ukraine they MUST get back the Donbas even though the people there are ethnically Russian and not Ukrainian. This would be like Mexico invading Texas, claiming it was their former border even though Americans live there. The Neocons want to believe that Russia is weak, so that is all they tell the press. How else to get Americans to support another endless war like they did in Vietnam?
Western weapons have proven not enough to give Kiev a decisive advantage to defeat Russia. Fighting in Ukraine has reached “a bit of a stalemate,” which is the first time a US Defense Intelligence Agency Chief of Staff John Kirchhofer told a conference in Washington. His assessment of Ukraine’s chances of actually winning this counteroffensive is about zero. “Certainly we are at a bit of a stalemate,” Kirchhofer said, according to Bloomberg. “One of the things that the Russian leadership believes is that they can outlast the support of the West.”
Ukrainian forces have been unable to advance from Kherson to Donetsk since early June. They have failed to make any significant territorial gains against the Russians whatsoever. So much for the Nuland claims that weapons will defeat Russia. The Senate leader of the warmongers, Lindsey Graham, was willing to sacrifice every Ukrainian to defeat Russia.
Here is Graham cheering that it’s the best money the US has ever spent to kill Russians. They claim they are fighting for freedom when in fact Russia is not interested in conquering all of Ukraine. They are defending the Donbas which was supposed to have been granted the right to be free from Ukraine. Zelensky has destroyed his own country all to conquer the Donbas, occupied by Russians for hundreds of years. This has nothing to do with Ukraine’s freedom. It is the freedom of the Donbas — not Kiev.
If it were Americans in the Donbas, the US would also be there to defend them in a civil war had Russia instigated it. This is a sick individual who takes pleasure in killing Russians. This is how Americans are being viewed because we elect such people. He cares nothing about the loss of lives. This offensive cost Ukraine 26,000 men and over 3,000 pieces of military hardware in the first two weeks. Zelensky has publicly blamed the West for failing to provide enough weapons – including long-range missiles and fighter jets – to guarantee the offensive’s success.
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace reportedly told Ukraine that his country was not “Amazon” for weapons and that members of NATO wanted “to see a bit of gratitude.” The Guardian reported that Wallace said during the NATO summit in Vilnius that “whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude” from Ukraine. Zelensky never bothers to say thank you. Wallace made the point that Zelensky is running through all the NATO stockpile of weapons. He is “persuading countries to give up their own stocks” of weapons and ammunition,” and that they also had “to persuade doubting politicians” that supporting Ukraine was “worthwhile” in its war with Russia. Wallace then added: “I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list, that I’m not like Amazon.
The Neocons keep putting out propaganda that Russia is losing. The truth is that 20% of Ukrainian weapons were destroyed in just the first two weeks. To my shock, New York Times actually told the truth that 20% of Ukrainian weapons were destroyed in just two weeks.
All of my sources are saying the same time. No weapon system will change Kiev’s fortunes. Neither US-supplied HIMARS rocket artillery and cluster bombs, nor British Storm Shadow cruise missiles, have thus far tilted the battlefield situation in Ukraine’s favor, he pointed out. All of this has failed, yet Zelensky continues to push his country toward annihilation, all to profit from Blackrock and JP Morgan.
The Neocons keep claiming using the White House that the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is progressing. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said last month that Ukrainian forces were “advancing steadily,” but that progress would be slow and “very bloody.” This is simply an outright lie. There is no independent source on either side that confirms that outlook. The other Neocon spokesman of the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, told CNN last month that heavy Ukrainian casualties are “to be expected” but that Zelensky will continue to receive “the support he needs not just from the United States, but from 50 other partners.”
This is clearly propaganda coming from the White House, most likely at the direction of Victoria Nuland and crew refusing to acknowledge that their current war game is failing. The fellow Neocon Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly rejected the idea of Ukraine entering into peace talks with Russia. This is why India and France are turning their backs on the Biden Administration. They can see that the United States has undergone a coup, and the Neocons are in full control.
Russia maintains that Western arms deliveries will only serve to prolong the conflict without altering its eventual outcome. That appears to be an honest assessment from all my sources on both sides. This is why Zelensky wants F16s to escalate the war dramatically by attacking Crimea and Russia to provide a major confrontation to drag in NATO.
Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles have all burned. Beginning in early June, Ukrainian forces launched a series of attacks all along the front line from Kherson to Donetsk. Advancing through minefields. That is what cost 26,000 men and more than 3,000 pieces of military hardware in just two weeks. Ukrainian losses were at their highest during the initial two weeks of the offensive. This was Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade – a NATO-trained unit – which by all reports, apparently lost 30% of its 99 Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles in two weeks. Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade lost nearly a third of its 32 German-made Leopard tanks in a single week. According to Russia, they destroyed a total of 311 Ukrainian tanks in two weeks. They claimed: “At least a third of them, I believe, were Western-made tanks, including Leopards,” was reported on Russia 24 TV.
This is why Ukrainian commanders decided to pause the counteroffensive. They simply lost so much. Zelensky acknowledged that there was a pause but blamed the West for failing to supply him with enough weapons and equipment for a successful operation. He omitted that some say he has lost more than one-third of all the weapons sent to Ukraine. Zelensky claims that the decisive phase of their counteroffensive has yet to begin. This, too, seems to be just propaganda.
Zelensky is running through ammunition like water, particularly 155mm artillery shells. Even Biden was forced to admit that “we’re low” on these shells, explaining that the shortage compelled him to send controversial cluster munitions in their stead, which is a war crime by all standards. What’s next? Tactical nuclear weapons instead of peace?"
"We Are Not The First Civilization To Collapse, But We Will Probably Be The Last"
"We Are Not The First Civilization To Collapse,
But We Will Probably Be The Last"
by Chris Hedges
"I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a handful of visitors. My shirt is matted with sweat.
I look out from the structure - known as Monks Mound - at the flatlands below, with smaller mounds dotting the distance. These earthen mounds, built at a confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, are all that remain of one of the largest pre-Columbian settlements north of Mexico, occupied from around 800 to 1,400 AD by perhaps as many as 20,000 people.
This great city, perhaps the greatest in North America, rose, flourished, fell into decline and was ultimately abandoned. Civilizations die in familiar patterns. They exhaust natural resources. They spawn parasitic elites who plunder and loot the institutions and systems that make a complex society possible. They engage in futile and self-defeating wars. And then the rot sets in. The great urban centers die first, falling into irreversible decay. Central authority unravels. Artistic expression and intellectual inquiry are replaced by a new dark age, the triumph of tawdry spectacle and the celebration of crowd-pleasing imbecility.
“Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum,” anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes in "The Collapse of Complex Societies." “Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration.”
Several centuries ago, the rulers of this vast city complex, which covered some 4,000 acres, including a 40-acre central plaza, stood where I stood. They no doubt saw below in the teeming settlements an unassailable power, with at least 120 temple mounds used as residences, sacred ceremonial sites, tombs, meeting centers and ball courts. Cahokia warriors dominated a vast territory from which they exacted tribute to enrich the ruling class of this highly stratified society. Reading the heavens, these mound builders constructed several circular astronomical observatories - wooden versions of Stonehenge.
The city’s hereditary rulers were venerated in life and death. A half mile from Monks Mound is the seven-foot-high Mound 72, in which archeologists found the remains of a man on a platform covered with 20,000 conch-shell disc beads from the Gulf of Mexico. The beads were arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the falcon’s head beneath and beside the man's head. Its wings and tail were placed underneath the man’s arms and legs. Below this layer of shells was the body of another man, buried face downward. Around these two men were six more human remains, possibly retainers, who may have been put to death to accompany the entombed man in the afterlife. Nearby were buried the remains of 53 girls and women ranging in age from 15 to 30, laid out in rows in two layers separated by matting. They appeared to have been strangled to death.
The poet Paul Valéry noted, “a civilization has the same fragility as a life.”
Across the Mississippi River from Monks Mound, the city skyline of St. Louis is visible. It is hard not to see our own collapse in that of Cahokia. In 1950, St. Louis was the eighth-largest city in the United States, with a population of 856,796. Today, that number has fallen to below 300,000, a drop of some 65 percent. Major employers - Anheuser-Busch, McDonnell-Douglas, TWA, Southwestern Bell and Ralston Purina - have dramatically reduced their presence or left altogether. St. Louis is consistently ranked one of the most dangerous cities in the country. One in five people live in poverty. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has the highest rate of police killings per capita, of the 100 largest police departments in the nation, according to a 2021 report. Prisoners in the city’s squalid jails, where 47 people died in custody between 2009 and 2019, complain of water being shut off from their cells for hours and guards routinely pepper spraying inmates, including those on suicide watch. The city’s crumbling infrastructure, hundreds of gutted and abandoned buildings, empty factories, vacant warehouses and impoverished neighborhoods replicate the ruins of other post-industrial American cities, the classic signposts of a civilization in terminal decline.
“Just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed, overpopulated, or both, become at risk of getting politically stressed, and of their governments collapsing,” Jared Diamond argues in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." “When people are desperate, undernourished and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as responsible for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start civil wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become terrorists, or they support or tolerate terrorism.”
Pre-industrial civilizations were dependent on the limits of solar energy and constrained by roads and waterways, impediments that were obliterated when fossil fuel became an energy source. As industrial empires became global, their increase in size meant an increase in complexity. Ironically, this complexity makes us more vulnerable to catastrophic collapse, not less. Soaring temperatures (Iraq is enduring 120 degree heat that has fried the country’s electrical grid), the depletion of natural resources, flooding, droughts, (the worst drought in 500 years is devastating Western, Central and Southern Europe and is expected to see a decline in crop yields of 8 or 9 percent), power outages, wars, pandemics, a rise in zoonotic diseases and breakdowns in supply chains combine to shake the foundations of industrial society. The Arctic has been heating up four times faster than the global average, resulting in an accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet and freakish weather patterns. The Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia are warming up to seven times faster. Climate scientists did not expect this extreme weather until 2050.
“Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up,” the anthropologist Ronald Wright warns, calling industrial society “a suicide machine.” In "A Short History of Progress", he writes: "Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee - or to watch out for - long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer."
Wright also reflects upon what will be left behind: "The archaeologists who dig us up will need to wear hazmat suits. Humankind will leave a telltale layer in the fossil record composed of everything we produce, from mounds of chicken bones, wet-wipes, tires, mattresses and other household waste to metals, concrete, plastics, industrial chemicals, and the nuclear residue of power plants and weaponry. We are cheating our children, handing them tawdry luxuries and addictive gadgets while we take away what’s left of the wealth, wonder and possibility of the pristine Earth."
Calculations of humanity’s footprint suggest we have been in ‘ecological deficit,’ taking more than Earth’s biological systems can withstand, for at least 30 years. Topsoil is being lost far faster than nature can replenish it; 30 percent of arable land has been exhausted since the mid-20th century. We have financed this monstrous debt by colonizing both past and future, drawing energy, chemical fertilizer and pesticides from the planet’s fossil carbon, and throwing the consequences onto coming generations of our species and all others. Some of those species have already been bankrupted: they are extinct. Others will follow.
As Cahokia declined, violence dramatically increased. Surrounding towns were burned to the ground. Groups, numbering in the hundreds, were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. At the end, “the enemy killed all people indiscriminately. The intent was not merely prestige, but an early form of ethnic cleansing” writes anthropologist Timothy R. Pauketat, in "Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians." He notes that, in one fifteenth-century cemetery in central Illinois, one-third of all adults had been killed by blows to the head, arrow wounds or scalping. Many showed evidence of fractures on their arms from vain attempts to fight off their attackers.
Such descent into internecine violence is compounded by a weakened and discredited central authority. In the later stages of Cahokia, the ruling class surrounded themselves with fortified wooden stockades, including a two-mile long wall that enclosed Monks Mound. Similar fortifications dotted the vast territory the Cahokia controlled, segregating gated communities where the wealthy and powerful, protected by armed guards, sought safety from the increasing lawlessness and hoarded dwindling food supplies and resources.
Overcrowding inside these stockades saw the spread of tuberculosis and blastomycosis, caused by a soil-borne fungus, along with iron deficiency anemia. Infant mortality rates rose, and life spans declined, a result of social disintegration, poor diet and disease.
By the 1400s Cahokia had been abandoned. In 1541, when Hernando de Soto’s invading army descended on what is today Missouri, looking for gold, nothing but the great mounds remained, relics of a forgotten past.
This time the collapse will be global. It will not be possible, as in ancient societies, to migrate to new ecosystems rich in natural resources. The steady rise in heat will devastate crop yields and make much of the planet uninhabitable. Climate scientists warn that once temperatures rise by 4℃, the earth, at best, will be able to sustain a billion people. The more insurmountable the crisis becomes, the more we, like our prehistoric ancestors, will retreat into self-defeating responses, violence, magical thinking and denial.
The historian Arnold Toynbee, who singled out unchecked militarism as the fatal blow to past empires, argued that civilizations are not murdered, but commit suicide. They fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past. The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit."
Assuming the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear war doesn't kill us all...
"Grey's Anatomy"
"Grey's Anatomy"
“Whoever said, "What you don't know can't hurt you" was a complete and total moron. Sometimes not knowing is the worst thing in the world."
- Meredith Grey
"Knowing is better than wondering. Waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beats the hell out of never trying."
- Meredith Grey
“Yes or no. In or out. Up or down. Live or die. Hero or coward. Fight or give in. I'll say it again to make sure you hear me. The human life is made up of choices. Live or die. That's the important choice. And it's not always in our hands."
- Derek Shepherd
"Dear Xavier High School..."
"Dear Xavier High School..."
Posted by Jill Schulz
"In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:
Click image for larger size.
Very highest recommendation:
Gerald Celente, "We Are On The Edge Of The Grim Reality of Nuclear Annihilation"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 7/19/23
"We Are On The Edge Of The
Grim Reality of Nuclear Annihilation"
"In this gripping video, renowned economist Gerald Celente delivers an urgent warning that exposes the dark and grim reality of nuclear annihilation."
Comments here:
o
Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls 7/19/23
"NATO Members Are Now Openly
Discussing War Plans Against Russia"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current
geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "The $300 Trillion Hangover"
"The $300 Trillion Hangover"
Looming corporate bankruptcies, a commercial real
estate crisis and the junk bond time bomb...
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Yesterday, the morning trading on Wall Street took a now-familiar form: stocks went up. By the end of the day, the Dow was up another 1%. What are we to make of it? Is it ‘risk on’ again? Is it time to load up on stocks? The answer is ‘no.’ And today we give you ‘no-plus,’ the real secret to Wall Street’s boom-y-ness.
‘Don’t fight the Fed’ has been one of the most successful formulae on Wall Street. But it’s not foolproof. And not complete. When the Fed switched from enabling inflation with zero rates in 2020…to trying to curb it by increasing rates in 2022…an investor would have been well advised to switch too – from buying the dips to selling the bounces. Stocks went down.
Doom, Gloom and Boom: But then, they didn’t go down. The ‘bounce’ has now gone on for 9 months. It has created a whole new group of rich people – the AI Millionaires. And it has produced what looks to many like a new bull market…with the best 6 months for the Nasdaq in history…and more to come. Not only that, but the US economy, too, has so far resisted its long overdue rendezvous with the business cycle. Where’s the recession? Where’s all the doom & gloom we promised?
A broader question worth asking: did the geniuses at the Fed finally get the hang of managing a $24 trillion economy…so that their own errors disappear, without pain or embarrassment? The Fed put interest rates far too low and left them there far too long, resulting in far too much debt throughout the world economy. What happens next? Economists argue over a ‘hard landing’ or a ‘soft landing’…but what if there’s no landing at? What if the party never ends?
Maybe so. But buckle your seat belts; turbulence ahead. Here’s a headline story from Bloomberg: "A $500 Billion Corporate-Debt Storm Builds Over Global Economy." "Fears of a credit crisis have receded. But a wave of corporate bankruptcies is building now that an era of easy money has come to an end."
And here’s another: "The $785 Billion Junk-Bond Maturity Wall Has Never Been So Close." "The world’s riskiest borrowers are starting to run out of easy-money era financing and feeling the pinch as they return to a tougher market shadowed by aggressive central banks. Junk-rated companies staring down a $785 billion maturity wall are in a race against time to replace debt that they secured when major central banks across the world slashed rates and boosted quantitative easing programs to keep economies afloat in 2020. On average, these companies now have 4.7 years to put fresh financing in place, the least amount of time ever, according to a Bloomberg global index."
Bloomberg is not letting up. The stewards should take their seats: "The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Time Bomb." "From San Francisco to Hong Kong, higher interest rates and falling property values are bringing the commercial real estate market to a perilous precipice. In New York and London, owners of gleaming office towers are walking away from their debt rather than pouring good money after bad. The landlords of downtown San Francisco’s largest mall have abandoned it. A new Hong Kong skyscraper is only a quarter leased.
The creeping rot inside commercial real estate is like a dark seam running through the global economy. Even as stock markets rally and investors are hopeful that the fastest interest-rate increases in a generation will ebb, the trouble in property is set to play out for years."
$300 Trillion Overhang: Remember that we are in a transition period, from one primary trend to another. After 4 decades of lower and lower interest rates…which reached ridiculous lows after the 2009 crisis in housing finance…the world now has a $300 trillion overhang of debt. Some government debt. Some corporate. Some household. All of this debt is subject to interest rates…that are now going up. Debt does not get refinanced overnight. It takes time. But when it is time to go back to lenders, debtors find their interest charges approximately twice what they were a few years ago.
Meanwhile, households are still running down their savings – which were built up during the Trump/Biden stimmie giveaways. And the US government – the world’s biggest consumer, as well as its biggest debtor – is now spending more than $2 trillion more than it receives in taxes, each year. That too must be financed…at rising cost.
So far, the giant balloon is still floating along nicely. Full employment. Rising stock prices. Joe Biden crows about what a great economy he has created. But the real secret is that the ‘tightening’ has hardly begun. There are lots of ways of measuring inflation. The most reliable is the ‘trimmed mean’ index…which puts today’s inflation at about 5%. Interest rates have moved up dramatically. Inflation has come down. But so far, the real, after inflation cost of credit (money) – based on the Fed Funds rate – is still only about zero. The Fed is not exactly fighting inflation tooth and nail, in other words. But interest rate hikes are only a part of the inflate-or-die picture. While monetary policy sobers up, fiscal policy turns to the bottle. More…tomorrow."
o
And all this caused by pure greed...
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Heaven And Hell"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 7/19/23
"AviaPark, Moscow: Largest Russian
Shopping Mall After 500 Days of Sanctions"
Comments here:
I am literally, absolutely speechless...
Comments?
o
Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
kimgary, 7/19/23
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave."
"Problems with drugs and crime on Kensington Ave, Philadelphia's most dangerous street. In Philadelphia as a whole, violent crime and drug abuse are major issues. The city has a higher rate of violent crime than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. The drug overdose rate in Philadelphia is also concerning. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50%, with more than twice as many deaths from overdoses as homicides. Kensington's high crime rate and drug abuse contribute significantly to Philadelphia's problems.
Because of the high number of drugs in the neighborhood, Kensington has the third-highest drug crime rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. The opioid epidemic has played a significant role in this problem, as it has in much of the rest of the country. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the United States over the last two decades, and Philadelphia is no exception. In addition to having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% of Philadelphia's overdose deaths involved opioids, and Kensington is a significant contributor to this figure. This Philadelphia neighborhood is said to have the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast, with many neighbors migrating to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high concentration of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have focused on the neighborhood in an attempt to address Philadelphia's problem."
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"Kiev vs. Philly"
"One city is in the midst of a war.
The other has been run by Democrats since 1955."
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A comment: Shakespeare wrote in "Macbeth", "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." I once saw another quote about Hell, maybe Sartre, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just enough to keep us from escaping." Look around, what do you see? Our society and economy, civilization itself is totally collapsing in every way, and it's doing it right now, and life as we knew it is already gone forever. The more I see, the more I think that thought about Hell just might be true, at least in America...
You tell me...comments?
"When Will It End? Homelessness and the Hollywood Strikes"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 7/19/23
"When Will It End?
Homelessness and the Hollywood Strikes"
"We have seen Los Angeles completely fall apart. Homelessness is destroying everything from businesses to increased crime. Plus, Hollywood is striking. The writers and the actors are on strike. When does it all end?"
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"Strange Things Going On At Sam's Club! Major Price Increases!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 7/19/23
"Strange Things Going On At Sam's Club!
Major Price Increases!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Sam's Club and are noticing some very high price increases on groceries! We also are seeing some strange things going on as Sam's Club is moving stuff around to fill in some major holes around the store. Hopefully these are not future food shortages."
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Tuesday, July 18, 2023
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
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"The eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens me. Why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time have been ascribed to me? We travel in a vast sphere, always drifting in the uncertain, pulled from one side to another. Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and to fasten ourselves, it shifts and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desires to find solid ground and an ultimate and solid foundation for building a tower reaching to the Infinite. But always these bases crack, and the earth obstinately opens up into abysses. We are infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, since the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from us in an encapsulated secret; we are equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which we were made, and the Infinite in which we are swallowed up."
- Blaise Pascal
"Reflect On What Happens..."
“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age breakdown. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a secular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”
– Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”
"Oh Sh*t, It's Starting, Putin Launching Massive Offensive - Scott Ritter "
Redacted, 7/18/23
"Oh Sh*t, It's Starting, Putin Launching
Massive Offensive - Scott Ritter "
Ritter segment begins at 36:45, Ends 1:00:00
"What will happen now that Ukraine has launched so many attacks on civilian infrastructure? Scott Ritter joins us to talk about Putin's next play and what it will cost Ukraine to "go slow" during the next stage of the counteroffensive."
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Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 7/18/23
"Scott Ritter: They're All Dead,
And Ukraine Has No Real Men Left"
"What will happen now that Ukraine has launched so many attacks on civilian infrastructure? Scott Ritter joins us to talk about Putin's next play and what it will cost Ukraine to "go slow" during the next stage of the counteroffensive."
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"20 Fast Food Chains That Are Getting More Expensive In 2023"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Fast Food Chains That Are Getting More Expensive In 2023"
By Epic Economist
"Inflation is still impacting every industry in the U.S., including fast food. Restaurant prices are rising 7.1 times faster than prices at the grocery store, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many famous brands point to the skyrocketing cost of ingredients as the main driver of menu price increases. Meat, poultry, fish, egg, and dairy prices all soared in the past couple of years. At the same time, milk, flour, sugar, and coffee prices faced the largest price hikes in BLS history. Now, some of the biggest fast-food chains in America are announcing further menu changes in 2023 as they continue to pass along those increased costs to their customers. Unfortunately, if you’re on a tight budget, this means you may no longer afford to visit your favorite restaurants in the months ahead.
For instance, Chick-fil-A customers may be noticing that prices at the chain keep going up. And it seems there’s no end in sight for that trend as new CEO Andrew Cathy just announced another price increase for 2023. The famous chicken sandwich restaurant raised menu prices by 15% in the past year. Now, the company announced another menu-wide price hike of 6% on average. In other words, Chick-fil-A items are a whopping 21% more expensive than they were just a couple of years back. That’s definitely a hefty sum for many American workers, who lost on average 24.7% of their purchasing power due to inflation, according to the Pew Research Center.
Meanwhile, from 2020 to 2022, Taco Bell’s prices went up by 14.6%. In the first two quarters of this year alone, the chain’s fans saw items going up by half of that rate, marking an additional 7.4% on Taco Bell’s menu costs. Some of the brand’s most popular products have seen the steepest increases, according to customers, who have also been also remarking on the apparent "shrinkflation" of some items, including the Crunchwrap. "All this while continuing to increase prices. I rarely eat at TB anymore now," said one former devotee on a Reddit post. Another noted that their order of 3 chicken tacos at Taco Bell came to a total of $8.34—while a similar order of 3 chicken tacos at Chipotle came out to $8.20, making Taco Bell the more expensive option. "I remember getting 4 tacos for like $3 as a teen," lamented one responder. In the past, the restaurant’s cheap prices were a small comfort for hungry Americans trying to save. But that’s no longer the case in 2023.
Similarly, Wendy’s rose prices twice in the past two years. Last year, the company increased its menu prices by 6%, according to CFO Gunther Plosch. In 2022, prices went up by another 6%. And in March, the executive said that Wendy’s stores would start implementing another 5% hike in the summer and into the third quarter of 2023. According to Pricelisto’s analysis, in Q2, most of its cheeseburger offerings went up between 32 and 39 cents. Today, we compiled 20 fast food chains where menu prices are getting more expensive this year."
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Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, PM 7/18/23
"Grain Deal Ends! Prices Will Skyrocket! Get Prepared!"
"Russia ends grain deal with the United Nations, and we go over how this is most likely gonna affect the entire world. 58 countries are already going to be affected by this tragedy!"
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"We Work In The Dark..."
"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"
“Standing Up When It’s Too Late”
“Standing Up When It’s Too Late”
By JR Nyquist
“This article is a comparison between America and another great empire faced with rot in high office and a decline of the state – Rome. The writer, JR Nyquist, artfully points out it’s not the big events that sink an empire but many seemingly little ones. You could call what is happening to the U.S. “death by a thousand cuts.” Except in this story, people are not really aware how deep the cuts are and exactly who is doing the cutting. I loved this piece, and I hope you do as well.” – Greg Hunter
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“There is a letter by Marcus Tullius Cicero, dated 18 December 50 B.C. This letter was written to his friend Atticus on the eve of the Roman Civil War. He wrote as follows: “The political situation alarms me deeply, and so far I have found scarcely anybody who is not for giving Caesar what he demands rather than fighting it out.” To explain the situation in brief, G. Julius Caesar had demanded the right to circumvent the Roman constitution, to break laws with impunity, to extend his command over a large army by using that army to threaten the Senate of Rome. “And why should we start standing up to him now?” asked Cicero. The next day he wrote to Atticus: “We should have stood up to him [Caesar] when he was weak, and that would have been easy. Now we have to deal with eleven legions…” Though he hated the idea of civil war, the only course, said Cicero, was to follow “the honest men or whoever may be called such, even if they plunge.”
And who were these “honest men”? “I don’t know of any,” wrote Cicero in the same letter. “There are honest individuals, but there are no honest groups.” Then he asked rhetorically if the Senate was honest, or the tax farmers, or the capitalists. None were frightened of living under an autocracy, he lamented. The capitalists, especially, “never have objected to that, so long as they were left in peace.” But civil war occurred nonetheless, because people are not free to be dishonest forever. They must admit to certain responsibilities, and oppose the advance of evil. The previous inclination to look away, to do nothing, to shrug off responsibility, proves in the end to be no more than a delaying tactic. They attempted to put off calamity, Cicero suggested, and made it all the more calamitous. That is all.
Why did the Roman Senate suddenly stand up to Caesar? What triggered their resistance? As with all free people, they began with policies of procrastination and appeasement. They hoped that the problem (i.e., Caesar) would go away. In the end, however, they discovered their mistake. Everyone still hoped for peace, though none believed it was possible. Everyone wanted to avoid war, but nobody saw a way out. Pompey stood before the Senate and gave voice to what everyone thought. “If we give Caesar the consulship, it will mean the subversion of the constitution.” In other words, it would mean the end of Rome, the end of the republic, the destruction of their country.
In a fitting preface to John Dickinson’s “Death of a Republic,” George L. Haskins wrote, “that the history of Rome is the history of the world, that, as all roads lead to Rome, so all history ends or begins with Rome.” Why do free people fall into complacency? Why are threats ignored until the eleventh hour?
“Surely,” wrote Cicero at the end of Caesar’s dictatorship, “our present sufferings are all too well deserved. For had we not allowed outrages to go unpunished on all sides, it would never have been possible for a single individual to seize tyrannical power.” Caesar’s cause was not right, but evil, Cicero explained. “Mere confiscations of the property of individual citizens were far from enough to satisfy him. Whole provinces and countries succumbed to his onslaught, in one comprehensive universal catastrophe…” As for the city of Rome, Cicero lamented, “nothing is left - only the lifeless walls of houses. And even they look afraid that some further terrifying attack may be imminent. The real Rome is gone forever.”
Republics are slow to defend themselves against enemies that advance, like Caesar, under camouflage. But make no mistake, republics always defend. Groups and categories of men may not be honest or brave, but when they are finally confronted with the truth – as individuals – they see no other course. They stand up and fight. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Caesar was struck down in the Senate and killed by thrusting daggers.
It is all too true, of course. “We should have stood up to him when he was weak,” Cicero lamented. The problem with republican government is its tardiness; or rather, tardiness in the face of danger. As Machiavelli wrote, “The institutions normally used by republics are slow in functioning. No assembly or magistrate can do everything alone. In many cases, they have to consult with one another, and to reconcile their diverse views takes time. Where there is a question of remedying a situation that will not brook delay, such a procedure is dangerous.”
Machiavelli concluded, therefore, “that republics in imminent danger, having no recourse to dictatorship, will always be ruined when some grave misfortune befalls them.” This is the weakness of republican government. Here is the ground on which it dies. An obvious threat, like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor is not the greatest danger. It is the subtle, camouflaged threat, that creeps up from behind. It is this camouflage that gives reluctant men a way out. “We need not fight. We need not make a fuss. There is nothing to fear.”
When this is the prevailing view, people who understand a given threat may ask: “What is to be done?” As long as we are isolated individuals, there is nothing to do. The individual may be honest with himself, but groups are not honest. What prevails overall is an optimistic dismissal. “The threat isn’t real.” This is how Hitler got so far. This is how Communism took over so many countries, and continues today under camouflage. There is nothing the individual can do that will sway the crowd. And as we are a republic, our political system operates according to the psychology of a crowd. The majority are caught up in the fads and media trends of the moment. Cynical and empty publicity characterizes much of our public discourse. But one day the country will awaken. Then, and only then, Americans will stop going along as if nothing serious hangs over them. Will it be too late? Perhaps it will be too late to save the republic. But it will not be too late to save the country.”
Greg Hunter ,"CV19 Vax Ongoing Global Criminal Experimentation"
"CV19 Vax Ongoing Global Criminal Experimentation"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who was one of the first to warn of the dangers of the so-called CV19 “vaccines.” Kingston showed the danger of the nanotechnology called mRNA, which Big Pharma patents say is, in fact, an electromagnetic device. Kingston was also one of the first to warn the CV19 vax was the “Beginning of Transhumanism,” a bioweapon, and not a vaccine at all. With all the negative facts about the vaccines and mRNA nanoparticle biotech, the shots are still being injected unabated. 676 million CV19 injections have been given in the USA alone with more than 13 billion CV19 injections worldwide. This is a massive global crime, and it’s still going on. Kingston explains, “These (vaccines) were designed to cause harm, disease, and we are being experimented on. A lot of people say, well, why don’t they just kill us? That’s like a mouse saying to a scientist, ‘Why don’t you just kill us?’ Because scientists are experimenting on the mice to figure out a way to benefit themselves. These psychopaths are experimenting on humans to figure out a way to benefit artificial intelligence. That’s what’s going on. It’s criminal human experimentation with weapons. What I just said sounds like a conspiracy theory. You can go through my letter, which is all Pfizer documents and government documents. I have the military’s DMED (Defense Medical Epidemiology Database) documents in there. All the hard evidence is there.”
Kingston also says people were not told they were being experimented on by Big Pharma. Kingston points out, “The clinical trials were never designed to demonstrate they could prevent infection and protect against disease. No one was given informed consent in the clinical trials and also under the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). People were not told about the risks that the FDA knew about in October 2020, which was a dozen neurological disorders and cardiovascular problems. So, they were not told any of this. So, that is not bona fide research. That’s criminal research. Pfizer, who was going to make $50 billion, was put in charge of safety, ethics and data interpretation. So, this was not bona fide research. It was criminal experimentation.”
Kingston says the mRNA/nanoparticles are still being injected, and they are also being used in other products without the public’s knowledge. Kingston wants to start with getting local sheriffs to start pulling the CV19 vaccines off the market because they are killing and disabling an uninformed public. Kingston says, “Once the shots are seized for the Covid 19 injections, I want people to wake up and say where else is this nanotechnology? Big Pharma companies are putting this technology in a lot of injectables. So, there are other people being injected and dying. They are putting it into cosmetics like Botox and fillers. We need to stop this now, but we need to start with the Covid 19 injections. These are not vaccines. These are nanoparticle injections. These nanoparticles are known to be toxic agents. In 2017, the nanoparticles are registered as duel-use weapons of biowarfare. So, the nanoparticles are weapons, and the sheriffs need to seize those weapons. That’s what needs to happen.”
Kingston says if the spread of nanoparticles is not stopped, it will eventually destroy all natural lifeforms on planet Earth. Yes–it is that bad. Kingston has a Bible verse to make a profound point, and she reads, “This is talking about ‘The End of Days.’ The prophecy reads, ‘But woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days. For those will be a time of tribulation such has not occurred since the beginning of creation, which God created until now and never will. Unless the Lord shortened those days, no life would have been saved but for the sake of the elect who he chose.’ This is talking about how God created all life forms perfectly. He created mankind perfectly in his image. There is now this other entity that is creating life. That’s synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. That’s what it is. We have an opportunity to stop this.” There is much more in the 1-hour and 5-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with renowned biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives another update on the bioweapon mRNA/nanoparticle injections and why this “synthetic biology” needs to be stopped.
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