Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"

"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo

"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.

Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."

Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?

Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"

"Moment. Moment. Moment.
- equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.

It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.
Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.

I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
~ Jane Hirshfield

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…”

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”

"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "

"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore living. As children, most of us sang that mesmerizing, wistful lullaby that ends with the words, 'Life is but a dream.' This is a classic example of a deep, sophisticated truth hiding, like an underground stream, in an unlikely place. It winds its way through our minds like a riddle or a Zen koan, coming up when we least expect it and asking that we consider its meaning. Many gurus and philosophers agree with this mysterious observation, saying that this world we perceive as real is actually an illusion, not unlike a film being projected on a screen. Most of us are so involved in the projection that we don't understand it for what it is. We are completely caught up in the illusion, imagining that we are in a life and death struggle and taking it very seriously.

The enlightened few, on the other hand, live their lives in the light of the awareness that what most of us perceive as reality is a passing fancy. As a result, they behave with detachment, compassion, and wisdom, while the rest of us struggle and writhe upon the stage in the play of our life. Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore it or don't do our best with the twists and turns of our fate. Rather, like an actress who plays her role fully even as she knows it's only a role, we engage in the unfolding drama, but with a little more freedom because we know that this is not the totality of who we are.

And life is more of an improvisation than it is like a play whose lines have already been written, whose end is already known. Like an improviser, we have choices to make and the more we embrace the illusionary quality of the performance, the lighter we can be on the planet, on others, and on ourselves. We can truly play with the shadows cast by the light of the projector, fully engaging without getting bogged down."
"We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe. We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we're hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we're victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck."
"Many lifetimes?", I asked.
"How many movies have you seen?"
"Oh."
"Films about living on this planet, about living on other planets; anything that's got space and time is all movie and all illusion," he said. "But for a while we can learn a huge amount and have a lot of fun with our illusions, can we not?"
- Richard Bach,
Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

"The Long Dark"

"The Long Dark"
by Chris Floyd

"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.

We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.

We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.

We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.

These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”

So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.

And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?

What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.

Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."

The Daily "Near You?"

Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

Gerald Celente, "Middle East Meltdown, When All Else Fails They Take You To War"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal
"Middle East Meltdown, 
When All Else Fails They Take You To War"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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"15 Retailers On The Brink Of Bankruptcy Right Now"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/10/23
"15 Retailers On The Brink Of Bankruptcy Right Now"

"Retail bankruptcies are up by 61%, new data shows. In addition, U.S. store closures have shot up 77% over the past year, and a fresh report released by Retail Dive in partnership with credit reporting agency CreditRiskMonitor identifies several retailers that are most at risk of facing bankruptcy in the final months of 2023, or have just filed for Chapter 11 protection, and are about to close doors for good.

For example, Instant Brands the maker of the viral Instant Pot owner of brands like Corelle and Pyrex has just filed for bankruptcy as parent company Cornell Capital pointed to profitability concerns. During the pandemic, stay-at-home mandates made many families turn to their kitchens for entertainment and comfort, and the Instant Pot, a modern take on a pressure cooker, rapidly became a sensation. But just because something becomes a hit that doesn't mean the underlying company will have long-term success. That's particularly true for brands that sell one-time-purchase items. Even though, at the time seemingly everyone wanted to buy one after the surge in demand was done, Instant Brands lost its core revenue source. During the last holiday season, the kitchen gadget retailer's products helped to drive sales higher for big box stores like Target and Walmart. The problem was that once you owned their products, you weren't likely to need another for at least a few years. In essence, it was an unsustainable business model, which ultimately led the brand to go bankrupt.

Similarly, discount retailer 99 Cent Only Stores saw wider losses in its latest quarter as sales and margins continued to slide. The company reported sales of about $480 million for the quarter, a 3.8% drop year over year. The business also reported a loss of $27 million, while its gross margins fell by 5%. The disappointing results led Moody's to drop the corporate credit rating of the regional discount, indicating a deepening default risk and higher potential for bankruptcy. "The downgrade reflects the company's much weaker than expected operating performance which has constrained liquidity as we expect free cash flow to remain negative," Moody's Vice President Mickey Chadha said in a statement. On top of that, the discount is losing ground for competitors such as Dollar General, and Dollar Tree. Moreover, discount grocers such as Aldi are taking up more market share, and many 99 Cents Only Stores look less attractive for both investors and consumers.

The retail apocalypse is still wreking havoc all across America, and even established brands are in danger of going under due to rapidly shifting economic fundamentals. This is the beggining of the end for struggling chains, which means we may have to say goodbye to many more stores before we enter 2024. Americans will be shocked to see dark storefronts and shortages of hundreds of products during the holidays as more and more brands shutter locations and halt operations in many areas of the country. This trend will only intensify over the next couple of months, changing our retail landscape forever. That's what we're about to expose in this video, so stay tuned until the end to find out if your favorite store is about to go out of business in 2023."
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"How It Really Is"

 

"Hate Crimes"

"Hate Crimes"
Plus Eisenhower's final warning, the cost of forever 
wars and what Russian dressing has to do with anything...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

"Twenty-six of 32 four-star admirals & generals who retired from June 2018 to July 2023 were later employed in roles including executive, adviser, board member or lobbyist for companies w/ significant defense business." ~ The Quincy Institute

Poitou, France - The big news today is the battle in Israel. It’s a real David vs. Goliath fight, with the US rushing to give Goliath any aid and comfort it can. The New York Times: "White House officials said President Biden told Mr. Netanyahu in a call on Sunday that military assistance is on its way to Israel and more will follow in the days ahead." US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent a message encouraging ceasefire efforts. The message was quickly deleted. Apparently, war is a vote getter and money-spinner. Peace is not. Not in Israel. Not in the US.

“God Take Me”: When Dwight Eisenhower left Washington in 1961, he warned the nation of a dangerous growth in the industry he knew best – the war industry. And then, having served his country and done his duty, he retired to the family farm in Pennsylvania. No consultant checks came his way. No emoluments from the weapons producers. No sinecures or lobbying gigs. Occasionally, when the phone rang, he picked it up to find JFK on the line…or later, Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. He gave advice when asked, but otherwise minded his own business – which consisted of painting, raising angus cattle, and spending time with his wife, Mamie.

We saw him during this period. We had gone to Walter Reed Hospital with our father to visit one of his WWII buddies. Walking down the hall, we spotted a man in a wheelchair coming our way. Our father had been out of uniform for at least ten years, but when he spotted Ike coming his way, he stood erect, his back to the wall, and saluted. “It’s General Eisenhower,” he whispered, overlooking Eisenhower’s two terms as President of the United States of America. When he was ready, in 1969, Ike asked the blinds to be drawn. Holding Mamie’s hand, he offered a prayer. “I want to go; God take me.” Moments later he was dead.

More than a half century later, retired generals rarely leave Washington. Instead, they join the payroll at think tanks or General Dynamics. The cancerous growth Eisenhower warned about, has metastasized and is probably terminal. America can only avoid a gruesome finale of war and inflation by cutting its military/empire spending. But it’s unlikely; hatred and war are too attractive.

German Hot Dogs: Hate crime is a new thing in the annals of jurisprudence. The Ten Commandments, revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, and presented to the Israelites on two tablets of stone, made no mention of hate. Of all the bad things one might do, ‘hate’ didn’t make the top 10. Trying to eliminate hate is like trying to abolish sin itself; it’s not likely to be successful. And while the US government punishes hate crime, it also encourages hatred on a huge scale.

In the War Between the States, northerners were persuaded that almost any white male south of the Potomac was doing the devil’s bidding. Lincoln’s army invaded Virginia with the express purpose of killing all southerners who resisted yankee authority. They kept at it until one out of every four white southerners was dead.

In 1917, the US government stirred up so much hatred against German-Americans that people set Dachshunds on fire and changed their names to erase their teutonic heritage. At least one man in the Midwest was murdered when he was mistaken for a Hun. Posters distributed by the US Army depicted Germans as rabid, blood-crazed gorillas. And the Wilson Administration sent 10,000 armed gunmen to Europe, every day beginning in 1917, with orders to kill them.

Modern hate-crime laws began with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1968. Groups wanted to be included in a ‘victim’ class so as to get preferential treatment of some sort. Most recently, “Asian activists” in California sought victim status for low-caste Indians. The California legislature went along; but Governor Newsom vetoed it. NBCNews: "A bill that would have made California the first state to explicitly ban caste-based discrimination was vetoed Saturday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. After a year of advocacy and a month long hunger strike, progressive South Asian groups were disappointed - but said that the caste equity movement is just beginning."

Hatred on the Menu: Once a group achieves its halo, anyone who challenges it is by definition a ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ or something-ist. In 2017, for example, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a confrontation occurred between people who wanted to take away Confederate monuments and those who wanted to keep them. It ended in one death. Donald Trump commented that “there were good people on both sides;” but by then hating the opposing group had become almost compulsory. After all, they were ‘white supremacists.’

While groups in the US seek victimhood at home, the Deep State/military/surveillance/think tank complex seeks victims. Most recently, it convinced many Americans that Russians are bad people and that it is okay to hate them. The Chinese…Iranians…North Koreans – politicians and the conniving press stirred up hatred against them all.

Hatred manifests itself in absurd and deadly ways. Recall that during the invasion of Iraq, Americans stopped eating ‘french fries;’ we were supposed to hate the French because they wisely refused to join America’s ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ The greasy potato sticks became ‘freedom fries.’ Now, the French fries are back on the table. It’s the Russian dressing that’s off the menu.

World Socialist Website reported earlier this year: "New York Philharmonic will not perform Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony." The New York Philharmonic Orchestra has quietly announced a complete change in the program… Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was originally scheduled to lead the famous Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. The Leningrad has been canceled and Sokhiev will not be on the podium. He is being replaced by James Gaffigan, in a program including a work by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov…

What did Shostakovich do? He died in 1975. And what about the French fry? What was its crime? But you don’t have to do anything to be a hate crime victim. You just have to be something – the enemy the war industry needs."
o
Joel’s Note: So-called “defense spending” by the United States in fiscal 2022 accounted for almost 40% of total global military expenditures, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). At $877 billion, the SIPRI’s figure includes discretionary and mandatory outlays by the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of State, and the National Intelligence Program.

That’s more than the next ten countries – China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and the Ukraine – spend… combined. The good folks over at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation compiled this nifty graphic to help us visualize the magnitude of the spending relative to other nations.
None of this is to suggest that there aren’t heinous acts perpetrated around the world. As we type these words, there are dozens of ongoing conflicts claiming tens of thousands of innocent lives, ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and of course civil wars. The Geneva Academy lists six armed conflicts here in Latin America, seven in Europe, 21 in Asia, more than 35 in Africa and more than 45 in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

The question is not whether bad things happen around the world… but whether a nation already swamped under $33.5 trillion in outstanding debt can afford to keep spending at its present rate. Take a look through the award spending page on the Department of Defense’s agency profile. You’ll see $71 billion in award obligations for the Dept. of the Air Force… $77 billion for the Dept. of the Army… $112 billion for the Dept. of the Navy. The Dept. of Logistics alone has logged over 2.8 million transactions this year.

Hundreds of billions of dollars here… hundreds of billions of dollars there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money. If indeed there is a case for the world needing a “strong America,” as foreign policy hawks never tire of reminding us, surely bankrupting the nation is not the way to project strength abroad."

"Israel - Hamas War 10/10/23"

Full screen recommended.
Vantage with Palki Sharma, 10/10/23
"Israel-Hamas War: Netanyahu Warns
 Hamas, Says "We'll Finish War"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Al Jazeera English, 10/10/23
"Israel - Gaza War, Latest Developments"
"The war in Gaza and Israel enters its fourth day. The Israeli military is bombarding Gaza, Hamas is launching more rockets, and the death toll on both sides is rising. Within the past hour, Hamas fired a barrage of hundreds of rockets towards southern Israel. It targeted the port city of Ashkelon, after earlier warning people to leave. Hamas says it's in response to Israel's continued pounding of Gaza with air and artillery strikes. At least 830 Palestinians have been killed, including 140 children and seven journalists, while at least 900 Israelis have been killed since Hamas launched its surprise offensive on Saturday.

Israel has also imposed a total siege on Gaza, cutting off all supplies of food, water and fuel. The World Health Organization is calling for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to allow in urgent medical aid."
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Full screen recommended.
"Egypt Aid Trucks Retreat After Israel "Bombing Threat", 
"Gaza Parliament and Ministries Targets”
"The Israeli army says Gaza’s parliament and civilian ministries are legitimate targets in its offensive against Hamas. “If there’s a gunman firing rockets from there, it turns into a military target,” Israeli army spokesperson Richard Hecht said. The Israeli air force has said it is continuing its aerial barrage as officials added over 1,000 strikes have already taken place on Gaza. The Israeli military also said it destroyed a mosque which it said was "housing weapons" for Hamas. A senior Hamas official has said allies like Iran and Hezbollah will join fighting "if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation”. An Israeli military official has suggested that Palestinians fleeing its air attacks in the Gaza Strip head to Egypt. Watch the video to find out more."
Comments here:
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"Israel Announces Plan To Carry Out Genocidal 
Atrocities Against 2 Million Palestinian Civilians"
"Things are escalating very rapidly in the Middle East, as Israel has now announced a siege warfare tactic against 2 million Palestinian civilians by cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel. This means 2 million Palestinian civilians will now face imminent starvation, sickness and disease, with sewage running in the streets, hospitals blacked out, and children woman and the elderly suffering horrifying deaths while under kinetic bombardment. Israel's actions are leading to rapid escalation and involvement from other groups and nations, including Hezbollah, Lebanon and Turkey. Iran may soon be involved as well, and Turkey is warning that if the USA gets involved, Turkey's military will side with Palestinians." Get the full, critical analysis in today's Brighteon Broadcast News here:
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A Comment: "A senior Hamas official has said allies like Iran and Hezbollah will join fighting 'if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation', which is precisely what Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to do. One should consider this: Lebanon shares a border with Israel. The elder of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, claims they have 100,000 very well trained and armed fighters. Significantly Hezbollah possesses 40,000 to 150,000 missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.  Should Iran enter the conflict they have at least 3,000 long range ballistic missiles and tens of thousands of shorter range missiles. If the United States attempts to aid Israel Turkey's military will side with Hamas. Israel will cease to exist... but not before exercising their nuclear weapon Samson Option in a final act of defiance. - CP

Dan, I Allegedly, "I Feel Like I’ve Been Duped"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 10/10/23
"I Feel Like I’ve Been Duped"
"Have you ever purchased something and then right after you do it goes on sale? This is a horrible feeling. Usually it’s with a very large purchase. Today we’re going to cover that exact topic."
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"Money..."

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
o
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
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Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/10/23
"As We Expected! Risk In The Market Has Dropped 
But It Will Not Last! Expect Another False Flag Event!"
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Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 10/10/23
"Stock Market Declines, Housing Falls & 
The Fed Says Americans Are Out Of Money"

"In the wake of unprecedented economic upheaval, a recent survey has revealed that 80% of Americans have already depleted their savings, and the situation is poised to worsen in the coming months. Despite a nearly 10-year low in personal savings rates, consumers continue to spend the majority of their discretionary income. As a result, some estimates predict that many will have nothing left in their savings by year-end.

One of the most significant contributors to Americans' financial struggles is the surging cost of living. A multitude of factors has caused prices to skyrocket, affecting various aspects of daily life. Car prices are another area where costs have been skyrocketing. Since 2012, the average new car price has increased from $30,000 to over $48,000, outpacing inflation by a considerable margin. This trend has raised concerns about how long this can continue before prices start to decline. The average car payment has reached a record high of $733 per month. New cars now cost 30% more than just a few years ago, and used cars are nearly 50% more expensive."
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"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/10/23
"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! This Is Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are seeing massive price increases on groceries! Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen a major surge in prices at all grocery stores and are trying to buy up different deals as we see them. This is not good as we all must prepare for the worst case scenario!"
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Monday, October 9, 2023

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: US Military Placing Massive Orders"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/9/23
"Alert: US Military Placing Massive Orders; 
Syria, Lebanon, Russia, Iran, Region About to Explode"
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Jeremiah Babe, "Who Is Going To Pay For All Of This?"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/9/23
"Who Is Going To Pay For All Of This?
 Americans Financial Pain Will Get Worse As The World Implodes
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Musical Interlude: Adiemus, "Adiemus"

Full screen recommended.
Adiemus, "Adiemus"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.
About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”

Chet Raymo, “The Silence”

“The Silence”
by Chet Raymo

“The hiding places of my power
Seem open; I approach, and then they close;
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
While yet we may, as far as words can give,
A substance and a life to what I feel…”

“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.

Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.

This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.

There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”

"Life Does Not Require Us To Be..."

 

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you
damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty,
the duty to take the consequences."
- P. J. O'Rourke

"The October Stock Market Crash Is Rapidly Accelerating With 50% Value Drop"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/9/23
"The October Stock Market Crash Is 
Rapidly Accelerating With 50% Value Drop"

"October is known as the spookiest month for Wall Street, and the market movements of the next few weeks are going to serve up an extra dose of terror for traders. Since September, conditions are getting turbulent for the S&P 500, which shed almost 6% during the month. Several calculations suggest that the index is about to drop below 3,000 points in October – which would be at least a 30% crash from current levels. But market insiders point to a myriad of factors that could send share prices even lower. They say a 50% crash would not be ‘unsurprising’.

The feeling is changing so rapidly on Wall Street that two important market indicators are showing that investors are sitting on the edge of their seats. On Thursday, CNN reported that its Fear & Greed Index, which tracks seven market indicators, sank to an “Extreme Fear” reading of 14, which marks the index’s lowest level since last October.

And they are right to worry because, right now, U.S. stocks are on shakier ground. The Federal Reserve just warned that it will keep higher interest rates for longer, which is raising concerns about whether or not the U.S. economy can stay resilient. Many signs of trouble are brewing. Investment bank Raymond James said on a note to clients that the U.S. economy is set to enter an inflection point as soon as this quarter. JPMorgan also predicts a rocky few weeks on Wall Street.

The so-called Magnificent Seven stocks—Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, and Nvidia—would be particularly hard-hit in such a scenario, sparking high double-digit losses as they catch down to the rest of the stock market and sectors like consumer staples and utilities. In the past few days, many other financial strategists started to raise the alarm about the imminent danger of an October crash. Notably, Albert Edwards, a global strategist at investment bank Société Générale, warned that markets were currently mimicking the run-up to 1987’s stock market crash.

The outlook today is eerily similar to the run-up to Black Monday when stocks were resilient amid rising bond yields right before the Dow crashed by 22% in a single trading session, its sharpest one-day decline in history, the strategist cautions.

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup also seem to be positioning themselves for more turmoil, lowering their year-end price target for the S&P 500 on Friday. Bank of America noted that at the end of September, investors were dumping stocks at the fastest rate since the end of 2022, and that won’t change in the coming weeks.

The scariest warning of all came from Jeremy Grantham, who said a 50% crash in the S&P500 would not be a surprise. During the latest episode of Bloomberg's "Merryn Talks Money" podcast, the legendary investor said that the market suffers from attention deficit disorder, “so it always thinks every rally is the beginning of the next great bull market."

With so much overvaluation going on, “the simple arithmetic suggests you'll either have a dismal return forever, or you'll have a nice bear market and then a normal return,” he cautioned. “And the nice bear market will be hopefully less than a 50% decline, but it won't be a huge amount less than 50% from the peak in real terms," Grantham stressed.

That’s what happens when there’s so much pressure on a very complicated financial system. At some point, things start to break. The pattern is very clear – it is always when everybody seems too distracted to pay attention to the signals that a disaster starts to unfold."
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The Daily "Near You?"

Malton, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

Jim Kunstler, "Here We Go Loop-de-Loop"

"Here We Go Loop-de-Loop"
By Jim Kunstler

“Palestine is not Ukraine. If America intervenes directly, all American locations in the region will become legitimate targets of the resistance axis and will face our attacks. And on this day there will be no red line left.” - Hezbollah Official Statement

"You know, of course, that the CIA’s job is to detect sinister doings in other countries, especially as they might affect our own country. Looks like they missed something lately in the spook-filled space between Iran and Israel. Do you suppose they’re too busy running Facebook? And their domestic companion, the FBI, has been working overtime for years now, between their mighty labors concocting RussiaGate and the current program to root out election deniers and other seditious riffraff - while millions of sketchy mutts from here, there, and everywhere in the world scuttle over our border with Mexico and decant across our fruited plains - with assistance, you understand, from our own border officials - and, yet, no questions asked. Here’s a free phone and an auto-refilling debit card. Have a nice day in Skokie, Plattsburgh, or wherever! And don’t forget to send in your court appearance forms by the 2030 deadline!

So, it came as a big surprise when southern Israel was overrun by Hamas dudes in tricked-out pickup trucks and para-gliders on Saturday, who carried home hundreds of nubile young women to have sport with, after slaughtering hundreds more people of all ages, like rampaging bronze age Philistines. That fresh enormity is, shall we say, quite a ways from resolution at this time. I’ll tell you what will be an even bigger surprise, though: when some organized unit of those aforesaid mutts of unknown origin who snuck across our border sets off something like a dirty bomb in New York, Los Angeles, or Washington DC. Or takes over a nuclear power station. Or… well, I wouldn’t want to put any ideas in a bad actor’s head. But you get the picture, I’m sure.

So, we’re in something that smells like uncharted territory this autumn Monday, and events are galloping faster than anyone can process. The scene looks a little bit like World War Three. At least any child of twelve could game it out that way in three easy steps. Say, the chief mullah in Teheran issues some crude remark about how Israel had it coming, yadda yadda … and the IDF forthwith fires a cruise missile up his qabaa… and next thing you know, so many mushroom clouds rise over the Levant that it looks like a shitake farm.

All this while the USA struggles to restore its political mental health after years of domestic abuse at the hands of our own government. A big question here is what kind of correction will it require to straighten out that abusive government… or can anything at all avail before having to shred the whole goshdarn operation and start over? Quien sabe? (As they say in Plattsburgh nowadays.)

I’m confident that Congress will sort out this new Speaker business in short order, now that the world appears to light up. But what of its current projects? For instance, the inquiry into the darkish business ventures of the Biden Family, Inc., and what to do about it? That look-see is tending toward a picture that shows an appalling connection between the Bidens’ lustful chasing of global main chances and the horrifying demolition of Ukraine currently ongoing. If it’s not already obvious to a majority of USA adults that “Joe Biden,” the cats-paw in the White House, must go, it will be in a matter of weeks as the bank records step into the spotlight and speak for themselves.

Are you ready for President Kamala and government-by-word-salad? E.g.: “It’s very important, as you’ve heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to seize the moment of time in which we exist, in our present, and be able to contextualize it, understand where we exist in history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future,” she said. Doctoral dissertations will be penned explicating that mouthful for years to come (where and whenever those years might be located on time’s mystifying spectrum).

As for Congress and its grim duties, there is also the matter of the current laughable budget resolution running out again just before Thanksgiving. Work to do! The USA is in such a desperate debt and bond issuance dilemma that it’s like a trapped wild animal faced with having to chew off its own leg to escape death. And the cause of that dilemma is our legislature’s failure to control the nation’s spending. As America’s Venerable Bede, Sen. Everett Dirksen (d. 1969) used to say: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Well, that game is drawing to a close. Reality is finally asserting its rugged old self to say that our country is as broke as broke can be and there has to be a painful adjustment. It will be presented as a Hobson’s choice: you can have no money… or you can have plenty of money that’s worthless. What’s it gonna be?

I’d guess that the new Speaker will have to be Mr. Jordan of Ohio, because at this time Congress badly needs to be led by someone who at least appears to be muscular and confident. One has to wonder, though, that even muscles and confidence might not be enough in the current situation — that moment of time in which we exist, as the Veep put it so well. And yet, so many things are happening at once that it feels like someone up there is monkeying with time itself. Or perhaps a giant blob has gummed up its wheels. But, really, I must ask: are you not a little tired of being a country that doesn’t know what it’s doing?"
The full title of Kunstler's website really does say it all...

"It Strikes Me...

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can’t get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they’re not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.”
- Kurt Vonnegut

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Doug Macgregor, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, PM 10/9/23
"Can the US Support Two Wars? w/Col Doug Macgregor"
Comments here:
o
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, PM 10/9/23
"NATO, Ukraine, and Israel w/Prof. Jeffrey Sachs"
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Redacted, Judge Napolitano, "Israel - Hamas War 10/9/23"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 10/9/23
"Egypt Just Dropped A Bombshell in the Israel - Hamas War"
"Egypt just did something unexpected in the conflict between
 Israel and Hamas. Clayton Morris is in Northern Egypt with this report."
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o
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, PM 10/9/23
"How Long In Gaza? w/Larry Johnson fmr CIA"
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"How It Really Is"

Dan, I Allegedly, "AM/PM 10/9/23"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 10/9/23
"You Need to Steer Clear of This"
"Wow. You can’t make this up. Today we’re going to learn 
about what could very well be the worst company ever."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly PM 10/9/23
"Your Personal Data is Being Sold"
"We have heard about so many ransom ware and hacking attacks lately. Now it’s getting worse because they are selling your personal data on the black market. You need to protect yourself."
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Bill Bonner, "Power & Glory"

Statue of Pericles, 
general of Athens during its golden age.
"Power & Glory"
Warfare, welfare and the cost of getting hooked on the empire drug...
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Another war! Another flare up in a long-bubbling cauldron…Arabs vs. Jews in the Levant. Since 2008, the conflict has cost the lives of more than 3,500 people – almost all of them civilians. Not to worry, a US carrier “strike group” is now steaming across the Mediterranean. Not to protect innocent civilians…but to back up Israeli soldiers with even more firepower.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares! That is what we learn from the spoofy “Report from Iron Mountain.” Like dogs and fleas, drunk drivers and lampposts, sinners and Hell – war and government go together. And now, the US is on course for a terrific smash-up. Its foreign policy spending is way out of line…at $1.5 trillion per year – an amount that is roughly the same as the deficit.

The Empire Drug: Unlike the welfare states of Europe, the US is more of a traditional warfare state. Most out-of-control in a whole out-of-control budget is its military spending. And since the US is cursed with a currency it can create at will, this inevitably means that it will try to ‘print’ its way out of its financial troubles, adding inflation, economic depression…and political turmoil (perhaps a revolution or a secession movement) into the mix of chaos and decline. The disaster, in other words, is likely to stretch across the whole nine yards of modern public policy catastrophes – finance, economics, and politics.

This is, of course, just a guess. And it will take many years to find out how good or bad a guess it was. But we just wanted to start out the week on a cheery note.

Also on a cheery note, at least one presidential candidate has placed himself clearly at odds with the War & Empire agenda – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is hoping to pick up where his uncle, John F. Kennedy, left things when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Our sources tell us that RFK, Jr. is going to break away from the Democratic Party in a speech, live streamed today from Philadelphia at noon. We wish him luck. But we give him low odds of success. People don’t usually give up the Power&Glory Empire drug until after they’ve hit bottom. We have a ways to go. And today, let’s ask ourselves: no one would want the scenario we outline above. So, why don’t ‘we’ make sure it doesn’t happen?

A Stiff Resolve: We could begin by noting that if leaders could prevent public policy disasters, they would never happen. Nobody wanted the Great Depression or the 16 million deaths in WWI. They happened anyway. Our hypothesis is that leaders (or more broadly, elites) don’t stop major disasters; they cause them. War is catnip to politicians. It stirs them to speechifying – ‘we will stop them on the beaches’….’four score and seven years ago’ – and provides them an opportunity not only to grab more fame and power, but also to exhibit their extraordinary strategic genius.

Probably the most notable of the genre was Pericles’ Funeral Oration, which Lincoln seemed to use as a model for his Gettysburg Address. Pericles began by telling the crowd how great the Athenians were – their government…their customs and so forth. Then he got down to business. The dead men (Athenians who died in their war with Sparta) died so that his great nation should not perish. And to that end: "So died these men as becomes Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier outcome."

The effect of Pericles’ speech was to stiffen Athens’ resolve to keep fighting. At the time, 431 BC, Spartan hoplites were outside the walls of the city. Crowded within the walls were the farmers from the surrounding territory, becoming increasingly weary of the war. They wanted peace so they could get back to their crops.

Pericles was a general as well as a politician. He exhorted the people to keep the faith…and to continue the war. But a plague soon ran through the packed city; approximately half the population of Athens died, including Pericles. The Athenians didn’t give up. The war went on until a Spartan general, Lysander, destroyed the Athenian fleet in 405 BC…and then Athens itself, facing siege and starvation, surrendered the following year.

Laughable Nonsense: And here, we pause to laugh. The ‘causes’ for war are always spelled out by the politicians and the press in the loftiest terms – to ‘free the Holy Land’…to ‘prevent foreign aggression’…to ‘make the world safe for democracy’…to “provide ‘living room’ for the German people.’ It is always laughable nonsense. In the current proxy war in the Ukraine, for example, the US claims to be defending a ‘rules based order’ – that is, a world of laws, not of brute force.

Invading another country is outlawed by the UN Charter, and the Nuremberg Tribunal. And in the US, the War Clause of the US Constitution also forbids an invasion not specifically backed by Congress with a Declaration of War. But in the real world of megapolitics, when you are powerful enough, you make the rules yourself. So it was that the US invaded Iraq in violation of all the rules – even its own constitution – and with much more firepower, death and destruction than Russia has used in Ukraine. The purpose of rules is to settle disputes without war. War though, has a purpose of its own. It doesn’t need a real dispute. And when it is ready, no rules will stop it.

Tomorrow…hate crimes! Stay tuned."