Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/4/24
"So It Begins... Waves Of Corporate Layoffs
As The World Economy Freefalls Faster"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, January 4, 2024
Dan, I Allegedly, "Fake Rich People Are Going Broke"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 1/4/24
"Fake Rich People Are Going Broke"
"Things are starting to crack in the system. We are seeing people that overextended themselves and put their money into investments that they thought would never go down. Now we’re seeing things like the watch industry and the high end vehicles drop dramatically."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "More Price Increases At Kroger But Finding Some Great Deals!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 1/4/24
"More Price Increases At Kroger
But Finding Some Great Deals!"
"We continue to find a lot of products going up in price at Kroger,
but we did manage to find some really good deals and digital coupons!"
Comments here:
"Alert! January 22nd And World War 3; Germany Evacuates Lebanon; UK Will Send Troops Into Ukraine"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/4/24
"Alert! January 22nd And World War 3;
Germany Evacuates Lebanon; UK Will Send Troops Into Ukraine"
Comments here:
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Jeremiah Babe, "Alert! Ominous Warning Signs For America"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/3/24
"Alert! Ominous Warning Signs For America:
War, Debt, Job Losses and Uncertainty"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"
○
"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of 3 billion
Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, 2 trillion galaxies like this.
And in all of that... and perhaps more, only one of each of us."
- "Dr. Leonard McCoy"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”
○
" I do not question the presence of intelligent life on other planets;
but I do question its existence on this one."
- Dr. Ivan Desantis
The Poet: Robert Service, "Prelude"
"Prelude"
"In youth I gnawed life's bitter rind
And shared the rugged lot
Of fellows rude and unrefined,
Frustrated and forgot;
And now alas! it is too late
My sorry ways to mend,
So sadly I accept my fate,
A Roughneck to the end.
Profanity is in my voice
And slag is in my rhyme,
For I have mucked with men who curse
And grovel in the grime;
My fingers were not formed, I fear,
To frame a pretty pen,
So please forgive me if I veer
From Virtue now and then.
For I would be the living voice,
Though raucous is its tone,
Of men who rarely may rejoice,
Yet barely ever moan:
The rovers of the raw-ribbed lands,
The lads of lowly worth,
The scallywags with scaley hands
Who weld the ends of earth."
- Robert Service
"Global Debt Circus: Let’s Get Clear About The Danger America is Facing"
"Global Debt Circus:
Let’s Get Clear About The Danger America is Facing"
by Capitalist Exploits
"Here’s some sobering numbers from the US:
• Interest payments on the debt increased by $177 billion or 33%.
• Medicare spending increased by $126 billion or 18%.
• Medicaid spending increased by $24 billion or 4%.
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation spending increased by $38 billion.
• FDIC spending amounted to $92 billion as the agency dealt with bank failures—an increase of $101 billion.
What This Means: Let’s be clear about the danger America is facing. The US has an unprecedented, almost incomprehensible, $33.5 trillion national debt that has eclipsed the size of the economy. Every person in America today owes more than $100,000. They are forced to borrow over $75,000 every second just to cover expenses. The budget deficit of $1.7 trillion shows how this burden grows yearly.
Families will be decimated by record-high inflation and access to capital. Today, the average family of four is paying $14,700 yearly or $1,224 more per month to purchase the same goods and services compared to the day sleepy Joe took office.
But it’s not just the US. Global sovereign debt is the world’s most glamorous pyramid scheme. Move over, Amway; there’s a new player in town, and it’s got countries across the globe wrapped around its debt-laden finger. We live in a world where countries engage in a high-stakes game of financial Jenga, each one desperately trying to avoid being the next to topple over. It’s a spectacular sight, really, like a global circus where the acrobats juggle debt instead of flaming torches.
Now, let’s talk about the architects of this financial circus – the political class themselves. These financial virtuosos have mastered the art of spending money they don’t have, all while smiling for the cameras and assuring their citizens that everything is under control. It’s the ultimate magic trick: turning debt into the illusion of prosperity.
Now, let’s talk about the debt enthusiasts - the bondholders. These financial daredevils willingly lend money to countries, fully aware that repayment is a distant dream. It’s a game of financial chicken, with both parties hurtling towards a collision course, but who cares when it’s someone else’s money right? Pension funds I’m looking at you.
Credit Agencies: Let’s not forget the credit rating agencies, those purveyors of financial wisdom who assign grades like teachers handing out gold stars. Somehow, they manage to maintain a straight face while giving top marks to countries drowning in debt. It’s as if they believe that, with enough positive reinforcement, the debt will magically disappear.
In the grand scheme of things, global sovereign debt is the ultimate soap opera, with each country playing its role in the never-ending drama of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a thrilling spectacle of financial acrobatics, where countries balance on the precipice of economic disaster, hoping that the safety net of international goodwill will catch them if they fall. So, there you have it - the state of global sovereign debt, a glittering, high-wire act that defies the laws of financial gravity, as the world continues to teeter on the edge of fiscal insanity."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Would You Like Some Free Money?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/3/24
"Would You Like Some Free Money?"
"There are so many grant programs available. 2024 is going to be a banner year to get money to start a business, pay your bills, grow your business or promote your social programs. Use these references to get the information to get some free money."Comments, references here:
Bill Bonner, "The Rhapsodia de la Pampa"
"The Rhapsodia de la Pampa"
Trillion dollar deficits, looming war,
appalling politics and the road to Buenos Aires...
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "A long-held guess here at BPR is that the US would eventually follow Argentina on the road to ruin…with high levels of corruption and inflation. Amid all the noise and to-do of 2023, it was hard to follow the tune. But in the deep background, the tango beat grew stronger.
Stocks hit a high note; wars and massacres continued; US politics degenerated into buffoonery; inflation eased off. Over the course of the last two administrations, 2017-2024, US debt increased from $19.9 trillion to $33.9 trillion – or at the rate of $2 trillion per year.
Last October and November set a new debt record – with a deficit of $383 billion for the first two months of the fiscal year, or $2.3 trillion annualized. No attack on the US. No depression. No emergency…not even a bad hair day…and yet, US politicians spent money as if they were Argentines! What to make of it?
Not a Care in the World: The most remarkable thing about it is that no one thinks it is very remarkable at all. Things that we once considered criminal are now respectable. Sins are now considered virtues. Rank stupidity, incompetence, and corruption are now prerequisites for public office. Stocks are near all-time highs, as if investors had not a care in the world. Federal budgets are no longer considered or approved; no attempt is made to get outflow to line up with income. Instead, in a form of budget improv, spending bills are passed…with hardly any real discussion or dissension. Congress is like a car full of drunks speeding down the highway…arguing over what to listen to on the radio.
Even more remarkable, people still lend money to the US government…fully aware that the Fed will begin to re-inflate the currency (inevitably leading to lower dollar values) this year. And believe it or not, there was a time when people thought mass murder and mass destruction were beneath contempt. The UN solemnly outlawed them both. But today, they are respectable features of US foreign policy.
After living through 2023, we wonder: how can 2024 top that? What goofy, malign, and appalling thing will happen this year? Rather than pretend we can know the future, let’s look at what kind of surprises might be worth preparing for.
Default Dominos: First, a stock market crash would be unwelcome. We went into last year recommending cash, fearing that another shoe was bound to drop. Came the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest bank failures in history; still, by the end of the year, the shelves were full of loafers and hobnailed boots that had yet to fall. A decent bet: some will hit the ground this year.
The Daily Mail: "US office buildings face $117BN debt time bomb: Mortgages due this year threaten to sink US economy as thousands of workplaces remain empty Billions of dollars in loans on office buildings that are about to come due could play havoc with the US economy after interest rates soared. About $117 billion worth is expected to be due this year and needs to be repaid or refinanced, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. A big chunk of it is at risk of defaulting and costing banks and developers huge sums, sending some into insolvency.
Yahoo Finance adds: "More big firms are likely to go bust next year amid the “double whammy” of high borrowing costs and pressure on consumer budgets, according to insolvency experts. Administrators and restructuring specialists also warned that high-growth companies such as tech firms could be among those facing financial turbulence. It comes after another year of tough economic conditions resulted in increased business failures during the year.
A second nasty surprise would be this: higher interest rates. In addition to the current deficits – now running about $2 trillion per year – the federal government has trillions more that now need to be refinanced – at much higher interest rates. Large, institutional bond buyers are going to want protection from the obvious crises ahead. Defaults, inflation…or simply higher rates themselves – all are good reasons to demand higher yields.
Strike Three: A third unpleasant surprise: recession. The mainstream media is telling investors that there will be no hard landing, no soft landing…nor any landing at all. Prices will stay aloft…presumably, forever. But the combination of higher interest rates, business failures, and consumers running out of money is likely to finally bring the recession we’ve been waiting for.
And one more thing to worry about – a larger, more dangerous war. War begets war. Sending fighting men into a war zone is dangerous….and pretty soon you might have more fight than you wanted. What, where, when? We don’t know. But supply brings forth demand. The US firepower industry is so large, so rich, and so politically powerful, there is no stopping it. And after seeing so much devastation, wrought by US bombs and missiles, the rest of the world is surely preparing a riposte.
The prominent risks, dear reader, whether in the stock market, the bond market, the economy, or in geopolitics…are on the downside. Any of them, alone or together, would result in a financial crisis, with reduced tax revenues to the government and increased expenses. Deficits would grow larger. Interest rates would go up. Companies would fail. Stocks would crash. And the clamor – probably a panic, to cut interest rates and to begin buying US debt with fake money – would be irresistible.
Inflate or Die. The refrain remains the same. In the coming months, we’ll probably see more low notes than high ones…more dying than inflating. But that will be only a prelude…a warm-up, while the orchestra tunes up…gets the rhythm of a tango…and begins its Rhapsodia de la Pampa."
o
Rhapsodia de la Pampa? No.
Rhapsodia de America!
Full screen recommended.
"When I See..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
o
Ahh, but it does...
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is here...
God help us, God help us all...
Judge Napolitano, "Col. Douglas Macgregor: Wrongheaded US Military Priorities"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/3/24
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Wrongheaded US Military Priorities"
Comments here:
"Don't Wonder..."
"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
"Here We Are..."
"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment.
There is no why."
- Kurt Vonnegut
○
But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."
"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
- Viktor Frankl
"Middle East Crisis, 1/3/24"
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/3/24
"Hezbollah Goes on Rampage In Kiryat Shmona;
Mass Troops on Northern Border. This is Huge!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
WION, AM 1/3/24
"Iran Reports 103 Dead, 170 Hurt In Blasts
At Ceremony Honoring Qasem Soleimani"
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o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, AM 1/3/24
"Houthis Go On Rampage At Bab-al-Mandab Strait,
Block All Ships; Biggest Operation Ever!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/3/24
"Hezbollah's 10 Attacks In 14 Hours On Day Of Arouri's Killing:
'IDF Troops Dead, Hurt' Claim"
"On the day that senior Hamas leader Saleh Al Arouri was killed in a Beirut suburb considered a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Lebanese group announced as many as 10 airstrikes on north Israel. Hezbollah claimed to have hit a new command headquarters of the IDF, and new spy equipment placed on cranes near the border. Hezbollah also said that it had "killed" and "injured" some IDF troops."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Now World, 1/3/24
"New Threats from Hamas: What's the Weapon
Behind Their Warning to Burn Tel Aviv and Target IDF?"
"On New Year's, Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades delivered a menacing threat to Israel, unveiling new weapons in their arsenal. The Iran-backed group released a video with the caption 'Tel-Aviv will be burned, Jerusalem will be liberated.' The undated footage showcases multiple rocket launchers in an undisclosed location within the besieged Gaza Strip. In the purported video, Hamas fighters are seen preparing M90 rockets, reportedly aimed at Israeli cities."
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"Human Nature: A Brief Disagreement"
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
"A visual journey into mankind's favorite pastime throughout the ages."
"War"
"War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties. While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic, or ecological circumstances.
The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be about 13,400 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, specifically traumatic bone lesions.
Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. Estimates for total deaths due to war vary wildly. For the period 3000 BCE until 1991, estimates range from 145 million to 2 billion. In one estimate, primitive warfare prior to 3000 BCE has been thought to have claimed 400 million victims based on the assumption that it accounted for the 15.1% of all deaths. For comparison, an estimated 1,680,000,000 people died from infectious diseases in the 20th century."
"When Killing The Enemy Wasn't Enough"
"When Killing The Enemy Wasn't Enough"
by John J. Waters
"I wrote earlier this month about the “final class” of Marine Corps Scout Snipers. The Marine Corps is in process of discontinuing its infantry Scout Sniper platoons in favor of something called “scout platoons.” Undoubtedly, many meetings and opinions went into the final decision, including consideration of an incident that occurred in Afghanistan in 2011, when a few Scout Snipers from Third Battalion, Second Marines (3/2) were videotaped urinating on Taliban corpses in Helmand Province. The Marines identified in that video were swiftly condemned, punished and made outcasts by the press, politicians and senior military officers. Among the foot soldiers, however, those same Marines were highly regarded for courage demonstrated on many, many combat missions. I pick up my conversation about the Iliad with classicist Emily Wilson on this particular episode from the War on Terror. You can find part one of our conversation here.
After the video became public, one of the Marines who participated was questioned about why he did it. “[Because] killing these assholes was not enough,” he said. Can you situate this story of the 3/2 Scout Snipers into an ancient context?
There is a focus on honoring the dead. It’s a clear line that is constantly crossed even in the first lines of the poem, when we find that, after their death, men become food for dogs and birds, and are eaten off the battlefield. Later, Hector begs Achilles that if he is killed, Hector’s body will at least be returned to his parents, but Achilles says “no,” that Hector is an idiot to think he will return the body. Achilles wants only to punish Hector more and more and even more. I can see how you can be in that mindset, how you want not to treat the enemy as human and not allow for these rituals or humane treatments across boundaries. What happens at the end of The Iliad, when Priam crosses over to the camp of Achilles and both men grieve, is that we recognize we need the common rituals, that we all lose something in war.
Those Scout Snipers believed they had killed Taliban fighters who laid IEDs against their brothers. They sought vengeance, in other words. Once, in the months and years after 9/11, we all had sought vengeance. A combat veteran who won the Medal of Honor told me “Nothing flips a man’s dial back to ready like telling him, ‘This one took our boy.’” Why do we need vengeance?
Vengeance, in a way, is proof that people love each other. People love each other so much that they become so close, like second selves, and when your person dies, it's understandable to want payback for that terrible loss. We see that kind of intimate love most obviously between Achilles and Patroclus. They’ve been fighting together for almost 10 years. Achilles refuses to fight, when his honor is violated by Agamemnon, but all that changes when Hector takes Achilles’ boy, so to speak. That flips his switch. Achilles mutates and no longer cares about his grievance against Agamemnon; he cares only about obliterating Hector and obliterating the whole city because he has infinite rage and grief. The most special person in the world has been killed.
Michael Monsoor was killed in Ramadi in 2006. He was given the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself when he smothered a grenade and saved the lives of his teammates. His father wanted only the truth about his death. He wanted to know the facts. Many parents want to know if we killed the one who did it to their boy. Michael’s father only wanted to know the truth. Can you reconcile those interests?
That’s such a difficult story. I don’t know exactly where to go in The Iliad. It’s making me think about particular characters who want to be the subject of song, the subject of a song by a person who sings about glory and heroics. Is The Iliad focused on telling everything that happened or just the heroic things that happened? Clearly, it’s not a literal telling. And yet it is focused on telling you more than just Achilles was great and this is why he was great.
When Hector is dead, we have three different laments. One comes from his mother, Hecuba. She wants that version of him that many people want, which is how glorious Hector had been. She wants people to tell her the story about how her son never flinched in combat, even though the reader of the poem knows that’s not true and in fact, he ran from Achilles. Her grief inspires her need to idealize her son in death. Hector’s wife, Andromache, thinks of his courage but also his rashness, how his decision to leave the city has caused her son to be killed. She sees his sacrifice as debatable. Finally, there is Helen. She gives a narrative about how Hector was a kind man when nobody else was kind to her. The poem gives us all these alternative ways of grieving and remembering.
I have read Homer’s poems at different points in my life, and my reading has raised a personal question that I explore in a novel called "River City One". The question is whether a soldier ever comes home from war. What do you think?
Yes, whether the nostos (home-coming journey) is ever fully complete. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey show soldiers coming home from war. Odysseus comes home geographically but is he home just because he is in that same physical space? No - that happens halfway through the poem and the story isn't over. Is he home once he reestablishes relationships with Telemachus and Penelope? Many people including in antiquity thought the story should end right there in Book 23, after he kills the suitors and makes love to his wife – but the poem continues, and the story actually ends when Odysseus keeps slaughtering people before he is stopped by Athena. So, has he really come home? The poem seems to show that he has several selves and several homes to come back to – and one of them, paradoxically, is the battlefield, and the warrior self that he might seem to have left behind.
In The Iliad, Hector feels compelled to leave home. Family members are repeatedly begging him not to leave the city, but he leaves and comes home only when he's dead, to be wept over by the women. We know Achilles will never go home geographically; he knows he'll die if he stays to fight at Troy, so once he rejoins the battle, we know that's a choice not to go home again. One can say there is a kind of homecoming in the moment he has with Priam at the end of the poem, such that there is a moment to mourn and eat and not perform in his role as killer and avenger. Is that a kind of temporary “home”? I don't know. Both of the Homeric poems wrestle with the question, whether warriors ever go home again. The answer is uncertain."
"Alert! Moscow Bombed! USA Greenlights Russian Strike; Israel Starts 2 Wars; N. Korea Says F$#% It!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, AM 1/3/24
"Alert! Moscow Bombed! USA Greenlights Russian Strike;
Israel Starts 2 Wars; N. Korea Says F$#% It!"
Comments here:
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Gerald Celente, "The Top Trends Of 2024"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 1/2/24
"The Top Trends Of 2024"
"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."
https://trendsjournal.com/
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html
"Are You Sane?"
(158).jpeg)
“Are You Sane?”
by Charles Hugh Smith
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”
“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?
The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.
In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:
“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays
The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.
Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom
This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.
Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.
This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”
"We’ll Meet Again" (Excerpt)
"We’ll Meet Again"
The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife.
In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why.
by Alexander T. Englert
Excerpt: "As the foremost logician of the 20th century, Kurt Gödel is well known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, the publications of which changed the course of mathematics, logic and computer science. When he was awarded the Albert Einstein Prize to recognize these achievements in 1951, the mathematician John von Neumann gave a speech in which he described Gödel’s achievements in logic and mathematics as so momentous that they will ‘remain visible far in space and time’. By contrast, his philosophical and religious views remain all but hidden from view. Gödel was private about these, publishing nothing on this subject during his lifetime. And while scholars have grappled with his ontological proof of God’s existence, which he circulated among friends towards the end of his life, other tenets of his belief system have received no significant discussion. One of these is Gödel’s belief that we survive death.
Why did he believe in an afterlife? What argument did he find persuasive? It turns out that a relatively full answer to these questions is buried in four lengthy letters written to his mother, Marianne Gödel, in 1961, to whom he makes the case that they are destined to meet again in the hereafter.
Before exploring Gödel’s views on the afterlife, I want to recognize his mother as the silent heroine of the story. Although most of Gödel’s letters are publicly accessible via the digital archives of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library), none of his mother’s letters are known to have survived. We possess only his side of their conversation, left to infer what she said from his replies. This creates a mystique when reading his letters, as if one were provided a Platonic dialogue with all the lines removed, except for those uttered by Socrates. Although we lack her own words, we owe a debt of gratitude to Marianne Gödel. For, without her curiosity and independence of thought, we would have one less resource in understanding her famous son’s philosophy.
Thanks to Marianne’s direct question about Gödel’s belief in an afterlife, we get his mature views on the matter. She asked him for this in 1961, a time when he was in top intellectual form and thinking extensively about philosophical topics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had been a full professor since 1953 and a permanent member since 1946. The nature of the exchange compelled Gödel to detail his views in a thorough and accessible manner. As a result, we have (with some supplementation) the equivalent of Gödel’s full argument for belief in an afterlife, intentionally aimed at comprehensively satisfying his mother’s questions, which appear in the series of letters to Marianne from July through to October 1961. While Gödel’s unpublished philosophical notebooks present a space in which he actively worked out views and experimented through often gnomic aphorisms and remarks, Gödel wanted these letters to be understandable and to provide a definitive answer to an earnest enquiry. And because the correspondence was private, he did not feel the need to hide his true views, which he might have done in more formal academic settings and among his colleagues at the IAS.
In a letter dated 23 July 1961, Gödel writes: ‘In your previous letter you pose the challenging question of whether I believe in a Wiedersehen.’ Wiedersehen means ‘to see again’. Rather than the more philosophically formal terms of ‘immortality’ or ‘afterlife’, this term lends the exchange an intimate quality. After emigrating from Austria to the United States in 1940, Gödel never returned to Europe, forcing his mother and brother to take the initiative to visit him, which they first did in 1958. As a result, one can intuit here what must have been a deep longing for lasting reunification on his mother’s behalf, wondering if she would ever have a meaningful amount of time with her son again. Gödel’s answer to her question is unwaveringly affirmative. His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: "If the world is rationally organized and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it?"
He deepens the rhetorical question at the end with the metaphor of someone who lays the foundation for a house only to walk away from the project and let it waste away. Gödel thinks such waste is impossible since the world, he insists, gives us good reason to consider it to be shot through with order and meaning. Hence, a human being who can achieve only partial fulfilment in a lifetime must seek rational validation for this deficiency in a future world, one in which our potential manifests."
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