Concerning the United States and the American culture…
We are a lost society, ruled by emotions, captured by technology, misinformed, uneducated, indifferent, fearful, passively accepting of whatever government and media tell them is true, and entranced by materialism funded by debt. We are a sick dying culture where common community standards, self-responsibility, hard work, kindness, and manners have been superseded by the worship of abnormality, celebration of degeneracy, living off the government, spreading hatred, and waging undeclared wars across the world. There is an empty shallowness to our civilization, with the vacuum filled with gadgets, pathetic displays of fake affluence, trivialities like social media, and superficial displays of virtue signaling regarding the latest woke craze shoved down our throats by those controlling the levers of society.
Yup. Even I can smell the sickness of festering rot from way, away here at the other end of the world. Let’s continue with our daily narrative and thus I present this post for your enjoyment and pleasures.
Chinese police in Serbia
Yes, it is true, they are here. They are in Belgrade and Novi Sad and mostly in city centres. They don’t have any authority, their main mission is to overcome the language barrier with Chinese visitors and tourists and offer their help to both Serbian police and Chinese citizens in that sense.
Chinese officials stated that they sent only those who are fluent in English which I understand. Numerous times I had issues with people from China when we talk in English. Most of the time I could not even recognise that they were speaking English because of their accent and the way they pronounce words.
Anyway, I like the idea. It became an attraction.
Doug Casey on the Rise of Alternatives as the US-Led Global Order Falters
Guest Post by Doug Casey
International Man: Since the invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen the US and its European allies institute unprecedented sanctions on Russia. In a bold move, the US government also froze the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank.
In response, Russia demanded payment in rubles in exchange for its energy.
What’s your take on this new phase of economic warfare?
Doug Casey: It’s a massively stupid and destructive move on the part of the US. There’s no upside to what the US is doing in fighting this economic war against Russia—or, for that matter, in backing the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine—but huge downside from every point of view.
Essentially the US and Western powers have confiscated hundreds of billions of dollars of assets from the Russian government, as well as individual Russians. It’s theft, pure and simple. It acts as a warning shot to everybody in the world: Your assets are not safe in Western countries. It’s a reason to get out of the US dollar and use something else.
It’s backfired on the US. It’s helping devastate Western economies by cutting off the flow of Russian oil, and especially natural gas, to Europe. Further, the Russians now demand payment in rubles. The ruble is now a much stronger currency because, in order to pay the Russians, the world has to buy rubles. The Russians have taken a page from the US playbook. Decades ago, the Saudis said they would only accept US dollars in payment for oil. And so, people had to buy dollars if they wanted Saudi oil.
The US is acting to destroy confidence in its currency, as well as the stability and perceived honesty of the dollar-based system. That’s extremely dangerous for a currency that rests on nothing but confidence. Something like this can cause confidence to blow away like a pile of feathers in a hurricane.
The issuer of the dollar, the bankrupt US Government (or its facilitator, the Fed), will give you nothing specific in exchange for them. But they can issue unlimited numbers of them. The dollar has been an IOU nothing for many years. But the charade is approaching an end. The US Government is now like a poker player “on tilt.”
International Man: Recently, Vladimir Putin traveled to Iran. As a result, Iran’s National Oil Company announced a $40 billion energy deal with Russia’s Gazprom. It’s safe to say they won’t be using the US dollar in their transactions.
What does this mean for future geopolitical alliances and economic dealings that undermine US dominance?
Doug Casey: The US is in serious decline—financially, economically, and sociologically—and the world knows it. Only a fool wants to hold the unsecured liability of a bankrupt government, especially one that’s so arrogant as to believe it can confiscate assets arbitrarily.
The major export of the US now, as it’s been for the last 40 years, is US dollars. We don’t really produce that much anymore. We ship people dollars. In return, they ship us vast amounts of material goods. Ships arrive in US ports full of products; they “dead head” on the return trip, mostly empty. The US has transformed itself from a nation of producers and creditors into a nation of consumers and debtors.
Our major export is dollars, not wheat and Boeings. Meanwhile, the US government is creating more dollars by the trillions in order to prop up the domestic economy. This is going to end very badly for the dollar’s use in international transactions.
Even though domestic prices are rising at something like 15%, the dollar has been quite strong in recent months against other currencies. The reason for that paradox is debt. Almost all of the world’s debt is denominated in dollars. And in order to service those debts, especially with interest rates now headed up, people need dollars.
So there’s been a scramble for dollars to service all the debt. It’s really rather perverse.
International Man: Russia and China recently announced their interest in developing a new reserve currency with other BRICS countries.
What would this mean if there was a serious rival to the US-led system?
Doug Casey: It’s been in the cards for years.
Countries that are our adversaries—like Russia and China—use the US dollar to trade between each other. Why? It’s quite strange, since those hot potato dollars all have to clear through New York. The reason is that the Russians don’t really trust the Chinese yuan, and the Chinese don’t trust the Russian ruble. They’re both fiat currencies, of little value outside the borders of the countries that issued them. It’s the same with the Indians, the Iranians, the Brazilians, the South Africans, and everybody else—they can’t use each other’s currencies. They’ve basically used dollars since the end of WW2.
All of the world’s currencies- every single one—are “fiat” units, essentially political footballs, whose numbers and values can fluctuate radically and randomly. The dollar is just the biggest and best of the bunch. It won’t be replaced easily, because the whole world has gotten so used to using it. Nobody wants to use a unit controlled by Washington, but what’s the realistic alternative? Flakey Third World governments run by sociopaths are incapable of putting together a new super fiat currency—that just adds another layer of risk and complexity. They can all see that even the euro, an artificial Esperanto currency, is on the edge of imploding. None of these governments have the same interests, and they certainly don’t trust each other.
What’s going to happen? They’ll default to gold for settling accounts among each other. I’m not saying they’ll allow their subjects to save in and trade in gold—that’s most unlikely. But I think it’s inevitable for settlements between governments. The only alternative is barter—”I’ll trade you a thousand tonnes of cocoa for two used tanks, 500 cows, and 100 tonnes of wool.” A flea market transaction that’s not very likely in a complicated industrial world… That’s why money was invented.
The world is going back to gold. Not because any government or economist wants to—rather just the opposite. But it’s not likely to happen except at much higher prices of gold unless there’s a credit collapse and scores of trillions of dollars of stocks, bonds, bank deposits, and other debt are wiped out. On the bright side, the approximately 6 billion ounces of gold that now exist will still be here.
Current events are leading to the end of the US dollar system. And when the US dollar is not needed or wanted for international trade, everybody will dump it. All those dollars will flood back to the US, where they must be accepted by law. Nobody’s going to want them abroad. Or not much more than they desire the Indian rupee, the Colombian peso, or the Ukrainian hryvnia.
They’re going to come back to the US to buy US real estate, US shares, and US businesses.
All those dollars that we’ve been exporting for decades have held down domestic inflation because they’ve been floating around abroad, driving up foreigner’s prices. They’ll come back to the US. Domestic prices will skyrocket upwards at the same time the dollar collapses, and the title to US assets are transferred to foreign citizens.
All those dollars being exported for decades resulted in an artificially high standard of living for Americans. When they come back—and they will come back as the world stops choosing dollars—the standard of living in the US will drop substantially.
International Man: The US dollar, the euro, the Russian ruble, the Chinese yuan, and the rest of them are all fiat currencies.
That being said, what advantages do countries with valuable commodities have over others as all fiat currencies continue to lose value?
Doug Casey: It’s great to have valuable commodities, but you can’t use oil for money. If that’s all there was to it, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, and Kazakhstan would be among the world’s richest countries. The same is true for every other country with valuable commodities. In fact, the countries with the most mineral wealth tend to be the poorest and most unstable. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Money is not wealth in itself. But it represents wealth. It represents an excess of production over consumption. A good money has got to have certain characteristics.
It has to be durable; that’s why we don’t use wheat as money. It has to be divisible; that’s why you don’t use artwork as money. It has to be convenient; that’s why you don’t use lead as money. It has to be consistent; that’s why you can’t use real estate as money. And it has to have some type of use value in itself; that’s why you can’t use paper as money.
That’s why the world is going to go back to gold. There’s a case that can be made for silver and a case that can be made for Bitcoin. And that’s about it. We’ll see how things sort out in the chaotic world we’re facing. And here is a statement to shock the average reader: Government should have no involvement with money. Money—like banking, interest rates, the markets, and the economy—should be totally divorced from politics. That’s why gold, not paper, is real money.
Where is the price of gold going? Relative to bushels of wheat, or pounds of coffee, or pounds of copper, my guess is that it’s about right at the moment. In fact, I’ve been saying for several years that gold is reasonably priced, at an equilibrium, relative to dollars. It’s not at giveaway levels like it was in 1971 at $35 or in 2001 at $260.
If the dollar is going to survive, it should be redeemable with a fixed amount of gold. They say the US owns 265 million ounces of gold. But how many dollars are there? Like the dollar itself, that number is something of a floating abstraction. Guesses vary. Especially because there are many definitions of what money is—not to mention near-money and credit. Numbers are bounced around from $6 trillion to $80 trillion. The number is probably academic and possibly unknowable.
Divide 265 million into any of the figures “economists” conjure, and you come up with a very large number. Just to finance a typical approximate annual US trade deficit of about $500 billion, the entire gold horde would immediately disappear even if gold were priced at $2,000. Maybe the price of gold should be $20,000 or more.
So what’s going to happen? I think the answer is chaos. The world’s going back to gold because we’re headed for a chaotic financial situation, and gold is the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously somebody else’s liability. And it’s an understatement to say none of these governments trust each other or each other’s paper currencies.
International Man: How do you see the world’s geopolitical chessboard changing in the coming years? What are the investment implications?
Doug Casey: If you look at various times in history—the world’s map changed tremendously from, say, 1910, when everything was mellow and prosperous, to 1920, when most everything was unrecognizable. The world looked one way in 1940 and totally different in 1950. My guess is that the world of 2020, which has already changed immensely, will be hugely different by 2030, 8 years from now.
Beyond 2030 we’re looking at a science fiction reality. There’s a good chance we’ll have something like a civil war in the US. And/or serious secession movements.
It’s even more likely that Canada will break up. The same thing is going to happen to Mexico and Brazil. All of Africa will restructure. Many European countries are likely to break up—Spain and areas of France. Italy only became a country 170 years ago. Germany only unified 150 years ago. Russia is likely to break up into smaller ethnic countries for sure.
Like it or not, people will migrate from Africa and the Middle East to Europe by the scores of millions.
Millions of Chinese will migrate from China to Africa, and the Africans won’t much like it. People from everywhere, not just Latin America, will flow into the US and Canada.
The colors of the map on the wall are going to be running in the years to come. That’s going to have profound investment implications. Among them, a lot of currencies are going to dry up and blow away.
It’s going to start happening in this decade. So buckle up.
China urges U.S. not to miscalculate resolve to defend sovereignty, territorial integrity
- Source
- Xinhuanet
- Editor
- Li Jiayao
- Time
- 2022-08-19 23:19:47
BEIJING, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) — Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Friday urged the U.S. side not to miscalculate China’s firm resolve to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Wang made the remarks at a daily news briefing, in response to what the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink had said about China’s response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
“Regarding Pelosi’s provocative visit to China’s Taiwan region, the context, cause and course of events are crystal clear,” Wang said.
It is the United States that has gone back on its commitment to the one-China principle and undermined China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, not the other way round. It is the U.S. leaders who went to Taiwan to support “Taiwan independence” separatist activities, not the Chinese ones who went to the United States to support Alaska’s “independence,” Wang added.
Wang said that China’s firm response to the U.S. provocation is reasonable, lawful and justified, which has been widely understood and supported by the international community. For the U.S. side, the only solution for the problem is to return to the three China-U.S. joint communiques and the one-China principle, instead of shirking responsibility and deflecting blame, still less acting recklessly to create a bigger crisis.
“We are firmly determined to safeguard our national sovereignty and territorial integrity. We urge the U.S. side not to miscalculate on this,” Wang added.
Soviet grannies delight with this zucchini and pepper salad
By Yulia Mulino
“Get your sleigh ready in summer and your cart in winter,” is a famous Russian proverb that meansit’s necessary to stock up ahead of the cold months. Today’s highlighted salad made of zucchini, carrots and peppers is a perfect example of this. And it’s also a spicy flavorful vegan snack that can be eaten immediately.
I remember how when I was a child, the zucchini crop was so plentiful that it was impossible to eat it in a season. So, my grandmother and my mother made a salad with all the zucchini grown in their garden.
These vegetables do not have a strong taste and smell, but other vegetables can improve it. Carrots are added to the salad for sweetness, tomatoes for color, and peppers for spicy flavor.
I still remember the smell coming from the kitchen when the canning season started. We always got a bowl for dinner of leftovers that didn’t fit in the cans. Fresh and rather warm, I love this salad just as much as I love canned salad.
That’s why I’m making it now for dinner. The most delicious thing is to serve it with potatoes, whether mashed or boiled. Or keep it for winter.
Ingredients for 10 servings, or a 0.8 liter jar:
- Medium zucchini – 2 pcs
- Sweet bell pepper – 2 pcs
- Carrot – 1 pc
- Onion – 1 pc
- Tomatoes in their own juice – 500 ml
- Garlic – 4 cloves
- Parsley – bunch
- Salt (not iodized) – 2 tsp/ to taste
- Sugar – 1 tbsp
- Black pepper to taste
- Vinegar 9% – 2 tbsp
- Sunflower oil for frying
Preparation:
1. Peel and slice the carrots and onions; fry them in sunflower oil.
2. Cut the peppers into julienne strips.
3. Let them stew for about 15-20 minutes.
4. Shred tomatoes and pour sauce on vegetables. Braise for 20 minutes.
5. Slice the zucchini and add it to vegetables.
6. After 15 minutes add salt, sugar and pepper.
7. Then squeeze in the garlic cloves.
8. Add parsley and vinegar. Braise for 5 more minutes.
9. Place into jars that have been sterilized and are suitable for canning, or leave as a side dish or snack.
10. Serve warm or chilled with potatoes or as a topping on a crouton.
Don’t judge a book by its cover
In March of 2019, I was so busy at work that my girlfriend Jessica took to the Book to try and find me some help for a few weeks.
Saturday afternoon, Jess placed an ad that said something along the lines of: “Looking for a painter to help with a project. Must be drug-free.”
We got a phone call that night from a lady who said her live-in boyfriend was interested but didn’t have a driver’s license. Jess scheduled an informal interview for the next day and asked the lady to be at the interview also.
The plan was for me and Jess to meet the lady and her boyfriend, Lee, at a local restaurant for lunch at 1:00 pm.
The cool part about interviewing someone with their significant other present is it cuts down on a ton of bs. The anxiety and nervousness which is normal to experience during an interview and can help keep someone on their best behavior, fades quickly in the company of someone they’re comfortable with. And if I’m going to have someone on my jobs, I want to know who they really are.
Jess and I got to the restaurant at 12:30 pm. We got a table in the corner and waited.
At 1:00 pm, Jess got a text. “We’re one minute away, sorry!!”
What the heck? Who shows up late to an interview?
Strike one.
At 1:01 pm this guy walks through the door:
I can’t even tell you how disappointed I was. It’s not like I can have some murderer on my jobs. Let’s be real about this. Teardrops=killer. And this guy has three bodies — hell no. Strike two.
A third strike wasn’t even needed when I extended my hand to shake his. But here it is — strike three.
Now that I’ve officially judged this book (Lee) by his cover, let’s get through the interview process so I can find a better fit for my company.
I have no problem being straight up, so the first question I asked was: “Why did you murder three people?”
With unwavering eye contact, he said: “I’ve never killed anyone. Each teardrop is for a friend that died.”
He explained that he was put into foster care at twelve years old.
At fourteen he started inking himself. When his friends died, he’d get a tattoo to memorialize them.
He answered every question that I asked in detail.
This guy knew all the right things to say. He was articulate, funny, charismatic and charming. Just a joy to be around.
So, I handed him a cup. I told him to go pee in it. He passed a drug test and swore he was trying to rebuild his life. I melted for him. I understood.
I hired him on the spot. I couldn’t help it. When I hired him, he hadn’t worked in six months. No one would give him a shot. He didn’t have glasses and couldn’t see, nor did he have a driver’s license.
I set deadlines for him to get glasses and a license.
He got his glasses last month. And this week he’s taking his driver’s test.
He also is a writer and a rapper (bonus points!).
Don’t judge a book by its cover means: Making a decision about all that something is, based on what you see is a mistake.
I needed a painter, but I saw a murderer.
In reality, he is a father, a poet, a rapper, a writer and a painter.
Today, he is also my friend.
A dolphin story
The famous Italian diver Enzo Maiorca dove into the sea of Syracuse and was talking to his daughter Rossana who was aboard the boat. Ready to go in, he felt something slightly hit his back. He turned and saw a dolphin. Then he realized that the dolphin did not want to play but to express something.
The animal dove and Enzo followed. At a depth of about 12 meters, trapped in an abandoned net, there was another dolphin. Enzo quickly asked his daughter to grab the diving knives. Soon, the two of them managed to free the dolphin, which, at the end of the ordeal, emerged, issued an “almost human cry” (describes Enzo). A dolphin can stay under water for up to 10 minutes, then it drowns.
The released dolphin was helped to the surface by Enzo, Rosana and the other dolphin. That’s when the surprise came: she was pregnant! The male circled them, and then stopped in front of Enzo, touched his cheek (like a kiss), in a gesture of gratitude and then they both swam off.
Enzo Maiorca ended his speech by saying: “Until man learns to respect and communicate with the animal world, he will never be able to know his true role on this Earth.”~
Yuan overtook the dollar in trading volume on the Moscow Exchange
The “de-Dollarization” by the world continues unabated, with more and more countries turning their back on the US Dollar, in favor of Chinese and Russian currencies.
On the Moscow Exchange, the volume of trading in yuan amounted to 26.3 billion rubles, for the first time exceeding the volume of trading in the dollar (25 billion rubles).
By 13:03 Moscow time, the dollar was trading at the rate of 59.7 rubles/$, having lost 1.05 rubles. from the opening of trading, euro – 60.4 rubles / € (-1.25 rubles). The yuan exchange rate against the ruble amounted to 8.77 rubles / yuan, depreciating from the opening of trading by 0.12 rubles.
On July 6, the turnover of yuan trading on the Moscow Exchange exceeded the turnover of euro trading. Interest in the yuan is observed against the backdrop of Western sanctions in response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
A tale of three Rufus’s
As a woman was driving her Chevy Cobalt through Ontario, Canada, on a lonely highway around 1 in the morning, it broke down.
Three teenage boys were on their way to grab something to eat after a late-night swim and spotted the smoking car and its distressed driver. So they pulled over, still in their swimsuits, and attempted to fix what was wrong with the woman’s car.
All three of their dads had taught them how to fix cars, but this one was done for, they quickly realized. She told them she couldn’t afford to have her car towed. So the boys – Aeron McQuillin, 18, Bailey Campbell, 17, and Billy Tarbett, 15 – then decided to push the woman’s car all the way to her home, which was just over 4 miles away.
So the woman steered as the boys pushed for more than 3 hours. At some point during the push, another motorist, Dan Morrison of Niagara Falls, could see what was going on. So he slowed down behind them to give them light, keeping his flashers on for other motorists to see. He was amazed by the boys’ kindness to do that for the woman.
Says Dan: “I’d never met these kids in my life. Dad-mode went into effect and I just wanted to make sure these kids were safe.”
So would they do it again? You bet they would.
Says Billy, the youngest of the boys who pushed the car: “We were always raised to help, no matter what the situation was… We were helping her but also she was helping us, doing a workout.”
What’s wrong with the US healthcare system?
Price and outcomes.
The US has incredibly expensive health care. I mean incredibly expensive. Health care is one of the biggest for-profit industries in the country. A long time ago, some enterprising capitalists figured out that if you sell a product that people have to have or they will literally die, if you conceal the price of the product, and if you design the product in such a way that people can’t comparison shop, you can charge any price you want.
As a result, well…
A few weeks ago, I slipped with a razor knife and cut myself at the base of my thumb. I needed four stitches.
The stitches were removed two days ago. It really wasn’t that big a deal.
So far, I have received two bills.
This for four stitches and a tetanus booster. Total price (so far):
$2,603.45.
I don’t have insurance. I do qualify for subsidized insurance under the ACA. My price for a basic plan is $570/month with a $6,000 deductible.
Conservatives blather about how the US has such expensive healthcare because it’s sooooo good and American hospitals have the best equipment and Americans do all this research and…
Ah HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Some of them, they…they actually…BWAH ha ha ha…they actually believe that.
This torrent of money doesn’t go into healthcare. A huge volume of it goes into health insurance profits. Every dollar an insurance company takes in profit or overhead is a dollar that isn’t going to treatment and isn’t going to pretty shiny machines that go beep and isn’t going to research.
Libertarians love to talk about how the market promotes efficiency. Which is true. It promotes efficiency at making profit, which is not necessarily the same as efficiency at delivering goods and services.
The outcomes of this system are plain:
- Shorter lifespan than other developed countries
- Higher infant mortality than other countries
Evidence demolishes ideology. If the US had cutting edge healthcare, you would expect it to be expensive but effective.
It’s not. It’s expensive but delivers inferior results.
Part of that is the unequal access, of course, but part of it is by design. Because the goal of American healthcare is profit, not treatment, it discourages preventive care and regular checkups, which are low-margin services, in favor of dramatic interventions for serious conditions, which are high-margin services.
This isn’t a grand conspiracy. It’s the natural consequence of a system tuned to maximize profit instead of maximizing number of people cared for.
Edited to add: It’s now several months later and the bills are still coming in. Since posting this answer, I’ve received yet another bill, this one for $816.25.
That brings the total bill (so far) for four stitches to:
$3,419.70
China beats US in most-cited science papers, moving to top of new rankings
- China accounts for 27.2 per cent of the world’s most-cited papers, while the US contributes 24.9 per cent, according to report
- The idea that Chinese research is lacking in quality, though abundant in quantity, is ‘short-sighted’, says policy expert
China has surpassed the United States for the first time to lead the world in the number of most-cited papers, a key indicator of scientific influence, according to a new report.
Between 2018 and 2020, China contributed 27.2 per cent of the world’s most-cited papers – those ranking in the top 1 per cent in terms of citations – while the US accounted for 24.9 per cent, said the “Japanese Science and Technology Indicators” report released on August 9.
Some have pointed to the report as evidence of the rapid rise in the quality – in addition to quantity – of Chinese research.
Baked potato with bacon
A quick dish equally good for cozy family get-togethers and shindigs with friends. Using the most affordable ingredients and a little culinary magic, you can turn ordinary potatoes into finger-licking fast food.
How to prepare: Wash a medium-sized potato, peel and dry. Make several pleat-shaped cuts so it looks like a mini-accordion. Cut bacon into thin slices, and use a knife to put them in the slits. Place the potato on a sheet of foil. Melt butter and add dill, parsley, salt, and pepper to it. Pour the aromatic butter over the potato and wrap in foil. (A homemade option is to grate a little garlic.) Place the potato in a preheated oven at 180C for 30 minutes. Then remove, sprinkle with grated cheese, and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes. If cooking several potatoes, pick ones of equal size so they take the same time to cook. If a potato is large and looks “unbakeable,” you can pre-boil it for 10-15 minutes beforehand.
Danny Trejo
Danny Trejo, known for countless tough-guy roles (and a few soft ones), often cast by his second cousin Robert Rodriguez.
But his first role wasn’t even supposed to be in front of the camera.
Trejo served time in Soledad prison for 11 years, and during that time he did two things to keep himself together. 1) He memorized and recited the script for Wizard of Oz while in solitary confinement, and 2) he started training as a boxer. The latter pastime got him more recognition, as he started winning boxing matches both before his release, and after. He was counseling others on how to break drug addiction and stay clean, when a friend called and asked him for support on a movie set. So he ended up on the set of the movie “Runaway Train”, a prison escape film starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts.
I walked on that movie set as a drug counselor. I was helping this kid I was counseling. He called me up and said, "Hey, there's a lot of blow down here." It was 1985, and cocaine was running rampant in the movie industry. It was crazy. You'd walk into production and there'd be lines on the table. He just asked me to come down and support him, because that's what I did. I still do it. I'm going over on an intervention right now to one of our Hollywood actors. I went onto this movie set, and he was a PA, and I thought it was cute.
I had never been on a movie set in my life. All these guys were dressed up as inmates, and they were all trying to act tough. They all had these fake tattoos. I kept smearing these tattoos. I had to say, "Oh shit, I'm sorry. That stuff smears." This guy asked me if I wanted to be in a movie, and I said, "What do I gotta do?" And he said, "Do you want to be an extra?" And I said, "An extra what?" And he said, "Can you act like a convict?" I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. I'd been in every penitentiary in the state. I looked at him and I said, "Well, I'll give it a shot." He gave me a blue shirt, and I took off my shirt, and I have that big tattoo on my chest. He said "Leave your shirt off."
Then this other guy comes over and says, "Hey, you're Danny Trejo. I saw you win the lightweight and welterweight title up in San Quentin." And I go, "Yeah. You're Eddie Bunker [Edward Bunker
].” I had been in prison with him. And he was a writer. We started talking, and he asked, “Are you still boxing?” And I go, “Well, I still train.” And he said, “Do you want a job? We need someone to train one of the actors how to box.” And I said, “I got a job. They’re going to give me 15 bucks for acting like a convict. What’s this pay?” He said, “It pays $320 a day.” So I said, “How bad do you want this guy beat up?”
And he goes, “No, you have to be really careful, this actor’s really high-strung. He’s already socked a couple of people.” I said, “For $320, man, give him a stick. I’ll fight Godzilla for 320 bucks.” I started training Eric Roberts
how to box. Eric wanted to learn how to box, and I think he was scared of me, so he’d do whatever I told him to do. Andrey Konchalovskiy, the director, saw that he would do whatever I told him to do. I guess Andrey had some problems with it. So Andrey comes over and hires me. He says, “You be in the movie. You fight Eric in the movie.” And that’s where it started. From that day until right now, I’ve got 183 movies. – IMDB
So from heroin addict/armed robber, to convict, to drug counselor and boxer, to fight instructor, to actor, then to director and writer. “Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else. Everything.”
Vareniki with mushrooms and potato
Chanterelles, agaric honey, or plain white — the choice is yours. They are great when fried with potatoes, cooked in an open mushroom pie with smetana filling, or stewed in ragout (pronounced “ragoo”). And then there are vareniki dumplings stuffed with mashed potato and mushrooms. Best served with smetana and fried onions. Resistance is futile.
Strange Corporate Decisions This Week
Earlier this week, I received two reports that WALMART had allegedly “canceled billions of dollars in orders.”
I was **not** able to get more info such as specific types of products or specific suppliers, or specific country of origin, so since I couldn’t verify it, I didn’t report it.
Minutes ago, I got this:
"My wife works for amazon web services (AWS) and they just canceled 40% of the marketing budget, froze hiring, and canceled all employee travel today" It was done on a video call about 50 minutes ago.
I am endeavoring to verify it, so treat it as RUMOR right now . . . but here’s the thing:
If these claims prove true, this is a major indicator of bad shit coming.
Especially the travel part. AWS has assets in China, Taiwan, and Eastern Bloc countries.
UKRAINE
Two days ago, I got word that the US/NATO shipped four (4) nuclear ARTILLERY shells to Ukraine.
Word was that the Ukrainians were to use those shells to hit the Zaporazyhe Nuclear Power Plant. A nuke artillery shell would certainly be able to penetrate a Reactor Containment building, and even a relatively tiny nuke blast would rupture a reactor, causing a radiation leakage disaster. BUT . . . they claimed . . . the fact that a nuke artillery shell was used will be MASKED by the reactor leaking radiation. So Ukraine would blame the Russians for mishandling the reactor causing it to blow up when, in reality, Ukraine caused it.
I thought this was a bit over-the-top, especially since the US unilaterally ended their nuclear artillery manufacturing and dismantled all their nuclear shells in the year 2004. HOWEVER, not all NATO countries did the same.
So it is possible that there are a few nuclear artillery shells still around, and if the US/NATO are actually the madmen that I believe they are, then some numbskull might have actually come up with a plan like this. Plausible deniability with a leaking reactor being blamed for radiation caused by the blast of nuclear artillery.
But since I could not verify **ANY** component of that story, I did NOT report it, either.
Which brings me to Ukraine, today.
There is a MJAJOR offensive taking place in Ukraine since yesterday. Russian Artillery was literally pounding from every part of the 150km long front line.
Today, Ukraine hit back inside Russia itself, with blasts in Belogorad. Then we had numerous reports of Ukraine missiles fired at the Kerch Strait Bridge. Then, no additional info — at all. Weird.
Two hours after the alleged missile attack against the Kerch Strait Bridge, air raid sirens sounded in Kiev. Then . . . nothing.
All this is getting too weird, but I tell you these things because I have now found out that, this afternoon (eastern US Time) Russia told its people at the Zaporazhye Nuclear Power Plant they “are not to go to work tomorrow.”
I HAVE VERIFIED THIS CLAIM.
So now, I look at the alleged WALMART order cancellations, the AWS 40% marketing budget cut, hiring freeze, and employee travel ban, along with what I’ve verified about Russians at the Nuclear power plant being told to stay home tomorrow, and I start to wonder to myself, is the intel I got about nuclear artillery shells factual and is tomorrow (or this weekend) when the plant at Zaporazyhe gets hits?
It’s certainly within the realm of possibility that big boys got a quiet warning to scale down ahead of something major.
WALMART is incredibly connected with government and might have gotten a sort of “heads-up” that everything is going to shit this month” so they are planning accordingly . . . and maybe canceled Billions in orders?
And AWS has hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, so maybe they too got a sort of heads-up, and decided to cut the marketing budget and halt employee travel etc.?
Then too, it was just this month that no less than Henry Kissinger told a media outlet that “things will escalate in mid-August.” Here we are.
I run all this past you so you can get a small glimpse into the info pouring in to me, and how hard it is to sift through apparently unrelated things, to come up with a picture of what might actually be.
Make a new friend…
This is a cat left at a shelter. He was cowering in the corner, hissing if you approached, and wouldn’t eat.
One of the workers asked me to give him some TLC.
This is the same cat, after ten minutes of cuddling, and telling him what a sweet boy he was. He was so scared and heartbroken that he shut down to humans, until he found a friend.
He certainly didn’t like the shelter any better, but feeling safe made him much nicer (and more adoptable). Cats have feelings.
How can kids learn entrepreneurship skills?
“Dad, I want to make money. Can I work for you?” My 10 year old boy asked me.
“We don’t work for money son. You must come up with a creative idea to make money through a business.”
“Oh, let me think,” he paused for a moment and said, “I have an idea! I could mow the lawn for the neighbors!”
“That’s not a business son!”
“Well, I could wash cars or walk their dogs over the weekends!”
“You’re still exchanging time for money son! That’s NOT a business. I want you to come up with a business idea!”
“I don’t understand dad!”
“I don’t want you to exchange time for money. Think how to solve this!”
Three days later…
“Dad, dad! I have an idea, what if I plant some vegetables in our backyard, grow them and sell them!”
“Now, THAT sounds more like a business son! Can you tell me the difference? How many hours will you invest to keeping up with your plants?” I asked.
“I need to water the plants every day after school.”
“What else?”
“Watch out for bugs eating my veggies?”
“Correct! How much time will you invest doing that?”
“Well, dad… nothing, maybe minutes!”
“So what is the difference between your veggie business and working for me or for the neighbors?”
“I’m going to save time!”
“Good! Now you have a new problem… You need to invest some money on your vegetable garden! How much money will you invest?
We went to Home Depot to buy stuff. He had his cash savings in his pocket.
”Dad, look! If we install this automatic water system I will be making money even while we’re on vacation!” He said excited after identifying a special hose to connect to his new pots.
“I will buy organic soil so my cucumbers and my tomatoes will be organic. I can sell them at a higher price to my neighbors and my friends.”
I smiled proudly as I could see how he was getting his business mind together.
We purchased everything. He negotiated a $50 dollar loan from me. We agreed that he will pay me interest.
Business is an art, not a science.
My boy is developing his entrepreneurial skills. He is learning everything that schools don’t teach him like [1] how to invest, [2] how to sell, [3] how to keep track of money.
He will learn the pains of paying interest of a loan, and after this winter, he’s learning the pains of losing money and having to start over again!
Most importantly, I’m teaching and developing his mindset!
Entrepreneurship is an art, an understanding of how to make money, it needs to be learned, not taught.
My cat tried to warn us
June 2015. My son Elliot is born.
From that day, my cat Juliette was not the same. She didn’t like the fact she was getting less attention.
And she let us know! She wasn’t nice with our baby and started to pee on the carpet in the basement. Always at the same spots.
How come this great cat became such a pain?
I had started to cough more often in the last couple of months. I had absolutely no explanation for it. I was running my small business from my basement.
A nurse told me it could be allergies. I never had allergies before. It seemed like allergies could start later in life. It sucked… but it is what it is, I guess. I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
In August, Juliette peed one last time in the basement. I had enough.
I decided I would remove the whole carpet during the weekend and redo the floor. I was tired of cleaning the mess every time it happened. Making the odor go away was not an easy task.
The following weekend, I started to remove the carpet… and found mold at every spot Juliette had peed in the past. It seemed like water and humidity were stuck under the floor and in the walls.
I can’t know for sure if it was her way to let me know why I was coughing so badly and why I felt so exhausted every time I tried to exercise.
Water was coming in and there was mold all over the basement.
We had to remove everything: floor, walls and ceiling. A company came with specialized equipment to decontaminate the basement. We had to redo everything inside… but also outside of the house to make sure water would not come back.
What started as a “weekend project” to stop a cat from peeing on the carpet ended up with a 6 months project that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Since that, my health has been back to what it was before. No coughing, no exhaustion.
Thanks to Juliette for this. She unfortunately passed away a year later.
Here she is with Elliot…
I’m truly grateful for the mess she made in my basement because the whole family could have suffered of permanent breathing issues…
“I’m Worried We’re Becoming A Thought-Controlled Dystopia, Like China!”
John: I’m worried about China. Jane: Oh yeah? What about it? John: Well more I’m worried about the example they’re setting, and that western governments will start implementing their technocratic oppression style to turn us all into a bunch of brainwashed, homogeneous obedience machines. Jane: What makes you think Chinese people are all brainwashed and homogeneous? John: Oh my God, don’t you watch the news? Have you not heard of their social credit score system? The state censorship and propaganda those people are subjected to? The CCP literally doesn’t let them have access to western social media platforms because our free thought and democratic values might interfere with their conformity policing. How have you not heard about this? It’s in the news constantly. Jane: Constantly? John: Oh yeah, it’s like a major news story all the time. All across the political spectrum, too. Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post. Alternative media too like Infowars and The Epoch Times; even lefty YouTubers like Vaush talk all the time about how bad it is in China. Jane: So because you’re being given the same message by all the western media you consume, you’re worried about the enforcement of thought conformity in… China? John: Yeah. Of course. Jane: And this is why you’re worried that, at some point in the future, that kind of brainwashing and homogeneity might someday be inflicted upon us by powerful people in the west? John: I mean yeah, if the CCP doesn’t do it to us first. Did you know they’re trying to take over the world? Jane: They are? John: Oh yeah! The Chinese want to take over the world and give us all a social credit score so we’ll all think the same. How do you not know about this? Don’t you ever watch TV? Jane: How do you know it’s true though? John: That they want to conquer us and give us a social credit score? Come on! Open your eyes! Have you seen how they treat their own population? They’re genociding the Uyghurs as we speak! Millions and millions of them in Nazi-style extermination camps! Plus they deliberately released the Covid virus to hurt us after cooking it up in a lab, they’re taking over Hollywood and infiltrating our political and academic institutions, and they’ve colonized the entire continent of Africa! Of course the CCP wants to rule us! Don’t you ever watch Tucker Carlson? They’re truly, deeply evil, and we’ve got to do something to stop them. Jane: Sounds like you’ve got this China thing all figured out. You’re right, that sounds really scary. I can’t imagine what it would be like, living in a thought-controlled dystopia where your rulers are brainwashing everyone into obedience and making sure everybody thinks the same way about stuff. John: Yeah! Finally you get it! I’m glad you’ve come around. Honestly you’re the first person I know who didn’t already understand these things about China. Jane: I’ll bet. John: So do you think it will happen? Do you think our government will implement a social credit score system to make us all believe lies and propaganda, like the Chinese? Jane: You know, I wouldn’t worry about it. |
The doll
At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.
Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.
The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”
Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.
During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.
Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.
“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.
Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “my travels have changed me.” the little girl hugged the new doll and brought her happy home.
A year later Kafka died.
Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:
“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”
FADING SMILE OF A DYING EMPIRE
From The burning platform blog
We moved to our corner of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania twenty-seven years ago. We raised our three boys here. We spent hundreds of hours on local baseball fields, in hockey rinks, in school gyms for basketball games, concerts, plays and donuts-with-dads. It’s still a nice place to live, with virtually no crime, decent roads, and reasonable property tax rates. But I would have to say there has been a degradation in the overall quality of life in my community, which is consistent with the downward spiral of our society in general. When we planted our roots in this community it was still more farm-like than suburban. Family farms and open space were more prevalent than housing tracts, strip malls, fast food joints and cookie cutter commercial buildings. A beautiful farmhouse a few miles from our home, freshly painted white, proudly displayed the iconic yellow smiley face. It symbolized good times.
We’ve been driving on this road for twenty-seven years on the way to baseball games, hockey practices, the car dealer for service, and lately to our gym, as we try to fend off father time. Driving by that barn in the early days would always brighten your day. A bright yellow smiley face against a white background represented a positive, happy view of the world.
We moved to this area in 1995 while Clinton was president, unemployment was 5.6%, CPI was 2.8%, GDP growth was 2.7%, the annual deficit was $164 billion, the national debt was $4.9 trillion, the Fed balance sheet was $500 billion, the U.S. population was 263 million, total household debt was $4 trillion, you earned 5.5% on your money market fund, the U.S. bailed out Mexico, the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and OJ Simpson was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife. The military industrial complex was being starved by lack of wars and the stock market soared by 33% as the beginning of irrational exuberance began under the reign of Greenspan and his Put.
A lot has happened over the last twenty-seven years and the faded, barely visible smiley face, on a now mold ridden decaying barn, is truly representative of a society, culture and economic system dying a slow torturous death, as apathy, technological distraction, myopic indolence, and the greed of powerful elites combine to ensure the eventual collapse of the short-lived American Empire. Much of this quarter century of decline is borne out in the change in economic numbers noted above.
The unemployment rate is reported as 3.5% today with 158 million out of 264 million working age adults employed. That leaves 106 million not employed, or 40% of working age adults not working. Back in 1995, 125 million out of 199 million working age adults were employed, leaving 74 million not working. Over a quarter century we’ve added 65 million people to our population, but only 33 million to the employment rolls. Either we’ve devolved into a nation of freeloaders on welfare/disability, or the BLS is lying about the 3.5% unemployment rate, or both.
The BLS currently tries to convince the ignorant masses inflation is only 8.5%, up tremendously from the 2.8% in 1995. Since the Fed/Wall Street induced financial crash of 2008, the government had been reporting inflation of between 0% to 3%, when in reality, as measured the way it was measured in 1980, it had been between 7% to 10%. Today’s actual inflation rate is 17% in case you were wondering. Revealing the true cost of living to the peasants might induce a revolting outcome for our overlords. The government prefers to treat the math challenged masses like mushrooms, by keeping them in the dark.
The corrupt Fed, feckless politicians, media mouthpieces for the empire, and Wall Street shysters were shocked I tell you by skyrocketing inflation after the Fed increased their balance sheet from $3.7 trillion to $8.9 trillion and the D.C. swamp creatures increased the national debt from $23.2 trillion to $30.7 trillion since the beginning of 2020. This generated inflation in financial assets for the global elite and their minions, while destroying the finances of the middle and lower classes. The rot grows like a cancer in this empire of debt.
The annual deficit of $164 billion in 1995 was racked up in 17 days in 2021. We have run annual deficits of $3.1 trillion in 2020 and $2.8 trillion in 2021, and the scumbags in Washington just keep passing $700 billion spending bills, writing off student loan debts for gender fluidity majors and sending billions in weapons to the most corrupt regime on the planet – Ukraine.
The degradation and downward trajectory of this empire of debt, delusion and despair can be most clearly defined by comparing our GDP growth since 1995 to the growth of debt by both our government and the populace.
Total U.S. GDP in 1995 totaled $7.6 trillion and today checks in at $24.8 trillion. That is a growth of 326% over twenty-seven years.
The national debt has grown by 626%. Seems unsustainable, but why question our glorious leaders.
The Fed balance sheet has grown by 1,780%. Household debt has grown by 400%. Median household income in 1995 was $34,000. Today it is $73,000. That is a 214% increase over 27 years. With real inflation averaging over 10% per year during this time frame, average working Americans have seen their standard of living methodically decline, replacing the income with debt. The only beneficiaries of debt are the banking cabal and the mega-corporations selling their cheap Chinese crap to clueless dupes who believe driving a leased BMW and living in a cookie cutter McMansion with an $800,000 mortgage makes them wealthy.
The selfie generation is too distracted checking in on Facebook, posting pictures of their food on Instagram, doing a dance routine on Tik Tok or counting their likes on Twitter to realize how badly they’ve been screwed over by those pulling the strings of this society. The propaganda and psychology of fear utilized by the powerful interests has reached a level that would make Edward Bernays burst with pride, as manipulating the masses to believe falsehoods is a key requirement in implementing their Great Reset agenda.
This entire charade seems to be bursting at the seams, with raging inflation, a recession in process (despite Biden’s lackeys trying to redefine recession), a Green New Deal Great Reset agenda purposely creating energy and food shortages, government agencies running roughshod over the Constitution, and a tyrannical administration attempting to crush their political adversaries using any means necessary. Smiles are fading as we head into either a hyperinflationary depression or a deflationary depression, with some world war mixed in.
The economic decay is easily provable, but our cultural and societal degeneration has exceeded our economic deterioration.
Just as the Roman Empire exhibited particular traits of a dying culture, the American Empire displays similar characteristics, such as: concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth; obsession with sex and perversions of sex; art becoming freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original; widening disparity between very rich and very poor; increased demand to live off the state.
Of course, our dying culture has also been turbocharged by the climate cult attempting to destroy our fossil fueled economic system by purposely sabotaging our energy and food systems as the driving force for their Great Reset. Weaponizing the annual flu as a means to inject billions of people with a DNA altering, sometimes lethal, concoction is part of Bill Gates’ depopulation agenda. They have taken the sex and gender perversion to new levels of child abuse, grooming and mutilation. The rampant pedophilia and child trafficking by the global elitists is the most despicable aspect of our cultural degeneracy. Anyone with a conscious can no longer be proud of this country and should be desperately concerned about its future.
“A growing sense of unease presently pervades the American consciousness. Americans are no longer as confident in their nation and self-assured as they once were. A sense of frustration and anger underscores American consciousness. Americans are looking over our shoulder at other emerging economic juggernauts and wondering if we can still be world’s social, political, and economic leader when Congress cannot even manage to balance the national budget. The thought that we are diminishing in stature in the eyes of the international community constantly torments Americans. Faded glory strikes a crippling blow to the American psyche. Analogous to an aging beauty queen, America might still possess a golden crown, but she lost her luster. In an eroding empire, Americans feel like second-class citizens in the union of nations.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster
The terms modern and progress have become warped and used as an excuse for destroying localization, small businesses, what worked, what was good, and what benefitted society, replacing it with globalization, mega-corporations, complex technology, profits at any cost, and benefits accumulating to the few with suffering borne by the many.
Two examples come to mind within a few miles from my home. Just a couple miles from the fading smile barn is a property that was once a thriving family farm. I snapped a picture last week as I was driving past.
The decaying abandoned farmhouse, dilapidated barn, and rusting farm machinery are being engulfed by weeds, as the memories of a productive useful family farm fade like that yellow smiley face. I don’t know why it was abandoned, but I’m sure the corporate farming conglomerates and the corporate meat processing plants were a major factor. When you can buy cheap meat at Wal-Mart produced in China or some industrial farm, why pay a little more for fresh non-GMO meat sold by a local farmer?
Gone are the roadside vegetable stands and buying fresh meat from your local farmer neighbor. Maybe the patriarch of the homestead got too old, and his sons had been indoctrinated by the government schools to get corporate jobs in some of the commercial office campuses that have replaced open space and farmland. Whatever the reason, it provokes melancholy about a better simpler time whenever I pass by.
The governmental actions taken in the early 2000s still irk me to this day. The area around the intersection of Forty Foot Road and Sumneytown Pike in the late 1990s was still reminiscent of simpler times, before smart phones, hyper-consumerism, and proliferation of big box retail. Small businesses were important and viable. There was a family run diner near the turnpike entrance where all the locals ate breakfast and talked sports and politics.
Township police were friendly, driving older basic vehicles and housed in a small unassuming one-story township building. Nicely kept older homes lined one side of Forty Foot Road and the other side was an eclectic mixture of old-time baseball fields, with no lights and little to no ground’s maintenance, and the old Henry Sprecht grade school, built in 1909 to honor a long-time educator and local historian, which had been replaced by newer schools and creatively repurposed into a quaint antiques mall.
We spent many a summer evening watching my oldest son play little league baseball on those fields while trying to keep our four-year-old and three-year-old sons from getting into trouble. We loved wandering through that antiques mall as individual vendors selling all manner of antiques, hand crafted woodwork, baseball cards, toys, occupied nooks, and crannies in this ancient school. We bought a handcrafted cabinet by a local artisan for our kitchen, which we still employ today in our storage area.
My fondest memory was at Christmas time when it would become a Christmas wonderland and I would take the boys there to see the spectacular miniature train show, where local train aficionados would set up amazing displays. The kids were mesmerized. There was also a family-owned home center in Hatfield called Snyder’s that sold everything for your home and also had a great train display at Christmas for kids to enjoy. All this unpretentious delight ended abruptly in the early 2000s, as progress, commercialization, and greed took hold of the country and our little community.
As you may remember, Greenspan coined the term irrational exuberance in 1996 to describe financial markets, then turbocharged stocks by cutting rates, causing the dot.com bubble and responded to the stock market crash by cutting rates and causing the biggest real estate bubble in history, until now. These ephemeral paper riches caused local government bureaucrats to use phantom tax revenues to envision delusions of grandeur by building useless unnecessary projects.
This is exactly what the government drones running Towamencin Township did. They produced a grand master plan, gave it a fancy name, spent tens of millions of our tax dollars, and produced an embarrassing mess. They used eminent domain to acquire homes, forced the dozens of small business owners out of the antique mall and flattened the building, closed off the baseball fields to little kids, and closed Forty Foot Road for over a year to build a glorious $13 million bridge to nowhere. This bridge stands as a tribute to all those Chinese ghost cities, as it serves no purpose except as an example of government incompetence, wastefulness, and misuse of taxpayer funds with no consequences for the government drones.
Rather than wait for actual retail tenants to sign on to their glorious project, the government geniuses built the bridge knowing they would come. They never came.
The real estate retail bubble popped. It’s now fifteen years later and those four baseball fields are still sitting there, untouched, undeveloped, and unused.
They stuck a Walgreens where the charming antique mall once sat. No pedestrians cross the pedestrian bridge because there is nothing on either side. A four- story commercial building was built on spec a block from the bridge and stood vacant for five years.
The family-owned Snyder’s home store was driven out of business by the Home Depot and Lowes built within a few miles. There are now cookie cutter townhouses where Snyder’s stood. Another successful retail center in the 1990s up the road, anchored by a family owned Genuardi supermarket and a Sears Hardware, along with a pizza place, drugstore, Blockbuster, and kids play center has been vacant and rotting for over a decade, as bankruptcies, mergers, and the relentless downward economic spiral made it untenable.
In addition to wasting taxpayer money on the ghost bridge to nowhere, these financial government geniuses decided their police station built in 1975 no longer met the needs of their fast-growing police force in a township with no crime, because it is 88% white/Asian. They built themselves a complex three times the size of their old station. Lucky, because they now have a police force of 23 officers, all decked out with souped-up brand-new SUVs.
You need that level of manpower and firepower for all those speed traps, fender benders and writing tickets for illegal basketball nets. There hasn’t been a major crime in Towamencin in over a decade, but the taxpayers pay over $1 million per year to be harassed and pay for their donut budget This level of government waste is happening in every locality and state in America. And the Feds put them all to shame with their corrupt, wasteful, traitorous spending, bribing, and war mongering across the globe, to the tune of trillions.
The decline I’ve personally seen in my local community is not just a localized cancer but has metastasized across the land and around the globe. As our economic system accelerates towards inevitable implosion, either as a planned demolition or due to the hubris of central bankers, the fraying social fabric of our civilized society is unmistakable, as the moral state of our country has deteriorated to a level seen only in debauched empires on the brink of failure.
The global elite and their moral depravity have engulfed the world, as their ravenous greed, insatiable appetite for dominion over the masses, immoral deceit, manipulative use of propaganda, and satanic decadence have created economic, social, political, and military distress across the globe. As Toynbee and Solzhenitsyn note, the lack of morality and courage among those who profess to be leaders has permeated throughout society, leading to a dearth of citizens taking civic responsibility for the path of the country.
“Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee
We are a lost society, ruled by emotions, captured by technology, misinformed, uneducated, indifferent, fearful, passively accepting of whatever government and media tell them is true, and entranced by materialism funded by debt.
We are a sick dying culture where common community standards, self-responsibility, hard work, kindness, and manners have been superseded by the worship of abnormality, celebration of degeneracy, living off the government, spreading hatred, and waging undeclared wars across the world.
There is an empty shallowness to our civilization, with the vacuum filled with gadgets, pathetic displays of fake affluence, trivialities like social media, and superficial displays of virtue signaling regarding the latest woke craze shoved down our throats by those controlling the levers of society.
There is an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, fear, and foreboding mood of impending doom, as this Fourth Turning accelerates towards its bloody denouement.
The aura of pessimism about the future and fear that our superpower status, only in existence since 1946, is rotting from within permeates the psychology of those actually willing to think critically and see what is really happening. The existing social order will be extinguished during the waning years of this Fourth Turning. We are in the interval between the decay of the old and formation of the new, whatever that may be.
This transition will be one of uncertainty, turmoil, miscalculation, fanatical misrepresentations, war (civil & global), false prophets, bloodshed, and clear winners and losers. Decay and death of empires have happened for centuries and are necessary to expunge the excesses and abuses which always occur as empires expand and its leaders exhibit a hubristic arrogance towards their people and the world.
“Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – The Fourth Turning
It is hard to believe the prognostications of Strauss & Howe a quarter century ago, just after I moved to my community, could be so eerily accurate. But, when you are sure of the catalysts: debt, global disorder, and civic decay, the volcanic eruption of distress can only flow along certain channels, preordained by choices made over decades by our leaders and ourselves.
“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:
-
- Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
- Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
- Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
- Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”
This Fourth Turning has created tremendous distress in all four categories noted by Strauss & Howe. With over $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities, the country is already in default, but unwilling to admit it. The Social Security fund will run out of money in a few years. State and local pension funds are underfunded by trillions. With Powell and his minions in control, hyperinflation and deflationary depression are on the near-term horizon, with financial assets crashing once again, for the fourth time this century.
The social distress has been initiated and promoted by the global elite through their complete control of the media propaganda outlets. They are attempting to spur violent upheaval, as this will give them the excuse to disarm and electronically imprison dissenters and Great Reset resisters. Class, race, religion, and gender are all being used to stoke unrest.
The political distress is the biggest gaping wound in our national body today. If critical thinking individuals didn’t acknowledge the existence of a Deep State before, they surely can’t deny its existence now. It has existed for decades, but has been forced out into the open, as threats to their power and control multiply due to their arrogance, ineptitude, wickedness, and avarice.
Anyone who dares to deviate from their directives and threatens their fiefdom is either killed, neutered, or destroyed (JFK, RFK, George Wallace, Perot, Assange, Trump). Russiagate, two impeachments, J6 witch trial, and now the rogue DOJ/FBI raid on Trump’s compound has driven the political stress to heights not seen since 1860. The desires of the globalist elites for a Great Reset into a new world order where you own nothing, and they own everything is the goal of all this engineered chaos.
The military distress may be the most concerning and potentially most destructive aspect of this Fourth Turning as we enter the normally bloody phase. The flailing U.S. empire is provoking and stoking global conflict to keep feeding the Deep State military industrial complex. The Ukraine conflict was initiated by the U.S. in 2014 and is being used as a justification to fight Russia without getting our hands dirty.
Continuing to poke the nuclear armed bear, has the potential to escalate the conflict to a point of no return. Throwing fuel on the fire by provoking China over Taiwan’s independence is irrationally reckless and the mark of a desperate empire seeing the sun setting on its 76-year reign as the one global superpower, and willing to risk global war in a fruitless effort to remain king.
The U.S. can let its empire expire with a whimper (e.g. British Empire) or a bang. Based on their ham-handed, stumbling, absurd endeavors to maintain their dominance over the world, they have initiated global food and energy shortages, caused unbearable economic hardship upon the middle and lower classes, and have pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war with countries run by serious men. While we are supposedly led by an ancient fossil lost in a fog of dementia and unable to string two coherent sentences together, even with a teleprompter. Obama, the Deep State, and a plethora of diversity hire apparatchiks are really calling the shots.
The smile has faded on this empire of debt, delusion, denial, and destruction, just as it has on the barn near my house. The coming trials will require levels of courage, fortitude, and sacrifice which many might think they are not capable of summoning, but we have no choice. You can’t sit out Fourth Turnings. Sides will need to be chosen and life or death decisions made. The future of this country and the world hang in the balance.
Choosing your allies and forming local communities of like-minded people with the skills to survive and thrive in the world created after the coming conflict is resolved, is all you can do at this point. Preparation may not be enough, but not preparing guarantees a bad outcome for you and your family. Whatever you do, put absolutely no faith in any government solution to our predicament. They are the enemy and you can’t vote your way out of this.
I hope after this is over to see a fresh coat of white paint applied to that old barn and a brand-new yellow smiley face resurrected on the same spot, marking the start of a new High.
URGENT: US on verge of becoming party to Ukrainian conflict, Moscow warns
Washington’s continued support for Kiev during Moscow’s military operation has put the US on the verge of becoming party to the Ukrainian conflict, Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov has said.
“We don’t want escalation. We’d like to avoid a situation, in which the US becomes a party to the conflict, but so far we don’t see any readiness of the other side to take these warnings seriously,” Ryabkov told Rossiya 1 TV channel on Friday.
Moscow rejects Washington’s explanation, that providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid is justified by Kiev’s right to self-defense, he pointed out.
“Excuse me, what kind of self-defense is it if they are already openly talking about the possibility of attacking targets deep in the Russian territory, in Crimea?” the deputy FM wondered.
According to Ryabkov, such statements are being made by the Ukrainian side “not just under the blind eye of the US and NATO, but with the encouragement of this kind of sentiment, approaches, plans and ideas directly from Washington,” Ryabkov insisted.
The ever more obvious and deeper involvement in Ukraine in terms of countering our military operation, in fact, puts this country, the US, on the verge of turning into a party to the conflict,” he reiterated.
The US has been the strongest supporter of Kiev amid its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with billions of dollars in military and financial aid, as well as intelligence data. Washington’s deliveries to the Ukrainian military have included such sophisticated hardware as HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, M777 howitzers and combat drones.
Reuters reported on Friday that US President Joe Biden is about to announce another lethal aid package for Kiev of around $800 million.
An unnamed official from the Biden administration told Politico on Thursday that the White House had no problem with Ukraine attacking Crimea, which became part of Russia after a 2014 referendum staged in response to a violent coup. The US believes that Kiev can strike any target on its territory, and “Crimea is Ukraine,” the American official insisted.
There have recently been a number of explosions near a Russian ammunition depot and at a military airfield in Crimea, which the Defense Ministry said were acts of “sabotage.” However, Ukrainian authorities haven’t officially confirmed involvement in the attacks.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
A Major Food Crisis Coming In 2023? – “Prices Will Be On Steroids After The Election”
We are being warned that food prices in the U.S. are going to go absolutely haywire after the election in November. I am taking such warnings very seriously, and I believe that you should too. Global officials have been telling us over and over again that we are heading into an unprecedented global food crisis, and I have been writing about this again and again in recent weeks. But so far, the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem to be taking this seriously. Agricultural production is going to be way below expectations all over the planet in 2022, and that means that there will be far less food to go around in 2023.
Let me give you a perfect example of what I am talking about. Just within the last couple of days, it has been reported that there will be crop losses “of up to 50 percent” in the German state of Baden-Württemberg…
Crop losses of up to 50 percent are now expected in parts of Germany due to drought, farmers in affected regions have claimed. Up to half of the crops in parts of the German state of Baden-Württemberg are likely to be lost due to drought, farmers in the region have claimed, with problems to do with the prices of fuel, fertiliser, and pesticides connected to the green agenda and war in Ukraine also reportedly causing problems for those in the region.
These are crop losses that haven’t happened yet.
These are crop losses that will happen in the fall if sufficient rain does not arrive soon…
With the losses expected to materialise in the autumn, the farming chaos may end up being another crisis facing Germany’s floundering political class as fuel shortages combined with a freefalling economy hit a public already suffering from officials’ poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just within the past week, I have written about how authorities are also projecting similar crop losses in key areas of the UK, France and Italy.
And here in the United States, 37 percent of farmers in the western half of the country say that they will be killing their own crops because there is no chance that they will come to maturity due to the endless drought.
All of these crop losses haven’t hit the food system yet.
So none of these crop losses are reflected in grocery store prices yet.
That won’t happen until the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.
With all of that in mind, I would like to share with you a comment that was just posted on one of Southern Prepper’s videos…
Just a heads up. I have a family member who works in the corporate pricing department for groceries. This company has been in business 40 years. Meeting was called 1 day ago and they were told prices will be on steroids after the election. Owner said he’s never seen what’s headed our way in 40 of business. They just hired 10 more people and can not keep up with data input. All hands on deck and overtime. included. Get your house in order. Buy Holiday grocery products while you can find and afford them. Boss told employees to stock up now. Please pay attention folks.
It would be easy to dismiss that comment because we don’t know who it is from and so we can’t verify the specific claims that are made.
But this is entirely consistent with everything else that I am hearing.
Food prices have been rising rapidly in recent months, but the really big deal is all the food that is not being grown right now. This lack of production is going to push prices to levels that would have once been unthinkable.
Most people simply do not realize how much our farmers are hurting right now. Just check out these numbers…
Nearly three quarters of US farmers say this year’s drought is hurting their harvest — with significant crop and income loss, according to a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation, an insurance company and lobbying group that represents agricultural interests. The survey was conducted across 15 states from June 8 to July 20 in extreme drought regions from Texas to North Dakota to California, which makes up nearly half of the country’s agricultural production value. In California — a state with high fruit and nut tree crops — 50% of farmers said they had to remove trees and multiyear crops due to drought, which will affect future revenue.
This is going to affect all of us.
If farmers and ranchers don’t produce our food, we do not eat.
Things are even worse in western Europe, and the war in Ukraine is greatly restricting the flow of agricultural goods from eastern Europe.
In 2023, there is going to be a mad scramble for whatever food that is available, and global prices are going to go nuts.
We have already started to see food riots and civil unrest is some areas of the globe, but I anticipate that things will get much worse next year.
Even here in the United States, I expect that there will be a lot of anger and frustration. And as we have seen, it certainly doesn’t take much for our major urban areas to explode.
Things aren’t even that bad yet, and already we are seeing people behave in ways that are extremely bizarre. For example, just consider a very strange incident that just happened in Los Angeles…
The gang of people ransacked the store while shouting, completely destroying the COVID-19 safety screen that had been set up to grab as much as they could in Los Angeles, California. A group entered the convenience store near Figueroa Street and El Segundo Boulevard, with surveillance footage showing the looters shouting at each other, on August 15. They can be seen running across the store and grabbing drinks, cigarettes, lottery tickets, bags of chips and other items.
Approximately 100 young people were involved in the violence.
When I read about this sort of a thing, it makes me very sad. I have been strongly warning that such unrest would be coming to America, and eventually it will get completely out of control.
As food prices surge to crazy heights, those at the bottom of the economic food chain will not be happy.
The coming food crisis will be a difficult time for our nation, and for the world as a whole.
If you understand what is coming, it gives you an opportunity to get prepared.
Sadly, most of the population doesn’t want to listen to the warnings, and that is extremely unfortunate.
‘Flurry’ of retail bankruptcies coming, former retail CEO warns
Retailers on life support may go the way of the dinosaur in early 2023 should the economic slowdown cause a lackluster holiday shopping season.
“I think we will see a flurry of bankruptcies likely in the first quarter of 2023 if this holiday season is anything less than completely robust,” Mark Cohen, former longtime CEO of Sear Canada and current Columbia University professor of retail studies, warned on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “I don’t think it will be, by the way.”
Retail bankruptcies — which picked up in droves at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — have fallen by the wayside as consumers returned to stores to stock up on apparel and other items coming out of the pandemic.
Only three retailers filed for bankruptcy in the second half of 2021 versus 20 in the same period in 2020, according to a report from BDO. There were no new retail bankruptcies filed from mid-September 2021 through mid-February 2022, the report found.
“There is no question as business becomes tougher to manage, weak players fall by the wayside,” Cohen said. “They are particularly vulnerable to inflationary pricing and inflationary costs.”
The bad news in retail continues to mount as the economy slows, calling into question how even the strongest in the sector would navigate a potential recession in 2023.
In early June, Target kicked off concerns about the retail sector’s health with a shocking decision to liquidate massive amounts of slow-moving inventory and take a more cautious view on near-term profits.
Since then, discretionary retailers such as RH, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Kohl’s have issued financial warnings for their second-quarter results.
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion
We are at risk of an accelerating hyper-collapse as people massively cut back spending due to things like inflation and fear. Most of our economy is based on optional purchases that can be put off or not made at all. Once people get into survival mode, the accelerating hyper-collapse will kick in, with spending dropping significantly, unemployment skyrocketing and bankruptcies happening on a regular basis.
I saw a forum where people in my NJ home town were talking about rent increases of $200, $300, even $500
Good luck having any money left to spend at retail with rent increases like that.
I mean seriously if your rent went up 300 dollars would you be out shopping, going to shows, eating in restaurants, taking a weekend road trip?
The worst part of all this is that NONE of it had to be. This is all taking place because of Russia economic sanctions that should not have been imposed if our government would have minded its own business.
US has doomed EU to hunger and cold – Russia
The United States has doomed the EU to hunger, cold and isolation by pressuring the bloc to cut its ties with Moscow, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Friday.
He wrote on Telegram that Washington would “stop at nothing to cling to its power over the world as it throws under the bus the citizens’ welfare and the economies of European countries to achieve this end.”
He noted that natural gas in the US costs $333 per 1,000 cubic meters. “At the same time, Washington sells it to Europe for a price which is 7.3 [times] higher, rendering the EU economy uncompetitive,” he wrote, adding that the eurozone’s annual inflation rate had hit a record 8.9%.
Volodin said Europe had been hit by a heatwave that triggered huge problems in the agriculture sector, as well as an energy crisis which had seen prices soar six times in one year.
The EU’s decision to phase out Russian energy supplies and cut economic ties with Moscow “have been made under Washington’s pressure,” the State Duma speaker claimed.
“US policies in Europe are enforced by England that has left the EU high and dry, as well as by a number of countries that are sovereign in name only – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine – with Poland, the Czech Republic and Finland joining this Russophobic coalition in the hopes of getting an American handout,” Volodin wrote.
His comments come as the EU is plagued by an energy crisis due to rising global prices. Earlier this month, the bloc approved a plan that would see its member states reduce gas consumption by 15% in a bid to tackle the crisis.
Another factor that has exacerbated the energy crunch was the EU’s decision to wean itself off natural gas from Russia, as the bloc considers these supplies to be unreliable. However, President Vladimir Putin has rejected accusations that Moscow could cut off gas supplies to the EU, stating that Russian energy giant Gazprom is “ready to pump as much as necessary” but that the bloc has “closed everything themselves.”
U.S. urged to stop attempting to contain China with Taiwan: spokesperson
- Source
- Xinhuanet
- Editor
- Li Jiayao
- Time
- 2022-08-11 10:33:51
-
BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) — China will resolutely make a fightback each time the United States makes a serious provocation that encroaches upon China’s sovereignty and interferes in China’s internal affairs, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.
“China will never allow its national sovereignty and territorial integrity to be wantonly trampled upon and undermined,” spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing, urging the United States to stop its attempt to contain China by using Taiwan.
Wang pointed out Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s visit to China’s Taiwan region is a major political provocation which upgrades exchanges between the United States and Taiwan.
Pelosi’s visit violated relevant commitments by the U.S. side in the China-U.S. Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, the one-China principle widely accepted by the international community and confirmed in the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, and the principle in international law of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, which is enshrined in the UN Charter, he said.
Disregarding China’s dissuasion and warnings concerning Pelosi’s visit, the United States has chosen to pursue the wrong course of action, Wang said, noting that it is the United States, not China, who has reneged on commitments.
“It is the United States that infringed upon China’s sovereignty, not China violating the sovereignty of the United States. It is the United States who connived at and supported ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities, not China conniving at and supporting separatist activities in the United States,” Wang added.
Wang said the United States is going down the path of obscuring, hollowing out and distorting the one-China principle, while accusing China of changing the status quo.
“The United States carries out over a hundred military drills in China’s adjacent waters every year, but accuses China of overacting,” Wang added, “Neither China nor the international community will accept such a gangster logic.”
If the United States truly hopes to abide by international law and uphold national sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries as it claims to, it should return to the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques, Wang said.
He urged the United States to refrain from reckless moves and stop attempting to use Taiwan to contain China and do right things and take concrete steps to facilitate the sound development of China-U.S. ties and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Challenging America’s Lords of Illusion with a Million Contrary Rumble Views
In Roger Zelazny’s classic 1967 science fiction novel Lord of Light, humans on a distant planet have employed technological devices to establish themselves as gods of the Hindu pantheon, each having particular aspects and attributes. Mara is the Lord of Illusion, able to reshape the perceived world in the minds of all those around him. Such an ability is powerful but not invincible since the physical reality remains unchanged, and Mara is slain in the very first chapter.
I think that story stands as an effective metaphor for America’s strengths in today’s world. Our country is so utterly dominant in the distribution of information and propaganda, including the electronic and social media, that we can easily persuade most of the world to accept as truth our manufactured illusions. But we cannot alter the underlying reality, perhaps leading to disastrous ultimate consequences.
Russia possesses a nuclear arsenal equal to our own and its revolutionary hypersonic weapons provide it considerable superiority in delivery systems. Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov serves as the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces, and a couple of weeks ago he held a public briefing at which he suggested that elements of the American government had probably been responsible for unleashing the global Covid epidemic.
I mentioned his explosive accusations in a column, but otherwise they seem to have been almost entirely ignored in both the American mainstream and even alternative media. Instead, the only significant American response was that Twitter suspended the official account of the Russian Foreign Ministry after it distributed the remarks of that top Russian general.
Once again, except for a column of my own, the censorship Twitter had suddenly imposed upon the Russian government for such accusatory statements passed almost entirely unnoticed by American mainstream and alternative media outlets alike.
Major declarations by top Russian military leaders surely receive extensive coverage in Russia’s own domestic media, so I’d assume that a substantial fraction of the Russian population now believes that the Covid virus which has killed more than 15 million people worldwide may have been an American product, engineered and released by our national security apparatus. But a near-total media embargo—extending to alternative outlets—has ensured that such notions remain completely excluded from American minds. Apparently, our editors follow the principle “What we don’t know can’t hurt us.”
Over the last couple of years I have been repeatedly struck by the complete unwillingness of virtually any mainstream or alternative Western journalist to take notice of the very strong evidence of America’s culpability in the Covid epidemic, evidence that I have presented in a long series of articles first beginning in April 2020.
Earlier this month I sent this plaintive note to a member of America’s elite establishment with whom I’ve been friendly for many years:
…the whole situation just staggers the imagination. For the same of argument, let’s assume I’m correct and there’s at least a pretty good chance that the blowback from an unauthorized biowarfare attack has now killed a million Americans. Can you think of anything in the history of the world let alone the history of America that’s comparable to that? As I argued in one of my recent articles, it’s probably 1000x a greater worldwide disaster than Chernobyl. And the notion that absolutely no one is willing to discuss it is just unbelievable. It’s not like Stalin’s NKVD will ship them off to the Gulag if they say anything. I mean it’s one thing if people are fearful of being shot, but it’s another thing if they’re merely fearful of being criticized on Twitter… I just can’t understand why absolutely no one is willing to take a public stand on this issue. Once all the facts came out more than a year ago, I assumed the dam would break any week.
And his reply:
It is quite amazing.
From the very beginning of the epidemic, our media and propaganda organs, whether mainstream or alternative, have successfully insulated the American public from the crucial information that might allow them to properly understand what had happened in their lives. As I noted in my original April 2020 article:
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hated Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies. Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
In a later article I emphasized that Iran’s top leadership had certainly recognized these obvious facts at the time:
By early March 2020, the Iranian general overseeing his country’s biowarfare defense had already begun suggesting that Covid was a Western biological attack against his country and China, and a couple of days later the semiofficial Iranian news agency FARS quoted Iran’s top Revolutionary Guards military commander as declaring:
Today, the country is engaged in a biological battle. We will prevail in the fight against this virus, which might be the product of an American biological [attack], which first spread in China and then to the rest of the world…America should know that if it has done so, it will return to itself.
Soon afterward, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei took the same public position, while populist former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became especially vocal on Twitter for several months, even directing his formal accusations to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Just a single one of his numerous Tweets drew many thousands of Retweets and Likes.
Iranian radio and television and its international news service repeatedly carried these stories, backed by supportive interviews with a top political aide to Malaysia’s former prime minister. But America’s overwhelming domination over the English-language global media ensured that this major international controversy never came to my attention at the time it occurred. The blockade preventing these Iranian charges from reaching the English-speaking world was further facilitated by American control over the basic infrastructure of the Internet. Just one month earlier, Iran’s PressTV channel for Britain had been deleted by YouTube, following the earlier removal of its main global channel. Most recently, the American government took the unprecedented action of seizing PressTV‘s Internet domain, completely eliminating all access to that website.
The original Covid outbreak had struck Wuhan at the height of China’s confrontation with the United States. By March 2020 official Chinese media was reporting that the virus might have been brought to that city by American military personnel when they participated in the World Military Games held there, with an official spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry creating a diplomatic incident when he Tweeted out those accusations.
I’ve been told that such theories of American responsibility have become endemic on Chinese social media, and last year China’s second largest official news agency briefly summarized my own views on its website.
Similarly, Sputnik News, a mainstream Russian media outlet with 20 million visits per month, recently published a short interview with me regarding the likely origins of Covid. Around the same time, a leading Iranian television channel interviewed me for five hours in preparation for a series they plan to broadcast in the near future.
Government officials and the general public of Russia, Iran, and China both seem increasingly aware of these important facts and the controversial scenario they suggest, so I find it difficult to understand how legitimate American national interests are served by keeping that same information away from the American people. Yet this continuing climate of near-absolute censorship has been maintained not only within the mainstream media but also by nearly all alternative journalists and outlets. Even when American figures of the greatest public stature and credibility have broken their silence, their statements have been ignored across almost the entire alternative media landscape.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University is the very high-ranking American academic who had served as the chairman of the Covid Commission established by the Lancet, a leading medical journal. In May he co-authored an important article in the prestigious PNAS journal arguing that the virus had probably been produced in a lab and calling for an independent inquiry into its true origins.
- A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
Neil L. Harrison and Jeffrey D. Sachs • PNAS • May 19, 2022 • 2,800 Words
This bombshell declaration, which should have reached the front pages of the New York Times, was instead ignored by virtually every mainstream and alternative media outlet.
The following month, he reiterated his views while speaking at a small think-tank gathering in Spain, and a short clip of his remarks went super-viral, being retweeted out more than 11,000 times and attracting over a million views.
With the exception of an article in the London Daily Mail, this further bombshell was again entirely ignored by all outlets in both the mainstream and alternative press.
Finally, earlier this month he gave a lengthy and remarkably candid interview to Current Affairs, a small alternative media webzine, in which he focused on the strong evidence he had encountered of an apparent cover-up of Covid’s possible origins by individuals associated with the American government:
- Why the Chair of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission Thinks The US Government Is Preventing a Real Investigation Into the Pandemic
Jeffrey Sachs • Current Affairs • August 2, 2022 • 4,300 Words
Once again, virtually no alternative journalist reported those astonishing allegations by the academic figure who had been best placed to make them.
When I brought his recent interview to the attention of several prominent mainstream individuals whom I personally know, they found it absolutely stunning. But apparently nearly every journalist in America thought otherwise, so its impact on the public debate has been almost nil.
Last week I published an account of the shocking McCain/POW scandal uncovered by the late Sydney Schanberg. Despite his stellar journalistic reputation and the mountain of evidence he had accumulated, his findings were totally ignored by the entire media, including by the Times, where he himself had previously served as one of the top editors. This notion of a story being too big or too dangerous for the media to cover certainly applies to the origins of the Covid epidemic.
Furthermore, the strategies used to suppress challenges to establishmentarian dogma may have grown much more sophisticated and effective. A couple of weeks ago I discussed this possibility in the aftermath of the Alex Jones trial, suggesting that techniques of “cognitive infiltration” may have been deployed against alternative organizations and activists, diverting them into blind alleys that dissipate their energies and severely damage their public credibility:
- American Pravda: Alex Jones, Cass Sunstein, and “Cognitive Infiltration”
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 8, 2022 • 5,400 Words
I speculated that the huge, sudden rise of a massive anti-vaxxing movement in America might be an example of this. A couple of years ago, vaccine issues were almost invisible, but soon after questions arose regarding the true origins of the Covid virus, the vaccination controversy moved to the absolute center stage of American public life, completely dominating the thoughts of most of those willing to challenge official orthodoxy on any other matter.
As a result, I suspect that a thousand times as much time and effort has recently been devoted to debating the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines than to investigating the true origins of the disease that made them necessary. And individuals or organizations who proclaim their fear that Bill Gates is the architect of a diabolical plot to exterminate most of the human race are hardly likely to be taken seriously by credible journalists or academics on any other matters.
The difficult year or two of lockdown conditions under which so many Americans had suffered fostered the social isolation that naturally allowed even the most fantastical ideas to take root among the fearful. Such an environment would have been ideal for the successful promotion across the Internet of debilitating nonsense promoted by organized propaganda-operatives.
Thus, since early 2020, the likely reality of an event of monumental historical importance—the unauthorized release of a military bioweapon that has killed so many millions worldwide—has been successfully suppressed within America and the rest of the West. In the past, other dramatic events such as the JFK assassination and the 9/11 attacks quickly sparked large-scale movements of citizen-activism challenging the questionable official narrative, but there currently exists no similar “Covid Truth Movement.”
Despite this unfortunate situation, there are some signs of hope, indications of a few embers that might eventually burst into flame.
First, growing coverage in the Russian, Iranian, and Chinese media may help pierce the wall of silence maintained by Western outlets, especially because the latter have become so severely discredited by their extremely skewed coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and the confrontation over Taiwan. At the very least, alternative journalists may finally gain the necessary courage to begin seriously exploring the origins of Covid.
In addition, Jeffrey Sachs, an extremely senior figure in the mainstream Covid firmament, has seemingly become willing to break the conspiracy of silence and raise issues that have been suppressed for more than two years. Although media outlets have scrupulously avoided publishing his statements, his public stature raises the possibility of successfully circumventing such gatekeepers.
Meanwhile, the facts are still out there. I recently reread my original April 2020 article that first raised these issues, and although more than two years have passed I found little in the text that I would wish to change.
Just days after that piece ran, our entire webzine was banned by Facebook and all our pages were deranked by Google. But although those harsh actions successfully suppressed what had been the viral spread of that article, they also underscored the potential importance of the arguments being made.
Over the next two years, I greatly expanded that first work into a lengthy series of articles, comprehensively covering the topic. Taken together, those pieces have now been viewed more than a half-million times, and the entire collection is now available both as a freely downloadable eBook and also as an Amazon paperback.
- Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words
Even more heartening has been the growing viewership of my video presentations. Back in February, just before the outbreak of the Ukraine war diverted all attention in a different direction, I was interviewed several times by small podcasters, and these shows have attracted considerable audiences. Totaling around four hours of discussion, they have now accumulated over a million views on Rumble, with more than half of these coming during the last few weeks. Circumventing media gatekeepers is a crucial step in piercing the veil of ignorance maintained by the West’s reigning Lords of Illusion, and recognizing the reality of our global disaster.
Kevin Barrett, FFWN • February 16, 2022 • 15m
Geopolitics & Empire • February 1, 2022 • 75m
Red Ice TV • February 3, 2022 • 130m
Related Reading:
- A Thousand Times Greater Than the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
- Russian Defense Ministry Suggests Direct American Government Responsibility for the Emergence of Covid
- American Pravda: Alex Jones, Cass Sunstein, and “Cognitive Infiltration”
- A Story Too Big for the New York Times
- Ukraine and Biowarfare Conspiracy Theories
The “experts” nail it again!
Guest Post by Simon Black
In March of 421 BC, after years of escalating conflict, Athens and Sparta finally decided to bury the hatchet and coexist peacefully together in the Mediterranean.
The two powers had been at odds for decades. Athens had ballooned into a regional empire, and Sparta itself was a rising power.
The two sides came to blows on multiple occasions. And even when they agreed to keep the peace in 421 BC, tensions were still high. All it took was one idiot to screw it up.
His name was Alcibiades, a Greek politician of noble birth. Alcibiades was pretty infamous in Athens; he was known for being corrupt, deceitful, disloyal, arrogant, and short-tempered.
I’m serious. There are numerous accounts from ancient historians who wrote in excruciating detail about what a terrible person Alcibiades was. Plutarch tells us, for example, about a time that Alcibiades cheated in a wrestling match by biting his opponent (to no one’s surprise) and how he mutilated his own dog.
Even poor Socrates tried, and failed, to teach Alcibiades about ethics and morality.
But despite his horrendous reputation, Alcibiades still managed to catapult himself into positions of high power… and to remain there… primarily due to his political cunning.
In fact Alcibiades was essentially the Speaker of the Athenian Assembly, with the power to dictate the day’s agenda and influence the outcome of votes.
Alcibiades was so powerful that, during the summer of 418 BC, he decided (without any approval from the government) to pay a visit to the Peloponnese in southern Greece– territory that was claimed by Sparta.
There was absolutely zero upside in Alcibiades doing this. It was just a big circus act for him to show off his power and prestige. He didn’t care if Sparta would be outraged, or if his actions had consequences for Athens. All that mattered to Alcibiades was that people were talking about him.
Naturally his actions did have consequences.
Smaller city-states in the Peloponnese were emboldened by Alcibiades’ trip to the region, so they forged a fledgling alliance and attempted to seize a strategic settlement located at Sparta’s southern border.
With their border security threatened, Sparta sent an army to push away the invaders; the resulting battle was a massive victory for Sparta and a huge embarrassment for Athens. But Alcibiades blamed one of his political opponents for the defeat, so he never took the fall for his own mistake.
The conflict quickly escalated further, and soon Athens and Sparta were once again in a full-blown war with each other– one that Athens would ultimately lose to its rival.
I’m writing this, of course, at a time when US Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just touched down in Taiwan.
But she’s not stupid. She knows there are consequences. The Chinese have made it very clear that they do not want Pelosi going to Taiwan. Tensions are already high between the US and China, and this trip certainly won’t help.
Now, obviously it’s not up to China to dictate US policy or actions. But like Alcibiades’ trip to the Peloponnese in 418 BC, there is absolutely zero benefit in Pelosi going to Taiwan.
The US economy is in a tailspin. Parents can’t find baby formula for their infants. Inflation is raging. People are suffering.
What exactly does this woman hope to achieve? Will her visit to Taiwan somehow make inflation miraculously retreat? Will baby formula suddenly appear on the shelves?
Of course not. So if there’s no benefit for Americans, then why go at all?
On the flip side, the trip does present a number of risks. China doesn’t want to look weak, and whatever retaliatory action they take probably won’t be positive for the US.
China’s initial response has been predictably swift. They’ve already kicked off live-fire military exercises, i.e. real weapons and munitions, and have essentially encircled Taiwan by sea. Apparently these military exercises will include missile tests off Taiwan’s east coast.
The US, meanwhile, has positioned at least two naval vessels and several fighter jets close to Taiwan’s east coast, increasing the potential for conflict, or even just an accident.
Hopefully nothing catastrophic happens. But, again, what exactly is the point of this trip? It’s all risk and no reward… just so that Pelosi can showboat in front of the cameras before her retirement next year.
You’d think that someone with decades of political experience– an ‘expert’ in international diplomacy– would understand such a simple reality, and then rationally choose the course of action which will benefit her country the most. But that’s a laughable proposition.
Pelosi has a multi-decade track record of deceit, disloyalty, cowardice, and arrogance. She’s even despised by prominent members of her own party.
Ironically, the only reason Pelosi even has a job is because a mere 73,815 voters in the San Francsico Bay area chose to send her to Congress. That’s a tiny fraction of the US population in a tiny corner of the country.
Seriously, more people voted to elect the mayor of Denver, Colorado than voted for Nancy Pelosi. Yet somehow Pelosi has enormous power and influence in global politics.
Something is clearly wrong with this system that produces such bizarre, lopsided outcomes from serially corrupt and incompetent candidates.
Pelosi is just one of countless examples– a #mefirst, self-centered hypocrite who has become the modern day Alcibiades.
And she’ll most likely go down in history with a similar reputation as he did.
Kindness
“I just went to buy a Samsung washer and dryer from a guy that was asking $500. I told him that I just had a baby and asked if he could take $400, that I would be really grateful. When I got home and hooked everything up, they both worked great. I opened up the dryer to check the lint filter and was shocked to find my $400 in there. I got a message from him saying ‘check the dryer, a gift for the new baby’. Man words can not describe how grateful I am right now.
I feel so blessed right now I felt I had to share, big shout out to the man David! Thank you so much!” – Chris Blaze
Kindness makes the world a kinder place.
