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Sunday, April 10, 2022

2022-04-10

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)

Regular Fare:


....... According to at least one Wall Street strategist, the answer to these questions is also the reason why the Fed Funds rate won't climb beyond 1.0%!

We refer to SocGen's resident permaskeptic, Albert Edwards, who today writes that "the prospect of the Fed engaging in rapid balance sheet shrinkage (QT) has spooked the markets." But, as we muse above, how does one combine the concurrent impact of QT with the Fed Fund hikes to get a handle on where Fed Funds might peak?

Well, Edwards believes he may have the answer, or rather he says that his "learned colleague", SocGen's in house quant guru Solomon Tadesse has an answer. While few in the mainstream have ever heard of Solomon, back in mid-2018, not long before the Fed's rate hike plans blew up spectacularly, the SocGen quant made waves on Wall Street trading desks when he went against the consensus view, and in May 2018 pinpointed the peak in Fed Funds at a lowly 2½%. He was absolutely spot on.

The problem: his latest analysis for this cycle puts the peak of the Fed Funds at just below 1.0%, or less than 3 more rate hikes before the Fed is forced to reverse! That, as Edwards notes, "is so far away from  the current consensus that it deserves some serious analysis."

.... So combining the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet from sub-$4 trillion at end 2018 to almost $9 trillion was the equivalent of the FFR falling to minus 5% (charts below)! But now that the Fed has reveresed, ending QE combined with just one ¼% hike in the headline FFR means the Shadow FFR has already jumped from minus 5% to minus 2.5% – a 250bp hike (blue line below).

.... As depicted in the chart above, Solomon constructs a Monetary Tightening to Easing ratio (MTE, the ratio of the degree of tightening to the degree of easing in the preceding cycle). The charts below show how the MTE ratio declined in the 1980s as disinflation became the dominant theme. Hence since the mid-1980s the tightening cycle has topped out at around 70% of the previous easing cycle. But shouldn’t this ratio now return to 1.5x given CPI inflation has comprehensively overshot, Edwards asks and answers: Maybe...

You see, the main reason why Solomon’s MTE ratio has been consistently lower (at 70%) recently is that tightening cycles have been halted because financial market bubbles, created by excessive Fed easing, then blow up and prevent the Fed from further tightening. Another way of visualizing this is the infamous chart showing that every Fed tightening cycle ends in crisis (and this one will be no different)

So putting it all together, if we take the 70% MTE ratio above, Solomon calculates that the Shadow FFR will likely top out with 550bp of tightening (70% of the 800bp easing), and even though the Fed will fail to tame inflation the crash in markets and the recession (or depression) that will hit the hyperfinancialized US economy, with its 6.3x financial assets to GDP...

... will force the Fed to not only end tightening early but to rush into an easing cycle



The shape of the Treasury yield curve continues to be a subject of great interest to the market, due to the now-widespread belief that a flat or negatively-sloped yield curve is a sure-fire harbinger of recession. I've disagreed with this of late, because while a negatively-sloped yield curve has in fact preceded almost all of the recessions in the past 50 years (with the notable exception of the economic collapse brought on by Covid shutdowns), there are other indicators (e.g., real yields, swap spreads, credit spreads) which also must be observed if one is to reliably anticipate recessions.

So the shape of the yield curve can help, but it's not bullet-proof. And to complicate things further, there are a variety of ways to measure the shape of the yield curve, and they often give conflicting signals.





Global food prices have never risen so fast and have never been so high, and as have detailed multiple times in recent months (as this is not simply a one-month, 'blame it on Putin' crisis), most recently here, the pieces are in place for some serious tears to form in the social fabric of many nations.

...... The reason for the glum outlook is not just the loss of Ukraine exports, and probable loss of the planting season for quite a large portion of the Ukraine, but because of the desperate global shortages of fertilizers which have become utterly essential to today’s crop yields.



.... In each case, we see governments and businesses that are overburdened by debt trying to find ways to push whatever they can “off-balance sheet”. This pressure leads to extensive outsourcing and fancy accounting that makes the official balance sheet of any organization look prettier than it actually is.  Obviously, capitalism itself inherently generates competitive pressure to produce top-performing balance sheets. Democracy too creates immense pressures for financial accountability. Both encourage the movement of ugly problems to off-balance sheet locations. But, whatever the various causes, the efforts to move problems off-balance sheet and to diminish costs by outsourcing, have created a series of intertwined problems that underpin many of today’s most important geopolitical and economic questions: ...

........... The true nature of the US Government’s off-balance-sheet picture is one of the most hotly debated questions of modern politics.

If it turns out that we have underestimated the extent of off-balance-sheet activities, and thus we misjudge the true nature of what is going on, then we can probably expect the continued nationalization of the losses. Problems seen through a more realistic lens are likely to be larger than they currently appear.



..... As a result, when John Pilger writes about how the Iraq war was motivated by access to oil, serious people in the finance world still tend to roll their eyes as if it’s a far fetched tale. They shouldn’t. It did. And unless we face up to the realpolitik, and our roles in it, nobody in finance will be able to protect their wealth let alone make more of it.

I suspect the learning curve we’re all about to go through will be significant. At the very least, it will force financial practitioners to face up to what it is they are really financing: western supremacy and the military industrial complex that supports it.



I remain utterly perplexed as to why the serious people of finance Twitter can’t grasp the basic fact that shutting out Russian gas/oil will hurt us more than it will hurt them. Or to what degree leaders will end up accountable for causing global famines and mass poverty if they go ahead with this policy.

I am not convinced at all that the rest of the world will ever be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make this a viable long-term policy.

Yes the impact on Russia is likely to be more painful for them than us in the immediate term. But the slow burn effects for the rest of the world may be much bigger. The idea we can plug the gap with US LNG exports and renewables is laughable. It’s going to take a minimum of 2-5 years to realign the energy system, and in that time far too many people may die from the imbalances that are going to be caused by this policy.


It Is Time to Replace Western Financial Trade Mechanisms and Remove The Dollar

This is not some grand conspiracy, ‘out there‘ deep geopolitical possibility, or foreboding likelihood as an outcome of short-sighted western emotion. No, this is just a predictable outcome from western created events that pushed specific countries to a natural conclusion based on their best interests. 

You can debate the motives of the western leaders who structured the sanctions against Russia, and whether they knew the outcome would happen as a consequence of their effort, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Personally, I believe this outcome is what the west intended. The people inside the World Economic Forum are not stupid – ideological, yes, but not stupid. They knew this would happen.

The finance ministers of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have decided to create their own financial mechanisms to continue trade between nations of similar disposition. Once the internal issues inside the BRICS alliance are resolved, and once the mechanisms are created, then other nations will be able to decide to join or not. The great global cleaving will commence. 

..... The bottom line is – the 2022 punitive economic and financial sanctions by the western nations’ alliance against Russia was exactly the reason why BRICS assembled in the first place. 

The multinational corporate control of government is exactly what the BRICS assembly foresaw when they first assembled during the Obama administration. When multinational corporations run the policy of western government, there is going to be a problem.

... The countries run by multinational corporations are in Yellow, the countries who have not yet chosen a side are in GREY:



No country has successfully challenged the U.S. dollar’s global hegemony—until now. How did this happen and what will it mean?

Foreign critics have long chafed at the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency. The U.S. can issue this currency backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit of the United States.” Foreign governments, needing dollars, not only accept them in trade but buy U.S. securities with them, effectively funding the U.S. government and its foreign wars. But no government has been powerful enough to break that arrangement – until now. How did that happen and what will it mean for the U.S. and global economies?.....



........ So, we’ll see. And recall that old saying, “Wisdom may come late, but it seldom never comes.” Meaning that sooner or later, people will figure out that if they want Russian gas, oil, minerals, food and much else, they will have to fork over the rubles. And many dollar-holders will then lighten up and sell bucks to buy rubles, as well as buy physical gold. One way or the other, we will witness the dollar weaken, perhaps a little bit and slowly, or maybe a lot and fast. While the ruble will likely strengthen, which means that the dollar-ruble exchange rate will tighten.  At the end of the day, the dollar-price for gold will rise, and along with that the valuations of many gold mining companies will move upside. Heck, we may even see a meltup in the price of gold, and an investor panic into gold miners across the entire sector

... A new, worldwide economic education process is about to begin. Time to brush off those century-old books about the “gold standard.”  



... The unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 5.3% in March, the lowest rate on record since comparable data became available in 1976.

The adjusted unemployment rate—which includes people who wanted a job, but did not look for one—was below its pre-pandemic level for the first time at 7.2%.


Chart Fare:
1:
4:



QOTW:

Danielle DiMartino Booth: "Supply is outrunning demand for the first time. You have inventories that are higher than new orders for the first time. That is a sign that we are headed for at least an industrial recession. The Fed has very little leeway…"

Rosie: Everyone who is calling for recession don't see it until 2023. But with the Atlanta Fed back down to stall-speed +0.9% SAAR for Q1 GDP, and with negative momentum in real incomes and spending, I sense it's this year's story. Thing is -- the Fed may not care.

R2: As the cheerleaders on bubblevision wax on, the reality is that a 10% bear market rally ranks as among the most feeble we have ever seen. Cyclical services (-13%), homebuilders (-33%), auto parts (-35%), home furnishings (-54%) are still flashing a consumer downturn ahead.




..... Capacity utilization has been falling for forty years straight since the onslaught of Supply Side economics. Cycle after cycle of mass layoffs and outsourcing. As deflation entered the economy via imports, interest rates fell and cheap capital fueled automation. Cheaper capital and more automation. The economy has been locked in a deflationary feedback loop. The official unemployment rate is a lie of BIBLICAL proportion. It first removes all of the long-term unemployed who have given up on finding a job. The employment population ratio is the lowest in U.S. history. If we reached a point of total layoffs and everyone gave up looking for work, according to today's Idiocracy we would reach ZERO unemployment and ZERO employment at the exact same time. ...

... The last .5% rate hike was in May 2000 when the Dotcom bubble was starting to implode. Within one year the Nasdaq was down -60% and eventually fell -80% at the 2002 lows. 

.... In summary, Shock Doctrine is the policy of capitalizing upon human misery in order to dramatically increase profit. 

This time the shock will bring down the entire house of cards.

Why? Because "more" was never enough. 



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Carbon dioxide levels also record a big jump



Uncontrolled gas leaks and flaring are pushing the planet toward catastrophe.

.... Today’s atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is as high as it was 4.3 million years ago — when the sea level was roughly 75 feet higher, the Arctic was covered in forests, and global temperatures were 7 degrees F hotter than right before the Industrial Revolution.





“I disagree with the notion that more information is always better.”

The edge is found in clear thinking and an uncluttered mind. Our brains only have so much decision making power capacity each day. Disposing that energy into numerous outlets — reading too many blogs, following too many investors, watching Mad Money — reduces our brain’s capacity to make full-powered decisions on important questions. 



“WHO treads a difficult line, & tends to be quite conservative in its recommendations to avoid putting out info that later proves to be incorrect. ‘You can’t be backtracking’ … because ‘then you lose complete credibility’.”

There is something important to learn from this example. The best estimate of a maximally accurate source would be frequently updated and follow a random walk. And authoritative sources like WHO are often said to be the most accurate sources. Even so, such sources do not tend to do this. They instead update their estimates rarely, and are especially reluctant to issue estimates that seem to “backtrack” on previous ones. Why?

........

Due to the first of these pressures, the need to inform decisions, authoritative sources prefer that dependent decisions be made infrequently and opaquely. Such as by central inflexible organizations, who decide by opaque political processes. There can thus form a natural alliance between central powers and authoritative sources.



"Unique Atmospheric Sight" Over Alaska Ignites Wild Social Media Speculation 




Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Regular Fare:


In a sad spectacle, former President Barack Obama visited the White House and humiliated his former VP, Joe Biden, as this video shows:

Who cares, right? But I do want to say a few things about this:
  1. Obama stands revealed here as a total narcissist as he basks in the applause and approval of White House political operatives while Joe Biden stands outside the circle of joy, looking lost and insignificant.
  2. Obama’s “joke” of addressing a sitting president as “Vice President” was unintentionally revealing of Biden’s lack of power within the White House and his own party.
  3. I’m not surprised Obama treated Biden in this humiliating manner. Obama intervened in 2020 and made Biden the nominee for the Democratic Party. Recall how he got both Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to drop out before Super Tuesday, thereby boosting Biden’s vote in his race against Bernie Sanders. Without Obama’s intervention, Sanders would have been the likely winner of the nomination process. But Obama and the DNC could not stomach the idea of a progressive like Sanders winning the nomination, so Biden was propped up as the candidate who could win, i.e., the candidate who could be controlled by corporate forces.


In the shadows of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Hunter Biden and his business partners embarked on an aggressive campaign to score millions of dollars in “life changing” business with oligarchs in both countries who had an interest in his father’s policymaking business, according to emails and court records obtained by Just the News.



... Previously, Maxey outlined [Daily Mail article and Video Here] his intent to share the full contents of the original files, and all of the retrieved deleted files, with the public so that people can see the scale of depravity and Biden family corruption within the evidence.



Climate Chaos Fare:

"Science has given us a three year deadline to end growth as we know it."

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) consists of contributions from each of the three IPCC Working Groups and a Synthesis Report, which integrates all the reports produced in the 10-year cycle. While “net-zero by 2050” is a slogan that gives everyone permission to slack off, the latest and final working group report released this week puts the challenge into sharper focus: carbon emissions must peak by 2025. We are three and one half years from the End of Growth. We then enter the long awaited Age of Limits. Will we do it? Former UNFCCC President Christiana Figueres sounds like she is scolding an unruly teenager:
I’m lacking words for this…. What is suicidal is our inability to take the decisions and enact the behavioral changes that we perfectly well can in order to align our planet with the Paris Agreement. That’s the problem. There is nothing new that any report can tell us about what we should be doing. The gap that we identified years ago is not closing; in fact, it’s enlarging. That’s the news. It’s tragic.

Scornful daddy António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said the kid was a “file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.”

Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.

........

If Covid taught us anything, it was that the status quo is a frail construct. It can vanish in an instant, or at least over the course of a few weeks. This is what the people in Ukraine witnessed, at least one by a hail of machine gun fire as he bicycled to the grocery. It is what happened to those in Lismore and Byron Bay who saw their homes rain bombed underwater to the rooftops for the second time in a month, or to those who watched their lifetime possessions vanish in wildfires of scale and speed no one had imagined possible. The shock of sudden change is how a two-year (and soon to be longer) pandemic convinced so many to leave their professional careers and switch to a different life path rather than go back to what they had been doing before. We have been shaken from dreary normalcy and been made aware of how precarious the world of our making has become, and how we could be spending our days in more meaningful pursuits.

Many think the solution to climate change is public education. I don’t. I think people know. Most just don’t want to admit it, or do anything, unless they have to.

.....

The report could not have set the agenda any better.

If humanity still needs a climate strategy, I think these thousand scientists, finally reaching their difficult 150-hour marathon consensus in the early hours of Monday morning, provided it. Our effort must address the existential issue of our era: changing our cultural habits and deciding to live as if there will still be a tomorrow.


Climate change and wars

..... The countries of the ‘global North’ (Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan) are responsible for 92% of total emissions that are causing climate breakdown.  Meanwhile, the Global South – the entire continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America – are responsible for only 8% of ‘excess emissions’. And the majority of these countries are still well within their fair shares of the emissions boundary, including India, Indonesia and Nigeria.  To make matters worse, the impacts of climate breakdown fall disproportionately on the countries of the global South, which suffer the vast majority of climate change-induced damages and mortality within their borders. 

... I have discussed before why market solutions like carbon pricing and carbon taxes will not deliver the required reductions in emissions. Market solutions will not work because it is just not profitable for capital to invest in climate change mitigation:...

... To stop global warming, we don’t need just clever new technology, we need to phase out old fossil fuel technology.  And we need a global plan to steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs.  Such a plan could also equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, health care.  At the same time, a global plan could aim to provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries.  But such a plan requires public ownership and control of fossil fuel companies and other key energy and food sectors.  Without that, there can be no plan. ...





Related Tweets:

1.5C and 2C are *impossible* due to brutal physics.
The earth's actual sensitivity to GHGs is at least double the sensitivity assumed by the IPCC.
This is the most critical of all climate information, yet kept hidden from the public.

IPCC: If climate sensitivity is higher than central estimates [ie 3°C which omits slow feedbacks] then 4°C+ could occur.
The real-world sensitivity is ~6°C for fast+slow feedbacks (Hansen)
We KNOW it is ~6°C because paleoclimate studies confirm it.

You need to have an understanding of committed warming. The GHGs already in the air will continue to act on the climate system for decades and centuries, even millennia.



COVID Fare:

I've continued to come across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Joey Smalley (aka Metatron) and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; new addition: Marc Girardot; plus Walter Chesnut on twitter; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Sucharit Bhakdi, and Pierre Kory, and Harvey Risch, and Michael Yeadon, and John Ioannidis, and Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and Dolores Cahill, and [local prof] Byram Bridle, and Ryan Cole, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts

Analysis:

el gato malo: boosters associated with higher death rates
the english data is (unfortunately) tracking as predicted

.......... this potent combination has created an ideal evolutionary gradient for vaccine accelerated OAS escape variants to which the large vaccinated cohort cannot adapt well.

they are selecting with unerring precision for the variants (like omicron) that not only evade but are outright advantaged by them.

the data from israel on this is deeply concerning. it looked like perhaps vaccines were working (or at least that herd immunity was taking hold, it’s difficult to separate the two), but then omi hit and everything changed.

.... widespread and identical immunogenic fixation is the opposite of herd immunity. it’s perpetual herd vulnerability and evo-selection for an endless stream of variants that can take advantage of it.

your immune system becomes a one trick pony and so the virus evolves to trick the pony. this does not go well for the pony rider.

... i really, really hope to be wrong about this because if this hypothesis is correct (and let’s be clear here, it’s a hypothesis and i’m not sure anything like this has ever happened in human history before so we’re a bit off the edge of the map and into some strange waters) then the vaccines are going to have opened up the inoculated for a life of high susceptibility to covid and will outright breed the variants that will keep making that worse.

that would represent the greatest public health policy disaster in history.


each iteration of variant is posing greater infection risk to the vaccinated relative to the unvaxxed. is this becoming vaccine fixation syndrome?

it has long been known that the covid vaccines were non-sterilizing. it has also been known, based on the countries like the UK that report the stats honestly that the vaccinated are at greater risk of contracting covid than the unvaxxed. this has even been known about the boosters.

but where this gets really worrying is this: each new variant is seeing this relative risk rate rise and the rate of rise is accelerating. this is, unfortunately, exactly what one would predict as a leaky vaccine with a strong tendency to antigenically fixate those having received it drives viral evolution to prey upon this vulnerability. herd OAS replaces herd immunity and vaccine driven evolution does the rest.

the UK data is getting really stark here. let’s look. ....

...... that’s a stunning outcome.

risk ratios have blown out. ......

... the idea that having been “inoculated” with these mRNA and adenovirus products could wind up generating a long-term syndrome in which those whose immune systems were altered cannot generate immunity to the evolving covid pathogens that take advantage of their non-adaptive immune responses. ...


The Boosted Cannot Clear Covid Easily and Keep Getting Reinfected

........ Chronic Covid is a situation where the vaccinated cannot develop natural immunity, cannot quickly clear infections, and remain ill and infectious for extended period of time. Such repeat infections progressively damage their immunity to the point of not being able to clear Covid at all. That would lead to people being chronically infected, infecting others, and overwhelmed with toxic Covid viral proteins, while remaining immunosuppressed.

... This article describes scientific mechanism and shows why this is happening. Using three recent studies, I will show that
  • The vaccinated cannot develop “natural immunity”
  • The boosted cannot clear the virus quickly upon infection
  • Covid virions invade and damage monocytes, the blood cells providing immunity, due to vaccine-mediated Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), leading to gradual destruction of the immune system. Sars-Cov-2 also infects immune T-cells.
.....



The spike protein is the “amyloid” being deposited and inducing amyloidoses: a major finding missed severe covid may be due to the added deposition of complement with the spike. The paper “The histologic and molecular correlates of COVID-19 vaccine-induced changes in the skin” made a case for the immune response to the Spike Protein causing self-limited hypersensitivity reactions to the vaccine. However, if you study the paper carefully, you notice that the authors have missed a far more important finding. ...


And the lack of FDA oversight



...... EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.

...... But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages.

And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product.

Given this background, the FDA’s acknowledgement in its approval letter that there are insufficient stocks of the licensed Comirnaty, but an abundant supply of the EUA Pfizer BioNTech jab, exposes the “approval” as a cynical scheme to encourage businesses and schools to impose illegal jab mandates.


Commentary:


... You can see that we have over 70% of people vaccinated, but 90% of the deaths occurring in the vaccinated. For a vaccine that has been widely touted as 95% Effective™ this would seem to be quite a remarkable achievement.



... As Bray himself notes, these lessons apply equally well to the insipid media discourse around Corona and all matters related to the vaccines. Indeed, his experience is basically identical to mine.

We – myself and many others – have now spent two years obsessively tracking national Corona statistics across multiple jurisdictions, we’ve read hundreds and hundreds of scientific papers, and we’ve developed a lot of reasonable if complex arguments about what is happening, what Corona policies have achieved, and what is to be done. Anytime a mainstream journalist or politician is forced to comment on any of our intellectual production, though, we’re dismissed as a bunch of eugenicist anti-science anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists who just want old people to die.

Journalism depends on simple, one-dimensional analyses, and journalists themselves prioritise social interactions and the spoken word over papers and documentary evidence. Their coverage ends up being dominated by a small collection of bad actors and manipulative personalities like Eric Feigl-Ding, who reduce matters of enormous complexity to simple slogans and flat, unidirectional policy demands, like social distancing forever and infinite vaccination.


They keep telling us to “trust the science.” But who paid for it?

After graduating from Columbia University with a chemical engineering degree, my grandfather went on to work for Pfizer for almost two decades, culminating his career as the company’s Global Director of New Products. I was rather proud of this fact growing up — it felt as if this father figure, who raised me for several years during my childhood, had somehow played a role in saving lives. But in recent years, my perspective on Pfizer — and other companies in its class — has shifted. Blame it on the insidious big pharma corruption laid bare by whistleblowers in recent years. Blame it on the endless string of big pharma lawsuits revealing fraud, deception, and cover-ups. Blame it on the fact that I witnessed some of their most profitable drugs ruin the lives of those I love most. All I know is, that pride I once felt has been overshadowed by a sticky skepticism I just can’t seem to shake.

.....

To truly grasp big pharma’s power, you need to understand how The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works. ALEC, which was founded in 1973 by conservative activists working on Ronald Reagan’s campaign, is a super secretive pay-to-play operation where corporate lobbyists — including in the pharma sector — hold confidential meetings about “model” bills. A large portion of these bills is eventually approved and become law. A rundown of ALEC’s greatest hits will tell you everything you need to know about the council’s motives and priorities. ...

..... But all that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’d like to dive a little further down the rabbit hole — and I’ll warn you, it’s a deep one — a quick Google search for “big pharma lawsuits” will reveal the industry’s dark track record of bribery, dishonesty, and fraud. .....

.... As for why the FDA wanted to keep this data hidden, the first batch of documentation revealed that there were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths in just the first 90 days after the Pfizer vaccine was introduced. Of 32 pregnancies with a known outcome, 28 resulted in fetal death. The CDC also recently unveiled data showing a total of 1,088,560 reports of adverse events from COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 28, 2022. That data included 23,149 reports of deaths and 183,311 reports of serious injuries. ....


Charts: 
 1:


Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Kunstler: Is it true, as is hotly rumored now, that the mRNA shots lead uniformly to autoimmune deficiency syndrome? Ditto the alarming rise in cancer cases among the vaxxed… ditto heart damage, organ damage, grievous neurological damage? We’ll know a lot more about this in May and June, and it’s hard to imagine what the collective emotional reaction will be if all that turns out to be true. Never in history will so many face the prospect of an untimely death, and at the hands of such banal bureaucratic villainy. Will they just compliantly check out of this world, the same way they lined up for their vaxxes and boosters, or finally rage against that machine?



Anecdotal Fare:

Then there are all those athletes and US soldiers dropping dead, and schoolchildren felled by massive heart attacks—all figments of "anti-vaxxer" propaganda, Politifact suggests


833 Athlete Cardiac Arrests and Serious Issues, 540 Dead, Following Covid Injection



Pushback Fare:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Time’s up. Pencils down.

The first phase of the Obedience-Prison-Conformity experiment is over. How’d you do?

If you ever wondered how you would have behaved in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mussolinian Italy, Ceaușescuian Romania, or China (Maoist or contemporary1), now you know.

If you ever wondered how you would have reacted to the Milgram Obedience Experiment, now you know. 

If you ever wondered how you would have fared in the Stanford Prison Experiment, now you know.

If you ever wondered how you would have the done on the Asch Conformity Test, now you know.

... Let’s check your answers. No cheating—you can’t go back and change them now.
Did you:
  1. Trust your government?
  2. Believe their propaganda?
  3. Fear what they told you to fear?
  4. Dismiss what they told you to dismiss?
  5. Hate whom they told you to hate?
  6. Inhabit their manufactured illusion?
  7. Delegate your thinking to fact-chokers?
  8. Suppress your conscience?
  9. Listen to your leaders and “experts”?
  10. Follow their rules?
  11. Go with the herd?
  12. Fail to question?
  13. Pass their obedience test?
  14. Accept BigPharma into your heart?
  15. Become an experimental subject?
  16. Relinquish your independence?
  17. Give up your rights and freedoms?
  18. Behave in a cowardly manner?
  19. Remain silent in the face of corruption, injustice, bullying, discrimination, and democide?
  20. Censor, cancel, block, and blame those who didn’t do any of the above?
YES?

Commiserations, you are a Good German. You did everything your felonious, fraudulent, fatal fascist regime told you to do. You complied with tyrants. You yielded to brainwashing. You embraced ignorance. You became a Covidian. You compromised your values. You tattled on dissidents. You called them idiots, racists, and misogynists. You wanted them to lose access to medical treatment. You cheered on intolerance. You enabled tyranny. You denied democide. You directly or indirectly caused the poverty, suffering, and deaths of millions. You won a lifetime of shame.

NO?

Congratulations, you are a Badass German. You exercised logic; reason; integrity; empathy; and critical, independent thinking. You did research. You took responsibility for your own knowledge. You spoke out. You exhibited moral courage. You defended the bullied. You fulfilled your Tenth Man duty. You retained your humanity. You resisted tyranny. You said, “NO!” You directly or indirectly saved the lives, minds, and health of others. You won memories you can be proud of, no matter the outcome.

Maybe you answered YES to many of the above questions, but you now feel remorse for succumbing to mass formation, mass hysteria, menticide, behavioral psychologist–formulated nudges, groupthink, cognitive biases, mind control, thought reform, emotional manipulation, disinformation campaigns, psychological warfare, gaslighting, learned helplessness, Gell-Mann Amnesia, Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, Stockholm syndrome, information fractalization, Nelsonian knowledge—pretty much the whole shebang of mass control tactics, all efficiently disseminated via an internationally coordinated propaganda campaign lucratively deployed by mainstream media and Big Tech.

You might feel embarrassed, ashamed, or dismayed that you were so easily duped. Great! That’s called growth.

It means you possess the humility necessary to recognize you were indoctrinated into a cult and are now ready to recalibrate to objective reality.

It means you have broken the spell, and you are finally, after two interminable years, emerging from your hypnotic coma—only to discover you’ve traded your rights, freedoms, and health for a chimera projected on a screen.

It means you have seen the gorilla—and you will never again be able to not see him.

It means you are AWAKE. Welcome to Team Reality.

Congratulations, you passed your makeup exam.

You have a lot of catching up to do, but you’re off to a good start. Once you begin learning, you won’t want to stop. You’re in for a revelatory promenade down the Yellow Brick Road.

Like a strangulation victim who’s broken her abuser’s chokehold, you will inhale scientific evidence like oxygen, and the truth will gradually come into focus.

There’s something else you have to do. Or you should do, if you want to start healing the wounds you’ve inflicted on those who answered NO to the questions on the test.

You can say you’re sorry. It’s hard, I know. But don’t worry, JP Sears has you covered: ...



COVID Conspiracy Fare:

How to Make a Pandemic.




Gaslight of the Gods, part V

This is unequivocally the most important thing I’ve ever written. Many will find the livestreamed discussion with fellow DRASTIC member Dr. J. Couey very helpful for clarity on some details; it also covers more supporting evidence.

My findings and conclusions are based on several thousand hours of research. The implications are profound, and profoundly disturbing. I’ve written them here, now, because the evidence has become so overwhelming that I can’t, in good conscience, withhold these conclusions from the public.

.....

An Abstract in 4 Key Points:
  1. Dr. Fauci and a few other senior scientists knew instantly that the discovery of HIV spike inserts within the SAR-CoV-2 viral genome made it almost impossible for the virus to be natural.
  2. They knew about the Furin cleavage site [FCS], the single biggest genomic contributor to SARS-CoV-2’s ability to become a pandemic virus.
  3. They suppressed treatments that were already available – including the very fusion inhibitors implicated by the existence of the HIV inserts.
  4. Much of what has been done to combat the pandemic – especially here in the United States – has been the opposite of what would’ve been recommended, had all of the information been publicly known in early 2020.
........


Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:

***** Brenner: Jerks

... Second, it is manifestly obvious that our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination. 

... Third, it is self-evident that our national leaders, elected or appointed, are equally incapable of sober deliberation, of intellectual honesty (with themselves as well as us), of elementary logic, even of acknowledging factual realities. Consequently, the resulting behavior defies rational analysis.

.....To depict accurately this kind of vaudeville, we have to revert to colloquial street vocabulary. To be frank, Biden simply was discovering his inner “jerk.”

That’s a uniquely emotive term with unmatched connotations and imagery. Its synonyms are not “stupid, ignoramus, dimwit, bumbler, fool, tone-deaf.” You can be any or all of those things as well as a jerk — OR not necessarily be a jerk. Moreover, you can be intelligent, informed, well=spoken and either non=jerk or jerk. Examples: the ubiquitous Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, is quintessentially of the type — a model by which to measure all others. U.S. Sen. ed Cruz, now auditioning for the position of America’s court jester, is an alternative model for those who prefer to relish their jerks Harvard-educated.

By contrast, Victoria Nuland is a ruthless, mean-spirited, dogmatic, shamelessly impolite ideologue cum provocateur. But she is not a jerk. On the other hand, let’s consider Tony Blinken.  He has great potential and has taken remarkable strides in that direction in the past few months, but perhaps needs a bit more seasoning to establish fully his credentials. Or, make a selection from among the parade of luminaries, wannabes and used-to-be “experts” — in particular, the military/Intelligence ones whose astonishing divorce from reality sheds light on our serial failures in the coercive use of force over the years — who clutter the airways....

... Jerks tend to be erratic in behavior, disjointed in their thinking, highly tolerant of inconsistency, unable to sustain a project and accident prone. They thrive in nihilistic and narcissistic societies like ours where embarrassment doesn’t exist. The jerk has a natural preference for a fluid decision process and ambiguous policy. For that spares him the need to discipline his own thoughts, to systematically weigh choices, and to make commitments to pursue a definite line of action.



For the past two years, we’ve been blitzed with propaganda about the pandemic, and now we’re being bombarded with headlines about the war in Ukraine. Perhaps we have reasons to be skeptical of the narrative being pushed?

Remember the war in Iraq? At the time, we were sold fabrications that linked Saddam Hussein with 9/11, al-Qaeda, and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

If we are to avoid getting hoodwinked again, we should learn from the past.

Let’s revisit what happened back then, and compare it to what’s been going on now. ...


In 2019, Zelensky was elected on an overwhelming mandate to make peace with Russia. As Stephen F. Cohen warned that year, the US chose to side with Ukraine's far-right and fuel war.


The country is not a symbol of freedom and liberal democracy



By now it’s abundantly clear that the neo-Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” Russophobic campaign launched by the Empire of Lies after the start of Operation Z is actually “24/7 Hate”.

Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia.

Hate, after all, packs way more punch than mere lies, which are now veering into abject ridiculousness, as in U.S. “intelligence” resorting to – what else – lies to fight the info war against Russia.....

... The NATOstan sphere simply cannot admit in public a series of facts that a military analyst of the caliber of Andrei Martyanov has been explaining for years. And that adds to their collective pain.

Russia can take on NATO and smash it to bits in 48 hours. ...

...... There’s no question, as Hudson states, that “the world economy is being enflamed” – with the U.S. weaponizing trade. Yet on the Right Side of History we have the Rublegas, the petroyuan, the new monetary/financial system being designed in a partnership between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China.

And that’s something no puny Cancel Culture War can erase.



.... Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is not true. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.

In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. For the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language. A bit like if putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.

This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was a fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some massacres (in Odessa and Marioupol, for the most notable). 

.... It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very, very, very few of those who actually have) will note that it is written in all letters that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution to the Ukraine.

That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their implementation while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of the Ukraine.

... So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities—including Swiss.

Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm by denouncing the Centuria project. These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term “Nazi,” the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic. 

... So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres. But while the Swiss government has been very quick to take sanctions against Russia, it has not adopted any against the Ukraine, which has been massacring its own population since 2014. .......



.... My take-away from Mishustin’s speech is that Russia has in place a world class management of the economy and finance. Those in Washington who thought the country could be crushed misunderstood Russians and underestimated the capabilities, determination and sang froid of their Government.

But then there is nothing to be surprised at in this state of affairs. Russian studies in the United States have been virtually useless to anyone for at least two decades.





The Russian operation to take the port city of Mariupol is drawing to a successful conclusion.  “Success”  has to be understood today in a qualified sense, since large parts of the city now lie in ruins and as many as 4,000 civilians may have been killed in the fighting, largely victims of trigger happy Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. The Azov battalion soldiers and other irregulars holding the city from fortified positions in residential communities of this city of 460,000 shot wantonly at those who tried to escape from the basements of apartment houses to fetch water or who dared attempt to join the humanitarian corridors and exit the city. The civilian population was held hostage and constituted a “human shield.” They protected the Ukrainian forces from the full fury of Russian artillery and precision air strikes, which otherwise would have been deployed.

..... As we have known for a week or so, the remaining Azov and other Ukrainian forces have retreated from the city proper to two locations on the outskirts of Mariupol:  the port and the Azovstal industrial territory. The Russians have now entirely encircled both.







This article provides an overview into a deeply disturbing trend in Ukraine, one that started in 2014, that has accelerated and intensified since 24 February 2022. Extrajudicial killings, harassment, arbitrary detentions by men in camouflaged uniforms, beatings and disappearances continue to take place on a regular basis in Ukraine.  Most of the detentions and disappearances are often carried out by the Ukrainian Security service, (SBU), under a sweeping repression.

... Add into this maelstrom another layer of extra-judicial repression, in the form of impromptu justice being meted out to civilians, bound up, tied to posts, beaten, humiliated and some killed as a result.  There are simply hundreds and hundreds of video clips and photos showing these events

... The so called” international community” has expressed no interest or desire to take a closer look at this disturbing situation in Ukraine.  Once again, the moral high ground as avidly promoted by thousands of NGOs’, think tanks and a multitude of reports, dissipates rapidly in reality into a dark void.  The silence is deafening and all of them mute on the repression that is taking place in Ukraine



... The Historical Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism
The birth of Ukrainian Nationalism as it is celebrated today has its origins in the 20th century. However, there are a few important historical highlights that should be known beforehand. ...


The case of Mariupol.

The Scrum is pleased to introduce Tony Kevin to its pages. He has given us a piece of great distinction concerning one of the pressing questions of our time. It is famously said that truth is war’s first casualty. In the Ukraine case, it has been a cruel, gruesome death. In our estimation, the Western press has just made a paradigm shift: It is now fully and with no apparent compunction committed to serving as the propaganda arm of the invisible government, as Bernays so directly put it in Propaganda, his 1928 classic on the dark art he did so much to perfect.

Anthony Kevin served for 30 years as a career diplomat in the Australian foreign service, 1968 to 1998. His postings included the Soviet Union (1969–71), the U.N. in New York (1974–76), Poland (as ambassador, 1991–94), and Cambodia (as ambassador, 1994–97). Since retiring from the foreign service, Tony Kevin has been active as an independent commentator and author. His two most recent books, Return to Moscow (University of Western Australia, 2017) and Russia and the West (published privately, 2019), have defended the values of East–West détente and a stable U.N.–based world order against increasingly hostile anti–Russian and anti–Chinese Western narratives.


Tony Kevin:

6 APRIL—The fate of Mariupol has come to symbolize and epitomize the larger question of the fate of Donbass and Ukraine as a whole. This has hung in the balance not only since the Russian military operation that began on 24 February; the crisis in Ukraine and the breakaway republics in the east has been coming slowly to a boil since the coup d’etat in Kiev eight years before this, in February 2014. This coup removed an admittedly imperfect but elected, pluralist government and replaced it with a violently anti–Russian nationalist regime, which thereafter enjoyed United States protection and support. There were momentous consequences in Crimea, Donbass and Odessa, during 2014 and subsequently.

This essay considers the context and course of the battle for Mariupol, now hopefully drawing to a close, and the illuminating case study of the mysterious major explosion on 24 March that wrecked the beloved Mariupol Drama Theatre, risking the lives of allegedly hundreds of people sheltering in its basements. It also suggests how the Mariupol story demonstrates the politically significant dynamics between the real war and the information war in and around Ukraine.

As a friend recently commented:
The success of “disinformation warfare” often stems from an initial, massively coordinated presentation to world media of a simple but false story, which no amount of scientific and rational argument can later dislodge. Such a story is framed to appeal to emotional triggers that enrage and incense people before they have the chance to see if the story is true….
We are now seeing this play out again, in respect of Bucha and other towns and villages to the north of Kiev, where a tactical or diplomatic withdrawal by previously occupying Russian forces has created opportunities for a skilful and profoundly evil Ukrainian government disinformation warfare blitz, involving carrying out disguised mass murders then wrongly blamed on Russia.

In Bucha during the night of 31 March–April 1, two days after Russian main forces had left the area, and during an obligatory curfew and announced purge of “saboteurs and collaborators,” Azov Battalion death squads went house-to-house on a killing spree, dragging out and killing almost 200 local civilians on a preselected kill list. They then dressed and rearranged the freshly killed bodies in the streets as props to support false claims that these were local civilians killed by Russian soldiers as they withdrew. The international media had meanwhile been primed and ready to run this story in real time and without time for checking or delays.

The international outrage created by this temporarily successful disinformation warfare offensive has had immediate negative effects. It has confused some wavering governments and peace groups as to which side to believe. It has diverted attention from the Russia–Ukraine peace talks, and possibly damaged them.

I do not know whether these effects will be long-lasting. In a few days, the war in the East will progress toward military resolution, and more reliable information about what happened in Bucha may emerge. Real wars prevail in the end over false information wars. When the dust settles, I will publish here a follow-up piece on Bucha. 

My sources for the following essay on Mariupol are various. I finished a month in Russia on 7 March. I have studied this war fulltime on the internet since returning to Australia. I have consulted national presidential, foreign and defence ministry websites; official news agencies such as TASS and Donbass Amalgamated News, as well as semi-official sites close to governments, such as RT, the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Xinhua. I have also made use of a variety of independent media I have come to trust.

The battle for Mariupol in context 

....



.... the leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies have fully opened the “Hate and Lies” valve and it appears that they are seriously “losing it”. 

Remember how in the Skripal and MH-17 cases EU countries joined in the sanctions out of “solidarity”? 

I personally would call that cowardice and submissiveness, but “solidarity” works too. Well, the Eurolemmings have solidarized themselves into their own grave and now there is no undoing what they did to themselves. 

From the Russian point of view, it is rather straightforward: Russia tried to encourage EU countries to use their own judgment and act in their own interests.

It is now quite clear that as long as they get to brown-nose Uncle Shmuel the Eurolemmings are quite content with their fate. Russia needs to flush the EU down her “mental toilet” and only deal with sovereign countries which have retained enough agency to defend their own interests. In the EU that means Hungary and, to a much lesser degree, Serbia (not the people, of course, but the government which remains subservient to the Eurolemmings). 

The Bucha massacre itself will go down Zone A’s collective memory hole, that’s where all the previous false flags of the Empire of Hate and Lies have gone. Once a demonization operation has served its use, it can be forgotten.

So what are the purposes of the Bucha false flag: ...



.... “Do as we say, or we’ll hurt you” seems to be the primary American “diplomatic” method.

Is it working? Well, sanctions have never removed a single government, but then, that probably wasn’t their point: they were done for the same reason countries use torture. The message of torture is “we torture people.” It’s intended to instill fear in others so they won’t oppose you. Same with sanctions.

But this time countries outside the West aren’t going along with US sanctions, they’re doing what they can to build to alternative financial routes to continue trading with Russia, and this is especially true of China.

The Liu Xing tweet is probably the most important one: “Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?”

This is how China must see American diplomacy. America slapped on tariffs and sanctions under Trump, never removed them on Biden, is crossing China’s reddest of red lines (Taiwan) and continues to make threats. It’s never “we’ll reward you for helping us” it’s always “do what we say or we’ll hurt you.”

Meanwhile Europe has become an American satrapy. ...

... It’s hard to be more incompetent than American leaders, but EU leaders have managed it.

As for the West in general, they have managed to cement a Russia/China alliance, by repeatedly threatening China and crossing the Taiwan line. India is supporting Russia more than the US. Imran Khan, in Pakistan, is running his election campaign based on “we are not the West’s slaves and will not sanction Russia.” Most of the global South has refused to sanction Russia. A new payments system is being created, threatening US dollar hegemony. Americans and Europeans can expect even more inflation than before. Anti-Russia sanctions plus the war will cause famines and hunger in many countries, increasing political instability.

For years I have been predicting a new Cold War. This is the precipitating event and I am almost certain that future historians will see it as such.

The West is not the presumptive winner of this new cold war. We are not the stronger side, in real economic terms (do not use GDP, it is artificially inflated, especially in the financialized West.)

Welcome to the future.



CaitOz Fare:

When You Lie It’s Misinformation, When They Lie It’s Cool: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

❖

In the end we’re just a confused species who entered into an awkward developmental transition phase because our brains evolved too fast.

We wound up with the ability to think abstract thoughts but without the wisdom to refrain from identifying with them. With the ability to invent nuclear weapons but without the wisdom to refrain from building them. The ability to conquer our ecosystem without the wisdom to refrain from doing so. To write vast tomes of philosophy that contain not one line telling us how to feel content in our own bodies, on our own home planet. To construct entire belief systems that are utterly useless for living in harmony with what is.

I’m sure birds and whales went through awkward evolutionary transition phases as well before they turned into the graceful flyers and swimmers they are today. Their early ancestors probably looked downright ridiculous for a while. It’s just that their transitions didn’t involve giant prefrontal cortices in their skulls that make childbirth painful and could easily give rise to the end of all life on earth.

The birth of a human baby is difficult due to the size of our enormous, rapidly evolved brains relative to the more slowly evolved pelvic bone. The birth of a sane humanity will be difficult for similar reasons.

I do believe we have the ability to make the jump from this awkward transition phase to become a truly conscious species. But it looks like if we make it, it’s going to be by the skin of our omnivore teeth.



......The audacity of a social media company which works hand-in-glove with the most powerful government on earth to go around branding people “state-affiliated media” is appalling. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It is an instrument of imperial narrative control, just like all the other billionaire Silicon Valley megacorporations of immense influence. Putin could only dream of having state media that effective.


Other Quotes of the Week:

Astore: America’s “leaders” believe they are in-the-know, and the rest of us are know-nothings who can be pushed around or ignored. Perhaps the most honest thing Hillary Clinton ever did was to speak of her “basket of deplorables” after which she dismissed them as “irredeemable.” This is exactly how Hillary and most of our “leaders” think. 

Garcia: I guess we could look on  the bright side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Covid diagnosis this week. She will be forced to postpone her provocative trip to Taiwan, which is the next apparent site of the US hegemon's "bait and bleed" operation to stop their global competitors (Russia and China, for now) right in their economic tracks by goading them into wars against their weaker neighbors.  Even the risk of nuclear war is not preventing the American gerontocracy from trying to maintain their increasingly tenuous status as Sole Remaining Superpower.

Bates: Charles Kettering famously said that a problem fully understood is half solved. The corollary to that is, unfortunately, that a problem not understood is actually unsolvable. ... we still limit problem definitions and problem solving to narrow specificity ... This deficiency becomes catastrophic when we attempt to grapple with existential challenges such as climate change or nuclear disarmament. The way we solve problems almost inevitably causes additional problems that usually leave us worse off than where we began.


Big Thoughts:


We have been taught to trust our feelings. Being authentic, we are told, is the key to success. On college campuses, feelings have been elevated to the sacred.

Gillian McCann, a professor of religion at Canada’s Nipissing University, relates the story of her graduate school supervisor advising her “to do whatever [she] felt.” A friend listening to her story quipped, “That kind of advice has ruined a generation.”

...... Feelings Don't Cause Thoughts

Haven’t we all blamed our circumstances or other people for our feelings? Feeling resentment, we blame our partner for not offering enough support. Feeling anxiety and stress, we blame a traffic delay. Feeling depressed, we are sure it is coming from the state of the world.

We have reversed cause and effect. As the late author Michael Crichton observed, Wet sidewalks don’t cause rain. Likewise, feelings don’t cause thoughts.

.... What is crucial is how we choose to process our feelings: outside-in or inside-out.

... There are no feelings that can ever exist separate from our thoughts. We are always experiencing our thinking and our feelings from the inside-out.

Looking at feelings through an outside-in mindset, it seems we have a lot of external circumstances to process and manage. After all, if an endless supply of other people and circumstances are causing our feelings, it is natural to have a lot on our minds.

However, we misunderstand how the mind operates when we attempt to get to the bottom of our feelings from an outside-in mindset.

There are no feelings that can ever exist separate from our thoughts. We are always experiencing our thinking and our feelings from the inside-out.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” From an inside-out mindset, our feelings are a barometer, giving us feedback on the quality of our thinking at the moment. 

Understanding that we can only experience life inside-out, not outside-in, is the beginning of taking responsibility and experiencing psychological freedom....


The sooner we get over ourselves, the more meaningful our life becomes.

... People reveal their expectations when asked, What will make you happier? Many will answer a different job, a new partner, a new car or house, or more leisure time. Changes such as these may confer some benefits, but researchers have found that surprisingly little of our happiness depends on life circumstances.

..... Many do not acknowledge the limits of their minds. They are very sure of what they think without having much understanding of their own thought processes.

... Hayek’s antidote for such hubris is “true individualism.” He regards the individual “not as highly rational and intelligent, but as a very irrational and fallible being, whose individual errors are corrected only in the course of a social process, and which aims at making the best of a very imperfect material.”

Every human being, even the most expert among us, makes errors. Uncoerced interactions with others are essential to finding and correcting our errors. 

Many of us have adopted a mindset of false individualism in our personal lives. We understand one aspect of life, and from that point of view, we pretend we understand all of life. In the process, we shrink our lives to fit the boundaries of our understanding. When our limited understanding bounds our attention, there is a lot to be miserable about. Relying on our habitual mode of thinking, we become rigid, predictable cartoon-like characters, or borrowing video game terminology, an unadaptable NPC (non-player character).

It is time to acknowledge that we are all imperfect material. The sooner we get over ourselves, the more meaningful our life becomes. 

........ Of course, the Dictator Within can also sell us on “delusions of grandeur—convincing us that we are so special that we are secretly envied or assuring us that we are smarter than other people and are unequivocally right while others are just flat-out wrong.”  

Our intellect works overtime to solve problems created or contrived by our thinking. Hayes cautions that we often solidify thoughts that are flat-out wrong about ourselves and others. More controls, and more thinking can’t possibly solve such contrived problems. 

... Hayes, like Hayek, points to a process. “We are paying,” he writes, “a psychological price because what is really wrong within is treating life as a problem to be solved rather than a process to be lived.”



Pics of the Week:






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