Debt Rattle July 8 2021

I assure you, if it requires coercion, manipulation, gaslighting, 24/7 advertising, fear-mongering, silencing of dissenting opinions and experts, slandering of alternative options, tons of incentives, and indemnification from liability, then it isn’t required for health.

Very well formulated, that’s a keeper.

(Google translate) The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, placed under observation at the hospital on Sunday, will have to remain hospitalized for another “two to four days” because of the persistence of symptoms of the coronavirus.

No other participant had been considered as a contact case, the barrier gestures having been respected, having then indicated the government of Luxembourg. Xavier Bettel received a first injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine on May 6.

https://www.leprogres.fr/sante/2021/07/06/hospitalise-le-premier-ministre-luxembourgeois-dans-un-etat-serieux-mais-stable

China being so zen and cool over there next to the war-monger west is still super hooked on GDP (waste and pollution measured with cheering), international resource (wealth) extraction and an absolute mother-trucking arsenal of weaponry.
I just don’t see it. I see Egypt. I see Mars. I see Mad Max. I see desert and famine on the horizon with war lords on their 4 horses.

I would like to clarify a comment I made yesterday about James Kunstler, since it was perhaps interpreted in a way I did not intend.

@laffin_boy wrote: My thanks to absolute galore for zeroing in on JK’s “special genius”. Which is to:
— predict the imminent collapse of… everything – (pretending that collapse is ALWAYS just around the bend)
— entertain your readers (because they’ve spent their entire lives being distracted, titillated, enraged, scared, and otherwise manipulated by our 24/7/365 global propaganda system and we don’t know any other way to exist without continuous external stimulation.)

…I remember when JK, who use to be an unknown architectural critic, “discovered” collapse and jumped aboard the gravy train.

In my opinion, this is not only unfairly disparaging, but completely wrong. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Jim a couple of times, first driving up to Troy to hear one of his lectures. He took the time to speak with me one on one “backstage.” I subsequently went to visit him at his home in Greenwich, NY, where I interviewed him for a blog I was doing at the time.

He is not only gracious and generous with his time, but also someone who “walks the walk”, preparing as best as any of us can for coming hard times. To say that he is “pretending” and “jumping about the [collapse] gravy train” is simply not true.

Remember, his seminal book about our modern day troubles is called “The Long Emergency.” Sure, he has managed to make some kind of living while focused on this topic–and one reason he is successful at it is because he believes it one hundred percent. Good for him that he is able to do this.

I think one reason his predictions don’t materialize in the timeframe he suspects they would has to do with one of his own catchphrases–we are living in a time where anything goes and nothing matters. So the disturbances and facts of the matter that are plainly visible to him–and “us”–are simply ignored, while the deck chairs get rearranged so that the vast unsustainable business that he is such an admirable and entertaining critic of can float along for another few weeks or months or years.

It’s the same phenomena that has me turning to the MSM each day, expecting to finally see Ivermectin vindicated as a potent salve for Covid or reading about Hunter Biden’s long jail term. Nope. Not today. Not tomorrow. But at some point the whole mess will definitely hit the fan hard.

By the way, Kunstler is also a talented painter, and has documented his small town on the Battenkill over the years. Personally, I am indebted to him, along with John Michael Greer, Ivan Illich, and Gail Tverberg (and to a lesser extent Orlov) as having a big influence in how I see the world these days.

I was about to post that Vice article that Dr. D linked to, but wanted to get my Kunstler fan boy post up on its own first.

Anyway, the Vice article has a fairly hysterical (in both senses of the word) headline:
‘So, So Angry’: Reporters Who Survived the Capitol Riot Are Still Struggling
The reporters who survived the insurrection are still covering Congress. But things don’t feel normal.

Gosh, how many reporters were killed during that battle?! But the bravery! To see your comrades in journalism fall before your eyes and yet have the courage, the bravery, the patriotism, to continue covering Congress. I am overwhelmed and speechless. Can we please just say it: Front Line Heroes! We Salute You!

Maybe things don’t feel normal because they ringed the place with troops and barbed wire?

@absolute: you’re knocking it out of the park today. 🙂 Thanks!

The Vice article about the Capitol reporters also brings to mind that RT editorial about all the shrieking and whimpering by what passes for the left in the UK over ending lockdown restrictions: The quasi-left comfortable classes in the Anglosphere at the very least have truly become pampered, poofy powder-puffs who will most certainly not be able navigate collapse once it is even more seriously under way. (I might not be able to, either, especially if they switch off the power and the heat just for shits and giggles next winter as some here were suggesting yesterday, but that’s entirely beside the point.)

a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Which was stolen from Aboriginal land using Anglo Silver Bank middle men.
I still want to go fishing by a running stream in the shade but I’ll have to wait till the dam breaks and the trees grow back.
On a lighter note – quantum level meditation seems a worthy goal given the current circumstances.

cough cough COVID cough cough

Mr. House is contagious and he’s going to infect all of us! Quick, somebody give him a PCR test run at 167 cycles!

Mister Roboto the quasi-left comfortables are headed for more toilet paper hoarding and a crash course in remembering to turn off the lights when leaving the bedroom – you know bill-shock and all that.
WEF has them owning nothing too and they have further to fall and much to realise. Lockdowns are a little teaser.

I cut a bunch of firewood from dead trees today in anticipation of when our turn comes for heat and fire. It was nice to be working in winter in the sun when it has been so grey.

How the USA system works vs how we pretend that it works.
• Oh Look, Fraud In Medicine! (Denninger)
————
Its going to happen in your hood
” mutations have rendered the stabs effectively worthless.”
———–
What happened when Europeans came to the Americas.
“The longer these periods of ‘viral or bacterial low-exposure’ are, the greater the likelihood of future epidemics.”
——-
Interpretation
” in the U.S., government changes but not policy. In China, government doesn’t change; policy does.”
———-
cognitive decline
““others” are doing it in his place.”

———————–
No longer exists
Nobody is taking care of the petty cash

“Pensions and 401(k)’s are were ….”
$5 trillion in public pension systems that have accrued government workers’ retirement savings over decades…… the cash is now in these opaque “alternative” investments……
These investments generate outsized fees for financial firms, bankroll the Wall Street’s political machine, and capitalize the corporations that are pillaging the middle class.
———
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnak
The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (/ˈkɑːr.næk/,[1] from Arabic Khurnak meaning “fortified village”), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings near Luxor, in Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom (around 2000–1700 BC) and continued into the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)
——
The web ….
“influence in how I see the world these days.”
———-
The USA social/economic system
No con runs without your consent.
——
You remember, too?
“Yinz guys have any ideas why anyone would want to kill the president of Haiti?
Was that the island the Clintons embezzled all those donated funds for victims of an earthquake?”

WARS
How many wars can the USA do at the same time?
Gangs/Guns
Opioids/Pain
Covid/Health
Trump/Biden
Rich/Poor/Homeless

https://www.wsj.com/articles/financially-hobbled-for-life-the-elite-masters-degrees-that-dont-pay-off-11625752773?mod=latest_headlines

This should have been apparent after they completed their first four years of trying to join the paper aristocracy. Can’t really feel bad for people, i did research and decided never again after finishing college, why couldn’t they? This is crux of everything wrong with the world, absolving personal responsibility and forcing others to suffer due to others dumb mistakes.

Just discovered that the comments on yesterday’s debt rattle are still rolling in. Some of the discussion revolved around control of the narrative, with the astute observation that using the term “elite” to describe “them” is, in itself, a nuanced form of control. The suggestion was put forth to come up with a different term.

Could be interesting to open that “competition” back up today and see the results, if anyone is interested in sharing their ideas on a better term to describe the scum that hold financial power in today’s world??

Or not … your choice. 😉

@madamski, I was hoping you’d weigh-in on the control topic yesterday. Good response.

We ARE a publicly-funded government-run health care. Congress already has exercised complete control. And yes, we already have higher costs than Switzerland, with worse outcomes than Cuba. …Just the way Congress wants it.

Careful with Canada, as we are their safety valve, a whole industry of visiting the U.S. for spot care. Like Europe, they could not afford it without our paying all Defense, and GST/PST very nearly cripples Canada as it is and they’re now depending entirely on financial and housing booms. Also my point was that, like all such plans, it does in fact work great — until very suddenly it doesn’t. Then all the death backlogged from 50 years of debt it paid back in one great war/collapse/default. Like Russia. And Britain is doing that – collapsing and refusing — right now, with the same immovable object, the bane of egos: “math”.

When did it start getting really bad here? 1992, the exact year the government got entirely involved. At the direct behest of the corporations, erasing all competition by law, along with most charities.

https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/GDP-pensions-health2-11.png
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar11/sickcare-will-bankrupt-US3-11.html

https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/healthcare-costs-US.jpg

This is by design, exactly as warned by people like us. The whole PURPOSE of “HMO’s” (jargon of the time) with their bulls–t sales pitch was to utterly destroy any function of private health and move it into a national, federal health care with universal medical records. And in December of 2019 we saw exactly why. NO resistance to anything, NO possibility of avoiding vaccines while Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald suddenly get “mis-diagnosed” and disappear of natural causes. …The orders under Obamacare was the Doctor MUST do as prescribed by the administration, even if it’s wrong, and without a private system to fall back on, the doctor would ALSO disappear, live under a bridge, and die de-licensed of natural causes if he doesn’t cooperate.

Add to this doctors ordered to “ask about guns” in their microscopic 15-minute sessions, and consider any ownership or dissatisfaction with CNN or the establishment a sign of mental instability, Red Flag laws, and diagnosing all dissenters, including the President, with open mental illness and you really see what was going on.

Very, very narrowly missed, and only with a horrendous, vicious, 30-year, dog-and-cat fight than continues today. As Biden jacks epipens and insulin. Today. Imagine your options for you and your children given the benevolent touch of the total state under Covid, the world’s most survivable disease at 99.97%.

And all for the profits. Profits? What? It’s been nationalized. Yes, and you notice under Obamacare, insurers, not doctors wrote the law, and Pharma stocks, all rose, not fell, as drug prices all rose, not fell, Shkreli and Wall St rose, not fell, and the middle class took +10% yearly rises compounded for decades, worse than any pressure since the nation was founded, and immediate worse national outcomes.
The only worse outcome possible than what we have is if Congress had succeeded. They are a thousand times worse than cash, and provably so on any level you’d like to name. Now if only we could get competition in that OTHER half of medicine: Insurance, which is ALSO totally run by Congress, Wall Street, and Corporate profits, outside of any competition or market-pricing one can think of. The “Profits” Health insurers paid HRC and Obamacare for are guaranteed by the state, with the merger of corporations and government as elegant as Comcast and benevolent as Halliburton.

Under the state it’s illegal to be a single doctor, or nearly so. But I also can’t open up an honest health insurance company. Can you?

If only we could have the technically-poor medical care and insurance system of 1979 we’d probably be twice as healthy.

Instead, we’re nearing the full collapse of no health care at all. As seen in no Dentists and Cancer screenings for a YEAR, entirely against medicine and at Congresses’ full request AFTER funding the lab that created it in the first place. This is BEFORE we go bankrupt with pumping $2T a night, is imminent and fatal, banks and the internet lock up, and outside of Army tents, there’s no existing non-technical system to get any healthcare at all.

Sure, tell me again about how good Congress is at helping my doctor. The system before they got involved was the worst possible…except for all the others worldwide. Ask Britain with their intentional drug-cocktail murder nursing home investigation. Yeah, that’s EXACTLY your script of 1936 stuff. Same path, same reason, same math. History repeats despite all the shouting I can do.

@upstateNYer

“I don’t believe “they” have control of 65% of the world’s hearts & minds. You seem to be primarily referencing the hearts & minds of western societies … how about we include the so-called 3rd world societies…and try to gauge where their hearts & minds are?”

Thanks for catching my sloppy generalizing – which, unfortunately, blurred the points I wanted to make. You are absolutely correct that what i’m describing is the deliberate destruction of our Western Industrial Civilization executed BY Westerners directed AT Westerners. And the Plandemic has focused on the major Western countries for the last 18 mos. In fact I did an analysis last December on how effective the West was in protecting their citizens from the “ravages” of C-19 vs the results from the mainland Asian countries – using deaths / million of pop. as a proxy for their success (or failure). What I found was that the 14 significant countries of mainland Asia (24% of world pop) had average death toll (per million pop.) of FIVE while the US, Canada & the 12 major EU countries (10% of world pop) had an average death toll (per million of pop) of SIX HUNDRED & THIRTY THREE. In other words the richest, most technologically advanced Civilization that has ever existed on this planet did 125 times WORSE at protecting their people than an area that is, in total, poorer and less “advanced”. (Considering the narrative that we’ve been spoon fed for generations) how is this possible? Unless it’s intentional. Unless it’s part of the overall plan. AND unless it’s scripted and organized and executed by people with more resources and more power than any member nation.

(Ok, back to your suggestion): I don’t believe the people who are organizing this “Reset” give a rat’s ass about the “3rd world” and what they may or may not think. Too much money does bad things to people. If you have enough money to pay for a global Plandemic-to-order then it’s likely that you’re not too concerned about Malaysian public opinion. And in case that there was some global “right to choose” implied with your suggestion let me point that very few of out Western countries can still be considered democracies in any realistic sense of the word. (including the US, Canada, the UK, Spain, Germany, France, etc, etc)

But having said all of that you will notice that Raul posted an article (on Julian’s BD) about “Indonesia’s Harsh Lockdown”. Now that the West has been terrorized into submission it’s now time to spread some of that fabled Western Expertise to some of our less fortunate neighbors.

also:

“then how come THEY are able to completely control the narrative and thus win the hearts and minds of most of the world’s population? “

Let me try a bit of personal experience from many years ago: I began to “wake up” to the reality of the world we actually live in when my kids were in their early teens. And I tried to share my insights with them but, to my horror, I found that it was too late. Mother Culture’s influence through the media and their peers was stronger (and more exciting) than my perspective on the world. What was to become their world. I came to realize that Mother Culture had stolen my kids from me. (mission: destroy the nuclear family) And I never got them back.

and:

“If we can’t win the minds of our loved ones…“

You & I have mixed success at influencing the opinions of those we care about because (hopefully) we’re open & honest about our POV and the people we’re trying to influence can weigh our opinions with their conscious minds. BUT, way too often, they’re weighing our input against “opinions” that were instilled in them without their conscious awareness. They never heard Mother Culture whispering sweet nothings in their ears. In other words it’s a stacked deck. A rigged game. We lose out to an invisible advisor that they don’t know even exists!

and:

“they most certainly can’t win the minds of EVERYONE”.

Yes they can because propaganda (a) WORKS and (b) it’s INVISIBLE.

I know you can’t buy this because you don’t feel hypnotized and besides you’re too smart. But try this: Ask everyone you know if they feel that they’re influenced by advertising (which, of course, is just commercial propaganda). Iv’e been doing this for years and am still waiting for my 1st “yes”. But the US advertising industry takes in almost a quarter of a trillion dollars a year! One side here doesn’t know what it’s doing and I don’t think it’s Business.

And:

“Controlling the narrative is not complete control. To believe that to be true, is to believe we might as well crawl in a hole and pull the dirt down on top of ourselves.”

I’m an old man. I’ve had 3/4 of a century to watch the evolution of the American Way of Life™ from “Leave it to Beaver” all the way down to “Drag Queen Storytime”. The more I see, the more I learn, the more fascinated I become in the degenerate ingenuity that we homo sapiens are capable of as we devolve further into a means of existence that Mother Nature never intended for this hopelessly lost species. But i’m riding this bus to the last stop. I’ll need the full story in order to write my account in my next life. ;^)

BTW, “crawl in a hole” is Kübler-Ross’s 4th stage (Depression). Which means you’re only one stage away from accepting that Propaganda is Real. Come on , brother! You can do it! We can double the number of Believers on TAE overnight! As Arlo said: “It’s a movement”.

and: “I call them elites because it’s a term everyone understands”

Uh huh. Because everyone “understands” that those who have stolen our wealth as a nation and now are intent on stealing our very lives are properly to referred to as “Elites”? Sorry but i’m afraid that the fact that the media ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL refers to them as our (benevolent) Elites makes more sense to me. But then I believe that propaganda exists so my opinion won’t count for much here.

“For every 1,000 confirmed cases for COVID-19,” What does this mean? A positive test result? I think this is not the same use of ‘case’ as in US 34 million cases. Otherwise the figures don’t make sense.

“And now for something completely different…”
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/07/cowpeas-and-weevils.html

Cowpea curculio is a weevil that can be very destructive to the crops it attacks.
This pest is just as destructive to southern peas as the boll weevil is to cotton.
The cowpea weevil is originally from Mexico and Central America.
This weevil arrived in North America in the 1800s.
​ ​David Riley, professor of entomology at the University of Georgia, has been conducting research on cowpea curculio for the past eight years. He says weevils wreak havoc on southern pea crops when the peas start to flower. “The cowpea weevils will come into the fields and search for young developing pea pods to lay their eggs in,” says Riley. “They will eat a little hole and lay an egg inside the pea pod. The egg will then hatch inside the pod, and the little grub will start to feed on the pea. It eventually eats the pea. When it matures, the grub will come out of the pea pod, drop to the ground, and then it will pupate in the soil.”

Cowpea Curculio Wreaking Havoc in the Southeast

​ A few years ago I started growing “field peas”, Whippoorwill type, once the most grown type in the US, grown by Thomas Jefferson, “once the standard”. They grow in all soils, and keep producing all season. Those are good characteristics. The peas (beans, actually, but African beans, not new world beans) are smallish, dense and benefit from being soaked and cooked longer than “Queen Ann” blackeyed peas that you buy in the store. They have done fine for me. I never had weevil problems, so I never learned more about weevils, but I decided to try other kinds of blackeyed peas last year, so I started learning about weevils.
​https://www.southernexposure.com/products/whippoorwill-southern-pea-cowpea/

Last year, and this year, I have also grown Mackey Peas, a Texas heirloom, a bigger, softer pea, with more pea mass and a nicer flavor and texture. Halfway through last season, growing them in Yoakum, I noticed more and more weevil damage to pods and peas. This year I grew them in Austin and grew the whippoorwill peas in Yoakum. It’s the peas, not the place. The weevils find them. It got so bad that most pods had a minority of the peas good, or none at all, empty pods. I just took the row out, and Jenny is taking it to friendly chickens that don’t complain. The Whippoorwill peas in Yoakum are doing fine. I won’t plant Mackey Peas again.