Category Archives: Collapse

It’s a Riot . . ., by Eric Peters

Posted on January 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

Some violence and death is more acceptable than other violence and death. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

One man gets beaten to death by government workers and riots ensue in several cities. Thousands of people are poisoned to death by the government at the behest of the corporations who control it and there’s hardly a protest. Those that did occur were also actually peaceful. The CDC was not firebombed. Fauci wasn’t attacked in the streets. The legions of people who willingly served as the enforcers of “lockdowns,” “mask” mandates and so on haven’t had to face angry mobs demanding justice.

It’s an interesting incongruity, isn’t it?

Almost as if – per Orwell’s Two Minutes’ Hate – the government encourages (and certainly doesn’t do much to stop) certain outpourings of rage. Perhaps for just that reason; i.e., to harmlessly defuse what might otherwise be dangerously percolating anger that could threaten the government.

The beatdown administered to Tyre Nichols was gratuitous, savage and – ultimately – murderous. So also – and more so – the way an entire nation was beaten down.

In Nichols’ case, it was five against one. Those odds are pretty good – relative to having the entire apparatus of the government-corporate nexus deployed against each and every one of us.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Government, Insurrection, Law, Morality, Tyranny

Tagged , ,

As West, Debt, & Stocks Implode, East Gold & Oil Will Explode, by Egon Von Greyerz

Posted on January 29, 2023 | 1 comment

There is no way the world can escape a massive debt implosion. From Egon Von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

“The risk of over-tightening by the European Central Bank is nothing less than catastrophic” says Prof Kenneth Rogoff .

At Davos he also said: “Italy is extremely vulnerable. But this could pop anywhere. Global debt has gone up massively since the pandemic: public debt, corporate debt, everything.”

Rogoff believes that it is a miracle that the world averted a financial crisis in 2022, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.

As Rogoff said: “We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising.”

But lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes  pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.

oil

Shadow banking is not subject to the normal mark-to-market rules. Thus no one knows what the real position or losses are. This means that central banks are in the dark when it comes to evaluation of the real risks of the system.

Clearly, I am not the only one harping on about the catastrophic global debt/liability situation.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Geopolitics, Governments

Tagged ,

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian, by Joakim Book

Posted on January 29, 2023 | 1 comment

We’re already pretty far down the path to totalitarianism, with many parallels to earlier tyranny. From Joakim Book at brownstone.org:

Totalitarianism

The West can never again go totalitarian.

We saw it happen generations ago. We fought two of humanity’s most destructive wars and faced the horror of industrial-scale extermination. Never again, said the world’s peoples in the late 1940s, and they began the difficult task of uncovering all that had been done, all that had gone wrong.

The mass graves, the German and Soviet labor camps, the Japanese massacres in the Far East, America’s internment camps, the secret police and the mutilations, the ever-present threat of violence hanging over every member of society. We saw the personality cults around Hitler or Stalin for what they were, the blatant ideologies for what they had resulted in.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989, and with it the remains of the Evil Empire that had put it there, we discovered more horror. The archives of East Germany and the Kremlin showed that informants were everywhere happily giving up information – real or invented – on their fellow humans. We found more bodies. We learned that under enough fear and pressure, human life wasn’t worth anything. When push came to violent shove, bonds of family and community meant nothing.

The error of this terrifying history is to think that this was a problem of “the other,” someone far away who is nothing like us. Asks Thorsteinn Siglaugsson in a recent article: ”How do you find your inner Nazi? And how do you get him under control? Most people would have participated in the atrocities of their time, had they been put in that position – or at least sat by and allowed them to happen.”

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, History, Politics, Tyranny

Tagged ,

Heretical Thoughts on Orthodoxies, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Orthodoxy cannot be challenged, which means that can’t adapt to present realities or change in response to new ones. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Heresy evolves, orthodoxy cannot. Plan accordingly. Orthodoxies offer the comforting illusion of solidarity. But in what lies ahead, we’re on our own.

In today’s world, the key orthodoxies are secular rather than religious: they are economic, ideological, political. Religious orthodoxy is in the spiritual realm. It may have secular ramifications (for example, Galileo being forced to renounce his scientific advances) but it doesn’t deal with forecasts of real-world systems.

Economic, ideological and geopolitical orthodoxies are different. They make forecasts about the real world, and they will be right or wrong.

The orthodoxies are roughly divided into two camps: the Establishment/Status Quo orthodoxies and the alternative orthodoxies.

Both are fiercely defended by True Believers, as the orthodoxy is the foundation of the True Believers’ identity and worldview.

The two orthodoxies aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed. Sometimes they overlap.

Much of what passes for “informed commentary” now is nothing more than True Believers cherry-picking whatever supports their orthodoxy. In this mindset, what’s important is that everyone agrees with the orthodoxy. Public fealty to the orthodoxy is all that matters.

In this climate, projecting an outcome that doesn’t fit an orthodoxy is heresy and must be suppressed.

I don’t see any value in trying to persuade others to agree with me. The analysis goes where it goes, and it doesn’t really matter if we like the conclusion or no

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Economy, Financial markets, Government, Society

Tagged

The “Great Reset” and the Future of Money… Here’s What You Need To Know, by Nick Giambruno

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

The Great Reset wants a global currency that’s essentially a digital straight jacket for billions of people. From Nick Giambruno at internationalman.com:

The Great Reset

International Man: What is the idea behind the so-called “Great Reset?”

Nick Giambruno: We’ve seen countless examples of the self-identified elite in the West using that term.

But let me first ask, who put these people in charge? Who anointed them the leaders of the world?

They’re not only talking about resetting the financial system but dramatically changing the nature of life.

I think something sinister is going on, and they’re not even trying to hide it anymore. It’s all in the open now.

So, let me try to summarize something incredibly complex.

These people recognize the current international monetary system based on the US dollar is on its way out. Even Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, acknowledges that the US dollar’s supremacy is fading.

Although they would prefer to continue milking the current system, they realize it’s failing and the need to bridge the gap to a new system which they hope to control.

Nobody knows what the next international monetary system will look like—not even the elites. However, they know what they want it to look like.

They want a complete control grid with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), movement licenses, mandatory medical procedures, and a social credit system, among other nasty things.

Simply put, the Great Reset agenda is a high-tech, totalitarian, global panopticon.

In short, they want total control over you in all domains—a new feudalism.

They’re emotionally manipulating people with fear and false narratives into accepting things they ordinarily wouldn’t—like their enslavement.

That’s what their Great Reset agenda is all about. It’s self-evidently anathema to personal freedom, human dignity, and self-determination.

Whether the self-proclaimed elites get all or some of those things is an open question.

The best scenario for mankind would be for most major governments to go bankrupt—which they are well on their way to—before they can implement the Great Reset agenda.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Government, Tyranny

Tagged ,

The Race to the Bottom Accelerates, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Everywhere you look, products and services are getting worse. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

When competence, transparency and accountability are all punished, the Race to the Bottom accelerates.

Race to the Bottom describes the process of competitive devaluation, where value is gutted to remain competitive with those who are grabbing market share by stripping out quality, value, durability, transparency, accountability and competence.

We see the global Race to the Bottom in everyday products: the quality of goods has plummeted as manufacturers compete to reduce costs to maintain high profit margins by stripping out the quality and durability of components. We see it in shrinkflation, where the cereal box contains less cereal while the price ratchets higher.

We see it when cereals that once contained no sugar are now sickly-sweet because the manufacturer is losing market share to less healthy sugar-bomb cereals.

We see it in healthcare where costs have been so ruthlessly stripped out to boost profits that it takes months to get an appointment and overworked caregivers no longer have the “luxury” of providing the care they were trained to provide. Routine procedures and hospital stays now carry pricetags equal to four years college tuition or a modest house.

The Race to the Bottom isn’t limited to goods and services. Consider the bedrock of the social order, civility. Civility in discourse is now rarer than sightings of UFOs / UAPs.

In politics, scoring cheap points while ignoring the nation’s social decay and unsustainable bubble economy is another example of the Race to the Bottom. Is getting to the bottom of the Taylor Swift ticketing “fiasco” really the most pressing issue that politicians need to address? It would seem so.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Culture, Government, Media, Medicine, Politics

Tagged

the AI wars have already begun, by el gato malo

Posted on January 26, 2023 | 1 comment

As the establishment piles lie upon lie, aided with their AI gizmos, the demand for verifiable truth will skyrocket. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

AI wars are a staple of science fiction, but they are rapidly becoming science fact. these new self learning intelligences have become remarkably good at mimicing human speech, parsing human concepts, and producing images that look awfully real or (at least) human made.

DALL-e is not even a particularly powerful one.

yet prompt it to draw “a giant cat seeks to take over the world” and…

and that’s what makes several sets of new emerging programs so worrying. we’re about to start dealing with an entirely new kind of manipulation, obfuscation, and weaponization of information as the real, no fooling around intelligence agency grade tools of propaganda and suppression are increasingly turned upon we the people by by our own governments. for our own protection. of course.

“surely you exaggerate señor cat,” one might be tempted to exclaim.

your tinfoil is too tight.

is that so..? (LINK)

The government’s campaign to fight “misinformation” has expanded to adapt military-grade artificial intelligence once used to silence the Islamic State (ISIS) to quickly identify and censor American dissent on issues like vaccine safety and election integrity, according to grant documents and cyber experts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded several million dollars in grants recently to universities and private firms to develop tools eerily similar to those developed in 2011 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program.

DARPA said those tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” beginning with the Arab Spring uprisings in the the Middle East that spawned ISIS over a decade ago. 

is that boldfaced bit sounding worryingly familiar to anyone?

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, Media, Propaganda, Tyranny

Tagged ,

A Dollar Collapse Is Now In Motion – Saudi Arabia Signals The End Of Petro Status, by Brandon Smith

Posted on January 26, 2023 | 1 comment

More and more countries are signalling that they no longer want to trade real commodities, particularly oil, for pieces of paper or computer entries. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

The decline of a currency’s world reserve status is often a long process rife with denials. There are numerous economic “experts” out there that have been dismissing any and all warnings of dollar collapse for years. They just don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it. The idea that the US currency could ever be dethroned as the defacto global trade mechanism is impossible in their minds.

One of the key pillars keeping the dollar in place as the world reserve is its petro-status, and this factor is often held up as the reason why the Greenback cannot fail. The other argument is that the dollar is backed by the full force of the US military, and the US military is backed by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve – In other words, the dollar is backed by…the dollar; it’s a very circular and naive position.

These sentiments are not only pervasive among mainstream economists, they are also all over the place within the alternative media. I suspect the main hang-up for liberty movement analysts is the notion that the globalist establishment would ever allow the dollar or the US economy to fail. Isn’t the dollar system their “golden goose”?

The answer is no, it is NOT their golden goose. The dollar is just another stepping stone towards their goal of a one-world economy and a one-world currency. They have killed the world reserve status of other currencies in the past, why wouldn’t they do the same to the dollar?

Globalist white papers and essays specifically outline the need for a diminished role for the US currency as well as a decline in the American economy in order to make way for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and a new global currency system controlled by the IMF. I warned about this years go, and my position has always been that the derailment of the dollar would likely start with the end of its petro status.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Banking, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade

Tagged , ,

When Truth is No Defense, by Eric Peters

Posted on January 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

They’ve criminalized telling the truth. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

It used to be that truth was an absolute defense against libel – the latter being, essentially, a claim that information conveyed to others is false and defamatory.

As in “misinformation.”

Well, the wheel has turned, hasn’t it? In fact, it threatens to run us over – those of us who have the audacity to give voice to the truth.

As for example the doctors in California who are being threatened with what amounts to state-enforced cancellation of their privilege (italics for a reason; more follows below) to practice medicine if they dare to tell their patients the truth when it conflicts with the falsehoods insisted upon by the state with regard to the Holy Virus and all attending state-corporate promulgated narratives about treatments for it. It does not matter that – for example – it is perfectly true Ivermectin is an effective treatment.

Nor that it is true – it is admitted to, finally – the the so-called “vaccines” do not ” stop the spread” and do carry significant risks. But if a doctor shares these truths with his patients, he risks more than being banned from Twitter or Facebook.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

Tagged ,

The New Rules of Engagement, by Jeff Deist

Posted on January 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s a vicious jungle out there. From Jeff Deist at mises.org:

Not that long ago, my grandparents explained to me why they never discussed politics, religion, or sex in mixed company. Politeness was their currency. And why antagonize people or create ill will over private matters?

Fast-forward to 2023, and their advice seems needed more than ever. Today nothing is private; everything is political. And American politics is characterized by a perverse degree of bad faith.

Whether the country really is more divided than any time since the Civil War or this is merely our perception—thanks to social media rancor, nonstop cable news, and rabid political partisanship—scarcely matters. Either way, the psychology is clear. Anger directed toward the “other” delivers the desired dopamine hit. Under conditions of extreme distrust, scapegoating is far easier and more satisfying than cooperation. We see this clearly with attitudes toward Brexit, Hillary versus Trump, covid lockdowns, vaccines, Ukraine, Antifa, January 6, the 2022 midterm elections, and a host of other manufactured issues. Americans are watching at least two different movies.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Politics, Society

Tagged