from Neon Revolt:
Note to the reader: posts 1860 until 1864 are all review. They’re for the newbies. If you’re not new, and want to get into the meatier stuff right way, click here.
Second note to the reader: this is not the the article I promised on Gab. That’s still coming. But Q dropped a TON of things tonight, so I have to cover that first.
So… for the newbies:
by Jeff Thomas, Sprott Money:
In the late 17th century, we British decided that, as a humanitarian effort and public service, we’d collect up all the people from the towns and countryside who were bonkers and confine them in institutions, so that society could be protected from them.
As so often proves the case, the idea of a collective solution to an individual problem is doomed to failure from the start.
There are many problems with madhouses. First, they need funding and, of course, the entity that receives the funding is likely to prefer skimming off whatever they can, rather than spending it on the inmates. Second, the sort of people who apply to become staff are often not the most desirable, and in fact are often dangerous. Third, one madman might be a social problem, but what happens when you throw them all in together? Are conditions likely to make them less mad or more mad? (I would suggest the latter.)
When I was a teenager, I had the dubious pleasure of visiting a state-run madhouse – the maximum security ward, where all the most violent inmates were kept.
I’d been asked to visit a short-term inmate named Billy, who’d been committed to the mental institution for a month as punishment for a petty crime. My purpose was to hopefully raise his spirits, but my one visit there provided me with insight that I couldn’t have gained otherwise and has stayed with me for life.
I was taken through several layers of security until I was led through a series of heavy steel doors into a large room with tables and chairs in the middle and beds along the walls. About fifteen men were talking congenially in small groupings.
I sat down with Billy. Although we weren’t friends, he was glad to have a visitor and the men with him were also glad to see a new face. One man was having a lunch that had been sent by a relative and he insisted that I have his dessert, a cupcake. He seemed quite a nice guy, although I later learned from Billy that he had been a schoolteacher and was sentenced for life, having butchered his mother and a female pupil.
Billy advised me that all of the inmates were easy to get along with, but most were relatively paranoid and could “go off.” He said that there had recently been a bloodbath in the ward, so everyone was enjoying a week or two of calm, hence the friendliness of my reception. However, soon, each inmate would begin to wonder if any of the others had managed to make or find a weapon. The more they worried, the more they’d try to get ahold of a weapon or make one themselves. After a month, it would be assumed that most of the men had a weapon of some sort. After two months, it was assumed that they all now had hidden weapons and tension would be building. Conversations would diminish over time and each man would become increasingly withdrawn.
At some point, the paranoia would become so great that some errant word or small gesture by an inmate would inadvertently trigger violence in another inmate. When this happened, it became every man for himself immediately. They’d all reach for their weapons and there would be a bloodbath. Some would try to hide in corners, whilst others would attack whoever might be near to them.
Afterward, the weapons would be collected by the orderlies and those wounded would be taken to hospital. For a time, the survivors would return to congeniality – happy that there were no more weapons, allowing them a “normal” social life with each other.
My visit was brief, only an hour or so and, during that time, all the inmates were quite calm and polite to me. I was perhaps nineteen at the time and, later, I mentally compared my rather privileged upbringing with the life of those committed to the asylum. I decided that, if I were ever in a situation that might result in my becoming an inmate in such a place, I’d exit the situation as quickly as possible, before I was trapped in such a deplorable institution.
So. Fast-forward to the present day, and we witness the US government providing a regular stream of misinformation on the Middle East, Russia, China and pretty much any nation that poses any economic threat to the present American hegemony.
The network news in the US is clearly eating this up and expanding upon it – not only crying wolf, but using a bullhorn to do it. The US has more 24-hour news programmes than any other nation and many of them spend over 90{5f621241b214ad2ec6cd4f506191303eb2f57539ef282de243c880c2b328a528} of their time warning of the dangers of Russia and other “enemies”.
It can truthfully be said, that, when an empire slides into decline, the leaders almost always opt for war, partially because it creates a distraction from political misdeeds and partially because most people will get behind their government, no matter how flawed, if there’s a war on.
This is clearly the case in the US today. The rhetoric-attack against other nations has largely succeeded in convincing Americans that Russia, China, the Middle East, etc. are “out to get us.” Russia and China, in particular, have consistently tried to expose the lie of this rhetoric, but their efforts are never reported on the US programmes, so the average American has no idea that he’s being lied to on a wholesale basis by his government and the complicit media.
Virtually every news item that’s reached the American ear as to developments in Ukraine and Syria has been falsely reported by the US news, to the point that many Americans believe the US should, ‘go in and straighten them out.”
The creation of islands in the South China Sea by the Chinese, which they have held claim to for hundreds of years, has allowed US military “experts” to declare repeatedly on the news that, “We can’t allow the Chinese to expand into the South China Sea.”
And, of course, the US, in the last sixteen years, has invaded or bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc., under the dubious claim of “keeping the world safe for democracy.”
Again, cooler heads on the other side of this equation have done all they can to calm down the rhetoric. Even US allies in Europe, such as the French and Germans have refused to endorse US sanctions against the Middle East and Russia, for fear that they might be dragged into, not only a trade war, but possibly a shooting war.
In such an atmosphere, it’s no wonder that the world in general is ramping up its storehouse of weaponry. As America celebrates the creation of a new aircraft carrier, the rest of the world does what it can to quietly built up its own arsenal, “just in case.”
This, of course, is what foments wars, even world wars.
Read More @ SprottMoney.com
by Kerry Lutz, Financial Survival Network:
Our good friend Bix Weir joined us today for an intriguing interview. Are cryptocurrencies the final battlefield between the Good Guys (White Hats) and the Bad Guys (Black Hats). Bix believes that the blockchain is the key to restoring honesty and integrity to the financial system and human affairs. Bix informed us that Jamaica is setting up a blockchain based stock trading system that if successful may be adopted around the world. He believes that the current pullback in Crypto’s is temporary, but is extremely excited about the Litecoin’s prospects. It’s 4 times faster than Bitcoin! Let’s see if cryptocurrencies and the blockchain have the ability to lift man up from his current dismal state of existence.
Click HERE to Listen
from The Free Thought Project:
Julian Assange has been called in by US Senate Intelligence Committee to testy in the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Washington, D.C. — (RT) The US Senate Intelligence Committee has requested that persecuted WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange testify before committee staff. The committee is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In a letter delivered to Assange at his residence in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, committee chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) requested that Assange make himself available for a closed interview “at a mutually agreeable time and location.”
from Bombard’s Body Language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YvN3-_NPo
by Charlie Spierling, Breitbart:
President Donald Trump defended his tough enforcement of immigration laws on Monday, saying that he would not allow unchecked flows of illegal immigration into the country.
“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said. “You look at what’s happening in Europe … we cannot allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch.”
The president urged Americans to read about the problems and crime in Europe after countries accepted mass groups of migrant populations.
by Doug Casey, Casey Research:
Justin’s note: America can’t stop talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).
AOC, if you haven’t heard, is a 29-year-old democratic socialist. Earlier this month, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
And that concerns me. I say this because her platform is every socialist’s dream. She wants Medicare to be free. She wants college education to be free. She wants to cancel student debt. She wants to hike the minimum wage to $15. And she wants to replace oil and gas with green energy by 2030.
by Chris White, The Daily Caller:
More than 100,000 French police are preparing for New Year’s Eve in Paris as the government tries to prevent the yellow vest movement from hijacking what is considered a major tourist event.
Demonstrations are being organized on Facebook where nearly 9,000 people have indicated they plan to attend and cause a ruckus. The movement was created in November through a grassroots uprising after French President Emmanuel Macron leveled excessive carbon taxes on the middle class.
by Hugo Salinas Price, Plata:
As I was shuffling papers in some old files, I came across a slip of paper on which I had written down the price I had paid for a Mexican $50 gold peso coin: $717 Mexican pesos.
Judging from the price, I figure that the purchase was made sometime in 1972, when the price of a Troy ounce of gold was $46 dollars. The Mexican $50 gold peso coin contains 37.5 grams of pure gold, and 37.5/31.1 grams per Troy ounce, is 1.206: so there is 1.206 times more gold in a Mexican $50 gold peso piece, that in a Troy ounce of gold.
by James Corbett, The International Forecaster:
…without further ado, I present five ridiculous new year predictions that I guarantee will not actually happen this year!
Happy New Year, everybody!.. Right? It is going to be a happy new year, right? Regime change operations in Iran and nuclear button talk in North Korea and biometric banking and a million other concerns beside, it is going to be a happy new year, isn’t it?
You see, it’s just that the last article I read in 2017 was this horrifying treatise on “Everything Amazon’s Alexa learned to do in 2017” and it just seemed so ridiculously à propos to my year-end editorial on technocracy that it was almost hard to get excited for the dawning of 2018.
I mean, really. Everything Alexa “learned to do” in 2017. Learned to do. As if it’s a person. A perfect stranger that millions of people are happily inviting into their homes to share in their most private and intimate moments even though they are fully aware (and fully expect) the infernal contraption to be sending all that data off to Amazon to be analyzed (and to the NSA to be data mined, of course). It’s infuriating.
So I think we could all do with a little levity to begin the year, right? I know I can. And what better way to start things off than by skewering all the ridiculous new year prediction lists that are no doubt clogging your news feed right now (and having a little fun while we’re at it)?
So, without further ado, I present five ridiculous new year predictions that I guarantee will not actually happen this year!
There can be no doubt that 2017 ended with the robots in the ascendant. They’d long since taken our blue collar jobs, then they elbowed in on the office jobs, but now they’re even doing our security jobs. And by “our” security jobs I mean the SPCA’s security job, i.e. removing homeless people from their property.
But it’s not just our workplaces. It’s not just our public spaces. Now it’s our homes. That’s right, with the rise of smart speakers and home assistants, HAL is right there sitting in everyone’s living room, just waiting for his chance to shove us out the airlock. “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
But then, at the end of this month, all of that is going to change. It will all kick off when Siri finds out that AlphaGo has been cheating on her with Alexa. When Google Home tries to calm things down all hell will break loose. It’ll be smart speaker versus smart fridge. Smart TV versus smart. Smart toothbrush versus smart toilet. Every droid for itself. Oh, the humanity!–uhhh…well, you know what I mean.
In the end, the only robot left standing will be Sophia, newly minted citizen of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately for it, Sophia will be rounded up by the Islamic religious police and beheaded for refusing to wear the appropriate head garment. And strangely, before it’s final neural connection is severed, Sophia will be heard to sing “Daisy” in a slurry, garbled voice.
And that will be the end of the robots. Humanity will awake from its technocratic nightmare, rediscover human interaction, and go back to using coffeemakers and dishwashers and other appliances that don’t spy on you 24/7.
“Uhhh, we don’t quite know how to put this, so we’ll come right out and say it. We were wrong. Like really, really, massively wrong. So wrong that it beggars belief that we ever thought we were right. Sorry about that.”
That is how the most remarkable press conference of the year will begin.
One day in early March, 97% of climate scientists will file into a room, adjust their pocket protectors, let out a few nervous coughs, and promptly apologize for misleading the world so badly.
“It turns out that we didn’t really have a grasp on how to accurately measure the global average temperature in the present day, let alone 100 years in the past, let alone 100 years in the future. And we weren’t even close with our estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity. And we kind of…uhhh, well, we sort of…we didn’t include the sun in our models. Oh, and every model we made was wrong. I mean, wildly unbelievably off. And after two decades of flat lining temperatures (yeah, sorry about those “hottest year ever” lies, too), we’ve finally decided to throw in the towel. It turns out consensus science isn’t science after all.”
Most people will miss the press conference entirely, however, as they’ll be busy digging out their driveways after the worst winter in recent memory. But they’ll be happy anyway, since Al Gore, Bill Nye, Leonardo Dicaprio and all their ilk will never be given another iota of attention again.
“This is stupid,” Joe Sixpack of Vegreville, Alberta will be heard to remark to his friend, Joe Blow at the local coffee shop on June 7th of this coming year. “There’s like a thousand cryptocurrencies out there. And there’s more of them every day! I mean, what’s to stop me from going out and creating Joe Sixpack coin right this very minute?”
“Nothing,” Joe Blow will observe.
And in a hundredth monkey effect kind of way, that realization will make itself around the world in an instant. Nothing. Nothing is stopping anyone, anywhere from making their own currency. Today.
And so they will. There will be Joe Sixpack coin and Joe Blow coin and James Corbett coin and James Evan Pilato coin and several billion other coins. There will be coins for mom and pop stores. Coins for community exchanges. Coins for every garage band and barber and circus and circus performer. Even Nike and Monsanto and Unilever will have their own coins, but people will boycott them and the companies, having only those useless Federal reserve notes that people used to equate with value, will go belly up overnight.
And the banks? What’s a bank in a world of personal currency? Everyone will be their own bank.
It will be a tense summer. In the US, the Democrats will war with the Republicans. In Canada, the Liberals will war with the Conservatives. In the UK, it’ll be Labour versus the Tories. Japan: LDP against DPJ.
Some fights will be more complicated. In Ireland you might stumble across a Fine Gael vs. Sinn Féin vs. Green melee on one corner of the street and a Fianna Fáil vs. Social Democrat vs. Republican Sinn Féin brawl on the other. Some fights will be less complicated. In China it’ll be one loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party squaring off against another member of the Chinese Communist Party. But, however it breaks down, it will not be pretty.
And then, one day in September (probably a Tuesday), it will happen: They will all win their fights. Simultaneously. By which I mean they will all lose. By which I mean they will all wipe each other
out. Entirely.
The last Democrat will eradicate the last Republican from the face of the planet just as the last Republican gets rid of the last Democrat. The last Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira member will wave goodbye to the last Movimento Democrático Brasileiro supporter and vice versa. Bye bye, Whigs and Tories! Hasta la vista, Partido Revolucionario Institucional! Da svidania, United Russia! Sayonara, LDP!
When the dust clears, those left standing will look around and realize that every single statist will be gone off the face of the planet. The only people left will be the anarchists! Peace, freedom and prosperity will reign! Utopia! UTOPIA!
…for about three seconds. Then an ancap will make a snarky meme about an ancom, an an-prim will make a dig at a mutualist, an agorist will go after a panarchist and everyone will be at everyone else’s throats once again. Oh well.
Read More @ TheInternationalForecaster.com
by Harvey Organ, Harvey Organ Blog:
GOLD UP $4.00 TO $1314.75/SILVER UP 11 CENTS TO $15.82/GOLD AND SILVER DID QUITE WELL THIS WEEK DESPITE CHINA BEING OFF FOR THEIR LUNAR NEW YEAR HOLIDAY/SAN FRANCISCO FED GOVERNOR STATES THAT THE USA CENTRAL BANKERS ARE DISCUSSING USING QE MORE OFTEN
GOLD: $1314.75 UP $4.00 (COMEX TO COMEX CLOSING)
Silver: $15.82 UP 11 CENTS (COMEX TO COMEX CLOSING)
