"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
George Orwell, The New Statesman and Nation, August 1937
"Boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.' When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."
Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, Eyewitness account, Fall of Berlin 1945
"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it.
Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016
"Under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate.
If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787
"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
John Harrington, Epigrams: Of Treason, 1618
Gold and silver came in steaming from the overnight foreign trade.
But a rally in the Dollar in NY time knocked them back down to mostly unchanged.
Stocks gathered themselves together at the same time and turned sharp losses into smaller losses and nearly unchanged.
The BRICs will have their summit meeting in Kazan, Russia over the next two days.
Never, ever expect the classic narcissist leader to fail to try every trick in the book, up to and including leading their nation into the abyss, in order to advance even their most narrow, pettiest desires.
This stuns the average person who would never even considering doing something so dishonorable and madly selfish.
The disadvantage of the average person is that they are not given over to madness, and find the mere concept of it horrifying.
But for some it is just the business of the day.
We have seen it in history. I have seen it in business. It is stunning.
Have a pleasant evening.
