"While some were speaking in the temple, and remarking how lavishly it was adorned with costly stones and beautiful memorials, Jesus said, 'These things that you see — the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.'
And they asked him, 'Teacher, when will this be, and what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?' And Jesus said, 'See that you are not deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and rebellion, do not be afraid, for such things must happen first. But it will not yet be the end.' Then he said to them, 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place. And awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.'
When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that the time of its desolation draws near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those in the midst of the city must leave, and those in the country should not return. For these are the be days of God’s judgement, so that all that has been written may be fulfilled.'"
Luke 21:5-11
"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.
The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps."
Commemorative Tablet, Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin
“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates. The truth is, no one really possesses it."
Simone Weil, War and the Iliad, 1939
"They asked, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And Jesus said, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”
Luke 17:37
"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; but they cannot understand destitution. They will be moved to the sound of beautiful music, and at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."
Léon Bloy, Exégèse des Lieux Communs
"The kings of the earth, the nobles, the military officers, the rich, the powerful, and every slave and free person hid themselves in caves and among mountain crags. They cried out to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, because the great day of their judgement has come, and who can stand against it?”
Revelation 6:15-17
Stocks managed to gain a footing after another early selloff, and went into the close with a gain.
Gold and silver enjoyed a little bounce.
Some of the better miners showed signs of short covering.
VIX continued to decline.
Bitcoin continued backing off from its high, its recent run to $100,000.
Stocks are primed for a sell off. It's just a matter of what gets the ball rolling.
My big question is, 'can the US survive another two months of Genocide Joe and his Merry Pranksters?
I am trying to keep an open mind on Trump, as I generally tend to do with a new president.
It's not easy.
I look at the Western leaders and wonder where such a parcel of incompetent rogues came from.
Have a pleasant evening.
