"Through its monopoly over the media, the ruling oligarchy can repeatedly blame all its failures on others, and divert attention to external threats – either real or imaginary. When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, 2018
"I organized the [false flag] incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo. On the night of 31 August, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz radio station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish. The operation was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs."
SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks, Testimony at the Nuremberg trials, 20 December 1945
"If you know American foreign policy, false flags are the essence of that. And if you study the CIA as I have for a lifetime, you know that false flags are actually their method of operation. It launches coups, assassinations, wars. The whole history of the United States after 1947 is bringing down governments."
Jeffrey Sachs, Interview with Piers Morgan, 5 December 2024
"Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle. But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its 'inevitability,' want it in order to shift the locus of their problems."
C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1960
"Foreigners and those who disagree with us are not thought
of as men and women like ourselves and our fellow-countrymen; they are thought
of as representatives and symbols of a class. In so far as they have
any personality at all, it is the personality we mistakenly attribute to their class
– a personality that is, by definition, intrinsically evil.
We know that the harming or killing of men and women is wrong, and we are reluctant consciously to do what we know to be wrong. But when particular men and women are thought of merely as representatives of a class, which has previously been defined as evil and personified in the shape of a devil, then the reluctance to hurt or murder disappears.
Rulers of nations and leaders of parties
find morality embarrassing. That is why they take such pains to depersonalize
their opponents. All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim: to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation."
Aldous Huxley, Words and Behaviour, 1936
In looking back over the past 30 years or so, I recognize that I have had a serious misconception of how certain things work in this fallen world. The solution is not to find knowledge and share it. Knowledge does not create morality.
You cannot foster goodness and moral improvement by showing people the reality of things. To the contrary, more knowledge can often just help to create more effective devils in those so inclined.
And a corollary of this is that just 'knowing more things' does not necessarily make one a better person. Some of the better educated people in our Lord's time on earth were the Pharisees and the Romans. And their hypocrisy is well-documented, to the point of being legendary.
"'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.'” Matthew 19:24-26
This is the reason why the efficient markets hypothesis and the trend to self-regulation is hoo-haw. People are not naturally give to the rational, so providing more and better information about how things work does not cause they to be 'better.'
Another modern myth shot to hell.
Stocks dumped today, but found a footing and came back in the light last hour of trading.
The economic news this morning 'sucked out loud', as the youngsters (those under 40) might say.
Donnie says he has 'big news' for us tonight at 9 PM EST. Since I am not clairvoyant, and am not able to see changes to the personal stock portfolios of some of our government luminaries, I have no idea what this is, and how it will affect the markets.
Odds are it will be a big nothing, or a big sounding something that is pure wind.
Gold and silver wobbled around as did the Dollar. The silver market is interesting of late. I think we have been seeing someone with deep pockets sitting on silver with a limit buy that keeps absorbing the paper selling on the Comex and whack-a-mole selling on the London LBMA.
The other day I read that Samsung has a new lithium battery technology that utilizes silver that solves a lot of lithium-ion problems, and its going into mass production next year. This is correlated to the Electric Vehicle market, and the buildouts of solar farms for AI centers.
Since I expect the AI tech bubble to go the way of the 2001 tech bubble, this might not be as long term reassuring as I might hope. But it will be nice to see the silver racket with a hole blown through it.
A similar situation has existed for some time now with gold, as its bull rally is underpinned by steady and strong physical buying by the non-Western central banks.
VIX fell again.
Bitcoin bounced back a little, remaining in the recent trading range it has channeled. It seems a bit dicey, but the major players don't want to kill their golden goose just yet.
Corrections and rallies come and go. But the risk markets are primed for a 10-20% correction. I think it will take an 'event' to crash through the support levels patrolled by Secretary Bessent and his boy at the NY Fed and ESF.
It might not even be a US-centric event. A crash in the Japan carry trade might get the ball rolling for example. Or some unfortunate series of event in the Mideast as another.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in God abide in love, and love in them.
Have a pleasant evening.
