Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Till Judgement Come

 

"The selling of the Iraq War to the American public was an exploitation of mass gullibility.  Current circumstances give little or no hope that the public response would be much different to the selling of some future untoward war."

Paul Pillar, Selling the Iraq War: Gullibility and Mass Hysteria, March 15, 2023

"If you do not stand firm in the faith, you will not stand at all.”

Isaiah 7:9

"The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion.  It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders."

Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

"People do not wake up one morning and decide to become monsters that will be reviled by all civilized people throughout history.  They go down that path one small step at a time, one seemingly harmless and practical decision after another.  They are being reasonable, practical, realistic— merely repeating the stories and slogans that 'everyone knows.' We live in a truly cynical age."

Jesse, It Can't Happen Here: Pride, Power, Exceptionalism, 8 May 2017

"When a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit.  Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry.  The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity.   Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors.  This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide."

Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate, 1952

"Words can be like tiny bits of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed and seem to have no effect, but after a while the toxic effect is there."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End: 1933-1945

 

It was a 'risk on' day today.

The Dollar rose.

The VIX fell.

Stocks finished higher after a big gap up open, compliments of Alphabet.

Gold was up a bit, and silver was lower.

The first victim in any period of war is the truth. 

This time is no different.

We had what I hope is our last hard freeze last night.  

So Daisy and I took an afternoon jaunt over to the Great Swamp Greenhouses, which are just southeast of our 'hood.  

They are in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.   As you may recall that is where the second cylinder fell in the radio version of War of the Worlds.

Daisy had some good sniffing opportunities while I was planning out some buys for the vegetable garden.

Even though we are miles away up in the hills, we get an abundance of critters from there, and especially in the winter.  And an abundance of birds.  It is also home to The Raptor Trust.

Spring is in the air.  A tonic for the prevailing hysteria and avalanche of lies and unproven claims.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Through the Looking Glass: The Cult of Power

 

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.   When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure.   

The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks To Power, 2013

"What happens to a society fed a diet of rushed, re-purposed, thinly reported content? Or branded content that is really merchandising — propaganda — posing as journalism?   And what happens when PR turns a profit and the truth goes penniless?"

Bill Moyers, Journalism in the Pressure Cooker of Plutocracy, May 26, 2015

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair.   That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."

Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, 2003 essay

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1895

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  You snakes.  You brood of vipers.  How will you escape being condemned to hell?“

Matthew 23:27-28,33

The cult of power desires to control what you can say and what you can hear, and finally, what you can do.

There has rarely been a more naked display of the power of silencing in this century as there is now.  

It is the domain of oligarchy, of empire, of the so-called power elite.

It is not something that resides in one man, in one Administration.  It has its roots in a system that has steadily become distorted by the lust for power above all going back at least 30 years. 

It seems that the system is no longer capable of producing reform on its own, using its own internal mechanism.  Take a look at the candidates that the system is producing.

If you say things that they do not approve, that they do not wish to be heard, that obstruct their tales of an empire of illusion, the power of the markets will reach out and destroy your ability to be heard, to freely express yourself, to earn a living, and in some cases, even take your freedom.

This is the story of our government, of our campuses, and of the persecution of journalists.  Freedom of speech is crushed under a witch hunt of lies and power politics.  You will see only what they wish you to see, and hear what they wish you to hear.  They tell you that you have no other choice.

All in the name of peace and freedom.

Stocks came in slumping again this morning.

But voila, Alphabet to the rescue.

Stocks ended the day well into the green.

Gold and silver held a little bounce higher.

VIX fell.  

The Dollar dropped.

Non-Farm Payrolls and FOMC next week.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Creatures of Unspeakable Horror

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir, 1993

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, posthumous 1951

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children,
      unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’
      and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!
Tell us only things that please us,
      prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

"When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.  The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.  It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas, Canadian legislator

"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all the objective, logical considerations, we find that which goes beyond the merely rational: the struggle against evil, against the servants of the antichrist.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak;  when he yields to the forces of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on and on to the next and to the next, at a furiously accelerating rate."

Die Weiße Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

Stocks were chopping around most of the day, and the cash market went into the close just about unchanged.

After a few stinkers disclosed their financial results after hours the futures turned into the red.

Gold and silver edge a bit lower, as the Dollar chopped sideways to slightly higher.

A good amount of physical gold has left the Hong Kong Comex warehouses over the past two days.

I have sometimes noticed that they bulk up the physical inventories before a major raid on the price of gold in the West, to allow for the buying that comes with the lowered price.

Freedom and justice are under assault by the moneyed interests, as in their willfulness they are often inclined to do.

It is hard to see how easily our 'thought leaders' ignore atrocities and crimes and genocide, as long as we approve of those who are committing them, or are at least being rewarded for our silence.

History will not absolve us.  

We are wrapped in a world of our own illusions.

Judgement is coming.

Have a pleasant evening.