Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Supremacy of Power

 

"There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth.  It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other."

Samuel Johnson, Capture of Louisbourg, Idler 20, September 25, 1750

"The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not? The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making."

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert, The God Emperor of Dune, 1981

“Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them — and then, the opportunity to choose.”

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959

"The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their illusions. And no people, no organization of people, and no nation is immune or exceptional to this extremity.  Evil is a choice, a long, gradual succession of choices. And the madness never sleeps, always looking for souls to devour."

Jesse, A Cruel Deception, 28 October 2022

"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one— the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"How are the mighty fallen, and their weapons of war destroyed."

2 Samuel 1:27


They lie, and call it statecraft.   They betray their nation, and call it practical.   They abandon virtue to greed, and call it rational. They foster corruption, and call it necessity. They murder innocents, and call it peace. 

And when they meet their God He will say, 'Depart from me.  I do not know you, workers of lawlessness.'

 Stocks were wobbling around again, stick save into the close.

Gold and silver were marching in place.

The Dollar is down a bit.

So is the VIX.

The FOMC decision on Wednesday and Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday may move the markets.

What are we becoming.

Have a pleasant evening.

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.