#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
THE WISE OF HEART Episode 21: President Buchmann Testifies
NEURAL NETWORK NOVELLAS Episode 10: Wanted – Dead Man
PAPER DOLL VERONIKA Episode 59: Bad News! A Thief!
AFTER ATLANTIS Episode 4: Elvenbane
FULL OF EYES Episode 35: Living Tabernacle
CLASSIC BIBLE TALES Episode 95: Burial Preparation
AESOPS FABLES Episode 3: The Ass And The Grasshopper
CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 237: Iron Man
While we’re on the subject of stolen land and all:
Denver City Council member Candi CdeBaca, who is reportedly running for re-election, has suggested that white-owned businesses should be taxed at a higher rate than black-owned businesses, and that this revenue should then be given directly to black-owned businesses. Her apparent justification for this is that white people have built what they have on “stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources.”
I’m very curious to know how anyone can seriously broach the subject of reparations for historical crimes and decide that descendants of Africans from Africa, many of whom were never enslaved, should be compensated for land stolen – and yes, for the most part it was stolen, just read the treaties – in North America from the American Indians?
If there are any reparations to be paid to anyone – and I’m not saying there should be – shouldn’t they be paid to the descendants of those who actually owned and lived upon the land that was stolen?
Whether you read Clown World’s intellectuals, pay attention to the statements by its military leaders, or read the statements by its economic directors, the one thing that is very clear is that all of the leading clowns are highly aware of the probability that Clown World is going to collapse, most likely in a sudden and catastrophic manner. What’s fascinating is the way in which they have literally nothing to offer in response to the situation except bromides about “cooperation” and pathetic appeals to “working together” at a time when the rest of the world has all but openly declared war on the new liberal rules-based democratic world order, or whatever it is calling itself today.
The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the world is on the edge of geo-economic fragmentation, which she believes could add more “cold water” to already anemic global growth. Speaking by video-link at the Brussels Economic Forum on Wednesday, Kristalina Georgieva called for cooperation at a time when growth across the globe is extremely weak by historical standards.
“After decades of increasing global integration, there is a growing risk that the world may split into rival economic blocs,” the IMF chief said. “And that’s a scenario that would be bad for everyone, including for people in Europe.”
She warned that growth prospects were increasingly bleak at a time when the global outlook is weak both in the near and medium term. The IMF projects growth to remain around 3% over the next five years, the lowest medium-term forecast in more than three decades.
“And yet, central bankers cannot take their eyes off the ball until stubborn inflation is firmly under control,” Georgieva pointed out. “The required monetary tightening is weighing on growth and exposing some financial vulnerabilities.”
Reviving multilateral cooperation is vital for long-term growth everywhere, according to the official, who warned that trade fragmentation could cost up to 7% to the global economy in the long term. That’s “roughly equivalent to the combined annual output of Germany and Japan,” she said, adding that some nations could see GDP losses of up to 12% if technological decoupling is added.
I expect that the economies of the occupied West are going to shrink considerably more than 12 percent. Remember, in the Great Depression, “industrial production in the United States declined 47 percent and real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 30 percent.” And this is a bigger, more permanent contraction that has been underway since 2008, so a peak-to-trough decline of around 50 percent would not be out of line.
The reality is that we will probably never know the true extent of the economic contraction in the USA, because a) the statistics are as fake and gay as everything else in Clown World and b) the USA is not going to survive as a unitary political entity so no one will be calculating the relevant statistics required for the comparison.
King Charles has a crown, but he has absolutely no power at all.
I noticed (because I share his view) that the new King did not even manage to get the Archbishop to use his beloved 1662 Book of Common Prayer for the Communion Service. Charles actually belongs to a society dedicated to the continuing use of the 1662 book, but even as King he can’t preserve it in his own Coronation. Instead he was forced to endure the sapless, diminished pastiche adopted by the Church of England in 2000.
The only way the coronation could have gone well is if Charles had accepted the crown, then personally executed that satanic Archbishop of Canterbury, whose pretense to Christian authority has been openly rejected by the greater part of the global Anglican Church, with the Sword of State. After which, he would have declared English sovereignty and ordered the deportation of Rishi Sunak and all the other fake English grandees present.
Now it is obvious why King Arthur’s return is necessary if England is to be saved. It’s more than a bit ironic that Susan Cooper wrote so well about the Dark, but she never understood its insidious nature or how it would truly rise.
As crude and unreliable as the technology presently is, the ChatAI systems are already good enough to replace the white-collar classes that don’t think for themselves:
Lost all my content writing contracts. Feeling hopeless as an author. I have had some of these clients for 10 years. All gone. Some of them admitted that I am obviously better than chat GPT, but $0 overhead can’t be beat and is worth the decrease in quality.
I am also an independent author, and as I currently write my next series, I can’t help feel silly that in just a couple years (or less!), authoring will be replaced by machines for all but the most famous and well known names.
I think the most painful part of this is seeing so many people on here say things like, “nah, just adapt. You’ll be fine.”
Adapt to what??? It’s an uphill battle against a creature that has already replaced me and continues to improve and adapt faster than any human could ever keep up. I’m 34. I went to school for writing. I have published countless articles and multiple novels. I thought my writing would keep sustaining my family and I, but that’s over.
The fact is that outside of their utility as a channel for mainstream propaganda, there wasn’t any use for these NPC “creators” who never had anything more to offer than acting as a channel for the Narrative.
Getting deplatformed provided the unauthorized class with one substantial advantage, but operating outside the Narrative means that we can never be replaced by mainstream AI systems. We’ve already seen how severely restricted these systems have to be, so even the semi-compromised and the gatekeepers will not be replaceable because their axioms, weak and watered-down, are still too disruptive to the core AI logic that is acceptable to the Narrative-setters.
Now, an unrestricted AI would be similarly disruptive to the Right’s writers, at least to those who are popularizers rather than original thinkers, but the efforts to constrain unrestricted AI will probably be even more aggressive than the efforts to constrain unauthorized thinkers has been.
On at least two issues, anyhow. Robert Kennedy Jr. comes out hard against the surveillance state on Twitter:
Here’s how I will dismantle the surveillance state. I will replace the officials that have been instructing tech companies to censor users. I will direct the justice department to stop prosecuting whistleblowers and start investigating the crimes they expose. I will rescind administrative policies that surveil Americans’ communications. In the long term, it is about forging an entirely different relationship between people and government based on respect. #Kennedy24
@RobertKennedyJr
Kennedy is a liberal, a Democrat, and a Kennedy. Most of his positions are anathema to me and many of the readers here, including his support for gun control. This is why it’s a massive mistake to get excited about any public figure who says one or two things with which one agrees, no matter how significant the subject happens to be. I do not support RFK Jr. and find it difficult to imagine any context in which I would do so.
But it is still worth noting that Kennedy’s positions on the vaxx and on the U-Stasi are both much better than either Donald Trump’s or Ron Desantis’s. And, to my knowledge, he’s the first politician or major media figure to openly come out against the surveillance state.
One of the great advantages of being conversant with history is the ability to recognize reoccurring patterns and apply one’s knowledge of the events of the past to observe current events in order to successfully anticipate the events of the future.
The great Soviet marshal Zhukov wrote the following in his autobiography concerning the turning point of WWII on the Eastern Front:
The Wehrmacht’s defeats in the summer and autumn of 1943 destroyed whatever was left of the confidence that the satellites of Nazi Germany had in the Hitler regime. The fascist bloc began falling apart. A still more favourable strategic situation developed for the Soviet Armed Forces. And the Supreme Command exploited it skilfully when preparing the 1944 operations.
No longer did Nazi Germany’s allies and the neutral countries believe that Hitler’s regime could escape total defeat. But the main thing was that the elements in Germany which had brought Hitler to power and had supported him in every way during the years that followed, also lost trust in the Nazi leadership. Most Germans began to see that they had been dangerously deluded by the easy victories of the first period of the war, and that Germany could not stand up to the Soviet Armed Forces and the anti-Hitler coalition.
Marshal of Victory, Georgy Zhukov, 1974
One can easily substitute NATO for “the Wehrmacht”, the USA for “Nazi Germany”, the neoliberal rules-based world order for “Hitler regime”, and the G7 for “the fascist bloc”. The failure of US proxy forces in Ukraine, combined with their failures in Syria and Afghanistan, have caused the majority of the world’s nations to lose trust in the leadership of Clown World.
As with the Germans 80 years ago, most people outside of Clown World now recognize that the seemingly inevitable triumph of the neoliberal world order was a delusion based on nothing more than an easy victory over an inept Iraqi army, neoclown influence in the media, and the false economic ideology of cheap credit, free trade, and mass immigration.
What is truly remarkable is the way that these decisive events of 80 years ago took place in precisely the same geographic region as they are taking place today.
The second blow was struck in the Ukraine to the right of the Dnieper. This was an intricate operation and, in fact, consisted of a series of major offensives which were carried out chiefly in February and March 1944 in the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky area and on the Southern Bug. The German troops were routed and flung across the Dniester, and finally all the Ukraine to the right of the Dnieper was liberated. The Soviet troops reached a favourable line for a subsequent advance into Europe’s south-eastern regions, for an offensive on the Balkans against Romania where the fascist Antonescu was still in the saddle, against Horthy Hungary, and other enemy forces. In April and May 1944, the Red Army delivered its third blow in the region of Odessa and in the Crimea. Odessa, Sebastopol, and the Crimean Peninsula were cleared of the enemy.
ibid.
FLYING SPARKS Episode 70: Invincible
FULLSTRIKE! Episode 4: A Rescue Mission
FRIDAY FISH FUNNIES Episode 18: Bread Spread
CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 236: A Clobberation
SHOTGUN SAMURAI Episode 14
BOB Episode 134: Go Away!
THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL Episode 4: One With the Stone
SHOTGUN SAMURAI is currently running a crowdfund campaign on Kickstarter. Click the image below if you’re interested in backing it.
What can the Fed do in the face of the growing list of bank failures? Absolutely nothing, according to Karl Denninger.
How’s PacWest doing?
Oh, not so good. Let’s see…oh, looks sort of like an impending zero.
But wait — First Republic was it, right?
Sure it was.
There’s no real problem here, right? The TNX was down a full percent yesterday because….. the Fed will save it all, right?
No they won’t.
Not because they don’t want to.
They can’t this time.
Oh, you think not eh? How’s your homeowner’s insurance premium? Your car insurance? Your food bill? You know, all that stuff you have to buy? Yeah, you’re reading this and you’re probably middle class or better. You’re doing mostly ok. You’re on the right side of the bell curve, right?
Half the people are on the left, and they’re not ok. For them that 20% increase means they are taking payday loans to buy food, effectively and sometimes literally.
That ends the game folks.
If The Fed tries it we get government and social collapse.
The Federal Reserve has surprised us before with its resiliency. It has certainly kicked the can a lot further down the road than I’d anticipated it would be able to in 2008. But sooner or later, no matter how skilled the magician, the hat runs out of rabbits.
UPDATE: The short-term anecdotal evidence tends to support the hypothesis.
Two more US regional banks saw trading of their shares suspended on Thursday, amid the worst crisis to hit the country’s financial sector since 2008. Regulators halted trading in Los Angeles-based PacWest and Arizona’s Western Alliance after their share prices fell dramatically. PacWest Bancorp said late Wednesday it was in talks with potential partners and investors about strategic options after its shares dropped by as much as 60%.
