from RonPaulLibertyReport

by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds

This is how states and empires decay and slide into the dustbin of history.

Democracy is fundamentally about advocacy: the people are free to advocate for their interests and form groups to represent their shared interests. In the broadest scope, the people are free to advocate for what they hold as the common good, policies and programs that benefit the entire populace rather than one special-interest group.

Since the state (all levels of government) concentrates wealth and power via taxation and a monopoly on force, groups advocate/lobby the state to recognize and respond to their interests. At the local level, this advocacy entails contacting city council members, speaking at council meetings, developing outreach tools (email lists, website, etc.), holding rallies at city hall, etc.

People advocate when they still have faith in their government. When they lose that faith, their only option is dissent. When advocacy yields zero results because government really only responds to corporations and the super-wealthy, then people lose faith in the representational branch of the state.

Continue Reading at OfTwoMinds.com…

from Dr. Steve Turley

from Dollar Collapse

Reprinted from Katusa Research:

I’ve had people from all walks of life ask me questions on this sector in the last 2 months.

And the number of questions, along with the number of people asking them, is astounding.

“Have you bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, Cardano…?”

These are people fixing my hot water tank, that work as elementary school teachers… some I haven’t even talked to in years.

Even the barista in the coffee shop below the office is talking cryptocurrency.

And that’s never a good sign.

Continue Reading at DollarCollapse.com…

from Gad Saad

by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org

What Seigel has to say here is just flat-out wrong and backward.

Anti-fear messaging is important to clinicians like me who attempt to help patients put risks in perspective. As a doctor who has both studied outbreaks and also the impact they have had on the human psyche, I feel it is important to provide context at all times.

Do you now? Well then where’s the context of these shots and reports in VAERS compared with the seasonal flu vaccine, which I remind you distributed 170 million doses last flu season?

On that data the Covid shots are one hundred times more likely to be associated with death than the flu shot was over a reasonably-comparable number of delivered doses, and like the flu shot, Covid shots were and are preferentially advised for older, more-morbid people.

Association is not proof of causation. But it is certainly a safety signal and claiming it is not is a lie.

Continue Reading at Market-Ticker.org…

from MiningStockEducation.com

[Ed. Note: Wearing a mask to a phone call is the ultimate appeal to human stupidity.]

from Zero Hedge

One of these world leaders is not like the others… One of these world leaders just doesn’t belong. Can you tell which one is not like the others, by the time we finish this song?

[…] Did you guess which thing was not like the others? Did you guess which thing just doesn’t belong? If you guessed this one is not like the others, Then you’re absolutely… right!

“…mask-up… it’s your patriotic duty…”

[…] Interestingly, President Biden also appears to be the only world leader who doesn’t have their national flag on screen…

But then again, it appears France has already surrendered…

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

from Bill Whittle

by Brian C. Joondeph
American Thinker

Media trust is at an all-time low, a majority of Americans believing that, “Most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” An Axios commissioned survey found that only 46 percent of Americans trusted traditional media, the lowest number ever recorded in the 20 years of this survey.

Gallup found similar distrust of the media, with only 40 percent of Americans having “a great deal” or even “a fair amount” of confidence that the media reports the news “fully accurately, and fairly”. The low point was a 32 percent level of trust in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president and he correctly labeled the media as “fake news”. 20 years ago, media trust was much higher, in the mid 50 percent range, despite Dan Rather at that time, a major network news anchor, lying about George W Bush’s National Guard service.

In other words, the media is lying to us and we are catching on to the lies.

Continue Reading at AmericanThinker.com…

[Ed. Note: This isn’t a new trick… Take a good look at the Nobel Prize in Economics sometime… It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the actual Nobel Prizes. Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandnephew of Ludvig Nobel, said the association with the Nobel prizes is “a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation.” It’s a smoke & mirrors performance that would make the Wizard of Oz jealous. These “awards” get as ridiculous as giving a “Freedom Award” to a war criminal like Henry Kissinger.]

from Mark Dice

by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade

According to the most recent 13F filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the biggest banks on Wall Street are each sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of stock positions – which we are now learning include highly leveraged stock positions for hedge funds called family offices.

The purpose of the SEC’s 13F filing is to provide transparency to the public as to the beneficial owners of publicly-traded stocks. Institutions holding more than $100 million in assets are supposed to file the 13F. But as the public learned to its horror over the past month, a reckless family office hedge fund called Archegos Capital Management built up stock positions estimated at $100 billion by borrowing about $90 billion of that from a handful of the largest Wall Street banks.

Continue Reading at WallStreetOnParade.com…

from The Rubin Report

by Simon Black
Sovereign Man

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Drug overdose deaths surged during lockdowns

The rate of US drug overdose deaths surged during the pandemic lockdowns, accounting for up to nearly 20,000 additional deaths.

The CDC measures the number of US drug overdose deaths over the previous year. In September of 2019, 68,757 people had died of a drug overdose in the previous year.

By September 2020, the number of deaths in the previous year rose to 87,203.

Continue Reading at SovereignMan.com…

from Styxhexenhammer666

by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Mish Talk

Confidence in the European Commission is on the decline in Germany. It is just one of several signs of rising Euroscepticism .

“Dexit” Is the New Brexit

Deutschland Exit, Dexit, is the New Brexit Discussion.

Germany’s far-right AfD party vowed to campaign for an end to coronavirus restrictions, a tougher line on migration and an exit from the EU as it finalised its election manifesto on Sunday.

The AfD had on Saturday voted to include a call for Germany to leave the European Union in its manifesto, as well as vowing to demand an end to coronavirus measures, complaining of a “politics of fear”.

Continue Reading at MishTalk.com…

from TomWoodsTV

by Ryan McMaken
Mises.org

President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country.

A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.

In both cases, of course, the stated plans to end military intervention have been framed in polite language designed to make it look like the US is leaving on its own terms—and also to allow the US regime some level of plausibility when it claims “mission accomplished.”

Continue Reading at Mises.org…

David Stockman urges the priority now should be ‘preserving capital’

by Adam Taggart
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity

Few people alive understand how Capitol Hill and Wall Street work better than former Congressman and financier David Stockman.

And he is deeply concerned that our current political, monetary and fiscal policies are setting the stage for an epic breakdown in the economy as well as the financial markets.

Risk is being grossly mispriced right now. Asset prices are being distorted into ridiculously dangerous territory by investors caught up in a flood of cheap liquidy as well as a widespread speculative mania.

Of the blizzard of warning signals that reflect this, here’s a gem — never before have so many money-losing companies been valued so richly:

Continue Reading at PeakProsperity.com…

by Alasdair MacLeod
Gold Money

Gold and silver continued to rally in lacklustre trading this week, and our headline chart shows that silver has now regained the losses since the start of the year, while gold is still 6% under water. In morning trading in the European time-zone, gold was at $1785, up $9 from last Friday’s close, and silver at $26.08, up 15 cents on the same time frame.

Silver has outperformed gold since the lows at the beginning of the month, driving the gold/silver ratio down slightly to 68.5. This is our next chart.

Having peaked at an all-time high of 125 on 19 March 2020, silver relative to sound money (gold) has almost doubled. For a monetary metal which over 150 years moved from a ratio of 16 to 125 was a major bear market, followed by an equally important turning point. Now that silver is in a bullish phase, we can see that the pecked line is a major support line for silver priced in gold. And the rally back towards it last April looks like a test that has been passed.

Continue Reading at GoldMoney.com…

from Gregory Mannarino

[Ed. Note: This ought to be popular at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia. I can’t wait.]

by Penka Arsova
LaCorte News

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly given a green light for the U.S. embassies and consulates to fly the LGBTQ flag on the same pole as the United States flag.

The story: Blinken’s decision was reported by the Foreign Policy magazine, which cited a confidential cable it reviewed, though it is unclear when the cable was sent. The reported move undoes a Trump administration-era rule. The state department, under the leadership of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, did not allow embassies to fly the rainbow pride flag from their flagpoles to celebrate LBGTQ Pride Month.

The cable highlighted that embassies can fly the LGBTQ flag to commemorate Pride Month but that it’s not mandatory. They can opt for other ways to show support for the LBTQ community but only if they are “appropriate in light of local conditions,” the cable reportedly said.

Continue Reading at LaCorteNews.com…

from Real Coffee with Scott Adams

The former Olympian, reality TV star, and conservative Republican will challenge incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom in an impending recall election.

[Ed. Note: America, you never stop getting more interesting. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!]

by Christian Britschgi
Reason.com

Former Olympian, reality TV star, and conservative firebrand Caitlyn Jenner has announced she is running for governor against incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the impending recall election.

“For the past decade, we have seen the glimmer of the Golden State reduced by one-party rule that places politics over progress and special interests over people,” said Jenner in an announcement email sent this morning. “I am a proven winner and the only outsider who can put an end to Gavin Newsom’s disastrous time as governor.”

The thrust of Jenner’s initial pitch to voters was to paint Newsom and his response to the pandemic as out of touch, hypocritical, and punitive.

“Small businesses have been devastated because of the over-restrictive lockdown. An entire generation of children have lost a year of education and have been prevented from going back to school, participating in activities, or socializing with their friends,” said Jenner.

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

from Michael Knowles

by Adam Hamilton
Zeal LLC

This young gold-stock upleg is accelerating, with fast-rising prices enticing in more capital. This sector has surged sharply to multiple major upside breakouts in recent weeks, which is starting to turn skeptics into believers. Despite their strong upside momentum being chased, gold-stock prices remain far from overbought levels warning of impending selloffs. This mounting upleg still has great room to power way higher.

Gold miners’ earnings are highly leveraged to prevailing gold prices, which drive this sector’s upleg and correction cycles. In early March as the last extended gold-stock correction was bottoming, I wrote an essay on gold’s momentum selloff. It concluded with “the gold-futures selling that ignited all this is finite, and is likely nearing exhaustion. After that, gold should rally hard.” We were positioned for a new upleg.

Continue Reading at ZealLLC.com…

from Harry S. Dent Jr.

by Brian Maher
Daily Reckoning

Would a man trust a fox to mind his hens? Would he trust a dog to mind his dinner? Would he trust a thief to mind his store?

Then why would he trust the government to mind his money?

“Man needs more to be reminded than to be instructed,” argued Samuel Johnson.

A man knows his nose squats in the middle of his face. He looks right past it just the same.

Today we remind men of the reason they initially chose gold and silver money — that is, why they initially selected sound money.

Continue Reading at DailyReckoning.com…

from Rebel News