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remus (at) woodpilereport.com

 

Policy

Ol' Remus offers his opinions as-is, where is. He rarely cites support for his opinions so they are, in that sense, unwarranted. He comes by them largely by having lived and watched and listened rather than by argument or persuasion. His opinions, not having been arrived at by debate are, therefore, not particularly vulnerable to debate. He entertains opposing opinion but he feels no inclination, much less obligation, to discuss or defend his own. Whatever usefulness or amusement readers may find in them is their own business.

Woodpilereport.com is an entirely private information service that is my sole property made available to others as a form of free personal expression under my de jure Preamble Citizen’s right as later guaranteed in the First Article in Amendment to the Constitution. Woodpilereport.com is not a “public accommodation” and it is preemptively exempt from any forced or coerced accommodation, via legislation or bureaucratic interpretation thereof or any dictate, directive, or decree by any agency of government or by any NGO or by any individual under any future “Fairness Doctrine” or similar charade. I reserve the right to refuse service - to wit: to refuse posting, linking, or mention of anyone or anything, at my sole discretion - to any person, agency, corporation, or other entity.

Woodpile Report is from the Hermetic School of websites. There is no advertising, no partnerships, log-ins, popups, subscriptions, print version, Disqus, feedback section, tip jar or shop. There are no trackers, cookies, LSOs, analytics or widgets. Posted links are cleansed of superfluous identifiers.

Although the sentiment warms Remus's tiny little heart, Woodpile Report has no mechanism for receiving donations or gifts, nor does he accept them by subterfuge.

Woodpile Report does not maintain an archive. Some issues linger on the server until Remus gets around to deleting them. Don't confuse Woodpile Report with a blog. It isn't. It's an olde tymme internet site made by hand and archives are a dispensable chore.

. . . . .

 

Privacy

Here at Yer ol' Woodpile Report all incoming email is automatically detected and deleted by instantaneously disconnecting before it arrives. Taking no chances, a clever device shreds Remus's hard drive into nanosize filaments and sinters them into a bust of Chopin. Meanwhile, from a hardened and very remote location, he sends a bot that deletes said email on your end by tricking your PC into self-immolation. Other devices vaporize every ISP that handled it and beam the resulting plasma into deep space. Then he sends a strike team of armed pre-med students to administer a prefrontal lobotomy so you can't remember your own birthday much less writing him an email. Finally, all persons in your zip code with the same last name as yours are put into the witness protection program. Now that's privacy.

 

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Disclaimer

The content of Woodpile Report is provided as general information only and is not be taken as investment advice. Aside from being a fool if you do, any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is solely your responsibility.

Links to offsite articles are offered as a convenience, the information and opinion they point to are not endorsed by Woodpile Report.

. . . . .

 

Copyright notice

You may copy and post an original article without prior permission if you credit the Woodpile Report, preferrably including a link. You may copy and post an original photo in a non-commercial website without prior permission if you credit the Woodpile Report .

. . . . .

 

Where the name came from

What's with the title Woodpile Report? Well, it's this way, from January of 2004 until mid-2007 it was emailed to a subscibers list. In that form it was titled the Woodpile Weather Report. A picture of ol' Remus's woodpile appeared at the top as both a weather report and, by documenting the progression from log pile to chunkwood to a split 'n stacked woodpile, a witness to the seasonal changes. It was the thin thread from which comments hung. As thrilling as all that was, the comments metastasized and took over. But the title remains.

. . . . .

 

Regime-speak

You're about to be lied to when they say-

a hand up
a new study shows
a poll by the highly respected
a positive step
are speaking out
arguably
arsenal
at some level
at-risk communities
best practices
broader implications
challenge
climate change
collectively
commonsense solutions
comprehensive reform
cycle of poverty
cycle of violence
demand action
denier
disenfranchised
disparate impact
disproportionately
diverse backgrounds
divisive
economically disadvantaged
embattled
emerging consensus
empower
enhance
evidence shows
experts agree
extremist
fair share
fiscal stimulus
fully funded
give back
giving voice to
greater diversity
growing support for
gun violence
hater
have issues
high capacity magazine
history shows
impacted by
impactful
in denial
inappropriate
inclusive environment
insensitivity
investing in our future
linked to
making a difference
making bad choices
marginalized
marriage equality
mean spirited
most vulnerable
mounting opposition to
multicultural
non-blaming
nonjudgmental
non-partisan, non-profit
not value neutral
not who we are
nuanced
off our streets
on some level
oppressed minorities
our nation's children
outreach
people of color (sometimes, colour)
poised to
poor and minorities
positive outcome
potentially
progressive
public/private partnership
raising awareness
reaching out
reaffirm our commitment to
redouble our efforts
research tells us
root cause
sends a message
shared values
social justice
solidarity with
sow discord
speaking truth to power
stakeholders
statistics show
sustainable, sustainability
the American People
the bigger issue is
the failed ...
the larger question is
the more important question is
the reality is
the struggle for
too many
too often
touched by
underserved populations
undocumented immigrant
unpack
value neutral
vibrant community
voicing concern
war on ...
working families

. . . . .

 

Hypercorrectness

You know who the media means by not saying who they mean when they say -


at-risk students
gang-related
gangbanger
low-income students
mob and rob
mobbing up
pack of teens
rival gang members
roving group
swarm mob
teen gang
teen mob
teen thugs
troubled youths
unarmed teen
unruly crowd
urban youths
young people
young men
youth violence

. . . . .

 

Tactics of the Left
Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have

Never go outside the experience of your people.

Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon

A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

. . . . .

 

How To Create A Socialist State
by Saul Alinsky

1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people

2) Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.

3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.

4) Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.

5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).

6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children learn in school.

7) Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.

8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

. . . . .

 

Moscow Rules
via the International Spy Museum

Assume nothing.

Never go against your gut.

Everyone is potentially under opposition control.

Don't look back; you are never completely alone.

Go with the flow, blend in.

Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.

Lull them into a sense of complacency.

Don't harass the opposition.

Pick the time and place for action.

Keep your options open.

. . . . .

 

Rules of Disinformation
via Proparanoid

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

Become incredulous and indignant

Create rumor mongers

Use a straw man

Sidetrack opponents with name calling, ridicule

Hit and Run

Question motives

Invoke authority

Play Dumb

Associate opponent charges with old news

Establish and rely upon fall-back positions

Enigmas have no solution

Alice in Wonderland Logic

Demand complete solutions

Fit the facts to alternate conclusions

Vanish evidence and witnesses

Change the subject

Emotionalize, antagonize, and goad

Ignore facts, demand impossible proofs

False evidence

Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor

Manufacture a new truth

Create bigger distractions

Silence critics

Vanish

Remus's antidote: tell the truth as plainly as you can. Humor helps.

. . . . .

 

The Five Stages of Collapse
Dmitry Orlov

Financial Collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost.

Commercial Collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost.

Political Collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost.

Social Collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost.

Cultural Collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost.

. . . . .

 

The Five Rules of Propaganda
Norman Davies

Simplification: reducing all data to a single confrontation between ‘Good and Bad', ‘Friend and Foe'.

Disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.

Transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.

Unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star performers, by social pressure, and by ‘psychological contagion'.

Orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.”

. . . . .

 

The Psychology of Cyber Attacks
Robert Cialdini
via securityintelligence.com

Principle of Liking - people tend to form trust with those they’re attracted to, both physically and emotionally

Social Proof - People are motivated more by what others do than a perceived or even quantifiable benefit

Rule of Reciprocation - Humans feel a sense of obligatory quid pro quo

Commitment & Consistency - Most people stick with their original decisions despite information that supports changing their course

Principle of Authority - Authority, whether real or perceived, elicits obedience in many people

Principle of Scarcity - People want to be included in exclusive offers and often make poor choices under pressure

. . . . .

 

How to prosecute anybody

Look around for "suspicious" behavior, i.e., behavior on the part of a private citizen that can be made to appear suspicious

Ruthlessly probe every element of the "suspect's" life, using the effectively infinite resources of the State, until enough "suspicious" behavior has been amassed

Assemble a huge list of charges to place before a grand jury

Present the case in such a fashion as to promote the less plausible accusations and obscure the more plausible ones, thus securing a grab-bag indictment

Offer the indicted person a plea bargain that will spare him centuries in prison and complete pauperization at the bargain price of a few years and/or a few thousand dollars.

Francis Porretto

. . . . .

 

Overused Military Sayings
Task & Purpose

Long pole in the tent
Oh and by the way
And getting blown up/shot could ruin your whole day
Bottom line up front
Zero dark hundred/ zero dark thirty
All of us are smarter than any of us
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt
OBE
Standby to standby
That’s not in your seabag
Hurry up and wait
Too easy
Only easy day was yesterday
You get what you inspect
Needs of the [service]
Ship, shipmate, self
Full spectrum
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast
Boots on the ground
Lackadaisical attitude
Soup sandwich
Warmy fuzzy
Shut up and color
Stay in your lane
Show me your war face
Just to piggyback on what the CO said
High speed, low drag
Dog and pony show
Shit hot
We got a lot of moving parts here
Break break
Are you tracking?
It would behoove you

 

 

 

art-top-gradient-650pxl-wide
gradient on blue texture
gradient on blue texture

Jan van der Heyden, View of the Westerkerk Amsterdam, 1667-1670

Although van der Heyden's views weren't strictly accurate in the topographical sense, the buildings in his cityscapes were recorded faithfully down to the last brick. "Photographic Realism" was a thing long before photography. His convincing atmospheric effects supported the clarity of the daylight. Van der Heyden died in 1712 at the age of seventy-five.

Westerkerk, "West Church", is a Calvinist church built in the Dutch Renaissance style, completed in 1631. For a photo of Westerkerk today, click here .

 

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Peter Grant at Bayou Renaissance Man mentions the unmentionable in his essay, Bailing out the states: the momentum and the prospect for violence builds. Excerpts:

If their residents find that government largesse is no longer flowing; and if they believe that they're entitled to such largesse; then they're going to get out of control and try to take what they want. The results are likely to be catastrophic for law and order, and civil society.

I think the ordinary people of America realize this. After all, that's why they bought more guns in March than any other month in previous US history. They're getting ready to defend what's theirs—and I believe they're right in anticipating the need to do so...

You want to know why my friends want me to upgrade their rifles? You want to know why I've been warning about COVID-19 as a threat to personal security, and suggesting ways to keep your shooting skills honed, even during the lockdown? ... Look no further.

Next

Aesop does some "napkin math", urges we all calm down, and makes recommendations, at Raconteur Report. Excerpts:

An endless total lockdown kills healthcare by giving them no patients. No lockdown kills it by giving them too many. Both extremes kill healthcare for everyone. Something between those two extremes is therefore called for...

We also know that the virus dies outside on warm sunny days in less time than a Superbowl commercial break. So the places we should be opening, weather permitting, are parks, beaches, golf courses, pools, etc...

So what we should be aiming for is picking out a sensible middle ground of getting ourselves out of this mess, while pushing as few people into the woodchipper along the way as is reasonably possible. Wearing a face mask in public and maintaining some distance between people in public, while continuing to find better ways to treat the most seriously infected by this virus, is a great part of that. It's also no great social burden.

Next

John Wilder looks at the downside of cheap oil, at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Excerpts:

The oil demand collapse will last for years, and will be in tandem with the economy. My bet? At least five years, if not a decade. A slowly moving economy doesn’t need as much fuel since you don’t have the money to drive, anyway...

But what happens when things start to get better, people start to drive more, and economies around the world begin to try growing again? All the drilling rigs are put up. All the drillers are doing other things. The companies that used to drill and frack the shale are gone.

Next

James Dakin at Bison Prepper emphasizes and repeats the bedrock of preparing—food. Excerpts:

You need food security, and you need it now. The guns and ammo are only there to protect your food. No one prolongs the lock down as food is destroyed rather than shipped and processed, no one, unless they are trying to hurt you...

Buy food. Do it now, and stop playing with all the other Prepper Toys. Stock that crap deep. This won't be over anytime soon. I still think you need to buy and preferably move to junk land. If the food distribution chains are failing, why would you think the economic system will stay in place? That means no job, ever again, to pay rent.

Next

Anthony Davies and James Harrigan at the Foundation for Economic Education say, "in times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t want to hear about tradeoffs".

Our daily actions prove that none of us believes that “if it saves just one life” is a reasonable basis for making decisions. Yet, when a threat like the coronavirus emerges, we go looking for an imaginary cure that will save lives without tradeoffs...

The uncomfortable truth is that no policy can save lives; it can only trade lives. Good policies result in a net positive tradeoff. But we have no idea whether the tradeoff is a net positive until we take a sober look at the cost of saving lives. And we can’t do that until we stop with the “if it saves just one life” nonsense.

Next

From Zero Hedge:

April is slated to be the worst month on record for U.S. auto sales. Edmunds forecasts that just 633,260 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. for an estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of 7.7 million. This reflects a 52.5% decrease in sales from April 2019, and a 36.6% decrease from March 2020.

Next

The Z Man reminds us the left is "A Racket, A Cult And A Corporation". Excerpts:

Ideologues do not need a practical motive like money or power. In fact, worldly goods are not motives for ideologues. Rather, they are means to an end. The ideologue seeks power and influence in order to advance his agenda, which often just means crushing his opponents...

One fanatic willing to report a close friend for unapproved thoughts is worth ten thousand police. Once no one could be sure of even their closest relationships, no one dares speak out.

This is what we see with the West. When the state, in the case of Europe, or Big Tech, in the case of America, declares someone a heretic, it is with the assumption that the auxiliary volunteer army of fanatics will take over the policing.

 

1960. Winchester magazine ad

 

art-remus-ident-04.jpg .22 rifles on offer were the Model 55 single shot, Model 77 semi-auto, and Model 69 target with receiver aperture sight. Also featured was the Model 94 lever action in 30-30 and .32 Special.

 

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Remus's notebook

 

Breitbart - Producers Warn America Is Facing Protein Shortage in Coronavirus Era ... the staggering acceleration of supply disruptions is alarming

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Cited here not as news, the coming food shortages haven't been news since February, but as a sort of progress report in general awareness.

Zelman Partisans - Hopped-Up Little Mississippi Dictator Decrees Police State ... bans open carry, cites § 45-17-7, the actual order cites no authority for this whatsoever

Cosmos - Earth ‘wobbled’ before two major earthquakes ... subduction zones are more dynamic on the observable timescale than previously thought

Free Thought Project - Cops Claimed Man Charged at Them, But Video Shows They Executed Him on His Knees ... police officers in Houston shot and killed a 27-year-old man

Taki's Magazine - Doctor Nicotine ... smokers may be more resistant to the new plague, a wonderful discovery for tobacco lovers, who have suffered decades of jihadist prosecution

Sultan Knish - Blue State Governors Lied, Thousands of Nursing Home Residents Died ... nearly 40% of coronavirus deaths in one of the hardest hit states took place in nursing homes

Excerpt: "Blue state governments lied, deliberately covering up the scale of nursing home deaths, while playing up the pandemic risks and the lockdown. Their decisions killed the weak and the elderly, devastated the economy, and transformed the entire relationship between the people and their governments... At least 7,000 seniors paid the price".

Shenandoah - This Time the Taxpayers Will Say “Let it Burn” ... with north of 35 million people losing their jobs and tens of millions more losing their businesses, it will not end with a political solution

Wall Street Journal - April Jobs Report Likely to Show Highest Unemployment Rate on Record ... suggest an unemployment rate above 20%

SciTechDaily - Gravitational King of Kepler-88 Planetary System Dethroned by Newly Discovered Exoplanet ... a planet three times the mass of Jupiter in a distant planetary system

Reason - New York Paid $69 Million to a Shady Vendor for Ventilators That Were Never Delivered ... has no background in medical supply

Babylon Bee - Inspiring: Celebrities Spell Out 'We're All In This Together' With Their Yachts ... exactly what America needed to get through this pandemic (satire)

Military - Army Says It Has Found the Best Fabric for DIY Face Masks ... four-ply microfiber cloth, which is popular for cleaning and polishing surfaces, filters out over 75% of particles

Organic Prepper - SELCO: This Is a Time of Massive Change and the Direction We’re Going Is Not Good ... all of this is nothing, compared to the situation that might come after this

TMIN - The Economic Numbers That Are Coming Are “Going To Be The Worst In The Post-World War II Era” ... America’s next economic depression has begun, and it is going to be really, really painful

Gizmodo - The Scientists Who Won't Give Up on the Warp Drive ... a way to travel faster than the speed of light without flaunting the laws of physics

Just The News - Oregon county creates race-specific 'grounding space' to escape 'whiteness' during pandemic ... no whites allowed

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Perhaps next they'll want reserved seats on buses and separate water fountains.

Science Alert - We Might Have First-Ever Detection of a Fast Radio Burst in Our Own Galaxy ... a Milky Way magnetar just 30,000 light-years away

Phys Org - Infectious disease modeling study casts doubt on the Justinianic Plague's impact ... historical research and mathematical modeling

American Gun News - Another Maryland Man Red-Flagged to Death by the Cops ... cops shot him through a window while asleep in bed. They also shot his pregnant girlfriend

Sounding Line - Map: Pangea with Modern-Day Borders ... Pangea existed from roughly 300 to 200 million years ago. Full screen map .

 

Stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Power grab, Sovereign Man - If you think about 9/11 in particular, its remarkable how much power the government grabbed, and how many freedoms they took away. What I’m most concerned about at this point is not the virus, nor even the economic devastation.They have us all cowering in our homes, stripped of the most basic freedoms to do just about anything. People are being thrown off their own private property because they’re not an ‘official resident’ of the town. Others have been arrested for attending a funeral. Others threatened with jail for their social media posts. There’s going to be a huge impact on our freedom from this astonishing growth of unchecked government power.

 

Weird universe, SciTechDaily - What was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planets, the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. If there is a directionality in the universe, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision. Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.

 

Weaponizing journalism, Front Page Magazine - “Local journalists are providing us with an extraordinary public service 24 hours a day,” Facebook's Campbell Brown, falsely claimed. Report for America’s model is finding young activists and parachuting them into local communities to purse some narrow political agenda. Except that Report for America is literally financing a fake news project which pays half the salaries of the reporters it embeds in local newsrooms, while its own funding comes from wealthy left-wing groups. Most newspapers are happy with the arrangement: it’s the readers who are cheated.

 

1939. Crane Texas

 

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Greater Metropolitan Downtown Crane, an oil town of about 3,350 on the western border of Texas. Crane today is an attractive town and the county seat, proud of its colorful history, including its raucous boom town days of the 1920s and '30s.

 

 

More stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Virus tracing, Gold Goats 'n Guns - In the U.S., ideologically-possessed and corrupt Boomers who have been in a heightened state of fear since Donald Trump was elected saw the opportunity to create the worst possible outcome in places like New York and California. Governors in blue states seized power they didn’t legally have and cried for help they didn’t need. So, now ‘contact tracing’ which is just a euphemism for total surveillance. China already has this. Western countries will now recruit tens of thousands of ‘contact tracers’ to go out and build their network for them.

 

Lockdown, The Z Man - You can’t help but wonder if what we are seeing is just a dry run for something more permanent in the future. I don’t think this was premeditated. Like the radicals of the French Revolution, our rulers are now captive to events they set in motion. As the evidence stacks up it is clear the lock downs were a terrible idea, but the people in charge have the whiff of authoritarianism in their nostrils and like a rutting beast they can think of nothing else. They are now busy dreaming up more insane restrictions just to humiliate people. It is increasingly difficult to remain a reasonable person. I’m getting a little salty.

 

Debt, Paul Craig Roberts - An economic system that enriches the rentier class by converting as much of personal income as possible to the service of debt is an economic system that is dead in the water. One possible way out is a debt writedown in order to create some discretionary income. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan substituted growth in consumer debt for the missing income growth, and by this substitution created discretionary income by loading up the consumer with debt. That load is now full. We are in the unenviable position of having very high stock prices in an economy that has no growth potential. The high stock prices are the product of trillions of dollars injected into financial asset prices.

 

1942. Office of Price Administration magazine ad

 

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Rubber actually was in short supply at the beginning of the war, but not in Mexico and Canada. Border states had easy access to new tires for personal use or for profit. Shortly after, synthetic rubber plants came on line. In this sense, tire rationing was "without basis in fact" for most of the war.

 

 

art-gradient-bw-&-colors.jpg
For adjusting your monitor

 




 

 

 

 



These past issues are still on the server
There is no archive

619 - 620 - 621 - 622 - 623 - 624 - 625

 


Notate Bene

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants and debt is the money of slaves.
Traditional

. . . . .

 

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
George Orwell, 1984

. . . . .

 

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

The socialist ideal eventually goes viral, and the majority learns to game the system. Everyone is trying to live at the expense of everyone else. In the terminal phase, the failure of the system is disguised under a mountain of lies, hollow promises, and debts. When the stream of other people's money runs out, the system collapses.
Kevin Brekke

. . . . .

 

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you … you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics ... It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel

. . . . .

 

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
H. L. Mencken

. . . . .

 

We have reached a point of diminishing returns in our public life. Hardly anything actually needs doing. We may in fact be past that point; not only does nothing much need doing, but we'd benefit if much of what has been done were to be undone.
John Derbyshire

. . . . .

 

The hallmark of authoritarian systems is the creation of innumerable, indecipherable laws. Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary government power via selective prosecution.
Ayn Rand

. . . . .

 

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.
Thomas Jefferson

. . . . .

 

When you are fed, there are many problems. When you are hungry, there is one problem.
NoPension at Zero Hedge

. . . . .

 

We have reached the stage where satire is prophecy.
Theodore Dalrymple

. . . . .

 

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.

To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Theodore Dalrymple

. . . . .

 

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This is number
626

5 May 2020