More Kipling…

Poems – ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

IF…..

IF……

by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Absolutely!!!

While each of us is ultimately a product of our own decisions and
internal choices, even beyond the influences of our environment, the
cultural atmosphere of our age certainly determines the manner in which
we are able to express our individual character.  The brilliant and
talented are sometimes cast into roles of poverty and obscurity.  The
obscene and devious often ascend to positions of righteous reverence. 
Good men are often painted as villains for centuries, while evil men
are regarded as saints for just as long.  The point is, the times in
which we live rarely express in an honest way who we really are,
unless, of course, we take hold of them tight, and cut out a new path
for history to travel…

Those men and women who drive forward without fear or doubt to
assert control over their destinies, and force their era to reflect
their principles, rather than their principles becoming a side-note to
their era, whether honorable or dishonorable, are invariably considered
“extreme”.  Most human beings waft about with the tides of time as
passengers; spectators watching events unfold from the sidelines. 
Those who swim against the currents, or who attempt to change their
flow altogether, are usually rare and confounding to the masses. 
Therefore, that which the masses consider extremism is often merely
that which they consider far outside what they have grown accustomed.

Frankly, history has proven over and over again that the majority is
usually wrong about most things.  Groups and collectives do not
create, or discover, or advance humanity.  Only individuals are capable
of this.  All great concepts begin as seeds within independent people,
and then spread like wildfire as they educate others.  A society that
strives for artificial normality and collectivist harmonization is a
society on the verge of chaos and death.  Only free hearts and minds
give man hope of survival.

More here…

Additonal on the ONGOING Greek Default….

Fitch Cuts Greek Rating, Says Debt Exchange Equals Default – Forbes

Fitch Cuts Greek Rating, Says Debt Exchange Equals Default

Wednesday’s action from Fitch comes a day after Greece secured a
second package of bailout loans from the so-called Troika – the IMF,
European Commission and ECB – worth €130 billion. The agreement with
private sector bondholders on 53.5% haircuts is crucial to reduce
Greek’s debt burden to a level that is manageable, at least in the short
term, but still awaits creditor approval over the next few weeks.

The deal is not enough to save Greece from a default though, Fitch said Wednesday

More here…

Greece Defaults!!

Greece “Officially Defaults” March 23, Banks Close

Wonder why European leaders appear more like a rotating cast of bumbling 3 Stooges than a team of coordinated fraternal bureaucrats throughout the debt crisis in Greece?  British investigative reporter John Ward of The Slog may have shed some light on to the matter of Greece and the strategically planned hard default of the beleaguered nation’s financial obligations at the close of business March 23.

More here…
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See Also…

Astonishing details of a Greek default plot hatched by Wall Street and the White House (with the knowledge of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) have been backed up by growing evidence of an undercover US Fed ‘swap’ deal to bankroll Mario Draghi’s eurobank liquidity programme . As a quid pro quo for this disguised loan, the US demanded a ‘leper’ default for Greece – with a much bigger European-funded contagion firewall than currently exists. But the plans may be derailed by intransigence in Berlin.

More here…

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“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling on a large scale.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Eldridge Gerry 1799

 

More Thanksgiving History…

Courtesy of Jeff Berwick…

Being born in America at anytime between 1623 and 1970 would have been quite a stroke of luck. You would have lived in one of the freest, most productive, and because of that, most prosperous regions on Earth. Luckily, America got its heavy socialism out of the way right from the get-go.

In 1621, the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock, had initially imposed a form of managerial socialism. The concept, like it is today, was for no one to have private property rights and to donate the fruits of your labors into a pool with everyone else and to then distribute those labors by need. The experiment, like every other experiment in socialism, ended in nearly everyone starving to death.

Faced with starvation or changing, they saw the error of their ways and let everyone take possession of their own plots of land and enjoy the proceeds for themselves. According to Jeffrey Tucker, of Whiskey & Gunpowder, “This led to trade, honesty, hard work, and eventually bounty. This is why the crop yields of 1621 were catastrophic and the yields of 1623 were bountiful. The celebration of Thanksgiving really dates from a market produced bounty. (The entire story is related by Bradford himself.) “What followed was truly something spectacular. This region, who had as its most cherished philosophy, freedom and liberty, went on to be the most amazing area on Earth. It attracted all the best from most other countries – mostly because those countries did not have the freedom, liberty and the subsequent prosperity of the US.

THE FALL OF AMERICA

Unfortunately, by 1913, America had fallen into a trap that has occurred so often throughout history. First, it forgot what made it so prosperous in the first place and, secondly, it forgot the warnings of its early founders about, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.”

And so, in 1913, with the advent of the Federal Reserve bank, the future for the US was set. It only took twenty years for this new system to bankrupt the US Government in 1933, resulting in the US Government confiscating gold from US citizens. Then, less than forty years later, the US Government was bankrupted again, this time resulting in any link to gold being removed from the US dollar in 1971.

More Here…

“Despotism,   or   unlimited   sovereignty,   or   absolute   power,   is   the   same   in   a   majority   of   a   popular assembly, an aristocratic council, and oligarchical junta, or a single emperor.”   JOHN ADAMS (1735-1826), U. S. President, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 13 November 1815.

Bottle Madness at the Federal Reserve…

Whether it’s a bottle of pills or a bottle of booze…  Fiat curency is an addictive that no men of power can refuse…

“QE3 is playing with fire. Or with a third dose of meth. Or another bottle of Four Roses. Choose your metaphor. It is a bad and deeply dangerous policy, all built on the insane view that if you stimulate a zombie with enough fiat money, it will start to live and breathe on its own.”

More here…

The “Best Quotes of February 2009″…

Doug Casey, Casey Research

America, which is basically an idea, a concept, is dead and gone. The United States is just another of 200 awful little nation-states that have spread across the face of the earth like a skin disease. There’s no longer any difference that I can tell between the U.S. and any other country.

There is no real haven for freedom in the world today. The best you can do is go where the governments are so unorganized that they can’t control you effectively. That’s one reason I like to spend time in Argentina. They have an incredibly stupid government, but they’re also very inefficient and ineffective. So it’s wonderful as a place to live. I also spend time in Uruguay, because it’s a tiny little country with no ambitions to conquer the world. The nice thing about New Zealand, where I am now, is that it’s a small country, only 4 million people, lots of open land. It’s got some severe problems, but it’s pleasant. I think the U.S. is going to be the epicenter of a lot of problems in the years to come.

…Europe is going to be hurt much worse than the U.S. Europeans are much more heavily taxed and much more heavily regulated. The average European is much more reliant upon the state psychologically as well as economically. So it’s all over for Europe and this doesn’t even count the problems that they’re going to have in the continuing war against Islam, which are much more serious for Europe than they are for the U.S. So Europe is fated to be nothing but a source of houseboys and maids for the Chinese in the next generation.

Gary Gibson, Whisky & Gunpowder
For the first time in history, currencies everywhere are merely paper…including the world’s reserve currency. The potential…the inevitability…of a worldwide bonfire of these little paper vanities staggers the imagination. The conflagration will be mesmerizing in its size and intensity. You may even find yourself enjoying the view…if you make it a point to be standing far enough away not to be consumed.

Peter Hambro, Peter Hambro Gold
People can see that the only solution to the credit crisis is to devalue all fiat currencies. The job of central bankers is to allow this to happen in an orderly fashion through inflation. I’m afraid it is the only way to avoid disaster, but naturally investors are turning to gold as a form of wealth insurance.

More here…

“Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments…. And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part.”
– Leo Tolstoy – “The Slavery of Our Times” (1900)

Gold and Silver Spot Prices…

…I have pulled the gold and Silver spot price charts and links due to the continuing and expanding disparity between spot and street prices.  There used to be a 10-15% premium over spot to purchase bullion at local retailers.  Now, the premiums are around 50% and rising.

Two interviews have been cited in recent past articles. They are so important, a repeat must be provided in case readers missed them. In a rare event shedding light on the positive side of the gold market, CNBC interviewed Jurg Kiener, CEO of Swiss Asia Capital. He points out the stark contrast of the two markets, paper gold versus physical gold. Kiener expects soon the US ‘gambling price’ gold market in COMEX and LME to eventually default after a titanic battle that began years ago has reached fever pitch. By that he means a return suddenly to physical price determination will come for gold. He concluded that when such an inevitable event occurs, THE GOLD PRICE WILL DOUBLE VERY QUICKLY, LIKE IN DAYS.

More here…

And from a different article…

Why Are People Using Ebay For Pricing Gold?

The reason that investors are turning to alternate reference sources for pricing physical precious metal is that the COMEX futures derived prices for metal are INCONSISTENT with the empirical robust demand story outlined above. In short, the COMEX pricing model appears to be FRAUDULENT, when despite overwhelming demand for the commodity we routinely and increasingly see “ BUYERS STRIKES ” in the futures markets like the one we experienced just this morning in gold and particularly in silver.

More on that, here…

Oh ye’ suckers…

“What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.” — Frank Adams

Solar Cyle 24… Where Are You???

From Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That):

Solar Cycle 24 just can’t seem to get rolling. IPS announced today (IPS is the Australian Space Weather Agency) , that it has changed its forecast for Solar Cycle 24, pushing it’s start into the future by six months. They write:

Due to the proximity of the IPS predicted rise of solar cycle 24
to observed solar cycle 23 solar minimum values, and the apparent lack of new Cycle 24 sunspots, IPS has again moved the predicted solar cycle away by 6 months.

The announcement came on the IPS web page, today, on the day that two small cycle 23 sunspots have started to appear near the solar  equator. Many had expected more cycle 24 spots to be visible by now, but the sun remains quiet, and has been producing more cycle 23 spots than cycle 24 spots so far since the first cycle 24 spot was seen on January 4th, 2008

More here…

“Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero. Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow.”– Horace – (35 B.C.)