Category Living in a Potemkin Village

Feb 13 2023

UFO Shootdown #4 – U.S. Military Shoot Down Another UFO Over Lake Huron


Posted originally on the CTH on February 12, 2023 | Sundance

According to multiple media reports, the U.S. military has engaged another Unidentified Flying Object over Lake Huron (Michigan) and shot it down.  This represents the fourth UFO targeted and destroyed by the U.S. military in the past eight days.

The dogfight between an F-16 and the mysterious object took place just hours after Montana Representative Matt Rosendale confirmed the sighting yesterday over Northern Montana was not “an anomaly” and was indeed an unknown flying object in the sky. [Tweet Link]

(Reuters) – The U.S. military on Sunday shot down an unidentified flying object above Lake Huron, the third such shootdown in as many days, following a week-long Chinese balloon spying saga that has intensified the hunt for violations of North American airspace.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the military had shot down the object. They also did not say whether it was maneuverable or simply floating with air currents.

[…] Meanwhile, Canadian investigators are hunting for the wreckage of an unidentified flying object that was shot down by a U.S. jet over Yukon territory on Saturday.

[…] U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who represents a district in Michigan, said the military had an “extremely close eye” on an object above Lake Huron, which is east of Lake Michigan on the U.S.-Canada border.

Canada also closed airspace on Sunday near Tobermory, Ontario, which is on Lake Huron near the U.S. border, according to Nav Canada, a private non-profit that operates Canada’s air traffic control system.

China denies the first balloon was being used for surveillance and says it was a civilian research craft. It condemned the United States for shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday.

With military and intelligence officials newly focused on airborne threats, at least two other flying objects have since been destroyed over North America.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told U.S. broadcaster ABC that U.S. officials think the two latest objects were also balloons. The original balloon was brought down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4. A second was shot down over sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska, on Friday. The third was destroyed over the Yukon on Saturday. (read more)

1) smaller than a car

2) shot down at 40000 ft

3) reportedly interfered with one of the jet fighters’ electronics

4) reportedly had no obvious means of propulsion or means to fly

5)  silver grey

6) US officials described the object as a “small metallic balloon with a tethered payload,” while other media reports described it as “cylindrical” in shape.  [*ability to evade detection]

7) Canada Minister of defense said they “defeated” object. Strange choice of words.

No pics of wreckage. Object over Lake Huron “decommissioned”. Rectangular structure. Taken out at 20,000 ft by F-16 with missile. Another object reported over China port.

Feb 13 2023

Likely A Worthwhile Endeavor – Matt Taibbi Looking for Research Help


Posted originally on the CTH on February 12, 2023 | Sundance 

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi is looking for some additional research assistance [SEE HERE]. Specifically, after going a little deeper on the Twitter Files, Taibbi appears to be recognizing the visibility of the Fourth Branch of Government.  He now needs to package the truth of it, in a way his former tribe will accept.

As a consequence, Taibbi is looking for (1) a reporter or academic with experience researching government contracts, and/or the funding of NGOs or academic research institutions; and (2) an infographics designer, preferably with experience in areas like ecosystem mapping.

Taibbi is a solid and inquisitive research journalist. However, he is still averse to recognizing Chicago Jesus as the originator of the modern issues he is outlining.

The issue of not accepting the Obama network as the structure that underpins the modern political surveillance state is common, even amid the tribe of walkaways from the progressive system.

Give him time, he’ll find see it.

From his current mission as expressed: […] “For decades, our government at least loosely complied with legislation like the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits aiming at the domestic population any official propaganda “intended for foreign audiences.” However, gloves came off in recent years.

In a remarkably short time since the end of the Obama presidency, the U.S. government has funded an elaborate network of NGOs and think-tanks whose researchers call themselves independent “disinformation experts.” They describe their posture as defensive — merely “tracking” or “countering” foreign disinformation — but in truth they aggressively court both the domestic news media and platforms like Twitter, often becoming both the sources for news stories and/or the referring authorities for censorship requests.

The end result has been relentless censorship of, and mountains of (often deceptive) state-sponsored propaganda about, legitimate American political activity. In the Twitter Files we see correspondence from state agencies and state-sponsored research entities describing everything from support of the Free Palestine movement to opposition to vaccine passports as illicit foreign propaganda. Some of this messaging devolves into outright smear campaigns, with efforts to denounce the organic #WalkAway hashtag as a Russian “psychological operation” serving as a particularly lurid example. The Hamilton 68 story (about which more is coming) hints at this dynamic.

The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation. Disinformation “labs” cast themselves as independent, objective, politically neutral resources, but in a shocking number of cases, their funding comes at least in part from government agencies like the Department of Defense. Far from being neutral, they often have clear mandates to play up foreign and domestic threats while arguing for digital censorship, de-platforming, and other forms of information control.

Worse, messages from these institutions are parroted more or less automatically by our corporate press, which has decided that instead of a network of independent/adversarial newspapers and TV stations, what the country needs is one giant Voice of America, bleating endlessly about “threats to democracy.” I’ve come to believe a sizable percentage of reporters don’t know that their sources are funded by the government, or that they’re repeating government messaging not just occasionally but all the time. The ones who don’t know this truth need to hear it, and the ones who knew all along need to be exposed. This project is about both of those things, too.

Foreign state media is labeled on platforms like Twitter.

I want to put labels on our own propaganda, and need your help to do it.” 

~ Matt Taibbi

If he keeps going…. he will see it.

[Understand Modern Fourth Branch of Govt Here]

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; that system was created by President George W Bush and VP Dick Cheney.  Instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.

The intelligence apparatus does not want their public-private partnership, between government and big tech social media, interfered with.  President Obama steps forth in April 2022 to put an exclamation point in place, saying the public-private partnership he created must control the information.  WATCH:

I cannot emphasize strongly enough; how close this collective demand is to a similar construct in Orwell’s 1984 prediction of “The Ministry of Truth.”  Indeed, if you follow the need for government control of information its logical conclusion, these demands by the U.S. deep state architects are identical.

I also hope readers can see this speech for what it is.  THIS is exactly what we were warning about when the shadows were moving feverously in the past several weeks {GO DEEP}.   The catchphrases “disinformation”, “misinformation” and “malinformation” are being cited by President Obama in that speech.   Where did that lingo come from?  THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY {SEE HERE}

At the top of all critical issues we must understand, share and keep focus on, the issue surrounding the free flow of information is the most critical.

Free speech, social media platforming, user bans, censorship, demonetization, financial targeting of Canadian truckers, Elon Musk purchasing Twitter then reveals the Twitter files, our ability to communicate, the culture war, the digital identity issue, heck, even your ability to read this, all of it, surrounds the central component of information.

This is the big war.  Controlling, labeling, emphasizing, downplaying, removing, information; everything else is downstream from this fight.

While President Obama talked about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation, it was only a week prior when the White House officially admitted to creating misinformation, disinformation and malinformation as part of their strategic campaign against Russia in Ukraine.  NBC news gleefully embraced the strategy {SEE HERE}.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has an official agency mission {SEE HERE} to “help the American people understand the scope and scale of Mal, Dis, and Misinformation activities,” and Google/DuckDuckGo/Big Tech have officially aligned with both U.S. government interests promising to target, remove and penalize any entity engaged in Mal, Dis and Misinformation activities.

Putting aside the creation of lies to advance a strategic geopolitical objective, the bigger admission in the U.S. government is that much of the information coming to the American public – from them – is manufactured, false, fabricated and wrong.

Simultaneous to this admission of manufactured lies, the platforms of Big Tech and social media are saying they will target, remove and block any content that contradicts the official government position.  The govt boldly admits they lie, and social media states they will block anyone who refutes those lies.

In the case of Google, the dominating search engine for information over the internet, they state it is an infraction against their policy to espouse a claim “that contradicts official government records.”  Yet, the U.S. government is officially admitting the information they are creating for the government records, is self-admittedly false….. and now in comes DuckDuckGo with the assist.

Not wanting to overinflate the CTH position, but this admitted reality is exactly why we have taken the following position.

…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”.  There is only information you accept and information you do not accept.  You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”… 

There are only two elements within the public discussion of information, truth and not truth.

In an era filled with “fact-checkers” and institutional guardians at the gates of Big Tech, let me explain exactly why it is important not to accept the speech rules of the guards.

When you accept the terms “disinformation”, “misinformation” or the newest lingo, “malinformation,” you are beginning to categorize truth and lies in various shades.  You are merging black and white, right and wrong, into various shades of grey.

When your mind works in the grey zone, you are, by direct and factual consequence, saying there is a problem.  You are correct; however, this is where people may make a mistake. That problem is supposed to be there.

It is not a solution to the problem to try and remove the grey simply because it takes too much work to separate the white pixels from the black ones.

You were born with a gift, the greatest gift a loving God could provide.  You were born with a brain and set of natural instincts that are tools to do this pixel separation, use them.

If you define the grey work as a problem you cannot solve on your own, you open the door for others to solve that problem for you.  You begin to abdicate the work, and that’s when trouble can enter.  The sliding scale of Pinocchios is one of the most familiar yet goofy outcomes.

Put more clearly, when you accept the terminology “disinformation”, you accept a problem.  The problem is then the tool by which authorities will step in to make judgements.  Speech, in its most consequential form, is then qualified by others to whom you have sub-contracted your thinking.

When you willingly sub-contract information filters to others, you have lost connection with the raw information.   CTH was founded upon the belief that truth has no agenda, nor does it care about you, your feelings, or your opinion of it.  It just sits there, empirically existing as evidence of information in its most pure form.

The search for truth, in all things, is the mission objective of this assembly.  Often, we don’t like the truth; often, the truth is bitter, cold, challenging and even painful to accept.  However, the truth doesn’t care.  Information in its most raw form is ambivalent to your opinion.  If you struggle to accept these things, that’s when you need grey.  The New York Times is not called the “grey lady” accidentally.

Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual.  But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present.  When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.

Often, I find myself struggling in the grey and complex.  It is not unusual to spend days researching, digging, clarifying a situation, only to discover the path to finding the truth is in another direction entirely.   Erasing everything and starting over is frustrating, but it is genuinely the only approach that works; and often finding truth is supposed to be difficult, that’s why it is rewarding.

In the digital information age, we are bombarded with information.  It is easy to be overwhelmed and need to find something or someone who has better skills at separating the black grains from the white ones.  All opinions in this quest should be considered; thus, it is important to allow the free flow of information.

I am not necessarily a speech absolutist.  There is some language that needs to be constrained if we are to participate in a respectful society, with grandma’s rules and knowing the audience.  The CTH has guidelines for comments for this exact reason.  However, those constraints need to be based on a set of inherent values.   When it comes to information it is important to draw a distinction from speech.

There needs to be an open venue for all information. Unfortunately, when we begin to apply labels or categorization to information, there’s an opportunity for information to be manipulated – even weaponized.  Saul Alinsky spent decades pondering the best techniques to weaponize information and speech.  Alinsky’s intentions, in the endeavor to change society by changing how language and information was used, were not good. He devoted his completed rulebook book to Lucifer.

Be careful about anyone saying we need to label or categorize information in order to control or remove speech from the discussion.

You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a God-given brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.

Unfortunately, the collectively aligned group of U.S. Govt, the Intelligence Community and now Big Tech, are saying they will put every roadblock they can muster in your way as you attempt to navigate through the misinformation they control.

Team Obama built the system, and now Team Obama are defending the system.

This also happened in April, 2022, the day before Obama’s speech….

….These are NOT coincidences.

Feb 9 2023

Ukraine Losing the War Big Time


Armstrong economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Feb 9, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

I reported last week that my source from Ukraine, not Russia, was placing the Ukrainian military casualties at 150,000 with 35,000 unaccounted for – missing in action. Including the civilian deaths, over 250,000 people have died. Ukraine is losing the war. With the UK claiming they will now train Ukrainian pilots and provide fighter jets, this is obviously putting the UK at risk and such pilots with a few weeks of training will only crash and burn.

Our targets coming into play for April and May are critical. We see major shifts in the financial markets coming even by June. The West has sacrificed the Ukrainian population in an effort to weaken Russia so they can run in and destroy Russia. Just as their plans for the Iraq War and Vietnam never worked out, this is only risking the security of the entire world for this Neocon nonsense where they always love war and hate every Russian – period! There is absolutely no reason for this war. It has been deliberately provided by the West.

This time, our computer warns, perhaps like the Oracle of Delphi, who told the King of Lydia that if he waged war against Persia, he would destroy a great empire. He presumed that meant Persia and his own. Socrates confirms the West will lose this one. This is totally unnecessary and pointless. We stand absolutely NOTHING to gain from this war – only losses. The Neocons always want war and they NEVER think what if they lose?

Some believe that supplying these arms is merely pretending to support Ukraine for they know that this will not prevent their loss. The West will be in a position to then wage war against Russia directly and they are hoping for Putin to attack outside of Ukraine to be the excuse. They will use Ukraine as a play for revenge against evil Russia. They have pumped out nothing but bullshit propaganda knowing that Ukraine stood ZERO chance of defeating Russia.

The West will then count the dead civilians and proclaim that they are just going in to wage war against evil Russia lying to the people with every breath they take. So get prepared,  for as we cross into 2024, we will be approaching 51.6 years since the end of the military draft in the United States. The draft law was due to expire at the end of June 1971. But Nixon decided it needed to continue and asked Congress to approve a two-year extension. In March 1973, 1974, and 1975. The Selective Service had assigned draft priority numbers for all men born in 1954, 1955, and 1956. However, the draft was never extended. It will probably be reinstated in 2024/2025.

Col. Douglas Macgregor has come out stating very clearly the reality of Ukraine.

Feb 9 2023

Head’s Up – Apparently, There’s a Limit on Tweets Now?


Posted originally on the CTH on February 8, 2023 | Sundance

Just an fyi, I encountered this issue with Twitter and cannot even express the problem on The Twitter due to the restriction.

If you want to help share the word, see if you can retweet this notification.

Like I said I cannot tweet or reply to tweets. So I have no way to notify followers or those who use Twitter to get feeds from CTH.

The CTH Account: “TheLastRefuge2” sent or re-tweeted 15 times today.  Apparently, there’s a new limit.  Additionally, exceeding the limit also means I cannot reply to any messages. So, there’s that.

Great job Elon Musk.  NOT!

Feb 9 2023

The Great Lou Dobbs Nails It


Posted originally on the conservative Tree house on February 8, 2023 | Sundance 

Sundance is that quietly salty cuss who prefers to swing the sharp machete alone amid the deep weeds; clearing the path simply for the sake of creating clarity and larger understanding about the topography of the stuff the professional political class would prefer to keep hidden in the weeds.   At times, he settles himself atop the bluff, opens his lunchbox and thermos to eat a simple sandwich, shirt sleeves will suffice as a napkin, while looking at the flow coming into the clearing…

Amid this era of insufferable pretending, our dear and rebellious non-pretending CTH friend, the Great Lou Dobbs, is a voice to cherish – he gets it.  There is a wisdom that comes with age and experience battling against the Machiavellian schemes of the professional political class; it also can make you quick-tempered, and that’s ok. Hell, it’s to be expected.

In this brief video segment {Direct Rumble Link}, Lou Dobbs cuts to the chase when analyzing the Republican party rebuttal to the Joe Biden state of the union speech.  Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee-Sanders delivered the remarks, they were poignant deliberate and accurate; however, they were also party managed, and party approved.

Just as Lou Dobbs has accurately and presciently called the Wall Street play-by-play for decades, amid the multinational schemes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce & Business Roundtable, Mr Dobbs accurately notes the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) as the originating approvers for the prepared rebuttal.  WATCH:

The Great Lou Dobbs is 100% correct.

The approved GOPe script, a construct of multinational financial influence and background motive, was/is intended to write President Donald Trump out of the Republican political framework. Governor Huckabee-Sanders went along with the plan. She, along with all of the non-pretenders, knows this, as all of them do. It is a sad acceptance to realize just how metastasized the political cancer has become, and how few can hold firm against the power of the corrupt political apparatus.

As I said last night, Huckabee-Sanders points about the damage from the Biden administration were accurate and well delivered.

That said, her acquiescence to the machinery of the professional republican system is both disheartening and pathetic.

Oh sure, she will backtrack sometime soon, filled with artificial pearl-clutching prose and promises of mistaken intent…. that’s the way it rolls. But once you see the strings attached to the marionettes you can never unsee them. Authenticity, trust and integrity are lost in sunlight moments when decisions are made.

CTH noted several weeks ago that based on the background moves in advance of Ron DeSantis’s reelection efforts, it became increasingly clear the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) was going to play a bigger role in 2024 in full alignment with the GOP establishment.

In some ways the leveraging of the RGA is the difference between the Big Club’s 2016 (Jeb!) effort, and the 2024 (Ron!) effort. It was obvious in 2022 with the amount of money the RGA poured into the FL governor’s coffers, a reelection race with a consistent double point lead, the RGA was not doing it for the 2022 reelection – they were building the DeSantis war chest for 2024.

The DeSantis management and branding group are in alignment with, and in close coordination with, the RGA.

At CTH we accept things as they are, not as we would wish them to be.

The Big Club is fooling many, but not here, not now and not today – or ever.

Once you see the strings on the marionettes, you can never return to that moment in the performance when you did not see them.

There are far more of us than them, and once people realize the scale of the duplicity and professional Republican corruption, the backlash against this Big Club branding and management team -together with their “influencers” and willing conscripts- is going to leave a lot of “conservative pundits” very isolated, alone and irrelevant.

:::SPIT:::

Feb 7 2023

Did Caesar Issue a Coin When He Crossed the Rubicon?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ancient Economies Re-Posted Feb 7, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I found it fascinating that you were able to calculate the funding of the war that Cleopatra provided Mark Antony. Have you done similar work to look at the funding of Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon?

WT

ANSWER: Yes. Where the Battle of Actium was a proxy war instigated by Cleopatra to try to seize control of Rome following the assassination of Julius Caesar. The best estimate I could make was that Mark Antony struck at least 25 million legionary denarii up to 35 million. Likewise, the coinage of Julius Caesar provides us with evidence of the cost of revolution as well, which is not recorded among contemporary historians. They were more interested in the reasons and biases of the time, not in the economics of the events.

Julius Caesar struck his Rubicon Coinage with the image of an elephant crushing a dragon-snake which represented the corrupt Senate. Some tried to claim that the snake represented Pompey the Great. Caesar had married Pompey to his daughter. He was greatly upset when the Egyptians beheaded Pompey and gave him his head as a gift. It is unlikely that the snake was ever a personal representation of Pompey. It was, in my mind, the Senate where the instigator of the civil war was none other than the vile and corrupt Cato. It was Cato who was the leader of the Opimates who controlled the Senate and tried to strip Caesar of all power which effectively forced him to cross the Rubicon.

It is most likely that this coinage commenced in Gaul, as part of Caesar’s preparations for invasion, in order to pay his troops. The number of dies suggests that this issue was also huge exceeding 25 million denarii. It most certainly was expanded when he acquired the reserves of the Roman Treasury that were left behind by the panic-stricken Senators, Optimates, when they fled Rome because the people never supported the likes of Cato or Cicero for that matter.

Elephant walking right, trampling on dragon-snake the head of which rears up before him, CAESAR in exergue. On the reverse, we see the emblems of the pontificate — simpulum, aspergillum, axe, and apex.

The coinage opens an economic window that allows us to understand the real motives and costs behind the events in history. This Rubicon Coinage reveals something far more politically significant than what the contemporary writers revealed. Caesar actually took personal responsibility for the production of this coinage which was obviously unconstitutional at the time. Typically, there was a treasurer also known as a moneyer who issued the coins. There is no moneyer on this coinage so Caesar is taking PERSONAL responsibility absent the possession of a qualifying magistracy appointed by the Senate.

This is why I call this the Rubicon Coinage for Caesar was declaring war on the Senate of Rome in this time of national crisis. The very creation of this coinage without a moneyer sanction by the Senate was a declaration of civil war. The symbolism of the obverse can hardly be anything other than the triumph of good over evil, whilst the reverse alludes to Caesar’s possession of the office of pontifex Maximus and he ended the corruption of bribing the high priests to extend the calendar to avoid elections. Hence, today we have the Julian calendar.

This issue of the Rubicon Coinage clearly funded the crossing of the Rubicon. How long this important type remained in issue after Cato and his corrupt Senators fled and the war with Pompey began is hard to say. It was most likely struck right up to the time of the final campaign leading to the Battle of Pharsalus which took place  August 9th, 48 BC, and the defeat of Pompey. It was on January 10th, 49 BC when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

It took just 19 months to bring down the Republic or 82.3 weeks from Caesar crossing the Rubicon to the defeat of Pompey at the Battle of  Pharsalus in the Greek region of Thessaly. Thereafter, Caesar now consolidated his power He was elected as consul (normally a one-year term) in 48, 46, 45, and 44BC. Because of the political crisis and the corruption of the Senate which did not want to yield any power to the people, the new Senate thus waived the traditional requirement that a consul had to wait 10 years between terms. Caesar was also granted the title and office of  Dictator which was a political position in times of crisis during the years 49, 48-47, and 46-44. Traditionally, the office of the Dictator was confined to just six months and he would be granted special powers to one man for a limited period to escape the bureaucracy to get things done. This was the means to deal with an emergency that threatened the state.

To meet the Republic’s urgent need for cash, Caesar resumed coinage of gold, which had not been struck by Rome since the dictatorship of Sulla (82-81 BCE). Most of Caesar’s aurei (about eight grams) are crude in design and workmanship in 46 BC. The moneyer was Aulus Hirtius who was a key supporter of Caesar. He served as one of Caesar’s legates in Gaul from about 54 BC and was an envoy to Pompey in 50 BC. He served Caesar loyally during the Civil War against Pompey and his successors in 48-45 BC. Hirtius was appointed as Caesar’s mintmaster in Rome in 46 BC, and it was at this time as a moneyer when he struck the first truly large issue of gold aurei from the spoils of Caesar’s campaigns. These aurei were poorly designed and executed with a veiled female head on the obverse, often appearing as a male, with priestly implements on the reverse. They were used to pay Caesar’s soldiers after the great triumphal parade.

Following Caesar’s assassination, Hirtius initially supported Marc Antony, but, after taking over as Consul in 43 BC, he raised an army against Antony at the instigation of Cicero and Octavian. His army defeated Antony at Mutina in April of 43 BC, but Hirtius was killed in the fighting. He left that political stage leaving Octavian and Antony masters of Rome. Hirtius was a loyal supporter of Caesar for he preserved and edited Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars.

It was during the latter part of 45BC when this particular series of Aureii was produced for Caesar’s Spanish triumph in October of that year. Indeed, that the obverse type of the winged goddess Victory clearly refers to Caesar’s victory at Munda against Roman adversaries. Caesar was a Populares, a man of the people, who was not shy to express his increasing disdain for the factions of the aristocracy – the Optimates led by Cato. Caesar even celebrated a triumph in the capital, an unprecedented commemoration of victory over other Romans illustrating he regarded the Optimates as the enemy of the people. The presence within the issue of a gold half-aureus, or quinarius, makes it almost certain that this type was minted specially for the Spanish triumph since the denomination was typically associated with the distribution of largess at public celebrations.

Lucius Munatius Plancus, whose name appears on the reverse of this coin, was one of the Urban Prefects appointed by the dictator in 46 BC to administer the capital while he was on campaign. After this prominent issue of aurei was minted under his name, he rose to the position of governor of Transalpine Gaul in 44 BC where he founded the colony of Lugdunum, and later was appointed consul in 42 BC. Although he supported Marc Antony in the tumult which followed Caesar’s assassination, he eventually became an adviser to Octavian and according to Suetonius he dissuaded the princeps from assuming the name of Romulus as a ‘second founder of Rome’ (Suet. Aug. 7) and instead on 16 January 27 BC he formally proposed that the title ‘Augustus’, meaning ‘revered one’ be granted to the young princeps.

It was not until Caesar received the unprecedented title of “Dictator in Perpetuity” (DICT PERPETUO on the coinage) early in 44 BCE, conservative Romans were horrified. To them, this was akin to a monarchy. Here is a coin struck before his assassination with the title DICT PERPETUO issued by the moneyer Macer.

They assassinated Caesar on the Ides of March – the 15th. Therefore, coins with the portrait of Caesar with the legend “DICT PERPETUO”  had to have been struck for only a few weeks. He was granted that title between January 26th, 44BC and February 15th, 44BC. It was on February 15th when Rome celebrated the festival of the Lupercal, which we call today Valentines’s Day.  That was when Mark Antony twice presents Caesar with a royal diadem, urging him to take it and declare himself king. He refuses this offer and orders the crown to be placed in the Temple of Jupiter. It was most likely at this time when Caesar took the title “DICT PERPETUO” as the alternative. Curiously, it was 30/31 days later when he was assassinated – Pi?

The conspirators who again fled Rome, also began to issue coins pretending they are defending the Republic, championed by the fake news of Cicero,. This is even when Brutus issues silver and gold coinage bragging that he killed Caesar on the EID MAR – 15th of March.

When Caesar was assassinated, that is when we see the coinage change. Mark Antony starts to issue denarii with his picture on one side and Caesar’s on the other.

We also see Octavian issuing even gold aurei with his image on one side and Caesar on the other. They even issued coins announcing their Triumvirate against the corrupt Polulares. We even see Augustus, after he defeats Cleopatra and Mark Antony, issuing coinage showing the comet in the sky that people took as the omen that Caesar was now a god.

The coinage documents events written by contemporary writers at the time. This was the basis of Shakespeare’s play – Julius Caesar. The coinage has both confirmed history but also opened the door to establish answers to important economic trends.  One with the coinage was it possible to answer the question of how fast did Rome really fall. By imputing this data, it became possible for the computer to even correctly forecast the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall in 1989. It is fascinating how it takes a finite amount of time to bring down a nation-state. When it starts to fall, it does so in a Waterfall type event. Rome fell in just 8.6 years.

Feb 7 2023

Farm Input Costs Continue Driving Massive Food Inflation


Posted originally on the CTH on February 6, 2023 | Sundance 

John Boyd Jr., President of the National Black Farmers Association appears on Newsmax TV to discuss the ongoing issue of higher farm input costs.  Energy costs, fertilizer costs, fuel costs as well as all packing and distribution costs that are associated with petroleum manufacturing, are continuing to drive farm costs throughout the supply chain.

After a review of the current farm output status, there is a very strong possibility we will see the fourth wave of food inflation hit this spring, in combination with several manufacturing and production facilities.  Again, the lack of consumer spending on durable goods has moderated the price in hard goods (supplies up, demand down); however, the highly consumable products like food, fuel and energy continue to experience upward price pressure as a direct result of Biden energy policy.  WATCH:

.

If consumers could eat missiles and weapons, the U.S. government would be offsetting the costs.  Unfortunately, for actual farming products, there is no government attention, policy or support.  Apparently, food is still not considered a national security issue.