Full screen recommended.
David Romano, "If Tomorrow Starts Without Me"
Read by Tom O'Bedlam
o
Full screen recommended.
"Dog's Last Day"
So sadly beautiful...
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Monday, September 21, 2026
"Hell..."
"Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing." - C. JoyBell C.
I believe it was Sartre who said, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just enough
to keep us from escaping." Look at the world... look around closely. What do you see?
I believe he may have been right...
- CP
"Facts..."
"What are the facts? Again and again and againwhat are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the stars foretell, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable verdict of history - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
- Robert A. Heinlein
And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"
"Yes, There Are Objective Standards"
"Yes, There Are Objective Standards"
by Paul Rosenberg
"The existence of objective standards threatens power, and so it has been ridiculed and excluded from open consideration. Reality, however, cannot be changed, and the fact is that we all act for life and against death. So does every other living thing on this planet. That makes life and death objective, definable standards.
Actions trump words, they trump ridicule, and they trump academic theories.The absolute standard of life as good is upheld, in actual practice, by every person who takes medicine or by anyone who avoids danger. Oceans of rhetoric can’t negate this. We and every other creature on this planet act to stay alive and to flee death. And so those trying to fight against absolute, objective standards betray themselves every time they take an antibiotic or buy organic produce. Accordingly, these statements stand:
• That which sustains and extends life is good or right.
• That which hinders or ends life is bad or wrong.
Why All The Opposition? Our need to extend and improve life has driven more or less every medical, technological and agricultural improvement of human history. Why, then, would anyone want to exclude it? The first answer is that they simply don’t see it. They've come to see an abstract, constructed reality as the whole playing field of life, and are struggling to find status within it. A second answer is the more important one: Life, if held to and pursued, negates power structures.
Life spawns chosen, decentralized and organic organization. Power structures, on the other hand, require humans (life-bearing beings) to be constrained: they require automatic compliance and couldn’t survive any other way. The lords of the abstract and constructed reality, then, must keep life and those using it within their constraints. They fear the recognition of an objective standard because it would make auto-compliance nearly impossible.
Life-spawned organization is everywhere, of course: It’s the way healthy families organize themselves. It’s how small businesses organize themselves. It’s the way little leagues and book clubs and tutoring clubs and a hundred similar groups organize themselves. This is the model of chosen grouping, and it injects life, decency and progress into the world.
The lords of the constructed reality require enforced grouping. They forbid, by any number of means, alternatives to themselves. That fact should condemn them right off, except that most people have been confused and conditioned otherwise... they’ve been taught (by the constructed reality) that the construct is the only reality, and that advocates for anything else are maniacs. The constructed reality, then, must destroy its opponents, beginning with God, who would be the ultimate objective standard. It must also trivialize life, which also stands as an absolute standard.
And So...And so, if life is a good value, we should act to extend and enhance it. We do that by using life-friendly tools like chosen grouping, voluntary trade, honest money, unhindered innovation and the virtues which accompany these things. We also do that by stepping away from the constructed reality: the virtual world of manufactured images, narratives and fears.
Fear, as I’ve noted often but probably not often enough, is a brain hack: It chains people within the construct: where they’re informed, endlessly, that they must believe what they’re told, because everyone else does. Life in the construct, then, becomes all virtual, all vicarious and all externally-derived. It is the antithesis of the model of Jesus, Jung and more or less every other independent thinker.
The alternative to the construct is to build a chosen society, centered on the golden rule. This model is known to work for us, being, again, the model of the healthy family, the productive small business and so on. Our way is the better way: the way that takes life as an objective standard. Because it is."
Todd Hayen, "Surface Thinking"
"Surface Thinking"
by Todd Hayen
"People don’t care because they don’t know. Simple as that. I know I’ve been through this a million times, but I just don’t think I’ve nailed it. Maybe now. It’s nuance, still, but it’s something more than I have written about before.
My stepson got married a few weeks ago, and I officiated the ceremony. Even though I did not know everyone who attended, I had the chance to talk to a lot of people. The wedding, by the way, was beautiful. I’m not really a fan of all the expense and hoopla that goes into these events, but I do believe rituals like weddings are important for keeping the psyche healthy.
Most people these days still adhere to the rituals of dressing up, looking their best, and formalizing the affair as much as they feel comfortable with - “I do” statements, walking down the aisle, the formal declaration of “husband and wife,” even “kissing the bride.” So it was fun and meaningful in that regard.
The thing I found strangely disturbing - and what inspired this article - were the odd conversations I had over the two days we were in attendance. Everyone involved, and most of the guests I am presuming, were liberals. Many, I am sure, would classify as woke, or at least leaning toward the radical left. I had one conversation with a distant family member who will remain unnamed (of course) who proceeded to tell me how Trump was the “most evil man in the world today” and how horrible it was that he was “in charge of the world.”
Well, Trump is certainly an ass, and he very well may be doing some horrible things, but he isn’t, by far, “the most evil man in the world.” And is he “in charge”? Maybe - and this is a stretch - he has power in the US to do his bidding, but he is hardly “in charge of the world.”
I suppose I can see how people see it this way, particularly considering recent events, but there is so much nuance out there regarding what’s going on in the world that we can hardly draw such black-and-white conclusions. I may know 10% of the whole story (that’s stretching it); you may know 20% plus; and I am sure there are people out there who know far more than 50%. But these people I talked to at the wedding (not just the conversation about evil Trump) probably know less than 1%.
Of course, the obvious reason is the source of information these one-percenters use. I doubt a single one of them reads anything but the New York Times, the Washington Post, or listens to NPR or some other tainted news source. Or, of course, they get their social-media news fix from Facebook, Instagram, or X. They join other liberal echo chambers where the aforementioned news sources’ propaganda is chewed up, spit out, and mangled beyond recognition - like a pack of hyenas devouring roadkill.
No wonder. How do I get to 10%? I read any and everything I can get my hands on. Mostly books by contrarian authors such as Orwell, Huxley, Patrick Wood, Desmet, RFK Jr., Malone, Whitney Webb, Michael Nehls, and Iain McGilchrist (among many others). I also read a lot of conventional history and conventional views.
I read Substacks, alternative news articles (OffGuardian, of course), and listen to and watch podcasts - not just the alternative stuff, but also the mainstream crap that is out there (you can’t avoid that nonsense). And after all that, I would hardly call myself “well informed.” But I do know more than the surface stuff. I know enough to know I don’t know enough. They don’t.
And there is good reason they don’t absorb the stuff they just so happen to come across that is different from the usual crap they gnaw on. I have gone over this dozens of times, so you all know it well. It isn’t just that they don’t read, listen to, or look at anything outside the mainstream - if they fall over something by accident, their mental system completely ignores it. We have been trying for years to get this stuff to them, and they are blind to it. But by some miracle, if it were injected into their brains - bypassing their woke filtering system - and if they were not brain-dead, they actually would know something more than the surface gives them.
So, what’s my point? Isn’t this the same thing we have all been griping about since the beginning? Yes and no. I actually thought at one time that “critical thinking” was the primary issue. That even if more detailed information were forced into these resistant brains, they would not be able to decipher it and come up with conclusions similar to ours. Not that they weren’t smart enough (IQ has not diminished substantially enough among the liberal population to make that a plausible explanation). It would just be a matter of a thinking method, and I believed they could not think critically.
Now I am not so sure. Now I wonder whether, if they had the details in their brains, they would be able to piece it all together and make sense of it. Take this whole Carney/Trump thing, for example. This is a clear circus of nonsense. On both sides. If people only listen to Carney complaining about what a bully Trump is, how he “surprised” him with new deal points at the last minute of negotiations, slapping his hand for trading with China, and claiming the French language isn’t good enough to consider - along with listening to Trump calling Carney “governor” and renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America (why not Lake Trump?) - how could anyone even begin to think they are getting any information at all from which to draw an intelligent conclusion?
Read something, sheepsters! Go deeper. What do the actual economic negotiators say? U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Canada’s Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Dominic LeBlanc (along with Chief Negotiator Janice Charette)? What about the dozens of other highly qualified people working on these trade issues behind the scenes? What are they saying? It is astounding to me that people only listen to these two numb-nuts when it comes to such complicated issues.
Obviously, most people are just too lazy to do more than listen to mainstream media sound bites. It is simply too much work to shove real information into a hardened and swollen brain. Have these people all lost their ability to think critically? Yes. But it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. The people I am talking about not only lack critical thinking. They lack the ability to think at all."
"I Still Believe Humanity Is Headed for A Mass Awakening"
"I Still Believe Humanity Is Headed for A Mass Awakening"
by Caitlin Johnstone
"I still believe humanity is headed toward a mass awakening, as unfashionable as that is to admit here in the late 2020s. The fashionable thing to say these days is that everything’s f*cked and we are headed to our doom, and that if anything changes it will be because the insanity of our capitalist system causes our material conditions to deteriorate so drastically that we are forced into revolution to survive. That things are bad because we’re a rotten people with selfish hearts who haven’t forced the revolutionary changes the world needs because, deep down, we actually like things the way they are.
People who want to look cool and smart in revolutionary political circles tend to say that if a mass-scale transformation of human consciousness were going to happen, it would have happened by now. That everyone’s already basically aware that we live in an abusive, propaganda-saturated dystopia ruled by tyrants, therefore our continued compliance with status quo politics is a conscious and deliberate choice made by the overwhelming majority of the western world.
But here’s the thing: anyone who has taken a deep dive down the rabbit hole of human consciousness and come out the other side knows it doesn’t actually work that way. Not on a personal level, anyhow.
Anyone who has had an authentic transformational awakening after a prolonged period of spiritual seeking will have experienced a sloppy, awkward, tumble of a journey into eventual freedom from egoic delusion. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t happen the way the mind imagines it happening. It doesn’t unfold in linear fashion, and, while it might have significant climactic moments after which nothing is ever the same, it doesn’t unpack all at once. It’s a clumsy, two-steps-forward-one-step-back ordeal whose most prominent characteristic is an absence of control.
But it does eventually happen. After a chaotic, unpredictable, frequently uncomfortable internal adventure, there’s a freedom, clarity, gracefulness and joy the likes of which you never could have imagined before the avalanche began.
I see no reason to believe our collective awakening should be any different. It’s not going to be a neat and tidy affair. It’s not going to look like the hippies imagined back in the sixties, with a prevalence of psychedelic drugs leading to a swift societal movement away from egocentric psychology and dominator politics. But we’ll get there. We are in the process of getting there already.
We are already a much more conscious species than we were at the turn of this century. Our ability to network and share information has exploded in ways that have turned us into a fundamentally different sort of animal. Young people care about a genocide which poses no direct threat to them as passionately as their grandparents cared about a war in Vietnam which they were being personally drafted to fight in. Concepts like “trauma” and “inner healing” are now household terms that our parents and grandparents were only ever dimly aware of. Any skillful spiritual teacher who’s been helping people reach enlightenment for a few decades will tell you that humans are popping out of their egos far more readily and frequently than they used to be. I myself am seeing the people around me in my personal life awaken and heal in ways I’d never dared hope for a few years ago.
I’ve seen too much to believe we cannot become a conscious species. I am more convinced than ever that we are headed there already. It’s going to be a shambling, shuffling mess of a journey, but we’ll get there. The human potential for spiritual enlightenment has long been an unaddressed elephant in the room in our estimations of what we can achieve as a species, but that elephant has been loudly clearing its throat as of late. We can’t run from our true nature forever."
"I Still Believe Humanity Is Headed for A Mass Awakening"
o
A Reader Comment by Jackabond: "There is no coherent argument from nature that suggests humans can transcend our natural selfishness. That is, in fact, an argument from super nature. The belief in an evolutionary, collective mass awakening that cures all that ails humanity is a comforting but childish absurdity.
Life is a complex struggle to find truth and meaning from an astonishing variety of contradictory and competing interests. Expecting billions of unique individuals to achieve collective enlightenment is pure fantasy. As Caitlin describes, progress is a slow, messy, and agonizingly incremental grind that takes us backwards as often as forwards. There’s no doubt that the world is better in many ways than ever before but can anyone truly argue that time has made the world any ‘gooder’? The penultimate ugliness of the current moment is sufficient to put that idea to rest.
Waiting for a mystical shift to make everything “all right” while remaining true to our nature is ultimately just a form of lazy optimism that keeps us from doing both the spiritual work and the hard practical work to to deal with our broken reality. That’s not being a naysayer Caitlin, it’s being realistic. Spell out your ‘naturalistic’ action plan and let’s put it to the test.
There are certainly natural processes that support a trend toward greater cooperation, but no coherent naturalistic argument reaches the strong claim of a collective awakening that eliminates our fundamental natural selfishness. That final step requires a non-natural cause."
Bill Bonner, "Back to the Zoo"
"Back to the Zoo"
by Bill Bonner
We’ve been using “inflate or die” as our model for the path
of the crisis. I’m retiring the model. “Inflate or die” is
no longer valid. The model has turned into “die or die.”
- Tom Dyson
Ardmore, Ireland - "We begin the week on a sepulcher note. Death awaits us all. And the Bubble Empire too. The Bubble, however, is still alive and kicking. But Mr. Trump’s excuse for a financial advisor - Pete Navarro - is already laying the blame for its demise — on Kevin Warsh. The Hill: "Peter Navarro says Fed’s rate raise is ‘a bad decision’. In a nutshell, Navarro wants more inflation...and he wants it before lunch. He thinks a little more gin in the punch will keep the party going a bit longer - at least until after the midterm elections. Warsh thinks we should all get some exercise instead.
‘Inflate or Die’ was merely a policy choice. The feds had no other option. They could keep the music playing by inflating the bubble, further and further...with more fake money and lower interest rates. Or, they could pull the plug and let it deflate, sag, and die a natural death. Either way, the end result was a corpse. The ‘die’ option was simply faster...more dignified, and more controlled. Hitting the ‘inflate’ button, on the other hand, led to chaos, disruption, corruption, re-election, depression...and often, to war...before ending in death anyway.
Inflation makes it possible for you to spend money that doesn’t exist on things you can’t afford. At a certain point, though, you just can’t afford anymore inflation. Only then will politicians give up on it. Which is why Navarro can relax. He’ll get his inflation...and get it good and hard.
Here’s how it works. You ‘print’ an extra dollar...and people take it up, say, at a 5% discount. Then, you ‘print’ another one...and another one. Each one is taken by the marketplace at a larger discount, until...the discount is more than 100%! Sounds absurd. But eventually, the fake money has negative value. When that happens, printing more money just makes things worse...real values go down, not up.
You run a restaurant. You serve a decent meal for $100. Then, with a little inflation, it goes to $120...then, to $200...and $1,000. You’re not making more money; you’re just trying to keep up with inflation. But at some point, traders give up on dollars. Then, the price tag - even if it is $100 trillion dollars - is actually worth less than your original $100 menu price.
Inflation upsets the economy. It distorts prices...causes financial ‘mistakes’...impedes investment...reduces output...and makes people crazy. Most people have less spending power...so ‘demand’ falls. Real things become cheap - in real money. We looked last week at how houses and automobiles have become very cheap - in gold terms. Labor has become very cheap too. In 1999, the median household earned 145 ounces of gold per year. Now, it earns barely 20.
Paper money always knows where it is going...and always gets there. $1,000 bills blow down alleyways; no one stoops to pick them up. Just since 2020, the dollar has lost 23% of its purchasing power. At that rate, around 2044, the dollar should be just about worthless. That is when it will be time to bring in the mahogany coffin; by then, the economy has already decomposed.
As we saw a few days ago, for many decades, the growth in US money supply has been two or three times greater than GDP growth. That will continue. Given the ‘inflate or die’ choice, politicians and central bankers will almost always choose inflation, as long as they can get away with it. They’ll want to ‘kick the can’ down the road...making it someone else’s problem. Sometimes, however, they will stand firm, tighten up, and let the bubble die. That’s what Paul Volcker did in 1980. But that was when the US government owed less than $1 trillion. Now, the total is $40 trillion...with about $90 trillion more in private debt...and trillions more in federal obligations.
Today, the politicians still want to inflate. But now, they are trapped. Dying is too painful to contemplate. But living is not so easy either. The interest rate cycle has turned against them. They inflate by borrowing. More borrowing means more debt. More debt means more debt service (interest rates), which increases debt and requires more inflation.
This is why Tom says it’s time to update our ‘inflate or die’ dictum. The whole problem is the dollar is overvalued...AND the government has made promises it can’t honor, many of which haven’t even come due yet. The debt has become such a crushing weight...that they cannot pursue either austerity (die) or more borrow and spend (inflate). Both paths lead to the same place...a gigantic default.
Now, there is no Volcker. And no Reagan to back him up. $39 trillion more debt on the feds’ books. And no way to deflate the Bubble Empire without striking the tents...firing the ringmaster...and sending the elephants back to the zoo. Stay tuned."
Dan, I Allegedly, "People Refuse To Accept Reality"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/21/26
"People Refuse To Accept Reality"
"The world is changing, and many people are struggling to accept the new economic reality. In this episode of iAllegedly, Dan discusses the rising cost of living, financial pressure on American families, older workers facing challenges in the job market, artificial intelligence replacing traditional work, and the difficulties businesses face today. From people struggling to pay their bills to companies reconsidering where they operate, the economic landscape is changing faster than many people realize. Dan shares personal stories, observations, and a candid perspective on what it takes to adapt and prepare for an uncertain future. We also discuss tax refund delays, buy now pay later financing, car loan problems, repossessions, business closures, and the potential economic impact of entertainment production moving out of California. This episode explores personal finance, job security, business challenges, economic change, and the importance of preparing for difficult times. Watch iAllegedly with Dan Golka for business news you can use, real-world financial observations, and an honest conversation about the challenges facing everyday Americans."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Gas Prices Skyrocket, This Is About To Get Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 9/21/26
"Gas Prices Skyrocket, This Is About To Get Worse"
Comments here:
"Honey Badgers"
Full screen recommended.
"Honey Badgers""Scott Ritter has humorously described the Yemeni Houthis as "the honey badgers of the Middle East, absolutely fearless and relentlessly ferocious." They just simply don't care. They declared war on Israel while all the other Muslim states just talked, and sent missiles and drones to attack Israel and attack any ships connected to Israel in any way. They totally control the 12 mile wide Bab-el-Mandab ("Gate of Grief") strait connecting the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, which transits 40% of the world's oil. Closing that is having catastrophic consequences on global economies, and the Houthis know it. And so it is...
Honey badgers are the Italian mafia of the animal kingdom. No one, and I mean no one, wants to mess with these savages. They literally wake up and choose violence daily. They are regarded as the most fearless animal in the wild and they back that up every day, all while looking like a ferret on steroids. They'll combat anything from lions, leopards, hyenas and even cobras and pythons. But how did they become so fearless? How do these compact sized danger-weasels take on the deadliest predators like it was a regular Sunday’s brunch with the girls? These are moments of honey badgers being straight up savages."
Comments here:
"Snyder Reports, 9/21/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 9/21/26
"Trump's Blow Up Threat:
What It Means For Gas Prices"
"Trump just threatened to BLOW UP Iran as Iran warns the U.S. will feel PAIN. Here's what it means for you, your gas prices, and your safety. President Trump says he is in DECIDING MODE on Iran - wipe them out, let them rot economically, or make a deal. As the UN General Assembly meets this week in New York, Iran is warning the geography of the war would expand if there's any U.S. assault, while Houthi ballistic missile attacks on Saudi Arabia escalate and U.S. embassies across the Middle East issue security alerts. In this video we break down the latest Trump Iran war threats, Iran's painful strikes warning, record diesel prices at $6.51 and gas at $4.47, FBI and Homeland Security warnings about threats on U.S. soil, and fears of cyberattacks on banks, water systems, and the power grid with China backing Iran."
Comments here:
"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom. 9/21/26"
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/21/26
"Larry Johnson: US Running Out of Oil"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/21/26
"Scott Ritter: Ukraine Running Out of Time"
Comments here:
"The Alert Level For The Iranian Military Has Been Raised To The Highest Possible Level As A Massive Escalation Appears To Be Imminent"
by Michael Snyder
"The Great Middle East War is poised to escalate to an entirely new level, and that could have huge implications for the entire planet. Diesel prices are already spiraling out of control, and strict energy rationing measures are already being implemented in impoverished nations such as Pakistan. Unfortunately, it appears that another round of fighting could be about to erupt in the Middle East. Within the past 24 hours, there have been a lot of rumors that the alert level for the Iranian military has been raised to the highest level possible. According to a major Iranian news agency, these rumors are accurate…
An Iranian official said Iran has raised its military readiness to the highest level, with response plans prepared at air, ground and naval levels to deliver a heavy, wide and surprising response to U.S. and Israeli forces and interests. Russia al-Youm network, citing an unnamed Iranian official, reported that Iranian forces have raised their operational alert to the highest level to be ready for any possible military development or adventure. The official said response plans have been prepared at the air, ground and naval levels, enabling a heavy, wide and surprising response to U.S. and Israeli military forces and interests.
Why is this happening now? Well, things have gotten quite crazy in the region over the past several days. On Saturday, the Houthis crossed a very clear red line by firing missiles at the capital city of Saudi Arabia…Saudi Arabia confirmed Saturday that the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group attempted to attack its capital with a ballistic missile, The Associated Press reported. Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the group attacked with a “large number of ballistic and cruise missiles” and drones to target the kingdom’s capital city, Riyadh, and the facilities of Saudi oil company Aramco in Yanbu.
The Saudis are absolutely furious, and they are asking the U.S. to intervene. On Sunday, both President Trump and Defense War Secretary Pete Hegseth unexpectedly made sudden returns to Washington… US President Donald Trump cut short his stay at Camp David on Sunday and returned to the White House. Simultaneously, Defense War Secretary Pete Hegseth departed a sports event in Texas to make a swift return to the capital, as the US prepared for potential wide-ranging military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
Hegseth left a college football game at Texas A&M University, while an official delegation in Copenhagen was recalled directly to the capital. According to a report on CNN by Alex Plitsas, the US was weighing extensive operations against Ansar Allah (the Houthis), in retaliation for rebel strikes inside Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has struggled to counter the Iranian-backed Yemeni rebels, to the point that it has approached Israel to enhance its defensive capabilites.
CNN National Security Analyst Alex Plitsas confirmed on X that the presidential session focused on reviewing strike options following a missile assault directed at Riyadh. “As I said last night, was told that the POTUS meeting at Camp David was to deliberate and review Yemen strike options. Today, U.S. embassies in Middle Eastern countries that are likely to be targets of retaliatory strikes issued warnings. Now POTUS head to the White House early,” he wrote on X.
Also on Sunday, U.S. embassies all over the Middle East simultaneously released new security alerts warning of “unforeseen escalation” in the region…U.S. embassies across the Middle East early Sunday morning local time issued security alerts for American citizens in the region. “Due to tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex with the potential for unforeseen escalation,” the State Department said in its alerts. The alerts did not state a specific threat, but called for Americans to “exercise heightened vigilance and be aware of potential flight cancellations, airspace closures, and travel disruptions.”
On top of everything else, we have learned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to the U.S. will be “significantly shortened”…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has significantly shortened his already brief visit to the United States. He will now fly directly to New York on the day of his address to the United Nations General Assembly and depart immediately after delivering the speech, i24NEWS learns. Netanyahu had originally been expected to begin his diplomatic visit in Texas before traveling to New York for his address on Thursday.
I think that far more is going on behind the scenes than we are being told. Just a little while ago, President Trump may have given us some hints about what is going on when he told Fox News that “very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future”…Mr Trump, who left the presidential retreat at Camp David earlier than expected on Saturday to return to the White House, told Fox News on Sunday he was in a “deciding mode” and that “very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future”. His options were “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal”, he said, adding: “My question is if and when do I blow the entire nation up?”
That sounds rather ominous. What would blowing up the entire nation of Iran look like? On the other side, the Iranians are reportedly considering a new law that would withdraw their nation from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty… An Iranian lawmaker said a bill proposing Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been submitted to parliament’s presiding board and is awaiting the speaker’s approval to be put to an open session. Hossein Ali Haji Deligani raised the issue during Sunday’s parliamentary session, saying the triple-urgency bill has been ready for some time. He said that given the country’s current circumstances and recent attacks against it, remaining in the NPT offers Iran nothing but harm.
Once they have withdrawn from that treaty, they would be free to start testing nuclear weapons. At this stage, there is no end in sight for the crisis in the Middle East. Instead, it appears likely that it will just continue to intensify. What this means is that the global energy crisis is about to get really painful. As I discussed on Friday, the Saudis have already told Europe that they won’t be getting any shipments of oil until November at the earliest. Needless to say, European leaders are scrambling to come up with an alternate plan.
Here in the United States, the average price of diesel set another record high on Sunday…
A year ago, the average price of a gallon of diesel in the United States was just $3.70. Now it is $6.50. We have never seen anything like this before. And some gas station signs are showing a price of $9.99 as a way to indicate that they are entirely out of diesel… Amid reports of gas stations in California showing maxing out at $9.99 for diesel, Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, told the news outlet Straight Arrow that this was also due to the displays’ three-digit limit. “I had a few moments and made contact with a couple stations,” said De Haan. “The stations did say their sign said $9.99, but they had done that because they had run out of diesel.”
Unfortunately, it isn’t just supplies of diesel that are running low. According to Newsweek, one gas station in Ohio temporarily ran out of gasoline last week… A social media post showing gas being sold for $9.99 per gallon in Ohio was in fact due to the station running low on fuel, Newsweek has learned, rather than the Buckeye State suffering particularly acute effects of the Iran war.
If the war in the Middle East escalates even more, things could get a lot worse. Most Americans assume that our homeland will never be touched by any of the wars that are raging on the other side of the planet, but that is not a safe assumption at all. In fact, the FBI is claiming that the Iranians actually “aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” on targets in California…
The FBI warned police departments in California in recent days that Iran could retaliate for American attacks by launching drones at the West Coast, according to an alert reviewed by ABC News. “We recently acquired unverified information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event the U.S. conducted strikes against Iran,” according to the alert distributed at the end of February. “We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”
In my opinion, the Iranians still have a lot of surprises up their sleeves. So do the Israelis. We are literally watching World War 3 play out right in front of our eyes, but most people still do not seem to understand this. Once the first weapons of mass destruction are used in the Middle East, perhaps that will be enough to get people to wake up."
Sunday, September 20, 2026
"ALERT! WW3 Trigger EVENT in Coming Weeks, Widespread Global Military Preparations Underway"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/20/26
"ALERT! WW3 Trigger EVENT in Coming Weeks,
Widespread Global Military Preparations Underway"
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"13 Signs Target Is Falling Apart Right In Front Of Our Eyes"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/20/26
"13 Signs Target Is Falling
Apart Right In Front Of Our Eyes"
"The Target boycott did not end, and the people still walking in are filming what the store turned into. Razors, deodorant, soap and even allergy medicine behind locked plastic. Asset protection chasing customers through the parking lot. A new demerit system handed to employees on paper, where twelve marks in a year ends your job. Shifts cut to twenty one hours a week, days off assigned without asking. Departments running with nobody left in them. Shelves with almost nothing on them. Stores quietly leaving whole areas and all citing the same reason. And a customer who could not get her own eyeglass prescription unless she promised to buy the glasses there. Every clip is a real shopper or a real Target employee, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. Nothing here is staged."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "We're In Serious Trouble - What Is This?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/20/26
"We're In Serious Trouble - What Is This?"
Comments here:
"Most Sought After Job In America Is Running A Burger Joint; The FED Can't Print More Oil/Diesel"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/20/26
"Most Sought After Job In America Is Running
A Burger Joint; The FED Can't Print More Oil/Diesel"
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"Russia Voted Under Fire. Washington Is Loading the Tankers"
"Russia Voted Under Fire.
Washington Is Loading the Tankers"
by Larry C. Johnson
"Two things happened this weekend that belong in the same frame, though you will not see them connected anywhere in the Western press. Russia held a national election under a hail of drones and cyberattacks - and came through it. And overnight, the United States began signaling that it is about to widen the war in the Middle East. They are not separate stories. The same barrage that tried to break the Russian vote also tore a piece out of Russia’s refining capacity, and that connects directly to the fuel crisis Washington is about to make worse. Take them in order.
An election under attack: Russians voted over three days, September 18 through 20, to seat the ninth convocation of the State Duma, their national legislature - all 450 seats. What made the final day extraordinary was the effort, backed by the West, to disrupt it by force.
Overnight, Ukraine launched the largest drone assault of the war. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, reported that air defenses brought down more than 1,600 drones across Russia since Saturday, roughly 450 of them bound for the capital region; the Russian Defense Ministry put the single-night intercept figure at 1,110, the highest it has ever reported. I will be candid: I woke up Sunday morning with no idea any of it had happened. The overwhelming majority were destroyed well before they reached Moscow. A handful got through - two people were killed and about twenty injured in the Moscow region. For those who lost their lives, and for their families, it is a tragedy. But set it against the scale: some seventeen million people live in the Moscow region, and their day went on. Then, through the voting hours, came waves of cyberattacks on the electronic voting system - another attempt to break the election that failed to break it.
Now the numbers that matter. Official turnout, per the Central Election Commission, came in around 56.7 percent over the three days. Ten parties qualified for the ballot. And in the four newly constituted republics - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson - turnout ran dramatically higher than the national figure, despite those regions being under active attack. People who face drones on their way to the polling station and vote anyway are telling you something about how much the franchise means to them.
The election was watched by international observers - independent-minded people, some of them frankly sympathetic to Gennady Zyuganov’s Communists, no friends of the ruling party. I spoke with several. Their verdict was the same: this was a free and fair election. I saw nothing to contradict it - no signs going up and being torn down, no one dragged away for campaigning.
Now, I know exactly what the Western press will wave in reply, so let me meet it head-on. Yes: the Supreme Court struck the federal list of Yabloko, the one small party that campaigned against the war, and Boris Nadezhdin was kept off the ballot and has since left the country. Those are the two names you will hear over and over as proof that the whole exercise was theater. It is not much of a case. Yabloko has polled below the five-percent threshold for the better part of two decades; the position it staked out - abandoning the four republics and the men fighting for them - is one almost no Russian holds. Excluding a marginal faction that stands where the West stands is not the same thing as crushing dissent, and it does not turn a three-day, ten-party election with 56.7 percent turnout into a fraud. The real spectrum of Russian politics does not run from pro-war to anti-war. It runs from those who support the special military operation to those who want it fought harder - and inside that spectrum the parties went at each other in the open, and the observers, including men who would sooner see a Communist in the Kremlin, judged the contest fair. On the evidence in front of me, the endless claim that Putin simply crushes all opposition is a fabrication.
Here is what the West consistently misreads. Russia’s parties argue fiercely about domestic policy - income inequality, taxes, education, health care, the ordinary business of any democracy. But on foreign policy they are united, something on the order of 95 percent behind the President and the special military operation. If the ruling bloc’s share slips, it will not be because Russians want the war to end. It will be because they want it prosecuted harder. That is the opposite of the war-weariness Western capitals keep predicting.
The refinery, and the squeeze: Here is the hinge the Western coverage misses entirely. In that same overnight barrage, a drone reached the Gazprom Neft refinery on Moscow’s southeastern edge - a plant that processes on the order of 245,000 barrels a day and supplies fuel to the capital region - and set it ablaze. Strip away the election framing for a moment and look at what that means for the world’s fuel balance. Every refinery knocked offline, in Russia or in the Gulf, tightens the same global distillate market. Ukraine, prodded and supplied by the West, is not only trying to break a Russian election; it is degrading Russian refining capacity at the precise moment the world can least afford to lose a barrel of diesel or jet fuel. That is the thread running straight into the second half of this story.
Washington reaches for the matches: The second development arrived overnight as well, and it points the other direction - toward escalation.
Late Saturday, September 19, the State Department sharpened its travel guidance, telling Americans outside the Middle East to seriously reconsider any travel to or through the region and warning those already there to brace for airspace closures and canceled flights. That advisory is confirmed and public. Alongside it came reports - which I have not been able to independently confirm, so I flag them as reports - that personnel manning Central Command’s operations centers are being recalled to duty, and that aerial refueling tankers are up and flying over the region. Anyone who has watched these sequences knows what airborne tankers usually precede.
The open question is the target. It could be Yemen and the Houthis - Ansar Allah - who have been trading strikes with Saudi Arabia and just put a plume of black smoke over Riyadh’s King Khalid airport. It could be Iran. It could be both. I cannot rule out any of the three. As I write this Sunday night, there is no sign that strikes are actually under way. So we will learn soon enough whether this is saber-rattling or whether Donald Trump means to escalate.
What we already know is that the global diesel and distillate crisis is getting worse, not better, and nothing on the horizon reverses it. The EIA now expects U.S. distillate inventories to sit below the five-year low through much of 2027; industry veterans reckon the world has lost something like seven million barrels a day of refining capacity to this year’s fighting. Last night’s strike on the Moscow refinery subtracts a little more. This is the box Trump has built for himself. He wants gasoline and diesel cheaper and inflation tamed - and every move he has made around the Persian Gulf, Iran, the Gulf states and now the Houthis guarantees tension stays high and the distillate squeeze stays on.
The market has been whipsawing on every on-again, off-again ceasefire rumor; crude actually eased into Friday’s close, near $104 Brent, on hopes that Saudi Arabia could restore pipeline flows. But if fresh American strikes land this week, expect that to reverse hard - crude spiking, equities selling off, the pump price and the diesel crack climbing right back up. These signals went out on a Sunday evening. Come Monday morning in New York, the odds favor a market moving the wrong way for a President who says he wants the opposite.
So that is where we stand. Trump, for all his talk of ending wars and lowering prices, keeps doing the one thing that makes both harder: pouring fuel on the fire. I will have more once the real shape of the Russian result is clear and once we know whether the tankers meant anything. For now, the democracy that is Russia did more than survive this weekend. It was attacked, and it voted anyway. Thanks for reading."
Musical Interlude: Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward, "Nights in White Satin"
Full screen recommended.
Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward,
"Nights in White Satin"
Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Forever Autumn"
Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, "Forever Autumn"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Planetary nebula Abell 78 stands out in this colorful telescopic skyscape. In fact the colors of the spiky Milky Way stars depend on their surface temperatures, both cooler (yellowish) and hotter (bluish) than the Sun. But Abell 78 shines by the characteristic emission of ionized atoms in the tenuous shroud of material shrugged off from an intensely hot central star. The atoms are ionized, their electrons stripped away, by the central star's energetic but otherwise invisible ultraviolet light.
The visible blue-green glow of loops and filaments in the nebula's central region corresponds to emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms, surrounded by strong red emission from electrons recombining with hydrogen atoms. Some 5,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Cygnus, Abell 78 is about three light-years across. A planetary nebula like Abell 78 represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience... in about 5 billion years.”
Chet Raymo, “When The Morning Stars Sing Together”
“When The Morning Stars Sing Together”
by Chet Raymo
“A Chinese proverb: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Which might be an acceptable epigraph for this blog. I can’t imagine anyone coming here looking for answers. Certainly, providing answers is the last thing on my mind. I would like to think you come for song.
We are, I think, by and large, a community who distrusts answers, at least answers that are vehemently held. We are made uncomfortable by stridency. By dogma. By the desire to proselytize. We wear our truths lightly, gaily, as a song bird wears its feathers. We are grateful to those who push back the clouds of ignorance and hold the reins of passion. With Blake, we sing their praises, a song we have spent a lifetime learning. We sing to celebrate. We sing because we have a song.”
"Where The Soul Rests In The Mountains"
Full screen recommended.
Walter’s Puppet Box,
"Where The Soul Rests In The Mountains"
"Along forgotten mountain roads, beyond the noise of crowded cities and rushing lives, there is a quieter world - a world where rivers whisper through the valleys, fog drifts between pine trees, campfires glow under endless skies, and tired souls slowly learn how to breathe again. "Where The Soul Rests In The Mountains" is a peaceful surreal AI music film about wandering hearts, forest silence, old hiking trails, rainy mornings in tents, tiny campfires, distant owls, soft rivers, and the quiet beauty hidden inside nature. Here, backpacks carry more than supplies. They carry memories. Healing. Freedom. And the small pieces of ourselves we forgot somewhere along the way. Mountains rise above sleeping valleys. Morning mist moves slowly through the trees. Boots dry beside the fire. Coffee steams quietly at sunrise. Birds sing through cold forest air. And every little moment feels alive again. This film was made for those who dream about forests, peaceful roads, cold rivers, soft campfire nights, handmade memories, and the feeling of disappearing into nature for a little while. This is not a story you need to solve. It is a place to rest. A place to breathe slowly. A place to remember what peace feels like."
"Native American Wisdom for Difficult Times: This Will Help You Stay Strong"
Full screen recommended.
"Native American Wisdom for Difficult Times:
This Will Help You Stay Strong"
"If the world feels overwhelming right now… this is for you. This video brings together powerful, grounded wisdom inspired by Native American teachings on how to stay calm, steady, and connected during difficult and uncertain times. These are simple but meaningful lessons about fear, patience, balance, and staying rooted in what truly matters. Shared through the voices of elders, these messages remind us that even in chaos, we can choose clarity, protect our peace, and move forward with strength. You don’t need all the answers - you just need to stay steady. If something here speaks to you, take a moment to reflect… and come back whenever you need it."
Delta King's Blues, "You Get Old, You Get Honest"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"You Get Old, You Get Honest"
"The older you get, the less you care about pretending. “You Get Old, You Get Honest” is a gritty, heartfelt Delta King’s Blues tune about leaving fake smiles behind, speaking your truth, and finally being comfortable with who you are. Warm acoustic guitar and soulful harmonica create a slow, laid-back blues atmosphere - perfect for anyone who has learned a few hard truths along the way. Age takes away the need to impress and leaves you with the courage to be real."
"We’re All 'Flagellants' Now"
"We’re All 'Flagellants' Now"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"The old FedEx envelope was clever, a work of art even, optimistic and colorful, signifying speed and progress. What a beautiful contrast to the plainness of the U.S. Postal Service. For years, I can recall dropping off these treasures and paying maybe $10 to assure their delivery across the country, even the world. For me, it was a fabulous symbol of an improved life, living proof that progress was baked into the historical trajectory.
But a few days ago, the clerk at the FedEx office confirmed a different ethos. There was no doing business without a scan of my government-issued ID. I asked for confirmation: So if I did not have this, there is simply no way that I could send a package? Confirmed. Then came the envelope. It was the color of the brown bag I took to school when I was a kid. Serviceable, drab, dull. Also the new one is stamped with a big green marker: recyclable. There is no design, no art, certainly no beauty. It’s all gone.
Its main message is suffering. What happened to the old envelopes? They’ve been replaced, the clerk explained firmly, with no more detail. A recycle exhortation suggests shortage. We have to reuse everything because there just isn’t enough to go around. We must sacrifice. The color suggests privation. It’s an aesthetic of sadness and penance. Then of course the price tag came: $26 for delivery not tomorrow but in two days. So compared with some years ago, we pay 2½ times as much for service half as good as it was.
Don’t complain. It’s just the new way. It’s the new way of life. What happened to progress? It’s been replaced. The new path is flagellantism: in politics, culture, economics and everywhere.
The flagellants were a medieval movement of public penitents that roamed from town to town in garbs of woe, flogging themselves and begging as penance for pestilence and war. They were infused with a fiery, apocalyptic and millenarian passion that they could see terrible moral realities to which others were blinded. The theory was that plagues were being visited upon the Earth by God as punishment for sin. The answer was contrition, sorrow and acts of penance as a means of appeasement, in order to make the bad times go away.
It’s true that there were people who did so in private but that was not the main point. The central focus and purpose of the flagellant movement was to make one’s suffering public and conspicuous, an early version of the virtue signal. In the guise of personal sorrow, they were really about spreading guilt to others. They would show up at any public celebration with a message: Your happiness is causing our suffering. The more you party, the more we are forced to bear the burden of the need to be in pain for your sins. Your joy is prolonging the suffering of the world.
Flagellantry is most recognizable in the aesthetic. The first signs I recall seeing of this occurred immediately during the panic of March 2020 when it was proclaimed from on high that a terrible virus was visiting the U.S. Read on for the ugly details…"
"Flagellantism: The New Political Ritual"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"Joseph Campbell was correct about the role of religious impulses in the human mind. They never go away. They just take on different forms according to the style of the times. Every single feature of traditional religion found a new expression in the COVID religion.
We had masking rituals that were rather complicated but learned and practiced quickly by multitudes: mask on while standing and mask off when sitting. We had sacramentals like social distancing and communion with vaccination. Our holy water became sanitizer and our prophets on Earth were government bureaucrats like Fauci.
Flagellantism did not disappear once the old president left and the new one came. Even after the pandemic ended, there were new signs that God was angry. There was the ever-present climate change which was a sign of Earth’s anger for being drilled and carved up for energy sources. And the bad country said to be responsible for the unwelcome invader of the White House - Russia - was now rampaging through the holy land of its neighbors.
In addition, the broader problem was capitalism itself, which gave us things like meat, gasoline, fur and other signs of evil. And what gave rise to capitalism? The answer should be obvious: imperialism, colonialism, racism and the existence of whiteness - each of which called for mass penance.
The pandemic unleashed it all. It was during this period that corporations decided that profitability alone required signs of suffering and hence the rise of ESG and DEI as new ways to assess economic value of corporate culture. And new practices were added to the list of the highly suspect: monogamy, heterosexuality and religious traditions such as Christianity and Orthodox Judaism that should now be regarded as deprecated, even as part of the underlying problem.
It was during this period when I found myself on an apartment hunt and observed a newly remodeled offering. I asked why the owner had not replaced the flooring. I was corrected: These are new floors. Impossible, I thought. They are gray and ghastly. That’s the new fashion, I was told. Looking it up, it was true. Gray flooring was being installed everywhere.
How does wood become gray? It dies. It starts to decay. It is swept away by rivers and floats around for years, alternatively soaked, baked by the sun and soaked again, until every bit of color is drained away. It becomes driftwood, a survivor of the elements and a symbol of the brutality of the cycle of life. Gray flooring is therefore the ideal symbol of the age of suffering, the proper material on which to move back and forth pondering the evils of the world.
In a world governed by flagellantism, ugly formlessness rises to replace aspirational art and imaginative creativity. This is why public art is so depressing and why even the clothing we can afford at the store all looks dreary and uniform. In this world, too, gender differences disappear as luxurious signs of decadence we can no longer afford.
Two other anecdotes. The overhead bins on the flight just now were largely empty, simply because most passengers chose the cheaper basic economy fare. This also requires they have no carry-on luggage and hence be forced to pay for checked luggage or travel with all their belongings in a backpack. We’ve gone from gigantic Louis Vuitton steamer trunks to stuffing things in pockets and hiding them from authorities.
Another case in point. I asked the man in the high-end shoe shop why none of the shoes had leather soles. Instead all shoes have these cushy rubber soles that seem weak and pathetic, and make no noise when one steps. “Everything has changed since COVID,” he said. “All shoes are house shoes now.”
I had no words and walked away, my entire thesis confirmed. Sure enough, all the data we have suggests the mighty triumph of flagellantism. Fertility is down dramatically. Life spans are shortening. People are sicker. Excess deaths are rising. We learn less, read less, write less, create less, love less.
Personal trauma is everywhere. The groceries are more expensive so we eat whatever we can, when we can, while hoping for breezes and whatever sunlight there is to provide just the essential energy we need to slog through another day.
Degrowth is the economic model of flagellantism, reducing consumption, embracing privation, acquiescing to austerity. We no longer declare recessions to be on their way because recession is the new way we live, the realization of the plan. The word “recession” implies a future of recovery, and that is not in the cards.
“Decolonization” is another watchword. It means feeling so guilty about the space you inhabit that your only moral action is to stay put and reflect on the sufferings of those you have displaced. You can of course say a prayer of supplication to them, so long as you never appropriate any aspect of their culture, since doing so would seem to affirm your rights as a human being.
You want joy, beauty, color, drama, adventure and love? It’s not gone entirely. Park yourself on a yoga mat on your gray floor and open your computer. Stream something on one of many streaming services you have been provided. Or become a gamer. There you will find what you seek. The experiences you seek you can only observe as an outsider looking in. It is not participatory. Social distancing never went away; it is how we live in a new age of unending penance.
So, you see, it’s not just about eating bugs. It’s about a whole theory and practice of life and salvation itself, a new religion to replace all the old ones. Cough up your government-issued ID, send your package if you must, think twice before complaining about anything on social media and figure out a way to channel your depression and despair into quiet humble gratitude and acquiescence. Don’t forget to recycle. The flagellants have taken over the world."
o
"In a scene from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a group of monks are depicted singing plainchant while on a procession through the streets of a medieval village. After chanting the first few lines of text, the monks abruptly hit themselves in the face and repeatedly do so during their procession. Although this scene was undoubtedly filmed for comedic purposes, and the movie, in general, propagates a number of historically questionable stereotypes of the Middle Ages, the act of monks singing while engaging in self-harm is historically sound. In fact, this scene reflects the practices of a group of traveling medieval flagellants who would whip themselves while singing songs of penance for the purpose of placating God."
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