Canadian Prepper, 11/1/26
"Alert! Multiple Nuclear Alert Cyberattacks;
Oil Refineries Burning"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Sunday, November 1, 2026
"When I See..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
○
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is upon us.
God help us, God help us all...
"People Don't Realize What's Happening, Things Could Break Loose Any Time Soon"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/1/26
"People Don't Realize What's Happening,
Things Could Break Loose Any Time Soon"
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Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
Click image for larger size.
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."
"Beyond the Palace Gates"
Full screen recommended.
"Beyond the Palace Gates"
"Step into a world beyond reality, where magnificent palaces shimmer beneath celestial skies, crystal pathways lead to hidden places, and every turn reveals another dreamlike wonder. This relaxing fantasy journey takes you through an enchanted world of luxurious palaces, glowing gardens, sparkling crystals, and breathtaking scenery accompanied by peaceful ethereal music. Created for moments when you simply want to escape. Perfect for relaxation and unwinding, studying and reading, meditation, sleep and peaceful evenings, background ambience, dreaming and escaping into another world. Relax, settle in, and journey Somewhere Beyond."
Delta Blues Brother, "We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted"
Full screen recommended.
"We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted"
"Not every ending is loud. Some friendships don’t break… They fade. “We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted” is a Delta blues reflection on time, distance, and the quiet way life pulls people in different directions. No fights. No closure. Just… less and less."
Native Elder Speaks, "The Truth About America"
The Poet: Robert Service, "Prelude"
"Prelude"
"In youth I gnawed life's bitter rind
And shared the rugged lot
Of fellows rude and unrefined,
Frustrated and forgot;
And now alas! it is too late
My sorry ways to mend,
So sadly I accept my fate,
A Roughneck to the end.
Profanity is in my voice
And slag is in my rhyme,
For I have mucked with men who curse
And grovel in the grime;
My fingers were not formed, I fear,
To frame a pretty pen,
So please forgive me if I veer
From Virtue now and then.
For I would be the living voice,
Though raucous is its tone,
Of men who rarely may rejoice,
Yet barely ever moan:
The rovers of the raw-ribbed lands,
The lads of lowly worth,
The scallywags with scaley hands
Who weld the ends of earth."
- Robert Service
Jeffrey Sachs, "Be Prepared For What's Coming..."
Jeffrey Sachs, "Be Prepared For What's Coming..."
"Jeffrey Sachs exposes the decades-long history of Middle East conflicts, questioning the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran. He argues that military intervention has brought enormous human and economic costs while making regional instability worse. Sachs also discusses Netanyahu's influence on U.S. foreign policy, Trump's broken promises, and why he believes a two-state solution is essential for lasting peace."
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"As Governments Around The World Urge Their Citizens To Prepare, Here Are 3 Key Things To Watch This Week"
by Michael Snyder
"Can you feel it? There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the air, and it appears that things could be about to break loose all around us. On Friday, chaos erupted on Wall Street as tech stocks crashed really hard. Most people don’t realize this, but nearly five trillion dollars in tech stock wealth has already been wiped out on the Nasdaq 100 since October 6th. Meanwhile, there was more violent rioting in Europe this weekend, the upcoming midterm elections could spark similar rioting here in the United States, and on top of everything else the Middle East is bracing for renewed fighting with Iran. This could potentially be a week that we will remember for a long time to come.
Last week, social media was absolutely buzzing with speculation about why governments all over the world are suddenly urging their citizens to stockpile food, water and emergency supplies…Governments across Europe and Asia are increasingly asking households to prepare for emergencies by keeping essential supplies at home, from drinking water and non-perishable food to medicines, batteries and cash. The guidance is drawing attention as officials warn that natural disasters, cyberattacks and hostile-state activity could disrupt everyday services sooner than expected. Times Now reported earlier that Japan is preparing a nationwide disaster-readiness appeal, while Britain launched its ‘Be Ready’ public campaign urging households to remain self-sufficient for at least 72 hours.
Now France has released official guidance for assembling a three-day emergency kit. The announcements have emerged amid heightened geopolitical tensions, leading to concerns worldwide. According to Daniel Aldrich, Dean’s Professor of Resilience at Northeastern University, “We are living through a polycrisis. Shocks no longer arrive one at a time. A storm knocks out power, the outage freezes payment systems, and a cyber intrusion lands on top of both.”
In most cases, people are being encouraged to have enough to survive for 72 hours. But in Germany, officials are instructing citizens to have at least a 10 day supply… Germany recommends that residents maintain enough food, water, and other necessities to sustain themselves for up to 10 days. Its Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) acknowledges that not every household can immediately build a 10-day supply, making three days of preparedness a practical starting point. The agency’s updated guidance addresses prolonged power outages, extreme weather, misinformation, and security emergencies, including situations involving armed conflict.
What do they think is going to happen? Even as governments issue these ominous instructions, they are assuring us that everything is fine, but meanwhile the U.S. Army is preparing for a scenario in which the digging of “mass battlefield graves” will be necessary…"The U.S. Army has conducted military exercises involving the excavation of mass battlefield graves, preparing for a potential future war in which casualties could become so overwhelming that bringing fallen soldiers home promptly would no longer be possible.
The drills, dubbed Operation Dragon Covenant, were held in North Carolina earlier this month and brought together military engineers, chaplains, medical personnel, and fatality management specialists to practice burying large numbers of bodies in temporary battlefield trenches, Army Times reports. Engineers reportedly used D6 bulldozers to excavate trenches capable of holding 20 bodies in roughly 75 minutes. Commanders calculated that a properly equipped engineering company could dig and cover trenches for 2,400 bodies in 24 hours of nonstop operations."
Without a doubt, I do believe that global events are reaching a critical turning point. On Monday, we will want to watch the financial markets very closely, because last week ended very badly. Stocks tend to fall a lot faster than they rise, and what we just witnessed was absolutely stunning. On Friday, approximately 2 trillion dollars in stock market wealth was suddenly wiped out…
Some were calling it “Bloody Friday”, and Intel got hit particularly hard… Intel, meanwhile, tanked almost 29% after issuing a weak outlook for the current quarter, pointing to a slowdown in PCs. Revenue in the company’s client computing and physical artificial intelligence group declined 5% from the year-ago quarter to $8.1 billion.
Sandisk was also down 13%, even as its fiscal first quarter results beat estimates. The data storage company announced an eight-for-one forward stock split. Chipmakers more broadly were under pressure as well. Advanced Micro Devices dropped close to 11%, while others such as Nvidia and Broadcom fell 4% and 5%, respectively.
What goes up must eventually come down. Over the past year, investors have engaged in an epic borrowing binge, and when margin debt increases so rapidly it almost always has a bad ending… Investors are borrowing heavily against their portfolios to boost their returns. Over the past year, margin debt has increased by 49%. That’s a bad omen. According to Fundstrat Global Advisors, whenever margin debt has grown more than 45% year-over-year since 1960, the market has declined five out of six times (83%). That’s a signal worth watching.
Of course it isn’t just U.S. stocks that have been falling. Last week, global investors lost a grand total of nearly 5 trillion dollars…
Now we will wait to see what happens on Monday. If global markets bounce back, that will be a very good sign. If they do not, that could be a harbinger of bad things to come.
On Tuesday, the focus will be on the midterm elections in the United States. Historically, the party that is holding the White House does not do well… Pain is the norm for White House incumbents when the midterms roll around. In 1994, Bill Clinton suffered a 54-seat setback in the House of Representatives; in 2010, Barack Obama lost 63; in 2018, Trump himself lost 40.
Democrats are expecting to do extremely well on Tuesday, and the polls are reinforcing those expectations… With Republicans clinging to a paper-thin 218–214 margin in the House and 53–47 lead in the Senate, opinion polls indicate a rising “blue wave”. A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey gave Democrats an 11-point lead, 47% to 36%, on the generic congressional ballot, while Trump’s approval rating stood at 32%. Voters will also choose governors in 36 states and three US territories, and decide thousands of state legislative contests.
At this stage, the left believes that winning the House is absolutely certain and they are being told that there is about a 70 percent chance that they will win the Senate too. If the Democrats do not win the Senate, the left will be extremely angry. The most important Senate races to watch are Texas, Alaska and Michigan. And if the Democrats do not win the House, the left will go absolutely ballistic. Let’s watch and see what happens.
A lot of political anger has been building up for months, and it won’t take much to cause a major explosion. In the aftermath of the midterms, just about everyone is expecting the U.S. and Israel to bomb Iran. In anticipation of that operation, cargo aircraft have been transporting air defense batteries to Israel…The US has transferred 10 military cargo aircraft to Israeli air bases in the southern Negev region amid preparations for a possible military strike against Iran, the Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported Thursday. The broadcaster said the aircraft landed at Ovda and Nevatim air bases, while additional US military planes were reportedly dispatched to bases in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
According to KAN, the planes departed from Fort Bliss in the US state of Texas, which houses one of the US military’s largest air defense centers, including facilities associated with interceptor missiles and air defense batteries. It has also been pointed out that at least 13 KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft are currently parked at Israel’s Ramon International Airport…
All of the military assets needed for the coming operation are either in place or will be in place shortly. The Iranians know this, and they are threatening to respond with an “earth-shattering blow”… Iran threatened an “earth-shattering blow” against the United States and Israel on Saturday, warning that “red lines are a thing of the past” if either resumes military strikes against the Islamic Republic, as President Donald Trump weighs renewed action amid escalating threats from Tehran. If there are no more red lines, what sort of weapons might they use?
We are also being warned that Iran will no longer limit themselves to attacks in the Middle East… Iran’s rapidly evolving defense doctrine allows military retaliation beyond the geographical area from which an attack originates, Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said Sunday. “The geography of a threat no longer determines the geography of the response,” Mokhber wrote on X, describing what he called a “rapid shift” in Tehran’s military strategy.
Most people assume that Iran could never threaten those of us living in the United States and Europe. That is not a safe assumption at all. The Iranians have far more cards up their sleeves than most people realize. And if they push things too far, that could spark an all-out apocalyptic showdown in the Middle East. Decisions that are made this week could radically alter the course of human history. So buckle up and hold on tight, because I have a feeling that things are about to get really wild."
Joel Bowman, "Voluntary Exiles"
"Voluntary Exiles"
by Joel Bowman
“Men who dreamed, and then realized their dreams. Men filled with wonder,
with longing, with ecstasy. Sailing straight for the unknown, finding it, realizing it...”
~ Henry Miller, from "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" (1945)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "We’ve enjoyed the good fortune of late to dine with a few of your fellow readers. Over juicy steaks and ample malbec, we exchanged stories and compared Notes, trying to make sense of the world around us. From democracy on the run in Brazil… to riots in France, Germany, and Italy… to the political shenanigans in the U.S. of A… it’s not easy to put the world to right in a single dinner. Still, one must try…
Usually when when meet up with readers, the question arises: Why Argentina? It’s a fair question. After all, dear wifey was born in Norway and grew up between the US and UK. Your editor hails from Australia’s golden shores. And between us, we’ve lived in at least a dozen other countries, besides…Today, we share with you a few thoughts about our adopted home, for what they’re worth…
For the aspiring voluntary exile, the first question one ponders when settling into life in a “foreign” country is, “Why here?” The obvious corollary – why not there? – is seldom far behind. After all, to our compatriots, Argentina must appear just as counterintuitive as, say, Albania... or Algeria... or Angola... to say nothing of the rest of the alphabet. Why the Paris of the South, then, and not the Buenos Aires of the North? One has to be somewhere, of course. But why anywhere in particular? We are by no means the first itinerant head-scratcher to ponder the “geographical conundrum.”
When the American author, Henry Miller, moved to Paris in the 1930s, he was already 40 years old. Miller said he made the move so that he could regain a “life of dignity.” Compared to his hometown of New York City, la Ville Lumière was (at that time) cheap and afforded the artist a kind of freedom that had somehow eluded him back home. Miller spent a decade in the French capital, during which time he wrote prolifically and enjoyed la bonne vie. When he eventually returned to the States, he penned “The Air-conditioned Nightmare,” an account of his impression of life in a country he could no longer understand or appreciate. To him, it seemed sterile and pointless. Absurd, even.
Wrote Miller of his experience: "In a few months I was down south at the home of an old friend. I spent a good part of the Summer there, then returned to New York. My father was still alive. I visited him regularly at his home in Brooklyn, talked about the old days in New York (the ‘80s and 90’s), met the neighbors, listened to the radio (always that damned “Information Please!”), discussed the nature of the prostate gland, the peculiarities of the bladder, the New Deal which was still new to me and rather goofy and meaningless. “That Roosevelt!” I can hear the neighbors saying, as if they were saying “That Hitler!”
A great change had come over America, no doubt about that. There were greater ones coming, I felt certain. We were only witnessing the prelude to something unimaginable. Everything was cock-eyed, and getting more so. Maybe we would end up on all fours, gibbering like baboons. Something disastrous was in store - everybody felt it. Yes, America had changed. The lack of resilience, the feeling of hopelessness, the resignation, the skepticism, the defeatism - I could scarcely believe my ears at first. And over it all that fatuous veneer of optimism - only now decidedly cracked.
What Miller perhaps recognized was a “system” of which he was no longer a part. Abroad, he was liberated from the norms and expectations of mere existence at home. Shifting status symbols... arbitrary social standards... pointless political posturing... the proverbial rat race; all that belonged to another world, baggage on a train he had long since alighted. For Miller, it was not simply the dark and foreboding future he perceived but, as Henry Thoreau put it a century and a half earlier, the way by which “most men tend to lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Old World Charm: Each man will define a “life of dignity” after his own fashion and, with a stroke of good fortune and a little imagination, discover a place where he can pursue his own happiness. Here in Buenos Aires, we have found such a place... at least, for now. Sure, until recently the politics were a complete mess and the economy was mostly in the doldrums… (Although, as regular readers know, that’s all in flux, even as we type these words to you this very morning.)
Still, there’s plenty more to life than the ongoing disaster of the public realm. In fact, one might argue it’s the private realm that really matters in the here and now. Part of this city’s charm, at least to us, lies in the “backwardness” of the place. There are no televisions blaring out in restaurants. No smartphone screens at the kitchen table. And nobody goes to dinner before 9pm (tourists excepted). Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a young family enter a restaurant at 10 or 11 o’clock on a “school night.”
On which point, families almost always dine together. Big families, too. Italian style. With lots of gesticulations and enthusiastic crosstalk. In most places, there is no such thing as a “kids menu.” Children eat what their parents eat. No “ifs, ands or buts,” as our own mother used to say to her own kids.
When in the many parks and plazas that perforate the city, all children know that, if they are lost, they need only find and inform the closest adult who, knowing the drill, places the child on their shoulders and claps loudly. Surrounding adults then do the same until, in concentric circles, the commotion emanates until the relevant parent realizes they are missing a kiddo. No Child Protective Services necessary. Just honest, reliable community.
Besides all that, there is a designated “friends day,” which the Argentines take very seriously. Amigos call each other, with unreserved affection, “gordo” (fatty), “loco” (crazy) and “pela” (baldy). Nobody gets “offended” or whines about it. Men embrace one another heartily, offering a kiss on the cheek, then dance the dark and brooding tango with the prettiest lady in the room.
An older, worthier generation still wears hats. And ties on a Sunday. Adults still read physical books in cafes. Often big, thick tomes, with nary a vampire or wizard to be found among the dog-eared pages. (Why, just yesterday we spotted a young man in a cafe near Plaza Vicente Lopez, reading a volume of Cicero’s works. Hope for the future, indeed.) The term “woke” is simply something you did before you got out of bed and, as Oscar Wilde once proclaimed, a gentleman seldom goes to sleep on the same day he woke up."
"There Was Truth..."
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth
even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, “1984”
Dan, I Allegedly, "McDonald's Is In Trouble Again!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 11/1/26
"McDonald's Is In Trouble Again!"
"McDonald's is facing another major consumer controversy, and this time it's the McRib sandwich. A new class-action lawsuit claims the famous McRib contains no actual pork rib meat, raising questions about food advertising, ingredients and consumer deception. A federal judge has allowed key claims to move forward, putting McDonald's back in the legal spotlight. And this isn't the first time major food companies have faced lawsuits over what they're selling. From Subway's tuna controversy to Burger King's Whopper, Taco Bell, Texas Pete, Buffalo Wild Wings and Velveeta, we're looking at some of America's strangest food lawsuits. After McDonald's dynamic pricing controversy, what's next? Business news, consumer protection, personal finance and the latest developments affecting American consumers."
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"25 Foods You Must Hide Before the Disaster (The Cellar and the Hungry Months)"
"25 Foods You Must Hide Before the Disaster
(The Cellar and the Hungry Months)"
by John Walter
Excerpt: "Supermarkets do not store food so much as pass it through. Stock turns over in two or three days in most formats, replenished overnight by trucks from regional depots that depend on diesel, on bridges, and on several hundred thousand drivers deciding to show up. Break one link and the shelves empty from the front backward. Texas went through it in February 2021 with ice and a failed grid, and Tokyo’s suburbs went through it within hours of the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, in a country that had rehearsed for that morning for decades.
The British emergency-planning phrase “nine meals from anarchy” oversimplifies the arithmetic, but it points at something real. Most houses hold somewhere between three and five days of edible calories, a rough figure rather than a measured one and close enough to plan around. Cut the trucks for a week and a household eats through the refrigerator in the first thirty-six hours, then starts rationing crackers.
Push the outage to a month and the question stops being about convenience. A diet, in the physiological sense, is a quantity of energy, protein, fat, and roughly thirty micronutrients arriving on a schedule the body can absorb without degrading, and that is an engineering problem with a calculable answer. Almost nobody calculates it in advance. (Watch this video to learn how to protect your food supplies when shortages hit!)
So run the numbers, because the numbers are the only part of this that stays calm. Four adults at two thousand kilocalories each for ninety days comes to seven hundred twenty thousand kilocalories. Stored as white rice at about sixteen hundred fifty kilocalories per pound, that is roughly four hundred forty pounds before protein, fat, or a single vitamin enters the sum. At something like thirty-five to forty pounds per five-gallon bucket, it fills eleven or twelve of them, which fits under a staircase and represents more food than most households buy in a year of ordinary shopping. Buying it in one weekend is how stockpiles fail: the household picks something it does not like, stores it badly, and quits by March.
Storage has enemies and they are unglamorous. Oxygen oxidizes fats and destroys vitamins in grain. Moisture invites mold and, in corn and peanuts, the molds that produce aflatoxin. Heat above about seventy-five degrees accelerates every decay reaction you are trying to slow, and light bleaches what heat does not finish. Insects and rodents arrive through seams you did not know existed. None of that yields to a bigger cupboard. It yields to Mylar, oxygen absorbers, rigid food-grade containers, a cool dark room, and honest rotation.
Most published lists fail at the selection stage, because they are pantry lists with the volume turned up: canned soup, breakfast cereal, spaghetti sauce, jerky, hard candy. All fine, most of them a poor foundation. A foundation needs calorie density, stability without refrigeration, and enough nutritional breadth that a family can live on it for a season without developing scurvy or losing muscle. Snack food has none of those properties and nothing requiring a freezer has the first two.
What follows is tiered from the calorie floor upward and deliberately unfashionable. It borrows from what carried people through the Leningrad blockade, through four years of siege in Sarajevo, and through every rural winter before refrigeration. Order matters less than completeness, since a skipped tier leaves a hole in the diet and holes are where people get sick. The article covers:
🌾 Staple calories, and why six of them beat sixty novelties.
🐟 Protein that never touches a freezer.
🛢️ Fat, the tier most lists leave out.
🥫 Vitamins and minerals, and the deficiency diseases that live in their absence.
🧂 Salt, sweeteners, and acid.
☠️ Foods that look like insurance and are not.
📦 Packaging, temperature, and rotation.
🧮 Sizing a stockpile with a two-week menu.
🔥 Fuel and water.
⚖️ Cost, and the limits of the whole exercise.
The tiers are load-bearing: each closes a deficiency the one before it opens, so the list reads as a single argument rather than twenty-five separate suggestions. Buy in that order and in the quantities your household actually eats, and the arithmetic closes. Buy the last tier first because the jars are prettier, and it will not."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
o
"Stocking Up at Walmart & Sam's, Preparing For The Worst'
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 11/1/26
"Stocking Up at Walmart & Sam's,
Preparing For The Worst'
Comments here:
"Snyder Reports, 11/1/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/1/26
"Protect Your Money Now:
The Cyber Attack Warning You Need To Hear"
"Cyber attacks are now the biggest threat to your money. After a $6.3 billion Binance hack froze withdrawals and a Wyoming bank went offline for a full week, here's how to protect yourself even if your money is FDIC insured. In this video I break down what happened with Binance, why Hilltop Bank customers lost online banking with debit cards capped at $1,000 a day, and the Pentagon investigation into a suspected cyber attack. More importantly, I give you 3 simple rules to protect your money: spread it across multiple banks, keep cash on hand, and keep your credit card separate from your bank. Whether you have $100 or millions, don't keep everything in one spot. Watch to learn exactly how much cash to hold and how to structure your accounts so one attack can't lock you out."
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o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/1/26
"El Nino Winter Warning:
Why Flooding Could Get Much Worse"
"Urgent Warning for the Southwest: flash flooding could get much worse as El Nino kicks in. Saturated ground, record tides, and 4 inches of rain in one day is a dangerous combo. In this video, I break down the flash flood risk across Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, why San Francisco just saw its highest October tide on record, what El Nino means for this winter, and 3 simple things you can do to prepare now - emergency radio, sandbags, and waterproof boots. This is the start of El Nino. With ground this saturated, any additional rain has nowhere to go. Here's what it means for you and your family."
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"The Dead Among Us Know"
"The Dead Among Us Know"
by Edward Curtin
"Time it was when all we had to remember was yesterday, if that. Then as the years passed, yesterday grew into the double-faced mystery of time that keeps us looking backwards and forward, trying to remember and trying to forget to remember, and remembering truly and falsely, as we wonder in the eternal present what’s coming next.
We can’t keep time, for it is a riddle beyond all grasping, mocking our pretensions. Time-bound creatures that we are, we are taught to tell time at an early age but never know what we are telling. In that regard, it is not much different from everything we are taught that we repeat by rote.
The boys pictured above were fast friends from before the age of seven when they made their First Holy Communion together. The place was St. Brendan’s Parish in the north Bronx in New York City. The year 1951. St. Brendan was an Irish monk (c. AD 484 – c. 577) who was a sailor known in legend for his voyage to find the “Isle of the Blessed.” Some say he reached North America.
As with all legends and often memories, the truth concerning his life is hard to determine, since not just legendary characters but all of us are walking contradictions, partly truth and partly fiction, to paraphrase the remarkable songwriter Kris Kristofferson. As the patron saint of sailors, mariners, travelers, elderly adventurers, and whales, Brendan brings to mind that other Irishman, the poet William Butler Yeats, who, as he aged, wrote in his poem, "Sailing to Byzantium:"
"An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
[…]
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
[…]
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Soul clap its hands and sing – yes!"
A few days ago I found the above photo in an envelope while unpacking after my wife and I had just moved from our home of thirty-eight years to another, a journey I found very hard. I was lost at sea. Shipwrecked. Although the ocean we crossed was two-and-a-half blocks, leaving our home felt to me like Brendan crossing the Atlantic in his little animal-skinned wooden currach. I am ashamed to admit this when so many are homeless and literally lost at sea, seeking shelter from unbearable conditions.
I had never looked closely at the photo before, and there it was just when I, for some uncanny reason, was thinking of Arthur’s life and death. I wonder if my look conveys an early sense of “transcendental homelessness,” in the words of the philosopher György Lukács. And Arthur’s sly grin, did it foretell his life and strange death to come?
October in far western Massachusetts. Dazzling colors ushering in falling leaves in a dying land. Halloween, football and war, all souls drifting down in the crepuscular light of late October, the approaching Days of the Dead and All Saints and All Souls Days and the coming November remembrance of Veteran’s Day, once called Armistice Day and named Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, when the mad slow slaughter of World War I – the war to end all wars with millions dead in rat infested trenches – is commemorated, as if anything has changed and such a war memorial is not a secret celebration of the heroic sacrifices the gullible make for their masters.
As for the civilian victims, whose numbers vastly exceed the military, aren’t we told by the hyenas with polished faces posing as leaders that they are just “collateral damage,” whose deaths are a small price to be paid for “victory”? War is a racket; the ultimate racket. Surely the Fall.
The dead never disappear from our lives, no matter how hard we try to erase them. They are there throughout, and not just at Halloween when the Grim Reaper and ghosts appear in costumes and dead leaves fall, swirling through the air, drifting with the dead in the wind as we wonder whether we are being tricked or treated.
We are surrounded by the dead, despite injunctions not to talk about them. If we say anything about them in our antiseptic language, we say they “passed on,” unconsciously suggesting the reverse – that death might be a failure we could avoid. The Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen wrote a play in 1899 called “When We Dead Awaken.” He was referring to us, “the living.”
When do the dead awaken? Perhaps not until we see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the costumed children having fun on Halloween, or the nihilistic phony politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us – every day. As Holden Caulfield says in The Catcher in the Rye, that quintessentially fall book now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, “They didn’t act like people and they didn’t act like actors. It’s hard to explain.”
José Ortega Y Gasset tries in The Revolt of the Masses: "Take stock of those around you…hear them talk in such precise terms about themselves and their surroundings, which would seem to point to them having ideas on the matter. But start to analyze those ideas and you will find that they hardly in any way reflect the reality to which they appear to refer, and if you go deeper you will discover that there is not even an attempt to adjust these ideas to reality. Quite the contrary: through these notions the individual is trying to cut off any personal vision of reality, of his own very life. For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his ‘ideas’ are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Halloween’s symbolism, despite its horrendous commercialism, explains social lying and playacting more than a thousand factual articles. It explains the warfare police state and adults’ refusal to defiantly oppose it. It explains the nihilistic underpinning of American society and children’s fears and wishes to use a magic wand to change the world to one that celebrates life, not death. That is the true treat that their playacting seeks. But the candy the adults give them conceals the poison of denial that the adults can’t face. The poison they have ingested.
Faces, yes. To face the masked faces that we face. At what age do we learn to don the primary masks? For persons are, by definition, masked, the word person being derived from the Latin, persona, meaning mask. Another Latin word, larva, also means mask, ghost, or evil spirit. Halloween, the day of double-masks. The living masks light up for me as I think of ghosts, the dead, all the souls and spirits circulating throughout our days, drifting like dead leaves in the breeze. People speaking sweet nothings through the mouth holes in their masks (Latin personare “to sound through”). “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
I remember my pal Arthur Nickerson, shot dead by a New York City cop with a bullet to his back. I remember a job I had when young. In my early naïve twenties, I was working nights in the 42nd Police Precinct in the Bronx, interviewing arrestees in holding cells at night. There I learned that many were framed by the undercover cops who planted drugs on them; that the precinct had a hoard of illegal drugs for that purpose. Thinking I was his ally, one cop from my neighborhood told me this, and that “we have to get these dirty f*cking bastards off the streets” (by which he meant black and Puerto Rican men).
This was 4-5 years before the honest, courageous NYPD undercover cop Frank Serpico, another pal, was set up by other undercover narco cops to be shot in the face because he wouldn’t take drug money. A few years later, the movie "Serpico," starring Al Pacino, was made about him. The film made Pacino famous but the real man is the one to honor. The man who couldn’t be bought, Francesco Serpico, so unlike all the corrupt cops and slimy politicians in Washington, D. C. who are nothing but bought. Although Artie’s death had rattled me and the news accounts didn’t make sense, it wasn’t until working in the police lockup that a veil started to fall from my eyes.
One night as we were eating dinner, you asked me why I was having so many dreams of being lost as we were moving. You said you thought that this was the first and only time I ever felt lost. I tried to explain. It was hard.
Memories. For years I remembered an incident from the August before I started college. I had just turned 18 years-old. Unlike many of my friends, I had never drunk any alcohol when in high school. Just the smell of it repulsed me, and being in shape for basketball was vitally important to me. But my friends convinced me to meet them at a bar for a little going away party before we all went off to college. The bar was called The Web and was near the corner of Fordham Rd. and Webster Ave across from Fordham University’s Rose Hill Bronx campus. And as young guys tend to do, we made fools of ourselves and got drunk.
Somehow I got home late that night and my father came out and picked me up from the porch where I lay on my face. I remembered the smell of the grey porch paint and my mother standing in the doorway looking forlorn behind him. I remembered him helping me to my feet and into the house and up the stairs to my bedroom. For years I remembered many small details. It was all so vivid.
One day long after when I was with my elderly mother, we got to talking about it and she reminded me that my memory couldn’t be true because by that time we had moved from our original house with the grey porch to another. We both remembered my getting drunk, but my memory of the aftermath couldn’t have occurred as I remembered it, although for decades I was sure of it. Yes, “partly truth and partly fiction.”
Are you keeping some sort of record? “All things are entangled, ensnared, and enamored,” said Nietzsche, including memories. We are tangled up in time’s web, sometimes blue, sometimes grey, and sometimes ravishingly joyous and blithe.
A few years after the photo of Arthur and me was taken between the church and the rectory, we were walking home from school and found two grey cardboard boxes by the side of a house near the sidewalk. They seemed to be for the garbage man. We checked them out and one box was filled with hundreds of round thin discs a few inches wide. The other box had smaller discs. We figured we could use them for some fun and so took the box with the larger discs to my house.
There we stood on the wooden porch which was raised up a dozen stone steps high above the street and laughingly skimmed them like flying sauces down and out. Soon my father came home and saw them flying and the cars and street covered with the discs. He immediately told us to stop and go collect them. Then he asked us if we knew what we were doing, what the discs were. We said no.
They were, he told us, the hosts the priest raises at the Consecration during Mass when the bells are rung and he says, “Hoc est enim corpus meum” (For this is my body), meaning that the bread has become the body of Christ. We never again sailed hosts. We learned our lesson. I later learned from Leonard Cohen’s song, "Suzanne", that “Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.” And the years have taught me that the body of Christ is broken over and over again and the blood of the innocent shed perpetually.
The ghosts of fall and Halloween return again and again to remind us of what we may have forgotten or wish not to see. “Whenever I take up a newspaper,” Ibsen added, “I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”
I recently found an old New York Times report from July 10, 1961 about Arthur. I remembered how at the time I found the reports of his death incredulous, and I still do. If you open the link, expand it, and read it closely for its logic, it might strike you the same way. It’s an old story, a cop shoots a teenager in the back and the media report it as simply justified. The report has no by-line, so one must assume it comes from the cop’s report. That, I guess, “is all the news that’s fit to print.”
The patrolman says he stopped Arthur, who is reported to be eighteen years-old at the time (I think 17), at the traffic light uncannily right near the Web bar on Webster Ave. and Fordham Rd. The reason: for driving a car with “bad lights.” Arthur’s companion was a friend who was an Army private. The car was allegedly stolen.
The Times report claims Arthur then tried to kill the cop by running him down. That is the standard go-to excuse for shooting an unarmed suspect, especially in the back, as a highly decorated, renown NYPD detective has confirmed for me. Deconstruct the Report. Eight shots fired. Revolver with six bullets. Time sequence. Suspect springing out of an alley gets shot in the back after the cop fires four more times for a total of eight rounds. Update it to today and it will sound familiar.
I am sure Arthur was no saint. How could a seven year-old with that mischievous look be one? How could a boy who flew Jesus-to-be flying saucer hosts all over the street be one? How could I?
Everyone eventually disappears. Gone. And are often forgotten. But that doesn’t mean they forget us while we are living. We are haunted by ghosts. It is uncanny. Did you ever sense that they are lurking in the shadows all around, urging us to tell their stories? To remember. To be nostalgic for the future, theirs and ours. Let’s stop pretending. At a certain stage and on the stage of life, masks are lies. It’s not hard to explain.
“Do you not know there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask?” warned Kierkegaard long ago. “Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it?” Where is Brendan’s Isle of the Blessed? Do you know? Between us, I swear, it is here and everywhere, if we make life a treat for everyone."
o
Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is "AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope" (Clarity Press) and his website is edwardcurtin.com. You can read more of his writing for OffG HERE
o
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bennett's Soul-Stirring "After I'm Gone Son"
"Pandora’s Box"
"Pandora’s Box"
by William Schryver
"In Greek mythology, Pandora’s Box (it was actually a jar) is the story of how suffering entered the human world. After the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, Zeus determined to afflict mankind with trials and tribulations. He ordered the craftsman god Hephaestus to fashion the first woman. The other gods endowed her with gifts: Athena taught her various practical skills, Aphrodite gave her beauty, Hermes instilled cunning. They named her Pandora, “all-gifted.”
Zeus sent Pandora to Earth as a gift for Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus. Despite Prometheus’ warning never to accept anything from Zeus, Epimetheus welcomed her. Along with Pandora came a sealed jar that Zeus had filled with every kind of evil - sickness, old age, unrequited toil, war, and all manner of other miseries.
Zeus commanded that the jar must never be opened. But curiosity overcame Pandora. She lifted the lid, and the evils flew out into the world, forever afflicting humanity. When she saw what she had done, Pandora rushed to close the jar. But it was too late. Only one thing remained inside: Hope.
Rumors abound this evening that the masters of empire have set in motion a plan to severely punish the Iranians for their perceived impudence in defying imperial decrees, and challenging the imperial order of things upon the earth. Many interpret these rumors to suggest the Americans will unleash thermonuclear fire upon a nation and a people they have pronounced enemies which must be destroyed in the interest of the common good.
But it is no longer 1945. Promethean fire has proliferated upon the planet. Iran possesses this knowledge and power, and the means to exercise it. Other more powerful countries will stand aghast and outraged if the Americans were to again release the nuclear genie from its bottle.
I remain thoroughly convinced that Russia, China, and North Korea will interpret such an action as an existential threat against all of them - for it will demonstrate that the still very dangerous but rapidly declining empire has completely lost its mind.
It is a very small step between attacking a military target with a nuclear weapon, and attacking a city wherein military activities are believed to take place. That was, of course, the path of rationalization that led to the targeting of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Have the masters of fading empire arrived at the desperate state of mind where they are willing to set fire to the world with the aspiration to rule over the ashes? I sure hope not. But I fear we are racing to the point in time where hope is all that’s left."
"Academy of Ideas: Kakistocracy – Are We Ruled By the Worst?"
Full screen recommended.
"Academy of Ideas: Kakistocracy –
Are We Ruled By the Worst?"
By Matt Morgan
"Summary: The narrator argues that modern governments have degenerated into kakistocracies, rule by the worst, where corrupt and power-hungry individuals dominate the highest levels of government and use political power to enrich themselves rather than serve the public. The narrator explains that the state’s inherent structure, which divides society into rulers and ruled and grants special powers to those in authority, attracts manipulative and ruthless individuals who outcompete principled people in the struggle for power, and over time these kakistocrats reshape institutions to protect their privileges while forming alliances with wealthy collabortakers who use lobbying and central bank monetary expansion to extract wealth from ordinary citizens. The narrator concludes that when the judiciary is co-opted and laws protect the corrupt rather than the honest, society is doomed, as Ayn Rand warned in "Atlas Shrugged."
Top 5 Key Topics:
ͦ The nature of kakistocracy: The narrator defines kakistocracy as rule by the worst, derived from the Greek words kakistos (worst) and kratos (power). In a kakistocracy, the highest levels of government are populated by corrupt, dishonest, power-hungry, manipulative, and sometimes sociopathic individuals who use political power to advance their own interests and enrich themselves and their cronies while the average citizen is impoverished and society deteriorates.
ͦ Why the worst get on top: The narrator explains that the state divides society into rulers and ruled and grants those who rule powers and privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens, attracting not only those motivated by public service but also those seeking wealth, power, and control. Friedrich Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom that {{the readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power}} and {{the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful}}, giving manipulative and ruthless individuals an advantage in the struggle for political power.
ͦ Jobbery and collabortakers: The narrator describes how kakistocrats engage in jobbery, the exploitation of public office for private gain, receiving modest official salaries yet becoming extraordinarily wealthy through immoral and criminal dealings behind the scenes. They form alliances with collabortakers, wealthy individuals and institutions in the private sector who spend billions of dollars each year on lobbying to buy access to kakistocrats, using campaign contributions, political favors, gifts, and promises of lucrative post-office employment to shape laws, regulations, and economic policy in their favor.
ͦ Central banks as tools of theft: The narrator argues that central banks are among the most powerful tools of a kakistocracy because their ability to expand the money supply finances government spending and debt on a scale impossible through taxation alone, allowing kakistocrats to access vast sums without directly raising taxes. Murray Rothbard explained that monetary inflation acts as a hidden tax by which early receivers of newly created money expropriate wealth from late receivers, enriching the kakistocracy while transferring purchasing power away from ordinary citizens whose wages and savings buy less as prices rise.
ͦ Corruption of the judiciary: The narrator contends that in Western democracies the judiciary was established to serve as an independent check on political power, but in a kakistocracy it has been absorbed into the corrupt system it was meant to restrain. William Kovacs writes that individuals are appointed or denied appointment to courts based on political belief and affiliation, and under the present legal structure kakistocrats have laws that protect them from the people, allowing them to enact policies that protect their privileges and advance their selfish interests."
"Doug Casey: The Collapse of Western Civilization Is Accelerating"
"Doug Casey: The Collapse of
Western Civilization Is Accelerating"
Full screen recommended.
By Matt Morgan
"Summary: Casey argues that Western civilization is collapsing under the weight of its own complexity, corruption, and ideological subversion, with both Islamic migrants and woke progressives working to destroy the foundational values that made the West exceptional. He contends that the world has become economically fascist, with governments controlling production through taxes and regulations while citizens are taxed at 30 to 40 percent or more, leaving them unable to save or advance, and that the destruction of petroleum infrastructure and the fragile electric grid could trigger a systemic collapse. Casey warns that recent government advisories for citizens to stockpile supplies and Pentagon plans for military bases to become self-sufficient for 90 days signal imminent threats, whether from cyberattacks, terrorism, or war, and urges individuals to insulate themselves by securing food, water, energy, and financial assets before the system breaks down entirely.
Top 5 Key Topics:
ͦ Collapse of Western civilization: Casey identifies 12 core characteristics of Western civilization now under attack, including free thought, free speech, free markets, limited government, individualism, rationality, liberty, progress, privacy, property rights, rule of law, and entrepreneurship. He argues that both Islamic migrants seeking Sharia law and woke progressives indoctrinated with Marxist ideas are working to destroy these values, and that the average person no longer holds them in esteem, leaving no real opposition to this vanguard of thugs.
ͦ Economic fascism and taxation: Casey defines fascism as private ownership of the means of production with total state control through taxes, regulations, and public-private partnerships, and asserts that every country in the world now operates under this system. He notes that citizens in most countries pay 30 to 40 percent in income taxes plus 20 percent VAT, leaving nothing to save, and that monetary inflation destroys what little remains, making it impossible for the average person to elevate themselves.
ͦ Fragility of infrastructure: Casey warns that civilization runs entirely on petroleum for transportation, plastics, and agriculture, and that the destruction of refineries in three ongoing wars plus attacks on the electric grid could cause a collapse. He cites Pentagon plans requiring all US military bases to be self-sufficient for 90 days in food, water, and energy, and notes that studies show taking out four to six key electrical facilities could bring down the entire grid for two years or more, killing two-thirds of the population.
ͦ Government preparedness warnings: Casey discusses recent advisories from the UK and Japan telling citizens to stockpile three days of food, water, and cash, and a leaked Pentagon plan approved in September mandating 90-day self-sufficiency for military bases using small modular nuclear reactors. He interprets these moves as evidence that authorities expect a major disruption, whether from cyberattacks, terrorism, or infrastructure failure, and emphasizes that military bases will not open their gates to desperate civilians if the grid goes down.
ͦ Personal resilience and preparation: Casey advises individuals to identify their real dependencies and mitigate risks by securing food, water, energy, and financial assets, much as military bases are doing. He mentions owning a farm with 150 head of cattle, dairy cows, chickens, and pigs as a hedge against systemic collapse, and recommends that anyone with space plant a garden and stockpile supplies, because even financial success may not matter if the system disappears entirely."
o
Most highly recommended.
"The Pendulum of History"
Saturday, October 31, 2026
"I Can't Believe This Is Happening... Be Ready For The Collapse"
Adventures With Danno, 10/31/26
"I Can't Believe This Is Happening...
Be Ready For The Collapse"
Comments here:
"Warning: U.S. Prepares For Massive Grid Down Event; No One Is Coming To Save You"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/31/26
"Warning: U.S. Prepares For Massive Grid Down Event;
No One Is Coming To Save You"
Comments here:
"Governments Around The World Are Preparing For Something - What Is It?"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/31/26
"Governments Around The World Are
Preparing For Something - What Is It?"
"What do governments around the world know that citizens don't? 14 countries are now warning citizens to prepare for chaos. In this update, I break down which 14 countries and regions are urging households to stockpile food, water, backup power and emergency supplies - from 3 days to 10+ days - and what threats they list: power failures, cyber attacks, natural disasters, sabotage and war. Plus the Pentagon's Fortress Initiative, the 5 US Army bases slated for nuclear micro-reactors, and the lesson from COVID about why governments wait to warn us. This is about emergency preparedness and what it means for you and your family. I’ll keep bringing updates as this develops."
Comments here:
Canadian Prepper, "If You're in a Major City You Must Prepare Now"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/31/26
"If You're in a Major City You Must Prepare Now"
Comments here:
Delta Blues Brother, "Some Fights Ain't Worth Winning"
Full screen recommended.
Delta Blues Brother, "Some Fights Ain't Worth Winning"
"Not every argument deserves your voice. Some people don't want the truth. They want your attention. "Some Fights Ain't Worth Winning" is an original Delta blues song about choosing peace over pointless conflict, protecting your time, and learning that silence can be the strongest answer of all. Featuring soulful resonator guitar, heartfelt harmonica, and the seasoned voice of Delta Blues Brother, this song delivers an old lesson that's more relevant than ever: not every battle is worth your energy. This is the blues of quiet strength. Peace is worth a whole lot more... than proving what I know."
Native American Elder, "5 Signs You Carry Fire in Your Spirit, Only Few Do"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"5 Signs You Carry Fire in Your Spirit, Only Few Do"
Musical Interlude: 2002, "Chrysalis"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "Chrysalis"
“Oceans of strings and choirs, flutes and keyboards lift us
out of the trials and tribulations of our daily lives as though
we were on a ship with gossamer sails, sailing on the moonlight.”
– Steve Ryals
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