Neil H, "Moonpath"
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, October 3, 2026
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant.
Click image for larger size.
It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape."
"The Earth"
"The Earth"
by Sheila Black
"What can I tell her over breakfast when she says
her son suffers from madness, and because there
is no mental health, he has ended up in jail,
and she is relieved, because at least he might
be safe there or he might get to see the doctor.
We are eating egg-white omelets; we are counting
carbs. We are buttoning ourselves in our clean dresses
and high-heeled shoes in order to bring home the bacon,
doing what we need to do and “It is what it is.”
Her granddaughter and daughter are living with her
in the one bedroom. Nights, the daughter lounges by
the pool, looking at her phone, while she teaches the child
to plant seeds in a flower bed she feels bad she does not own.
She tells she cried in the car coming here; she did not know
me then. She thought we would be talking to each other
the whole time about what we are selling, what
the other might buy, but somehow we left that behind
over the toast with the tiny pots of strawberry jam.
Who can explain all this luxury, all this despair?
Or how we all hold our secret shames so close
and gloss our lips with “Cinnamon Fire” as if that were
some legitimate form of protection. Cinnamon Fire!
She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years - you
won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving,
because it is all happening on a wheel that spin
so fast. Why not stop to look at the pink flowers
you’ve planted with your granddaughter? Why not feel
your bare toes in the good wet earth? We play with the crusts
on our plates. The waitress takes the coffee away. We
are strangers again, each carrying our lonely fear
our children won’t find their way, wishing for them
some inner logic - sacred trust of earth and self, that exists
for each of us so far within, so far under the skin, we
can’t even begin to say what it is made of; it merely is,
poised between love and grief: the blue space we call wonder,
which is merely the dew on the grass, the shadow the sun
makes as it rolls over the vast skin of the Earth."
Crystal Heaven, "Lost Pearl Kingdom"
Full screen recommended.
Crystal Heaven, "Lost Pearl Kingdom"
"Step beyond the crystal waters and discover a lost kingdom hidden within a breathtaking fantasy world. Journey through magnificent pearl palaces, enchanted islands, crystal rivers, magical waterfalls, glowing gardens, ancient forests, and peaceful lotus lakes. Every scene reveals a new corner of this dreamlike kingdom, filled with shimmering waters, mystical crystals, beautiful flowers, golden architecture, and peaceful natural landscapes. Let the gentle flow of the water, magical scenery, and soothing fantasy ambient music with sweet acoustic guitar, soft piano, delicate harp, and distant heavenly humming carry you into a world far beyond reality. This relaxing fantasy journey is perfect for: relaxation & stress relief, sleep & peaceful nights, studying & reading, meditation & mindfulness, Dreaming & imagination, Creative inspiration, exploring magical fantasy worlds. Put on your headphones, relax, and let yourself wander through the Lost Pearl Kingdom. Perhaps somewhere beyond the crystal sea, there is still a hidden palace waiting to be discovered..."
Native American Elder, "How to Walk Away From Everything That Stole Your Peace"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"How to Walk Away From
Everything That Stole Your Peace"
"Gravel Roads and Fading Prayers"
Full screen recommended.
"Gravel Roads and Fading Prayers"
"Welcome to The Delta Old Lantern - a home for deep Delta Blues, Southern Gothic storytelling, old soul music, and timeless blues wisdom. Here you’ll find dark Delta Blues inspired by dusty backroads, front porch memories, aging souls, quiet struggles, and the changing world around us. Every song carries the spirit of old acoustic blues, slide guitar echoes, worn-out roads, and stories carved by time. The Delta Old Lantern creates atmospheric blues music for listeners who appreciate raw emotion, old-world storytelling, lonely highways, weathered hearts, and the beauty found in growing older. These songs are inspired by the spirit of classic Delta Blues legends while bringing a modern cinematic sound for today’s listeners."
The Poet: Maya Angelou, "A Brave And Startling Truth"
"A Brave And Startling Truth"
by Maya Angelou
"We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space,
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns,
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth.
And when we come to it,
To the day of peacemaking,
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms.
When we come to it,
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate,
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean.
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass,
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil.
When the rapacious storming of the churches,
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased.
When the pennants are waving gaily,
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze.
When we come to it,
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders,
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce.
When land mines of death have been removed,
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace.
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh,
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse.
When we come to it,
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory,
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets.
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun.
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world.
When we come to it,
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe,
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace.
We, this people on this mote of matter,
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence,
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor,
And the body is quieted into awe.
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet,
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living.
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow,
And the proud back is glad to bend.
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.
When we come to it,
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body,
Created on this earth, of this earth,
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety,
Without crippling fear.
When we come to it,
We must confess that we are the possible,
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world.
That is when, and only when,
We come to it."
○
"Our Secular Priests"
"Our Secular Priests"
by The ZMan
"A recurring feature of human society is the class of people who set themselves apart from the rest of society to function as the keepers of public morality. They usually set themselves apart through self-denial, which is a way of showing themselves to be purer than the rest of the lot. It is thought that the Jewish prohibition on eating pork, for example, is a way to set the Jewish people apart from the rest of the people by abstaining from what was considered a dirty animal.
This is why every religion has both dietary laws and prohibitions on certain types of common behavior. It may be that these only apply to the holy men, as was common in the pre-Christian world. They can also be standards against which people measure themselves, as in the Christian world. The ancient shaman was someone expected to sublimate his urges as a sign of his purity. Christians, of course, have many rules that are guides for adhering to Christian ethics.
In the post-Christian age, the priestly class follows a similar pattern. The people we call the managerial elite and their performative proxies in the media have many ways of demonstrating their purity. In fact, we have the phrase “purity spiral” to describe when a group of these people engage in a competition in which they try to prove they are the purest of the bunch. Many of the moral panics over the last decades have been the result of purity spirals that spun out of control.
The public act of piety is another feature of human society. The great man may not be in the priestly class, but he could show his piety by supporting them in some way or by engaging in a public ritual directed by the priestly class. Scipio Africanus was famous for his public acts of piety, which he used to inoculate himself against claims of civic impropriety and corruption. In the Christion era, great men would build cathedrals and monasteries to demonstrate their fidelity to the Church.
We see the same thing in this age. Public figures kneeling in front of the cameras, allegedly in solidarity with the blacks, was no different than the ancients sacrificing a bull to the gods. When they forced their employees to kneel, it was another way of signaling their virtue to each other and the rest of us. The Covid panic, in many respects, was nothing more than a purity spiral among the managerial elite. It is why it had so many outward symbols of obedience to the god of Covid.
Another aspect of this is that the people performing these rituals in public or setting themselves apart through self-denial is that they probably do not think too much about the truth of this stuff. The kneelers did not think much about it at all. They just assumed that they had to show their fidelity to that which everyone else in their class was now sure would provide forgiveness. They were kneeling in order to gain forgiveness on behalf of the sinners called the masses.
You see it in this strange clip of the then-newly elected leader of Canada. His first public statement after the election is about Gaia. “We have an enormous opportunity to bring climate change into the heart of every financial decision.” After some meaningless managerial drivel, he then promises, “We can deliver the net zero world that you’ve demanded, and that our future generations deserve.” He is saying that he will lead his people to the promised land of salvation.
Of course, his faith is not in God, in the Christian sense, but in people like himself who show themselves as our superior by believing in boutique ideas like climate change and a “net-zero world.” In the ancient world, the priestly class would identify themselves with ornaments on their person. In the Christian age, the priest has an easily recognizable costume. In this age, the priestly class sets itself apart from the rest of us by babbling about nonsense things like climate change.
Note that in this age, the pointlessness of the belief is important. Jews not eating fish or seafood had some practical benefit. Cleanliness had utility. The rituals of the Christian churches provided a way to bind the people to one another in a common ethical framework and common purpose. Other than setting the believer apart, the boutique beliefs of our self-declared priests are pointless. The sanctification of George Floyd appealed to our betters because of its absurdity.
Another reason why holy men find ways to set themselves apart as purer, cleaner, and less human than the rest is they have an underlying contempt for man. The shaman is always warning about the dangers of enjoying life. The priest is always looking for a sinner to torment. The modern clerisy is always seeking some way to display their contempt for the pleasures of regular people. They set themselves apart by setting themselves above that which they despise, their fellow man.
It is why the modern priests are more lethal than those of the past. They inherited the Christian distain for this world and the joys within it. Then they bolted onto it a class consciousness based in contempt for the people over whom they rule. Add in the minority’s natural paranoia and the result is a ruling class that seems to be hellbent on pulling the roof down on Western society. It is not that they hate you. They hate everyone, but they really hate you."
o
Full screen recommended.
Genesis, "Jesus He Knows Me"
"In A Nation Ruled By Swine..."
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
- Hunter S. Thompson, “The Great Shark Hunt”
"Doomsday Statement: US Bonds Have No Buyers, Billions Of People Will Feel Financial Effects"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/3/26
"Doomsday Statement: US Bonds Have No Buyers,
Billions Of People Will Feel Financial Effects"
Comments here:
"US National Debt Clock, Real Time"
Dan, I Allegedly, "Nike Did It To Themselves"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/3/26
"Nike Did It To Themselves"
"Nike, McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson and other major brands are facing a simple question: what happens when companies lose touch with their core customers? In this episode of iAllegedly, Dan takes you from the Pacific Air Show in Huntington Beach into a wide-ranging look at Nike’s sales and stock performance, brand strategy, consumer behavior, dynamic pricing, and the business decisions that can have lasting consequences. We also look at McDonald’s pricing practices, AI and the changing retail landscape, Tesla robotaxis, jobs, consumer spending and businesses struggling with higher costs. There’s much more in this episode, including Boeing, the changing value of college degrees, electronic credit-card theft, rising medical-device costs, California’s new plug-in solar rules and Casey’s aggressive store expansion. The bigger story is how quickly the business landscape is changing - and how consumers are responding. Plus, enjoy the Pacific Air Show from Huntington Beach, California, with jets flying throughout the video."
Comments here:
"Snyder Reports, 10/3/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/3/26
"Trump Promises 2 Checks To Millions:
$5,000 & $90 - Who Gets Paid?"
"President Trump just promised not one, but TWO checks to millions of Americans - a $5,000 Trump Dividend check and a $90 Medicare payment. Who qualifies, when will they arrive, and will they actually happen? In this video we break down the latest stimulus check update, including the $5,000 checks pledge tied to Republicans keeping the House and Senate, and the confirmed plan to send $90 direct deposits to 20 million seniors on Medicare in early October from the $2 billion Medicare Improvement Fund. We also do the math: 240-245 million adults x $5,000 = over $1.2 trillion - and why experts warn about debt, inflation, and the Federal Reserve. We cover eligibility questions, income limits, per-adult vs per-household, direct deposit vs mailed check, and what must happen in the November midterms for the Trump dividend to pass."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/3/26
"Is Walmart Screwing Over Their Customers? Watch This!"
"Millions of Americans shop at Walmart every day - but are you being overcharged at checkout? Proof shows sale prices ringing up higher and digital price tags lying about price-per-ounce. In this video, I break down viral proof of Walmart pricing errors, from a $1 sale ringing up $1.44 to a $2.24 overcharge on seasoning, and why Walmart shrinkflation means you've been overpaying for groceries for years. This isn't just Walmart - Kroger, Safeway, and grocery stores across the US are doing it too. I'll show you what to check on your receipt to lower your grocery bill. Have YOU found a price that didn't match? Drop it in the comments below."
Comments here:
"Poop, Peppers And A Mouse In The Brine"
by Drs. Jill Glasspool Malone and Robert W. Malone
"The Great Mystery of the Mexican Lettuce"
"FDA has finally discovered Cyclospora at the Mexican operations linked to this summer’s record-breaking outbreak: one positive sample came from a tank holding outgoing wastewater at the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing plant, and another from a drainage ditch at one of its lettuce growers. Nearly 13,000 Americans got sick. More than 570 were hospitalized. Two died. And yet FDA says there is still “not enough evidence to conclusively determine how contamination occurred.” Really?
Cyclospora is a fecal-oral parasite. Humans are its known host. It gets onto food when human feces contaminate water or soil. So somewhere between human feces, wastewater, a drainage ditch next to a lettuce field, and Cyclospora showing up in all, lies one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern food safety. The FDA still can’t quite figure out the relationship. So we made the Venn diagram for them.
This was not exactly unknown when I was growing up. My seventh-grade Spanish teacher, who was from Mexico, gave us one particularly memorable piece of travel advice: don’t eat raw produce in Mexico unless you want to become personally acquainted with Montezuma’s Revenge. Toilets could be hard to come by in the fields, she told us, and people sometimes pooped where they worked. That was in the 1970s. Apparently, the science remains unsettled as to what "fecal-oral" actually means. Or is it really that the politics remain unsettled? The corporate interest aspect is clear.
By the way, Cyclospora is actually a rather demanding little parasite. Human beings are its known host. It leaves the human body unable to infect anyone, spends days to weeks maturing in the environment, and only then becomes infectious. In other words, this wasn't somebody failing to wash his hands before handling a head of lettuce. The fecal contamination had to become part of the agricultural environment.
The more important question is not whether anyone can prove which molecule of contaminated water touched which leaf of iceberg lettuce. It is why the United States imports enormous quantities of raw produce from regions where human sewage contamination of agricultural water has been a known food-safety problem for generations, and then acts mystified when a parasite transmitted through human feces turns up in the water surrounding the lettuce. And sometimes, when you find a human fecal parasite in the wastewater and in the drainage ditch next to the lettuce, perhaps it is time to stop scratching your head about where the shit came from.
In the meantime, this might be a good moment to remember one of the lessons from "Homesteading for Health." You don’t need a farm to grow some of your own food. Sprouts and microgreens can be grown right in the house. A few pots on a patio or a small raised bed can keep you supplied with fresh lettuce and greens for much of the year. There are plenty of reasons to grow at least some of what you eat. Knowing exactly where it came from is one of them. And I can say with reasonable confidence that you won’t be defecating in your own vegetable garden anytime soon.
And Now, the Jalapeños. Apparently Mexican lettuce was not having all the fun. FDA has now closed another investigation, this one into a Salmonella Javiana outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers grown in Sinaloa, Mexico. The final tally was 488 illnesses in 34 states and 65 hospitalizations. Of the 308 people interviewed, 281, or 91 percent, reported eating at a Mexican-style restaurant before becoming sick, including Chipotle and QDOBA.
Salmonella, for those who have somehow escaped the last century of food-safety education, is primarily an intestinal bacterium of humans and animals. It gets into food largely through fecal contamination (hmmm…. where did we hear that story before)? With fresh produce, the usual suspects are contaminated irrigation or wash water, manure and animal feces, sewage, dirty equipment, or workers with poor sanitation. FDA itself says that past outbreaks involving fresh produce have usually resulted from produce becoming contaminated with fecal material. In other words, once again, we're talking about poop. And about people going to the bathroom in the very same spot where they are cultivating the food that is then imported in to the USA and we eat.
FDA investigators traced the peppers backward through the supply chain, eventually identifying a common grower in Sinaloa as the likely source of the outbreak. Inspectors then traveled to Mexico to investigate the distributor that handled the implicated jalapeños. There was just one problem. By the time FDA got there, there weren’t any jalapeños left to test. So investigators sampled the environment instead. Those samples were negative. And FDA therefore concluded that it was “unable to determine a route or source of contamination” and closed the investigation.
Perhaps the mystery really is impenetrable. Nearly 500 Americans became ill. Ninety-one percent of those interviewed had eaten at Mexican-style restaurants. Investigators traced the outbreak to jalapeños, traced the jalapeños to Sinaloa, and identified a common grower as the likely source. Salmonella generally reaches fresh produce through fecal contamination somewhere in the growing, irrigation, harvesting, washing, or processing chain.
Unfortunately, by the time FDA arrived, the jalapeños were gone. The environmental samples came back negative. And without the offending peppers actually sitting there waiting to confess, FDA was unable to determine how the contamination occurred. Fair enough. But when hundreds of people get Salmonella from jalapeños traced to the same Mexican grower, perhaps we don’t need Hercule Poirot. Something got into those peppers. And odds are, it came out of something else first. And that something most likely was human…
Sometimes I feel like both the FDA and the CDC live in some strange parallel-universe bubble where they are channeling old silent-film Keystone Cop comedies. But as I reflect more on this, I have realized that it describes pretty much all of the HHS I have encountered recently.
A Few Tips: We grow a lot of peppers in our raised beds. They don’t take much space, although they do need a reasonably long growing season, which can make them more challenging in the northern parts of the country. We either chop them and freeze them raw, or throw them on the BBQ first, then chop and freeze them. Simple, inexpensive, and we know exactly where they came from.
But growing your own isn’t an option for everyone. So here are a couple of practical alternatives: Pay attention to where your produce comes from. When possible, buy produce grown in the United States or in countries with strong agricultural sanitation and wastewater controls. Sorry to our Mexican and South American neighbors, but given the repeated contamination problems involving imported produce, country of origin is something worth paying attention to.
Consider washing produce with a hypochlorous acid product labeled for that use. And don’t forget the places people tend to miss, including the inner leaves of whole lettuce, cabbage, and similar produce. We use Curativa Bay food mist on our produce when we buy it from the store. Its non-toxic nature and rapid degradation into harmless saltwater byproducts make it environmentally friendly and safe for human health. Full disclosure: Robert and I are affiliated with the company, but it is also a company whose products we use ourselves and trust.
None of this makes fresh produce risk-free. But after reading enough FDA outbreak investigations involving fecal contamination, wastewater, drainage ditches, and imported vegetables, We have become considerably more interested in knowing exactly where our salad came from.
A Little Something Extra in the Peperoncini: Leaving Mexico behind, we travel now to Greece, where Mezzetta sources its Golden Greek Peperoncini from farms on the Peloponnese peninsula. FDA announced a recall after what the agency rather delicately described as a “pest contaminant” was discovered in a jar. The “pest contaminant” happened to be a dead mouse. The discovery went viral after a woman named Tiffany posted a video to TikTok while making Mississippi-style pot roast. She had opened the jar, pulled out some peperoncini, and then noticed something else floating around inside.
We have spent years farming and have dealt with more mice than we care to count. We have never encountered a white mouse running around our barns, fields, feed rooms, or outbuildings. White mice are, of course, immediately associated with domesticated and laboratory strains. To our knowledge, white mice aren’t running around the pepper fields of Greece.
That does not prove from a video that this particular animal was a domestic or laboratory mouse, nor does it tell us when or where it entered the jar. But it raises a rather different question from the one we started with. Was this actually a wild mouse that somehow found its way into a jar of peppers during food production, or was this a domesticated white mouse introduced somewhere along the way? Because if it is the latter, we are no longer simply talking about sloppy agricultural sanitation. We are potentially talking about product adulteration. And that deserves a very different investigation. And hopefully the FDA also has someone very, very good at pattern recognition - but somehow we doubt it.
FDA reports that no illnesses have been associated with the recall, which is reassuring, although perhaps not the first thing that would be going through our minds after discovering that we had just sampled the mouse-infused brine. Mezzetta recalled the affected lot and began investigating how a rodent managed to become part of the Mediterranean experience. FDA calls it a “pest contaminant.” We call it the peperoncini that comes with its own mammalian protein supplement. But for God’s sake, don’t lick your fingers."
"How it Really is"
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think.
The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
- Thomas Sowell
"Most Civilizations..."
“Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.”
- Frank Herbert, "God Emperor of Dune"
"Will Europe Be Annihilated Over Kaliningrad?"
"Will Europe Be Annihilated Over Kaliningrad?"
by John Leake
"The most disconcerting thing about living in the West is that we have no reliable means of knowing who is in charge. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that it is NOT President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron, or German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. As we saw during the pandemic, all these countries seem to be governed by the same shadowy globalist oligarchy.
Like the US, the nations of Europe have no coherent strategy for winning a war against Russia. Mess making and blowing up energy infrastructure, thereby condemning their citizenries to high energy prices and general inflation, is apparently what passes for strategy in western military circles. The comparison with the fraudulent, criminal, and catastrophic pandemic response is apt.
The UK, which has a standing army of about 78,000, seems to think it is once again engaged in the Great Game against Russia, which has a standing army of 2,441,000—the military equivalent of former British Health Secretary Matt Hancock managing the pandemic response.
Germany has an active duty military of 63,000 soldiers. After limiting or banning German rearmament after the First and Second World Wars, NATO is now aggressively encouraging Germany to rearm, apparently to have another go at Russia. And why not? It worked out so well the first two times.
The Germans should remember what then Senator Harry Truman told a New York Times reporter in June 1941: "If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible."
The Germans should also remember the old saying attributed to Lord Hastings Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO. The purpose of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
Yesterday, October 1, 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, singling it out as the likely target of a NATO attack, which would prompt Russia to consider using every weapon at its disposal. He added that Moscow was not threatening anyone and had no plan to attack Europe in 2029, 2030, or 2050, but that Europeans should understand Russia would answer aggression. The remarks followed a Russian diplomatic note to NATO warning that an attempt to cut off Kaliningrad could draw a response with Russia’s full arsenal, including nuclear weapons. As reported in the Associated Press.
The warning sent to NATO echoed statements issued by several Russian embassies in Europe this week which said that Moscow has “information that NATO is preparing (an) air and naval blockade of Kaliningrad and Kaliningrad region.”
The embassies in the U.K. and Ireland posted their statements on their Telegram channels, and the embassy in Belgium released it to the Tass news agency.
NATO claims it is reinforcing the eastern flank and practicing to defend allied territory, not planning to seize or isolate Kaliningrad. Moscow claims that drills, ship interdictions, and talk of blockade already amount to escalation against sovereign Russian land.
The so-called “leaders” of Europe would do well to remember how the former Hanseatic city of Danzig became a flashpoint in September 1939. After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) created the Free City of Danzig (today Gdańsk) under League of Nations sovereignty, with Poland holding special rights over the port, customs, and foreign relations. It also awarded Poland the Polish Corridor - a strip of former German territory along the lower Vistula - so the restored Polish state would have “free and secure access to the sea,” as Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points had promised.
The corridor cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. Hitler claimed that the city - almost entirely inhabited by Germans - had been unjustly isolated from its mother country and people. In a September 1, 1939 Reichstag speech, he called Danzig “a German city” and the corridor “German,” and accused Poland of strangling the free city. That morning the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military depot on the Westerplatte peninsula in Danzig harbor. German forces then seized the city and drove through the corridor. Britain and France declared war on September 3, and World War II began.
IF NATO naval forces try to blockade Kaliningrad, they will provoke Putin to respond aggressively, and I’m sure they are prepared to make the comparison with Hitler’s actions in September 1939.
They would be far wiser to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. No one in his right mind would risk blowing up Europe over this unnecessary war, which could have been averted by simply agreeing to Russia’s proposed neutrality deal in the autumn of 2021. In the United States, no one had even heard of the disputed (ethnic Russian) Donbas or could have located it on a map prior to 2022.
Everyone in the West should carefully consider the events of 2021 that led to Russia sending its expeditionary force into Ukraine in February 2022. As I recount in my new book, "Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions": Shortly after President Biden was sworn into office in January 2021, tensions between the United States and Russia began to ratchet up over various disagreements. In the autumn of 2021, Russian intelligence told President Putin that, in addition to the ongoing training and equipping of the Ukrainian military, CIA and British intelligence (MI6) are essentially controlling Ukrainian intelligence and turning it into a “springboard for operations against Moscow.” President Putin found these reports highly alarming, and he quickly submitted a proposal to NATO for Ukrainian neutrality. As NATO secretary Jens Stoltenberg later recounted to the EU Parliament:
In the autumn of 2021, Russia actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what they sent us, and that was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
Why wasn’t Stoltenberg at least willing to try an Austrian style neutrality deal for Ukraine? Given that the Russians proposed it, they had a strong motive to abide by it. If they subsequently violated the terms of their own proposal, the West would have a clear cause for war with Russia. Implied in Stoltenberg’s statement is that, in December 2021, he found the prospect of imminent war with Russia in Ukraine preferable to making a concession to Russia to avert war for an indeterminate period, perhaps for as long as Austria had remained at peace with Russia.
Immanuel Kant remains the most famous native son of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and it is worth reviewing what he had to say about war in his 1795 work, "Toward Perpetual Peace."
Kant regarded war as something reason must work to abolish. In his view, “reason absolutely condemns war as a legal recourse” and makes a state of peace an immediate duty. Between states there is no court, so each side that believes itself injured may use force to press its claim, and neither can be judged wrong in a strict legal sense. That provisional resort does not make the condition just. The condition itself is “in the highest degree unjust,” and states are bound to leave it.
Kant elegantly stated that a war of mutual annihilation would produce “perpetual peace in the vast burial ground of the human race.” He also vehemently condemned methods that eliminate the possibility of reaching peace - that is, assassinations and other forms of treachery. As he saw it, the warring parties are obliged to maintain a disposition of mutual respect and willingness to negotiate, or peace would never be possible. He presented the following specific conditions for achieving and maintaining peace:
ͦ No peace treaty that secretly reserves a pretext for a future war.
ͦ No treating a state as property that can be inherited, bought, exchanged, or given away.
ͦ. Standing armies to be abolished over time, because they threaten other states and fuel an arms race.
ͦ No public debt contracted for foreign affairs and war.
ͦ No forcible interference in another state’s constitution and government.
ͦ. No hostilities that would make mutual confidence after the war impossible.
He also offered three “definitive articles” for securing and maintaining peace:
ͦ. Every state should have a republican constitution (representative government under law, with the executive separate from the legislature). Citizens who bear the costs of war will not lightly authorize it; he contrasts this with rulers who can wage war as a kind of pleasure party at little personal cost.
ͦ The right of nations should rest on a federation of free states (foedus pacificum), a pacific league aimed at ending all wars, not a single world state that swallows the others. He feared a universal monarchy would become despotism.
ͦ Cosmopolitan right is limited to conditions of universal hospitality: a right to visit, not a right to settle or conquer."
o
"The U.S. Is Sending A Third Aircraft Carrier And A Second Marine Division To The Middle East As The Global Energy Crisis And The Global Food Crisis Both Intensify"
"The U.S. Is Sending A Third Aircraft Carrier And A Second Marine Division To The
Middle East As The Global Energy Crisis And The Global Food Crisis Both Intensify"
by Michael Snyder
"The months ahead are shaping up to be a time of war, economic problems, food shortages and global chaos. There is no end in sight for the war in the Middle East or the war with Russia. Meanwhile, global energy supplies and global food supplies both continue to get even tighter. We desperately need some sort of a diplomatic miracle, but talks with the Iranians have totally broken down and tensions between the Russians and our allies in Europe are higher than ever. Our deteriorating economy is the number one political issue in the U.S. during this election season, but the economic pain that we have experienced so far will be absolutely dwarfed by what is ahead.
On Thursday, it was being reported that the U.S. has decided to deploy a third aircraft carrier and a second Marine division to the Middle East…The Trump administration has decided to deploy a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East, along with a second Marine division, a US official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and an additional division of US Marines will deploy to US Central Command’s area of operations. The move means that, until the US midterm elections, US President Donald Trump will have significantly greater military capabilities and a wider range of options for potential action against Iran.
Many were hoping that an end to the war was near. These moves are an indication that a major escalation could be coming. The Iranians have not backed down and they are not going to back down.
On Tuesday, they attacked three more commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz… Three vessels reported being struck on Tuesday, September 29, in the area around the Strait of Hormuz as Iran appears to be lashing out to demonstrate that it is still threatening vessels. While it brings the total number of vessels struck to four so far this week, observers point to increasing oil flows and vessel traffic in the region.
UK Maritime Trade Operations reported the incidents, although few details were provided. It said that the information had come from verified sources but was delayed in being transmitted. It was unclear when the strikes took place. It identified all three incidents as involving tankers without details on the extent of the damage, while an unconfirmed report said one of the vessels was an LNG carrier.
Two of the vessels were identified in the tracking by the International Maritime Organization, with both being crude oil tankers flying the Liberian flag and sustaining damage. One VLCC, the Mersin Prosperity (299,319 dwt), is operated by ADNOC. The other tanker appeared to be a smaller vessel, possibly involved in the shuttle operations that have arisen to get oil from the Gulf states to tankers waiting south of the Strait in the Arabian Sea. This tanker was identified as Sinbad (115,949 dwt), and it was last reported at Fujairah. Both tankers appeared to be making the transit dark.
We have been able to get some oil through the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks. But not nearly enough. It would be wonderful if the Iranians were willing to make a reasonable deal, but they just aren’t budging. In fact, talks with the Iranians went so poorly when Iranian officials came to New York that Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered them to leave early…
After little progress was made in weekend meetings between Iranian and Qatari mediators, Rubio lost patience and told the Iranians on Monday that Araghchi and his delegation had to leave New York immediately, according to the two officials, who were familiar with the decision and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal administration process. Rubio, according to one official, determined that the Iranians had “overstayed their welcome” and that since the high-level meetings at the U.N. were over, they should leave. Ararghchi and his team departed New York very early Tuesday.
What this means is that the global energy crisis is going to continue to get worse. Earlier today, we learned that the Chinese “have suspended exports of oil products to regions beyond Hong Kong and Macau until further notice”… Chinese refiners have suspended exports of oil products to regions beyond Hong Kong and Macau until further notice from Beijing, four people briefed on the matter said on Thursday. As China looks to safeguard domestic supplies, state oil major PetroChina cancelled on Wednesday a handful of its gasoline and jet fuel shipments that were planned for October, three of the sources said.
This pushed the price of Brent crude above 101 dollars a barrel and the price of U.S. crude above 92 dollars a barrel. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have announced that the U.S. will be releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and they are strongly pressuring our allies in Europe to follow suit… The Trump administration has told Germany and France to draw down emergency diesel inventories to help ease soaring global fuel prices or face a potential US diesel export ban, according to three people close to the discussions.
The warning marks an escalation in pressure on Europe as US President Donald Trump considers a potential ban to help bring down US fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections. Even though fuel prices in Europe have risen to absolutely insane levels, European leaders have been hesitant to authorize the release of more strategic reserves. One anonymous U.S. official told Reuters that it is “in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States”… The International Energy Agency, the West’s energy watchdog, has not yet asked Germany to release stocks, Germany’s economy ministry said. It was not clear when the IEA might meet next.
The US administration has been particularly frustrated with France and Germany, which US officials believe have not fully followed through on earlier commitments to release emergency oil and petroleum product stocks, Reuters has reported previously. “It is in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States as we pursue multiple pathways to boost the supply of refined products and lower costs for consumers,” one of the sources, a US official, told Reuters.
As global supplies of fuel get extremely tight, we are seeing things happen that are absolutely unprecedented. This week, the crack spread for diesel was hovering in a range of $108 to $122 per barrel. The soaring cost of diesel is hitting farmers all over the planet extremely hard, and it is one of the factors that is driving up global food prices.
Zero Hedge is reporting that the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index increased by a whopping 13 percent during the third quarter of this year… The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest quarterly gain since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, as Black Sea disruptions, a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, and mounting El Niño risks have formed what could be considered a perfect storm poised to drive food prices higher. BCOMAGSP, which tracks 10 major crops including corn, soybeans, wheat, coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, and others, jumped 13% in the third quarter.
When food prices rise in the United States, that is painful, but most of us still have enough food to eat. In nations where poverty is widespread, higher food prices can mean the difference between eating and not eating for millions of people. Ominously, the foreign minister of India is now warning that a “major food crisis” is coming in the months ahead…
India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar has warned that the world faces a “major food crisis” in the coming months, as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East compound the effects of a super El Nino. Speaking at an event organised by the Asia Society in New York, Mr Jaishankar said the two conflicts had “a devastating impact” on the economies of the Global South, and that energy, food, fertilizer and finance were all under strain at once. “If you have energy as a big crunch and then food and fertilizers on top of it, and finance, because every time there’s a conflict, money moves towards safe harbors and away from the Global South, the net result of it has been really very, very stressful,” he said.
We are experiencing a global fertilizer crisis, soaring diesel prices, extreme droughts in Central America and other key agricultural regions, the most powerful Super El Niño ever recorded and World War III all at the same time. The food shortages that are coming will shock everyone. The wealthy nations will hoard whatever food happens to be available just like they are starting to hoard fuel right now.
But many impoverished nations will not have that option. The number of acutely hungry people in the world was already at an all-time high coming into 2026, and now global hunger is going to go to an entirely new level. What we are facing is extremely serious, and there are no easy solutions on the horizon."
Tragically, this scene is about to soon be repeated many thousands of times...
Was it worth it?
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/3/26
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
Comments here:
Friday, October 2, 2026
"What Country Will Fail First? Labor Market Collapses; Truckers Getting Destroyed, Living In Poverty"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/2/26
"What Country Will Fail First? Labor Market Collapses;
Truckers Getting Destroyed, Living In Poverty"
Comments here:
"Millions Of Adults Are Moving Back In With Their Parents Because They Can't Afford Rent Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/2/26
"Millions Of Adults Are Moving Back In With
Their Parents Because They Can't Afford Rent Anymore"
"Millions of adults are moving back in with their parents, and it comes down to money: rent costs more than the paycheck, the job is gone, and the debt is still there. In this video, young adults show what moving back home really looks like: staying with mom because rent isn't worth it, losing a job and moving back home, moving back to dad's after a financial struggle, living in a childhood bedroom again as an adult, a family of four moving into mom's basement, and a hair business that collapsed after a client scam. We look at why so many people in their twenties and thirties are back under their parents' roof, what the cost of living crisis is doing to independence, and how to run a household on less."
Comments here:
"Alert! Mass Evacuation From Kiev? Ground Troops Head To Iran"
Canadian Prepper, 10/2/26
"Alert! Mass Evacuation From Kiev?
Ground Troops Head To Iran"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
Full screen recommended.
Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust.
Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."
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