Merry Christmas folks, thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, December 24, 2021
"Traditional Christmas Classics🎄 Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby"
Full screen recommended.
"Traditional Christmas Classics🎄
Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby"
"Relaxing Fireplace & The Best Instrumental Christmas Music"
Full screen recommended.
"Relaxing Fireplace & The Best Instrumental Christmas Music"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris from the death explosion of a massive star, witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. This sharp, ground-based telescopic view combines broadband color data with narrowband data that tracks emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms to explore the tangled filaments within the still expanding cloud.
One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is visible as a bright spot near the nebula's center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is a mere 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus."
"If You Look..."; "Can You See The Signs That Are Happening All Around Us?"
"We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy. It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong."
- Robert James Brown
○
Full screen recommended.
"Can You See The Signs That Are Happening All Around Us?"
by Epic Economist
"Most people remain terribly unaware of the dangerous events that are coming for us. We are living at a time when massive disasters are happing all around us, but the vast majority of our society isn't paying attention to what's going on. Our world is being shaken by economic and financial troubles, widespread social disorder, pestilence, and many other natural catastrophes, but many of us are still thinking that life will eventually get back to "normal". Sadly, that isn’t going to happen. As we approach 2022, global events will continue to accelerate and most of our population is going to be caught by surprise by what is coming because they just don't want to believe that things will ever get so chaotic.
But with each passing day, more disasters emerge around the world. For instance, on Monday the California coast was hit by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake that brought significant shaking and serious damages to the area. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, initial economic losses totaled more than $10 million, but officials are still evaluating the true scope of the damages. Seismic activity continues to increase all over the planet, and that's particularly worrying because, along the Ring of Fire, where 75 percent of the Earth’s active volcanoes are located, new tremors are reported on a daily basis. The region accounts for more than 80 percent of all global earthquakes and the fact that it is becoming active right now means that we're basically sitting on a ticking time bomb.
On top of that, late last week, extreme winds and brutal tornadoes erupted right in the middle of the nation. Last Wednesday, a widespread windstorm, severe weather outbreak, and unusual heat from the Rockies and Plains into the upper Midwest was recorded. Needless to say, such high wind speeds can fuel wildfires to spin out of control. And that's what happened in the state of Kansas, where hundreds of thousands of acres were burned in less than three days.
On Thursday, the Forest Service exposed that nearly 400,000 acres had burned and hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Darin Myers, fire department chief in Ellis County, revealed that some of his firefighters saved a resident from her burning home just before the flames became uncontrolled. They said that the blaze has “erased” the house. “Usually it takes 30 minutes to an hour to burn a house down,” Myers explains. “It was just like within a minute. The fire was past the house and the house was gone.”
The catastrophe also led many farmers to lose everything. In some cases, the flames moved so fast that it was impossible to move all of the animals out of the way. Unfortunately, the whole world has been hit by a series of tragedies over the past few years, and that has resulted in the destruction of millions of acres of agricultural land. Now, we're once again at the brink of a global food crisis.
Since last year, global hunger faced an unprecedented spike and started affecting an additional 768 million people worldwide. According to the UN, the number of people living with food insecurity -- or those forced to compromise on food quantity or quality -- skyrocketed by 318 million, to 2.38 billion. And experts are warning that while drought, geopolitical conflicts, and inflation intensifies, a global food crisis seems to be fast approaching.
At this point, global food supplies are getting increasingly tighter. And the great solution global leaders are coming up with is for people to start eating insects. In Europe, officials just allowed house crickets, yellow mealworms, and grasshoppers to be sold as food at supermarkets. The main question now is: how many households will be able to afford traditional food and how many will have to resort to substitutes to save money?
Right now, millions of Americans are having trouble affording essential goods as inflation soars higher. An almost 7 percent surge in consumer prices is making it more difficult for people to make ends meet because wages haven't kept pace with inflation. The same is happening all over the globe. In essence, those who can no longer afford meat might resort to bugs and worms to feed their families.
These are extremely unusual times, and with each passing day, more strange things happen all over the world. Yet, most of the population wants to believe that things are improving and we're heading to a state of normality. Of course, it would be great if that was true, but it isn't. We must wake up from this collective numbness because the changes that we are facing right now will be proven permanent, and the pace of change is only going to intensify during the months and years to come."
○
"The Elves of Capitalism"
"The Elves of Capitalism"
By Jeffrey Tucker
One reason that the Brothers Grimm fairy tales have such appeal - more so than the folklore that came before - is that they deal with a world that is familiar to us, a world that was just being invented in the early 19th century, when these stories were first printed and circulated. They deal with people, scenes and events that affect what we call the middle class today, or the bourgeoisie.
Yes, the stories feature kings, queens, princes and princesses - this was not yet the age of democracy - but most often our sympathies as readers rest with the plain people and their triumphs, which the stories feature most poignantly.
Both Karl Marx and free market economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) agreed that what we call the middle class was a new creation in the history of the world, and it was brought about by capitalism. The caste chasms that once persisted between the peasants and the lords, those privileged by title and land grants and those fated to serve them, were melted away by the advent of commercial society.
Universal possession of property and money replaced servitude and barter, and exchange relationships of people’s own choosing gradually replaced the required lifetime associations of birth and happenstance. The distinguishing mark of this new middle class was the prospect of social advance through rising prosperity. Fluid classes replaced fixed castes.
This was the world that serves as the backdrop to the tales of the Brothers Grimm. A great example of this is the very short story called “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” A cobbler and his wife worked very hard at their craft, making shoes all day. But leather was expensive, and no matter how hard they worked, they could not put their business in the black. They were selling some shoes, but they couldn’t make enough fast enough. They were getting poorer, rather than richer.
One night, the shoemaker left his cut leather out on a table and went to bed. The next morning, a fantastic pair of shoes made out of that leather awaited him. The craftsmanship was impeccable. They were of the finest style. He was able to charge a very high price to a customer who was very impressed by them.
This same series of events repeated themselves again the next day and the next. Some months later, the shoemaker and his wife were financially secure and part of the rising middle class. All their financial worries were gone, and they were comfortable and happy.
At this point, the shoemaker said to his wife: “I should like to sit up and watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.” The wife agreed, and they stayed up to watch what was happening in the night.
Now, to be sure, this turn of events strikes me as rather strange. One might think that curiosity would have caused them to examine this long before. Why didn’t they stay up after the second or third time that leather had become shoes? Why did they wait so long to investigate the cause of their prosperity?
In any case, they did stay up and look, and they found two naked elves there working away, turning scraps of leather into fine shoes. The wife thoughtfully decided to return the favor and make them tiny little clothes. When the elves found the clothes, they put them on and ran away with great delight. They never returned, but the story assures us that this was just fine because the shoe business stayed in the black. The shoemaker and his wife lived a long and prosperous life.
We can see in this one story an archetype of what was then a new type of middle-class success story in the framework of a commercial society. The couple went from poverty to wealth in relatively short order. This came about not because of favors from the king or the discovery of gold, much less from stealing or piracy, but purely by virtue of work and commerce, combined with the assistance of some benefactors in the night whose favors they never sought, but nonetheless came to deeply appreciate.
Apply this story in our times: We are all in the position of poor shoemakers with benefactors. In a state of nature, we would be struggling for survival as most all of humanity did from the beginning of recorded history until the late Middle Ages, when the first lights of capitalism as we know it began to appear on the horizon. Over the next several hundred years, and especially during the 19th century, life itself was transformed. The state of nature was vanquished, and the world completely re-made in the service of human well-being.
As William Bernstein summarizes the situation: “Beginning about A.D. 100, there had been improvement in human well-being, but it was so slow and unreliable that it was not noticeable during the average person’s 25-year life span. Then, not long after 1820, prosperity began flowing in an ever-increasing torrent; with each successive generation, the life of the son became observably more comfortable, informed and predictable than that of the father.”
We were born into a world of amazing prosperity that our generation did not create. We have the expectation of living to old age, but this is completely new in the sweep of history, an expectation we can only have had since about 1950. The shift in population reflects that dramatic change, too.
There were most probably 250 million people alive 2,000 years ago, and it took until 1800 for the 1 billion mark to be reached. One hundred and twenty years later, that was doubled. Three billion people lived on the planet by 1960, and there are 7 billion today. Charting this out, you gain a picture of a world of stagnation and stasis from the beginning of recorded history until the Industrial Revolution, when life as we know it today was first experienced by humankind.
If we are shoemakers in this story, the prosperous world in which we live - the world that grants us smartphones, healthcare, gasoline to power our cars and the ability to communicate in real-time video with any living soul on the planet with the click of a button - might be regarded as the elves that came in the night to turn our leather into a marketable product. Most of us never did anything of our own merit to cause us to benefit from this amazing world. At our birth, we woke up in the morning and found a finished and beautiful pair of shoes given unto us.
Earlier, I said that it strikes me as strange that the shoemaker and his wife waited so long to become curious about who or what was nocturnally turning their leather into shoes. How could they have gone for months without wanting to know what was causing their poverty to turn to riches? How could they have treated the magic in their shop as something helpful but rather normal, and only decided to look into the cause as an afterthought?
Yet this is how most everyone behaves in the world today. We are surrounded by bounty in this man-made world, a world completely unlike anything that has existed in 99.9% of the rest of the history of the world. And how very few bother to investigate the causes! We take it all for granted.
We use our technology, eat foods from all over the world available for sale a few blocks from our home, hop on planes that sweep us through the air to any destination on the planet, instantly communicate with anyone anywhere and have the expectation of living to the age of 80 and beyond, yet we are remarkably indifferent and incurious about what forces operate within this world to have turned the cruel state of nature into an earthy paradise.
Actually, the situation is worse than that. Many are openly hostile to the institutions and ideas that have given rise to our age of plenty. We’ve all seen the protests on television in which mobs of iPhone-carrying young people are raising their fists in anger against commercial society, capitalism and capital accumulation and demand just the type of controls, expropriation and regimentation that are guaranteed to drive us back in time to the restoration of castes, poverty and shortened lives. They are plotting to kill the elves.
In the fairy tale, there are only two elves. In the real world, scholars have discerned that there are actually six, and they go by the following names…
First, there is private property, without which there can be no control of the world around us. It would not be necessary if there were a superabundance of all things, but the reality of scarcity means that exclusive ownership is the first condition that permits us to improve the world. Collective ownership is a meaningless phrase as it pertains to scarce resources.
Second, there is exchange. So long as it is voluntary, all exchange takes place with the expectation of mutual benefit. Exchange is a step beyond gift giving because the lives of both parties are made better off by the acquisition of something new. Exchange is what makes possible the formation of exchange ratios and, in a money economy, the development of the balance sheet for calculation profit and loss. The is the foundation of economic rationality.
Third, there is the division of labor that permits us all to benefit from cooperating with one another toward mutual enrichment. This is about more than dividing up productive tasks. It is about integrating everyone into the great project of building civilization. Even the master of all talents and skills can benefit by cooperating with the least skilled among us. The discovery of this reality is the beginning of true enlightenment. It means the replacement of war with trade and the replacement of exploitation with cooperation.
Fourth, there is risk-taking entrepreneurship that bravely pulls back the veil of uncertainty that hides the future from us and takes a step into the future to bring us every manner of material progress. Uncertainty over the future is a reality that binds all of humanity; entrepreneurs are those who do not fear this condition, but rather see this as an opportunity for improving the lives of others at a profit.
Fifth, there is capital accumulation, the amassing of goods that are produced not for consumption, but for the production of other goods. Capital is what makes possible what F.A. Hayek calls the “extended order,” that intertemporal machinery that stabilizes the events of life over time. Capital is what makes planning possible. It makes the hiring of large workforces possible. It allows investors to plan for and build a bright future.
The sixth elf is not an institution, but a state of mind. It is the desire for a better life and the belief that it can happen if we take the right steps. It is the belief in the possibility of progress. If we lose this, we lose everything. Even if all the other conditions are in place, without the intellectual and spiritual commitment to climb higher and higher out of the state of nature, we will slip further and further into the abyss. This state of mind is the essence of what came to define the Western mind, and which has now spread to the entire world.
Together, these elves constitute a team with a name, and that name is capitalism. If you don’t like that name, you can call it something else: the free market, free enterprise, the free society, liberalism or you can make up your own. What matters is not the team name but the constituent parts that make up that team.
The study of economics is much like the decision of the shoemaking couple that stayed up overnight to find out the cause of their good fortune. They discovered these elves and found that they had no clothes. They decided to make clothes for them as a reward for their service. So too should we clothe the institutions that made our world beautiful in order to protect them against the elements and their enemies. And even after they scurry off into the night, we must never lose consciousness of what they have done for us.
Happy holidays!"
The Poet: David Whyte, "The Opening of Eyes"
"The Opening of Eyes"
"That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water,
And I heard the voice of the world speak out.
I knew then as I have before,
Life is no passing memory of what has been,
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things,
Seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees
Before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished,
Opened at last,
Fallen in love
With Solid Ground."
~ David Whyte
"The Economy Has Melted Down in Time for Christmas"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 12/24/21:
"The Economy Has Melted Down in Time for Christmas"
"The Economy is just getting worse. From unemployment to
retail it is getting worse just in time for Christmas. Nothing is based in reality."
○
Full screen recommended.
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave.
During Christmas Eve, Friday, Dec 24, 2021"
"Enjoy Christmas, Things Are About To Get Ugly; Collapse Unavoidable- Prepare"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/24/21:
"Enjoy Christmas, Things Are About To Get Ugly;
Collapse Unavoidable - Prepare"
Jim Kunstler, "Reindeer Games"
"Reindeer Games"
by Jim Kunstler
"You understand, of course, that Western Civ’s mass formation psychosis, like a horror movie franchise, requires the constant re-invention of its monsters and hobgoblins, and a constantly refreshed arsenal of weapons to defeat them. Covid is our mutating monster, but Big Pharma’s silver bullets and wooden stakes have proven quite lame. So, the resourceful superhero, Dr. Fauci (“The Science”), has induced his magic messenger, Santa Claus (a.k.a. the FDA), to deliver two brand-new light-sabers to humankind to keep millions of disordered minds churning with hope of slaying the object of their fear.
Enter stage-right-and-left: Paxlovid from Pfizer and Molnupiravir from Merck. The names alone sound like mysterious invocations from a druidical rite of redemption. How many times have you muttered Mol-Nu-Pir-a-Vir opening the fridge in hopes of finding at least one last beer tucked away behind the mayonnaise and miso?
Molnupiravir, you see, works as a DNA polymerase inhibitor, the same as (sshhhhh) ivermectin, except that, unlike ivermectin — which is considered about the safest drug in the world, and which won a Nobel prize for its inventor — Molnupiravir is hardly tested at all. The FDA calls it an “investigational drug,” meaning it is subject to Murphy’s Law, as the “vaccines” have proved to be. Nor has it passed through any approval process so far. It’s being released under an FDA emergency use authorization, which relieves Merck of any liability problem if people are harmed by it. Molnupiravir will cost $700 for a five-day course of treatment (ten pills) compared to $20 for a course of ivermectin. The US government bought $2.2 billion worth of Molnupiravir. Pfizer’s Paxlovid is actually a two-drug treatment, requiring the HIV-drug ritonavir to give it a buddy-boost. The US government bought $5-billion worth of Paxlovid.
And so now we see why US public health officialdom and the non compos mentis “Joe Biden” & Co. worked so hard, along with social media and cable news, to outlaw all the other cheap and highly-effective Covid early treatment drugs on the scene. Not just ivermectin but fluvoxamine, hydroxychloroquine and so on. They’ve even interfered with deliveries of monoclonal antibodies to stifle their use. You can see clearly what a racketeering operation this has been all along between the FDA, the CDC, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID and the pharmaceutical industry.
There is also the shell game currently being played by Pfizer and its two “vaccines” — the one still under an emergency use authorization called BioNTech, and Pfizer’s replacement for that, Comirnaty, which has received an FDA approval under shady circumstances. The catch is, Pfizer refuses to release Comirnaty in the USA because approved drugs do not enjoy that shield against liability. Pfizer’s BioNTech vaxx has injured and killed many thousands of people the past year. If the two vaxxes are the same, you can expect Comirnaty to kill and injure plenty of victims, and Pfizer will be sued up its pfizoo.
Therefore, Pfizer is also working hard to confuse the public about whether the two drugs are actually the same or not. Ohio University tried to pull a switcheroo with its vaxx mandate, saying they’d made Comirnaty available to students, which is obviously untrue, since Pfizer won’t release it. They are using the unapproved BioNTech. Ohio law (HB 244, in effect this past October) prevents Ohio public schools from mandating vaccines not approved by the FDA. Hence, students at Ohio University are suing the school over its vaccine mandate.
Alas, the Omicron variant has turned into the Grinch that is stealing their Christmas. Omicron is so mild an illness that there has been perhaps one death from it in America — and who knows how chronically ill that patient was? (They won’t say, of course.) All week long, as it became increasingly evident Omicron was nothing to get worked-up about, the “Joe Biden” regime went into overdrive trying to cow the nation into another round of submission and more booster shots.
On Tuesday, the worked-up so-called president rolled out the phony trope that this latest act in the melodrama is a “crisis of the unvaccinated” — despite the fact that both vaxxed and unvaxxed are equally susceptible to Omicron, and the additional fact that Omicron spreads so effectively that in just a month it is displacing all the previous and more deadly Covid variants. Notice, though, that “Joe Biden” didn’t dare lay any lockdowns on the country, while the Supreme Court is preparing to give “JB” his second colonoscopy of the season when they reconvene after New Year’s to hear the cases against his vaxx mandate.
You can infer that this might mean the end of the Covid 19 pandemic extravaganza that has so benefited the party in power. It has given them free rein to the only policy exercise they know: pushing people around. If there’s any lesson that Americans need to draw about the Democratic Party’s motives during this two-year Covid horror show it is that “progressives” are determined to punish, coerce, and persecute the people of this land, while stealing as much of their wealth as possible, and driving our culture into a ditch.
So, with Omicron on the scene like an unexpected reality-test, the Democrats may be fresh out of monsters to terrify the populace. As the horror movie ends and the screen fades to black, the audience is apt to walk out from under that mass formation spell into the winter sunlight, blinking and gasping at the insane ordeal they’ve been subjected to. It’s already happening in a bunch of blue cities whose Democratic bosses have discovered that de-funding the police was a shuck-and-jive they now have to answer for.
Plenty of other matters await answering too, including perhaps the fate of Dr. Fauci and his many co-conspirators in the operation to kill more than a million Americans — when you figure in both Covid deaths and vaxx-related deaths, not to mention suicides and deaths by drugs and despair, not to mention countless injuries that people will not recover from. Robert F. Kennedy’s excellent book, The Real Anthony Fauci, is a comprehensive manual for bringing Dr. Fauci and dozens of his cohorts and accomplices into a court-of-law.
Get this: the SARs Covid-19 episode has been an engineered mind-f**k from start to finish. Western Civ has been taken for a ride, fleeced, shot in the head, and left in the trunk of a car abandoned on a lonely stretch of highway. As we turn the corner into 2022, millions of surviving, de-programmed Americans may get a little worked-up about what has been done to our country and just who is responsible for it.
This Christmas Eve, we can’t omit great thanks to some of the other brave medical researchers and doctors across the country who have sacrificed livelihoods to fight both for the peoples’ health and against the torrents of bad faith and dishonesty spewed out against the people of this land by their own government and its propaganda legions. Kudos to Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCollough, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Chris Martenson, Dr. David Martin, Dr. Steve Kirsch, Dr. Bret Weinstein, Dale Bigtree, Alex Berenson, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and many many others who are standing up against tyranny and coercion."
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/24/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/24/21"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"President Trump is tripling down on pushing the vax, as he tells the public he has had his CV19 booster shot. Trump is still taking full credit for “Operation Warp Speed” that he says “saved millions of lives.” Who cares if there are more vaccine deaths and injuries by orders of magnitude for the CV19 experimental jabs than all vaccines combined in the past 30 years. Does it work? Not if you consider, just this week, that Senators Warren and Booker got their CV19 booster (third shot) and both are now sick with Covid. Triple vaxed Jim Cramer, who wants forced vaccinations on all Americans, also just came down with Covid. It does not stop Covid, but it certainly works for profits for the vaccine makers. That much is for sure.
My Christmas message is bittersweet. It’s been a heavy year for reporting the real news. What is coming at us is going to be rough even if people like data analyst Clif high are only half right. The CV19 injections cause permanent damage, and almost everyone has a family member who got vaxed. The sad realization is there is no reversing this experimental jab. The main reason is the graphene stays in your system forever and acts like razorblades throughout your body until you die. The mainstream media intentionally misinformed people, and the psyop was intense. Many have been scared into taking it or simply think if they comply and get injected, they will get their life back. Of course, it is just the opposite.
So, the Christmas message is simply enjoy the birth of our Lord and Savior, live in the now and do not fear. Jesus is real and he loves us dearly."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these topics,
gives a Christmas message and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/24/21:
"Traditional Instrumental Christmas Songs Playlist"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
"Traditional Instrumental Christmas Songs Playlist"
Beautiful!
"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"
Full screen recommended.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"
"The Christmas Pines" Peaceful Instrumental Christmas Music
Full screen recommended.
Tim Janis,
"The Christmas Pines",
Peaceful Instrumental Christmas Music
"Merry Christmas"
"And that, of course, is the message of Christmas.
We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest,
the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent..."
- Taylor Caldwel
"26 Popular Traditional Christmas Carols w Festive Art by Thomas Kinkade"
Full screen recommended.
"26 Popular Traditional Christmas Carols w
Festive Art by Thomas Kinkade"
"The Christmas Truce of 1914"
Full screen recommended.
"The Christmas Truce of 1914"
by IWN
"At Christmas 1914, an event occurred that was not repeated again during the First World War. An unofficial, spontaneous truce took place along some parts of the Western Front. It often started with a ceasefire as Christmas Day approached. German Army officer Walther Stennes recalled how, initially, this caused some concern.
"On Christmas Eve at noon, fire ceased completely – on both fronts. Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so. But anyhow everyone is awake, no one is sleeping and the sentries are still on duty. So I think it’s alright.’"
British private Marmaduke Walkinton explained how the close proximity of the enemy led to increased communication between the two sides. "We were in the front line; we were about 300 yards from the Germans. And we had, I think on Christmas Eve, we’d been singing carols and this that and the other, and the Germans had been doing the same. And we’d been shouting to each other, sometimes rude remarks more often just joking remarks. Anyway, eventually a German said, ‘Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot. So then we began to pop our heads over the side and jump down quickly in case they shot but they didn’t shoot. And then we saw a German standing up, waving his arms and we didn’t shoot and so on, and so it gradually grew."
For Colin Wilson of the Grenadier Guards, the truce also started with carols. This was then followed by an invitation from the German troops opposite. "We heard a German singing Holy Night of course in German, naturally. Then after he’d finished singing there were all sorts of Christmas greetings being shouted across no man’s land at us. These Germans shouted out, ‘What about you singing Holy Night?’ Well we had a go but of course we weren’t very good at that. Anyway they said, ‘Meet us and come over in no man’s land.’ Well after a time we were allowed – a limited number of us – our officers allowed a limited number of us to go into no man’s land."
The attempts at fraternization by German soldiers did not always meet with success. Clifford Lane remembered how he and his battalion, the 1st Hertfordshire Regiment, ignored such overtures. "Later on in the night there was a great deal of commotion going on in the German front line which was about 100, 150 yards away I suppose. And after a few moments there were lighted objects raised above the German parapet looking like Chinese lanterns to us.The Germans were shouting over to our trench, there’s no doubt about that at all, and before we could take any action or do anything we were ordered to open rapid fire you see. Which we did. The Germans did not reply to our rapid fire they simply carried on with their celebrations, ignored us completely and were having a very fine time indeed. We never did anything else but simply continue in our wet trenches trying to make the most of a bad job."
On Christmas Day, Allied and German troops met in no man’s land. German artillery officer Mr Rickner described celebrating with French soldiers. "I remember very well Christmas, I remember the Christmas Day when the German and the French soldiers left their trenches, went to the barbed wire between them with champagne and cigarettes in their hands and had feelings of fraternization and shouted they wanted to finish the war and that lasted only 2 days 1 and a half really and then strict order came that no fraternization was allowed and we had to stay back in our trenches."
The 6th Gordon Highlanders also took part in the truce, J Reid among them. "When we were on the line at Sailly, Christmas 1914, there was a bit of a truce there you know and the Germans stopped firing, we stopped firing. And we came out of the line and they came out of the line. And we were swapping tins of bully for their tins of meat and the padre was out having a talk with them, they were burying any dead that was there and we were burying any dead – this carried on for about a couple of days."
When the two sides met, they often exchanged gifts and souvenirs. George Jameson recalled what his men returned with. "Keith and Philip Ridley, two of my section, came dashing into the billet during the morning and said, ‘What do you know, the Jerries are out on the top; they’re walking about, they’re dishing out drinks and cigarettes – there’s no fighting going on!’ Well we’d noticed the place was very quiet. I said I don’t believe it. I said well I can’t go I’m duty bloke for the morning but hop off and see what you can find. So Keith and Philip and Lesley Wood went off and they arrived back around about lunchtime, Keith with one of the Landwehr hats on – the grey thing with the red band round the button – Philip had a water bottle. They’d had drinks, they’d had smokes and they’d been walking about. He said, ‘You just wouldn’t believe it!’
British soldiers who took part in the truce often remembered their conversations with the Germans. Archibald Stanley enjoyed speaking to them. "I tell you what happened on Christmas Day 1914, and people don’t believe it. We had this unofficial truce. We met in no man’s land on Christmas Day 1914. We shook hands – they were Saxons – and I heard one fellow talking English. I said to him, ‘You speak English?’ You know what he said? ‘Cor blimey mate,’ he said, ‘I was in a London hotel when the war broke out!’ I thought that topped it. He’d got the London accent…"
Others had more serious exchanges, such as Henry Williamson of the London Regiment. "I talked to an officer the next day – because the truce went on for several days – and he said, ‘You know, we could not have gone on in the First Battle of Ypres because you had so many reserves in your woods and so many automatischer pistol.’ I said, ‘Were your machine guns gone, all knocked out?’ He said, ‘Oh no, automatischer pistol’ – it was our 15 rounds rapid. We also learned that many of the German mass attacks were made by boys, German students of 16/17, arm in arm with one rifle among three."
The high commands on both sides ordered an end to the truce when they heard of it. George Ashurst described how unpopular this made them. "We got orders come down the trench, ‘Get back in your trenches every man,’ by word of mouth down each trench; ‘Everybody back in your trenches,’ shouting. The generals behind must’ve seen it and got a bit suspicious so what they did, they gave orders for a battery of guns behind us to fire, and a machine gun to open out and officers to fire their revolvers at the Jerries. ‘Course that started the war again. Ooh we were cursing them to hell, cursing the generals and that, you want to get up here in this stuff never mind your giving orders, in your big chateaux and driving about in your big cars. We hated the sight of the bloody generals."
The legend that built up around the truce over the years made some sceptical about it, including Harold Lewis of the Royal Field Artillery, stationed in Britain at Christmas 1914. "Although it would be arrogant to say that the thing didn’t actually take place, I very much doubt whether anything of the nature or magnitude that have been claimed for it took place at all. And particularly because the two armies concerned, the German with that rigid discipline and our own with the finest discipline of a fighting force there was, are not likely to break that tradition. And if anybody tried, what were the NCOs doing? What were the officers doing? I think the whole thing borders on the fairytale and may be classed with the Russians with snow on their boots and the Angels of Mons."
Although the truce faded out after Boxing Day, on New Year’s Eve H. Williams of the London Regiment encountered one German soldier still unwilling to return to a state of war. "This runner came along when I was on this fatigue job and said, ‘You’re wanted again to interpret.’ I said, ‘What is it this time?’ He said, ‘There’s a drunk German in our trenches and he won’t go back!’ So I went up and saw our platoon officer there and he said, ‘Williams, there’s this chap here, he’s drunk. I don’t mind it’s all very well to meet them in no man’s land, but he’s actually in our trenches.’ Anyway this chap was standing there with a couple of bottles of beer wanting us to drink the health of the New Year and all the rest of it. He said, ‘Tell him he’s got to go back.’ So I told him. He wouldn’t take any notice he didn’t want to go back. And this officer said, ‘Well if he stops here, he’s got to be made prisoner, ask him if he wants to be made prisoner!’ So I did. ‘Oh, was, Gott nein!’ he said. He understood that, but he wouldn’t go back. Eventually, the officer detailed another chap and me to take him back, so he was escorted there – one on each side and this chap staggering about and singing at the top of his voice. Well we got up to the German wire and I thought, ‘Well I don’t think I’ll go right into their trenches, they might not be as lenient as we are.’ Anyway we found a gap in the wire, headed him in the right direction and left him to it!"
○
Full screen recommended.
"Christmas Truce of 1914"
"Digital Assets Will Be A Digital Disaster; FED Will Bankrupt You; New Home Sales Tank; Family Pets"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/23/21:
"Digital Assets Will Be A Digital Disaster; FED Will Bankrupt You;
New Home Sales Tank; Family Pets"
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! The Economy Is In MELTDOWN. The Worst Is Yet To Come"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/23/21:
"Alert! The Economy Is In MELTDOWN. The Worst Is Yet To Come"
A Christmas Musical Interlude: Placido Domingo and the Vienna Choir Boys, "Ave Maria"
Full screen recommended.
Placido Domingo and the Vienna Choir Boys
"Ave Maria", Composed By Franz Schubert
The original German words by boys choir and tenor.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.
Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
○
"Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"
"A Vision..."
"I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not - that none of us - are alone! I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope. But... that continues to be my wish."
- "Ellie Arroway", "Contact" by Carl Sagan.
"It's Like In The Great Stories..."
Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something."
Frodo: "What are we holding onto, Sam?"
Sam: "That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- Samwise Gamgee,
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
"If All Of This Seems Familiar, That Is Because We Have Seen It All Before…"
"If All Of This Seems Familiar,
That Is Because We Have Seen It All Before…"
by Michael Snyder
"It is often said that history repeats itself, but usually it doesn’t happen quite so quickly. If you are getting a sinking feeling because current events bear such a close resemblance to early 2020, you are definitely not alone. All over the globe, the Omicron variant is causing a wave of tremendous fear that is unlike anything that we have seen since the first half of last year. And based on the response so far, it appears that we haven’t learned much since then. We are witnessing so many of the exact same patterns play out, and that could have very important implications for the year ahead of us. Interestingly, many on social media are now reminding us that 2022 is pronounced “2020 too”, and that is certainly quite a depressing thought.
Do you remember all of those ominous projections that “the experts” were giving us back at the very start of the COVID pandemic? Well, it is happening again. Researchers at the University of Washington made headlines all over the world this week when they warned that there could be 140 million new COVID infections in the United States in January and February… "Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine revised its COVID-19 modeling to include updated information about the omicron variant. They found the U.S. may see a total of about 140 million new infections from Jan. 1 to March 1, 2022, peaking in late-January at about 2.8 million new daily infections."
Wow, that sounds really bad. But of course we have seen similar projections before, and every time they were dead wrong. And just like when the pandemic first began, New York City is the epicenter for this new wave of infections… "New York once again smashed COVID records on Wednesday, with the new Omicron variant blamed for an all-time high of 28,924 cases reported across the Empire State.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the numbers at a news conference Wednesday – the fifth day in the last six where New York has broken its prior COVID diagnosis records, and the sixth day in a row that there has been more than 20,000 cases across the state."
Doesn’t it seem odd that New York City just keeps setting new record after new record even though so many New Yorkers have been “fully vaccinated”? In fact, it has been reported that a whopping 85 percent of all New York City residents have received at least one injection. Is there someone out there that can explain to me what is going on?
Another parallel to the early days of the pandemic is that Bill Gates is starting to make lots of noise again. He says that he has canceled most of his holiday plans because of Omicron, and he is warning that the “worst part of the pandemic” could be right in front of us… "Bill Gates said he called off his holiday plans as the omicron variant ushers in what he predicts could be the “worst part of the pandemic.” He also predicted, however, that the current surge in COVID-19 cases could be over within months, and the pandemic itself may end next year “if we take the right steps.” “Just when it seemed like life would return to normal, we could be entering the worst part of the pandemic,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “Omicron will hit home for all of us. Close friends of mine now have it, and I’ve canceled most of my holiday plans.”
That is funny, because he originally told us that if we did everything that he was urging us to do that things would be much better by now. But guys like him will never admit that they were wrong.
Thanks to all of the fear that is being generated, we are starting to see major sporting events being canceled just like we did in early 2020. For example, the NHL has decided to “pause” their entire season… "The headlines on Monday night were stark, if unsurprising: The NHL was going to pause the 2021-22 season Wednesday, and resume after Christmas break, amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. This followed a flurry of team shutdowns that left a diminishing number of games on the schedule." In the aftermath, we’re left with several questions: How will teams get “unpaused”? Will there be a change in protocols? How does this impact the Olympics and All-Star Weekend?
And The Gator Bowl is in danger of not being played because Texas A&M decided to pull out of the game at the last minute… "Texas A&M will not participate in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl because of COVID-19 issues and season-ending injuries within the program, leaving Wake Forest without an opponent as officials try to find a replacement team, it was announced Wednesday. “It is unfortunate, but we just don’t have enough scholarship players available to field a team,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher said.
If Omicron continues to spread rapidly, will there soon be a tsunami of cancellations such as we witnessed during the early portion of last year? Let us hope not. Initially, Americans were being told that life would “return to normal” once everyone got their shots. But now health authorities are telling us that “boosters” are needed because immunity wanes “3 to 6 months” after the initial injections… "Breakthrough cases demonstrate how effective vaccines are and can also show how that protection changes over time. Immunity from initial vaccinations wanes 3 to 6 months later, health experts say, so boosters are crucial to fighting off the new variant."
If you keep complying, there is always going to be another injection for you to take for the rest of your life. And for many of you, “the rest of your life” is going to be a whole lot shorter than you originally thought.
There is so much fear in the air right now, and it appears to be completely unnecessary. In fact, a very large study just determined that Omicron appears to be much less dangerous than Delta is… "The real-world analysis, of more than 160,000 people, comes ahead of a similar UK Government report expected to show Britons are also less likely to be severely ill with the variant. Omicron sufferers were also 70 percent less likely to be admitted to ICU or put on a ventilator compared to those with Delta, according to the study led by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD)."
But of course our leaders are not going to be swayed by real scientific studies such as this. Instead, they are just going to keep smashing the panic button because that is what the “experts” are telling them to do. A fresh round of restrictions, mandates and lockdowns would be absolutely devastating for the global economy, and it would certainly set the stage for so many of the things that I have been warning about. Sadly, even though they have seen the damage that they have already caused, our politicians seem determined to create even more chaos.
Very dark times are now upon us, and I have a feeling that they are about to get even darker."