Jeremiah Babe, 12/31/22:
"Falling Into The Abyss - Things Are About To Get Worse"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, December 31, 2022
"Predict This!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 12/31/22:
"Predict This!"
"Everybody has submitted their predictions on where are, and where we think the economy is headed in the new year. Here are your predictions for 2023."
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Life, magnificent, precious Life...
"A Look to the Heavens"
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130422.html
"Get Your Stuff Together..."
"We all got problems. But there's a great book out called "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. " Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another. "
- Quincy Jones
The Poet: John O'Donohue, "In These Times "
"In These Times "
"In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home."
~ John O'Donohue,
from "To Bless the Space Between Us "
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Coming Home"
"Coming Home"
"When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place -
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me."
- Mary Oliver
2023: "It Has Been A Privilege..."
Full screen recommended.
2023: We're the band...
and "It has been a privilege playing with you."
o
God help us...
"Truth And Consequences"
"Truth And Consequences"
by Jim Kunstler
“I would advise the more-sciencey-than-thou to not pivot from Covid directly into climate change bullying just yet. 2023 is going to be replete with excess death, and you are gonna have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. Lots of apologetic to push, in support of the Narrative.” - The Ethical Skeptic on Substack
"Even if NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The WashPo, and the rest of the Big News Media mafia ignore the Twitter Files story, the revolution at Twitter is going to shake their windows and rattle their walls. There will be free debate in 2023 on this social media platform. News and ideas will be set loose across the landscape, and, for the first time in years, reality will have a chance to compete with the bad faith narratives of a regime at war against its own people.
We’ll have to see how long this window remains open before the Intel Community tries to shut Twitter down, ramp up a campaign to defame it, or blow it up as a viable business. Or make a move to, shall we say, neutralize the person behind the revolution there. The more that free speech is actually permitted on Twitter, the more every other platform will look like a lame organ of propaganda, especially when it comes to issues that really matter such as the deadly consequences of the mRNA “vaccines,” the shady doings around recent US elections, the actual condition of the US economy, the perilous folly of “Joe Biden’s” war in Ukraine (and the family grifting operation that prompted it), and the evil machinations of the Intel Community itself.
In about one week the Party of Chaos will be swept out of power in the US House of Representatives. Their opponents will take control of all the House committee chairs, with subpoena power to compel the testimony of public figures who have managed to avoid answering questions for years. The Big News Media may not be able to avoid reporting on it, especially with Twitter loosened up, and their lying attempts to spin events are going to look pathetic when instantly contrasted with free analysis and informed debate in the public arena.
You can’t overstate what an advantage the insidious takeover of social media gave to forces seeking to wreck the country, though the effects have barely been explored yet. The people remain bamboozled over the Covid-19 operation especially. The pandemic certainly wasn’t some random act by Mother Nature, not with US public health agencies supporting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses from Ukraine to North Carolina to Wuhan, China. And the subsequent damage caused by the government’s response to the outbreak was either an epic fiasco of inept officialdom, or something that smells like mass murder.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s little trick so far to avoid answering questions about these matters was simply to not use the term “gain-of-function” in his correspondence arranging grants for it — especially after President Barack Obama banned that type of research by its name in 2014. So when asked about gain-of-function, he could just lie with abandon. After that simple ruse is exposed, the patent and royalty benefits enjoyed by Dr. Fauci — who doubled his net worth after 2019 — will be dragged into the light of day.
It’s doubtful that Merrick Garland’s uber-corrupt DOJ would follow-up on any referral for criminal prosecution issued by a House committee. But guess what? There are fifty states attorneys general who have standing to prosecute Dr. Fauci over injuries to their state’s citizens. It appears that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for one, has identified that legal avenue and this week asked Florida’s top court to convene a special grand jury to consider exactly that.
The other players in Team Covid have plenty to answer for, too. Rochelle Walensky’s CDC has deliberately concealed, misled, obfuscated, or opted to not even collect information about injuries and deaths from the Covid “vaccines.” Her agency did nothing to update the inadequate, difficult-to-use VAERS reporting system, or even communicate the very bad news that managed to land on it. The CDC is still aggressively pushing vaccines on children, knowing full well that it damages young hearts, brains, immune systems, and probably the kids’ very DNA.
Probably few would recognize the name Dr. Robert Califf in his second go-round as Commissioner of the FDA (served one year 2016-17 under Obama; confirmed again in Feb. 2022). Dr. Califf has been a tool of the pharma companies for decades. Earlier in his career as a professor at Duke University, he specialized in organizing drug trials. His operation there was supported by over $150-million in grants from pharma. Even despite Deep State control of social media prior to Elon Musk’s cleanup of Twitter, a lot was already known about the botched and faked drug trials that led to the FDA’s conditional emergency approval of Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA Covid-19 products — along with the official suppression of existing anti-viral drugs that could have saved a million lives, which was done strictly to preserve the liability shields of the “vaccines.” A finding of fraud in all this would vitiate the Pharma companies’ protection against lawsuits, and there was fraud galore in the whole wicked business.
Others have to be called to face the new music in Congress: self-styled “humanitarian” Bill Gates, whose fingerprints are all over the Covid-19 story, from the “pandemic war game” (Event 201) he sponsored, held in the fall of 2019, to his vested interests in pharma, to his connections with the shadowy operations of the World Economic Forum and its stated population-reduction initiative.
Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, indisputably the preeminent expert on Coronavirus gain-of-function research, and knee-deep in the Covid-19 episode - who has magically been able to hide under a rock the past three years - could shed a lot of light in public testimony on what happened. And Peter Daszak, head of the CIA cut-out org, EcoHealth Alliance, which helped enable the move of gain-of-function research to the Wuhan lab, explicitly explained years ago - in a notorious recording from a symposium - how to create profit opportunities from a pandemic response.
There are countless high officials of the deputy director and commissioner rank, unknown to the public, who could be called to testify about their agency’s contribution to the catastrophe that the Covid-19 response turned out to be. Almost all of them have been laying low since the whole thing started.
Meantime, Mr. Musk has announced that Twitter is preparing the release of all its archives containing communication with federal agencies that sought to control and suppress truthful discussion of the pandemic 2020 to 2022. He added snarkily that his personal pronouns are “prosecute/Fauci” - in case there’s any misunderstanding about what he’s learned from the files.
What’s liable to come out of this uncorking of evil spirits in 2023 is a grotesque spewage of info about official corruption and misconduct that will make the projectile vomiting from The Exorcist look like a mere Satanic loogie in comparison. You have to wonder how the nation will handle it, especially along with the extremely uncomfortable fact that “Joe Biden” still occupies the White House."
"Life Changing Poems for Hard Times"
Full screen recommended.
RedFrost Motivation,
"Life Changing Poems for Hard Times"
Read by Shane Morris
3:20 - "A Psalm of Life" by H. W. Longfellow
6:15 - "If" by Rudyard Kipling
9:33 - "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley
11:15 - "Desiderata" by Max Ermann
Douglas Macgregor, "Ukraine: The Russian Winter Offensive"
Douglas Macgregor,
"Ukraine: The Russian Winter Offensive"
Comments here:
"Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Ridiculous! Sale Prices!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/31/22:
"Price Increases At Kroger!
This Is Ridiculous! Sale Prices!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing price increases on groceries, and a lot of empty shelves! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
"25 Biggest Grocery Stores In America
That Filed For Bankruptcy"
by Epic Economist
"At a time when supercenters continue to seize a larger share of the market, and online platforms offer shoppers everything they want without leaving their homes, running a grocery store is definately not an easy thing to do. The business of food retailing is build upon extremely thin profit margins, and issues like shoplifting, supply chain disruptions, mergers and aquisitions, or anti-trust complaints can drive an entire chain that operated for decades or even hundreds of years out of business in a snap of fingers. It's very likely that at least one supermarket chain you used to shop at has disappeared from the U.S. retail landscape since the turn of the century.
For example, A&P, also known as The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., this company started as a tea seller in 1859. As time went by, it branched out its business to sell other products, and its wide product range and good pricing allowed it to become a very popular store all over America. At its peak, A&P had over 15,000 stores, according to Reuters. But as other competitors emerged, and its new store format fell flat, A&P faced a series of waves of sell-offs and store closures, which resulted in two rounds of bankruptcies. In 2015, the cumulative losses become too great for the chain to bear, and A&P went out of business completely.
Similarly, Fresh & Easy was the U.S. version of the U.K. grocery giant Tesco. In 2006, the supermarket chain opened branches in California, Arizona, and Nevada. In addition to selling groceries, the company also established a cold-chain delivery for prepackaged meals, which Tesco had successfully implemented in the U.K. But American customers didn’t really buy the idea, and they didn’t think the quality was that good. CPS magazine notes that the size of the U.S. made the delivery system untenable and that the brand failed to distinguish itself from other brands, filing for bankruptcy for the first time in 2013. A year after, Fresh & Easy was bought by Yucaipa Companies, but that wasn't enough to save the grocery chain; Fresh & Easy filed for bankruptcy again in 2015, closing all of its stores in the same year.
The same happened to Grand Union stores, which were once plentiful in the U.S. Northeast. But tough competition led the grocer to file for bankruptcy in 2001, being bought by C&S Wholesale Grocers a year later. The new parent company quickly realized that it wouldn’t be able to save the brand, so it decided to sell off stores to Tops Friendly Markets in 2012. But a couple of months later, proven to be unprofitable, the new owner discontinued the Grand Union chain altogether.
Competition is getting harder and harder as big conglomerates dominate the scene and crush small, local, and mom-and-pop brands with their large-scale operations and reduced labor costs. Only companies that stand out will be able to survive in this environment, which means we are likely to see many more grocery store shutdowns in the years ahead. With so many big names closing stores lately, it makes us wonder which chain will disappear next. Today, we listed 25 once loved grocery store chains that don't exist anymore.
o
Related:
"Butterflies..."
“I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories… and when humans are broken, they’re like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn’t form when the person wasn’t broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It’s during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know that it doesn’t matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! What matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile!”
- C. JoyBell C.
"Alea Iacta Est"
"Alea Iacta Est"
by Alexander Macris
"In the closing days of 50 BC, the Roman Senate declared that Julius Caesar’s term as a provincial governor was finished. Roman law afforded its magistrates immunity to prosecution, but this immunity would end with Caesar’s term. As the leader of the populares faction, Caesar had many enemies among the elite optimates, and as soon as he left office, these enemies planned to bury him in litigation. Caesar knew he would lose everything: property, liberty, even his life.
Caesar decided it was better to fight for victory than accept certain defeat. In January 49 BC, he crossed the Rubicon River with his army, in violation of sacred Roman law, and began a civil war. “Alea iacta est,” said Caesar: The die is cast."
○
Full screen recommended.
Charles Bukowoski, "Roll the Dice"
"Today Is The Day..."
- C. JoyBell C.
Friday, December 30, 2022
"A Look to the Heavens"
“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
•
"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged
in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where
he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."
- Walt Whitman
•
"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged
in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where
he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."
- Walt Whitman
"Sometimes..."
"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether
it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
That ultimately is the question...
Adrian Lester as Hamlet: "To be or not to be..."
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act III, Scene I
The Poet: David Whyte, "The Winter of Listening"
"The Winter of Listening"
"No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning red in the palms while
the night wind carries everything away outside.
All this petty worry while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious inside us does not
care to be known by the mind
in ways that diminish its presence.
What we strive for in perfection
is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire,
what disturbs and then nourishes
has everything we need.
What we hate in ourselves
is what we cannot know in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer so far off
I feel it grown in me now and ready
to arrive in the world.
All those years listening to those
who had nothing to say.
All those years forgetting how everything
has its own voice to make itself heard.
All those years forgetting how easily
you can belong to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow difficulty
of remembering how everything
is born from an opposite
and miraculous otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that otherness.
So let this winter of listening
be enough for the new life
I must call my own."
- David Whyte,
"The House of Belonging"
"This Assumption..."
"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
- H. L. Mencken
"Get Ready To Pay More"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 12/30/22:
"Get Ready To Pay More"
"There are so many tax increases that are coming in 2023 that people just don’t know about. In addition to that we are seeing that inflation is continuing to rise. Get Ready to Pay More."
Comments here:
"Europe's Largest Ice Rink, Moscow, Russia"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 12/30/22:
"Europe's Largest Ice Rink, Moscow, Russia"
"Take a tour of VDNKh in Moscow, Russia during the 2022 New Year Celebrations. Walking through the park we will look at Europe's largest ice rink is in Moscow, Russia. Christmas decorations, Ice slides and food markets."
Comments here:
I'm speechless...
Your thoughts, Good Citizen? Comment below...
"Price Increases At Sam's Club! Be Prepared! Stock Up! What's Coming!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/30/22:
"Price Increases At Sam's Club!
Be Prepared! Stock Up! What's Coming!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Sam's Club, and are noticing price increases on groceries, and a lot of empty shelves! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Forecast 2023 - Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand" (Excerpt)
"Forecast 2023 -
Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand"
by Jim Kunstler
Excerpt: “The powerful are panicking, and so they should. Their secrets are leaking.” - Miranda Devine
“It’s all just snake oil. We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.” - Raul Ilargi Meier
“2023 could be a pivotal year for USA if the pervasive lies can be exposed, digested, and believed. All that exposure has to happen amidst continuing boondoggles toward the Great Reset agenda.” - Truman Verdun
“More borrowing only ever makes sense if you are expecting a larger economy in the future. All economic expansion is based on energy. Countries with energy can expand, those without cannot.” - Chris Martenson
“To be an enemy to America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” - Henry Kissinger
“The incorrect narrative provided by mainstream media (MSM) is that climate change is our worst problem. To lessen this problem, citizens need to move quickly away from fossil fuels and transition to renewables. The real narrative is that we are running short of fossil fuels that can be profitably extracted, and renewables are not adequate substitutes. However, this narrative is too worrisome for most people to handle.” - Ugh Bardi
"It’s hard to contemplate 2023 without spiraling into nausea, tachycardia, and cold sweat. But it is an inescapable duty here to lay out the probabilities ahead. I’ve been doing this forecast thing for some years now, and, of course, I am often wrong, so take some solace in that and relax. Maybe the new year will be all unicorns, rainbows, talking gerbils, and candied violets.
2022 sure was a cold shower. The long emergency I talk so much about finally got up to cruising speed, with the ectoplasmic “Joe Biden” revving our country into economic, political, and cultural collapse - a hat-trick of calamity - and he did it more swiftly and directly than any emperor managed in late-day Rome, with policies and actions 180-degrees contra to America’s public interest - cheered on by a thinking class that had obviously lost it consensual mind.
Was it simply to do the opposite of what the loathed and detested Mr. Trump would do? Could it be that simple or that automatic? The thinking class’s eyes have a zombified glaze these days. It’s obvious, you might agree, that “Joe Biden” is not in charge of anything, really. He’s an animatronic figure programmed to read a teleprompter and not much else. Half the time, he can’t even find his way off-stage after doing that one trick. The claque pulling his strings just may be the crew you see around him (you know, WYSIWYG): Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and company. Ms. Rice has kept herself completely hidden backstage at the White House for two years. Nobody ever hears about her or sees her. Weird, a little bit, for the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.
Or else, are there puppeteers deeper in the shadows, say, “JB’s” former boss Barack Obama, Der Schwabenklaus and his WEF retinue, Bill Gates and other tech billionaires, the “systemically important” bankers, George Soros…? Or some coven of super-elite warlocks we’d never heard of? The US leadership dynamic is truly mystifying and has been for two whole years. Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point. And now onto the shape of things to come…"
Full article is here:
A Must-Read: "It's Not A Lie If You Believe It" (Excerpt)
"It's Not A Lie If You Believe It" (Excerpt)
By Jim Quinn
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten,
the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell, "1984"
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical
point of view, is silence about truth.”
- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Excerpt: "I wish I could go through a day without having to reference Orwell and Huxley when observing how the ruling class is able to manipulate, subjugate, and propagandize the willfully ignorant masses through lies, deceptions, disinformation, and fear. But here we are, living through a dystopian nightmare blending the worst aspects of Orwell’s "1984" and Huxley’s "Brave New World."
It’s as if O’Brien and Mustapha Mond are running the show, using behavioral conditioning, restricting freedom of speech, adhering to a strict caste system, surveilling everything we say or do, using our fears to control us, utilizing propaganda to produce false narratives, and ultimately threatening to stomp a boot on our faces forever if we do not obey and conform. Virtually everything we are told by politicians, government bureaucrats, military brass, “esteemed” journalists, medical “experts”, bankers, and corporate executives is lies. They do not believe their lies, but they know it benefits themselves financially to lie, and as long as they work together, they know the ignorant masses will believe them.
George tells Jerry “It’s not a lie if you believe it” as he is going to take a lie detector test. I wonder how Fauci, Biden, Hillary, Obama, Comey, Wray, Pelosi, and the slew of other Deep State coup conspirators would fare on a lie detector test about Russiagate, Covidgate, J6 Insurrectiongate, and Vaccinegate. Based on the titanic volume of lies they have spewed over the last several years, I’m sure the machine would overheat and explode if hooked up to any of this traitorous vile scum.
The humorous phrase uttered by George Costanza on a sitcom twenty-seven years ago captures a significant kernel of truth about the mindset of the vast majority of non-critical thinking drones roaming the aisles of WalMarts and waiting in the drive-thru at McDonalds across our dystopian states of America. The lies run so deep you need hip-boots to wade through them on a daily basis. The reason our leaders lie is because we let them lie. The majority prefer comforting lies to unpleasant truths, because accepting unpleasant truths would require them to act and they prefer being distracted by trivialities like sports, reality TV, social media likes and otherwise being addicted to their technological gadgets."
Full, recommended must-read article is here:
"Ukraine SitRep 12/28/22: Counter Artillery War, Financial Disaster" (Excerpt)
"Ukraine SitRep 12/28/22:
Counter Artillery War, Financial Disaster"
By Moon of Alabama
Excerpt: "Since the mid of the year it has become clear that the war in Ukraine is one that is mainly fought by artillery. Ukraine was clearly the underdog in that fight as the Russian forces fired eight times the amount of artillery munitions the Ukraine could make available. The U.S. and some European dependents stepped in. Some 120 M-777 guns and a myriad of modern track mounted artillery systems were given to the Ukrainian army. Hundred of tons of ammunition were moved in. The U.S. and some allies delivered HIMARS systems that could reach beyond the limits of gun artillery.
The Russian military reacted to it. It dispersed its depots and command centers thereby limiting the number of targets for HIMARS systems. It also intensified its use of electronic warfare which took down the drones the Ukrainian artillery used to find its targets: The electronic suppression of Ukraine’s unmanned aerial vehicles blunted one of Kyiv’s biggest advantages in the early months of the war. The Ukrainians counted on superior intelligence - largely provided by UAVs - to make their smaller artillery arsenal more precise than Russia’s own, larger arsenal of big guns and rocket-launchers.
But the Russians’ electronic warfare prevented those drones from navigating and communicating - and deprived the Ukrainians of the precision they were counting on. “The defeat of precision was critical to unit survival” for the Russians, analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds explained in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“The average life-expectancy of a quadcopter remained around three flights,” Zabrodskyi, Watling, Danylyuk and Reynolds wrote. “The average life-expectancy of a fixed-wing UAV was around six flights” and, “in aggregate, only around a third of UAV missions can be said to have been successful.”
Lacking real fighting capabilities the Ukrainian artillery switched towards easier fixed targets. In late November it again started to intensely bombard Donetsk city with artillery and missiles. As there are few military installations or even barracks within the city this clearly was a war against its civilian population. Russian language papers wrote about the civilian casualties caused by the carnage. The political leadership of the Donetsk Republic requested an urgent operation against the threat.
As the heavily fortified frontline makes it impossible to quickly break through and hunt the artillery behind that line, the Russian military moved to other measures. A special cell was created to wage the fight against Ukrainian artillery around Donetsk. More counter artillery radars were moved in. More satellite picture interpreters began to look for firing positions. Longer range counter battery guns also appeared."
Full, highly recommended article is here:
o
Related:
“Winter Is Coming”
“Winter Is Coming”, Part 3
by Jim Quinn
“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”
– George R.R. Martin, "Game of Thrones"
“The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.”– Strauss & Howe, “The Fourth Turning”
“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance.
Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”– Strauss & Howe, "The Fourth Turning"
“In Part One of this article I laid out the reasons for Gray Champions arising to meet challenges during crisis periods in history. In Part Two of this article I assessed the configuration of Gray Champions throughout the world and the potential impact on the course of this Fourth Turning.
The swirling fog of confusion enveloping the globe as the high lords of the universe play their game of thrones has even the most critical thinking individuals baffled by the course of events. The desperation and blatant lawlessness of the Deep State players in their endeavor to preserve their hegemony over the course of global affairs is palpable with every attack, false flag, accusation, and ratcheting up of their propaganda media machine.
Like “Game of Thrones,” the behind the scenes machinations, subterfuge, and deceptions taking place outside the purview of the common folk are designed to only benefit the rich and powerful players undertaking these traitorous actions. Open warfare will not happen until it is thought to be in the best interests of those manipulating the levers of society and the narrative produced by their perpetual propaganda media machine. But, in the end, it will be the innocent common people who will suffer the consequences, while the lords reap the riches, glory and power.
“Why is it always the innocents who suffer most,
when you high lords play your game of thrones?”
– “Lord Varys”,
- George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones”
The common people have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives. Even now, the average person has no idea we are in the midst of a crisis period which will change the course of history. The overwhelming majority of the 335 million Americans, and billions around the globe, try to go about their daily lives oblivious to the intrigues, conspiracies, and treachery playing out at the highest levels of government and in smoky backrooms, where deals are made, wars plotted, and billions dispersed to the oligarchical lords running our world.
The common people get up, go to work, try to earn enough to survive or get ahead in life, raise their children, and endeavor to attain the lifestyle sold to them by their overlords based on delusion and debt. They are easily distracted by technological baubles, watching sporting events, enslaved by government handouts, and told what to believe by their keepers. They don’t want to experience the challenges of winter, but a never ending summer. They don’t want to think and be responsible for their lives. They want to be left in peace on Twitter and Facebook, but that isn’t how it works during a Fourth Turning winter.
“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”
– George R.R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones”
There is no telling how the next ten or so years will play out; which alliances prove to be successful or disastrous, and the outcomes of the fast approaching civil and global wars, which are inevitable given the current state of affairs in the world. The Fourth Turning isn’t a prediction. It’s a period of crisis driven by the generational alignment which happens like clockwork every 80 to 100 years. It predicts nothing. The course of events is up to the individuals driving those events.
Those who attempt to dismiss this generational theory by calling it doom porn or saying it is impossible to predict the future are revealing their fears rather than arguing based on facts or substance. A man who fears the coming trials and tribulations has already lost. Fear works far better than swords in keeping the masses controlled. Take the Russian bogeyman scenario utilized to keep the ignorant masses distracted and bemused. Praying for a lone wolf to save the day and restore the world to its summer like condition is irrational and again based upon fear. Winter winds are already blowing at gale force.
“When the snows fall and the white winds blow,
the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”
– “Ned Stark”,
– George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones”
It’s fear that appears to be pushing people over the edge. The common people are being manipulated by the “powers that be” though propaganda, mistruths, distractions, iGadgets, hero worship, irrelevant social justice warrior issues, the illusion of political choices, and being lured into debt servitude by the banking cabal and their mega-corporation co-conspirators. They have successfully divided us into angry subsets of lone wolves unwilling or unable to unite and fight the true enemies.
The common people will again do the dying and get the short end of the stick, just as they did during the Civil War, Great Depression and World War II. In order to change the dynamics of this Fourth Turning from one where the lords determine our fate, it would require the majority to open their eyes to see the truth and be led by truly just men to overcome the forces of darkness currently in control. Based on history, this is an unlikely scenario, but still possible.
“Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and
the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true.”
– “Syrio Forel”,
– George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones”
While Biden, Putin, and Xi play their game of thrones for world dominance, we the people still have to do our part at this crucial time in history. While the vast majority of Americans may not be intellectually capable of independent thought or critical thinking due to decades of dumbing down through the government education gulags and a steady diet of government propaganda, there are a minority of patriotic people who respect the Constitution and will need to man the wall.
We know the existing social order will be demolished by the end of this Fourth Turning and courageous acts will matter, sacrifice required, and defeating enemies from within and without will be compulsory. There will be no glory for common men who make the ultimate sacrifice and die for a better tomorrow for their children and grandchildren. Everyone has the potential to make a difference. Danger is omnipresent.
“I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.”
– The Oath of the Brothers of the Night’s Watch
– “Game of Thrones”
You don’t have to be a fan of the ‘Game of Thrones’ or a believer in the Fourth Turning to realize the world is in the midst of a crisis. Denial and willful ignorance will not turn back time to better days. Whether it be a fictional battle for control of the seven kingdoms or a real battle for control of petro-currencies, gas pipelines, natural resources, and military dominance, the humans locked in these battles never change.
Full screen recommended.
The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war…
History’s howling storms can bring out the worst and best in people. The next Fourth Turning can literally destroy us as a nation and people, leaving us cursed in the histories of those who endure and remember. Alternatively, it can ennoble our lives, elevate us as a community, and inspire acts of consummate heroism – deeds that will grow into myth-like legends recited by our heirs far into the future.”
– Strauss & Howe, “The Fourth Turning”