"US troops are only 20 miles from Russian border; Russia sets the political framework to justify an attack on NATO; Russian claims evidence of US involvement in attack on Nuclear triad; global demand for weapons is about to skyrocket; Food inflation to continue into 2023; medicine shortages due to 100's of millions of Chinese contracting pathogen soon; record global coal usage in 2022; India/China border clash; Japan record military spending for WW3, among other things."
"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."
But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."
"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until dawn.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”
“Shantaram”
by Gregory David Roberts
“Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in “Shantaram,” a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies peformed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.
He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.
Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughout the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel.”
– Valerie Ryan
Freely read “Shantaram” online, by Gregory David Roberts, here:
Absolutely Explode During The Early Stages Of 2023"
By Michael Snyder
"Will 2023 be a year when extremely destructive conflicts erupt all over the world? We are certainly already living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and tensions are approaching the boiling point in a number of key global flashpoints right now. If several more major conflicts were to suddenly begin next year, we could potentially witness an extended period of geopolitical instability that would be unlike anything that we have ever witnessed. It is easy to start wars, but it is much harder to end them. If you doubt this, just look at what is going on in Ukraine. There is no end in sight for that conflict, and there are several other wars that could literally erupt at any time. The following are 5 global flashpoints which could absolutely explode during the early stages of 2023…
#1 Serbia: Are you ready for another war in the Balkans? Ethnic tensions have risen to the highest level in more than two decades, and the president of Serbia just convened an emergency gathering of his national security council…"Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has met his national security council as tensions rise in Kosovo between the authorities there and ethnic Serbs. On Saturday a stun grenade was thrown at EU police in north Kosovo, where Serbs form a majority, and local police exchanged fire with unknown groups. Ethnic Serbs set up road blocks after Kosovan police were deployed in a dispute over car number plates."
Some in the region now believe that war is “inevitable”, and Kosovo is already asking NATO to step in and intervene…"At a news conference in Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Sunday, Prime Minister Albin Kurti asked the Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led international peacekeeping force, to guarantee “freedom of movement,” as he accused “criminal gangs” of blocking roads. A fragile peace has been preserved in Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following the 1998-99 war in which NATO intervened to protect Kosovo’s Albanian majority. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence."
#2 The Disputed Border Between China And India: On Tuesday, we learned that there has been yet another violent clash along the hotly disputed border between China and India…"Soldiers from India and China clashed last week along their disputed border, India’s defense minister said Tuesday, in the latest violence along the contested frontier since June 2020, when troops from both countries were killed in a deadly brawl.
Rajnath Singh, who addressed lawmakers in parliament, said Friday’s encounter along the Tawang sector of eastern Arunachal Pradesh state started when Chinese troops “encroached into Indian territory” and “unilaterally tried to change the status quo” along the disputed border near Yangtze."
The Chinese just can’t seem to stop provoking India, and a full-blown conflict between the two nations could escalate out of control very rapidly. Let us hope that does not happen, because both China and India possess nuclear weapons.
#3 Taiwan: For a long time, we have been warned that China will eventually invade Taiwan. Unfortunately, tensions in the region just continue to escalate, and on Tuesday the Chinese sent more bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone than ever before…"China sent a record 18 nuclear-capable bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone, Taipei said on Tuesday (Dec 13), just days after Beijing banned more Taiwanese imports in the latest sign of deteriorating ties." Democratic Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which sees the self-ruled island as part of its territory to be seized one day.
#4 Iran: There will be a war between Iran and Israel. Of course the IDF has already been regularly hitting Iranian-backed forces inside Syria on a regular basis, but we should be thankful that a full-blown war in which missiles are flying back and forth between the two nations hasn’t started yet.
Unfortunately, we are closer than ever to that point. In fact, it is being reported that Israel is actually warning that it may bomb the airport in Beirut “if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes”…"According to Israeli media reports, Israel has warned Lebanon that Israel Defense Forces could bomb Beirut’s airport if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes destined for the terrorist group Hezbollah. The alleged weapons smuggling was reported by a London-based Arabic language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, which quoted Israeli sources who said Israel issued the warning."
When a full-blown war between Iran and Israel finally starts, there will be no holding back by either side. The death and destruction such a war will cause will shock the entire world, and the global oil trade will be thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos.
#5 Ukraine: The United States and Russia both continue to escalate the horrifying conflict in Ukraine. Now that Russia is bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine’s power grid, the U.S. is choosing to respond by giving Patriot missiles systems to the Ukrainians…"Pentagon officials are in the final stages of preparing a plan to send a Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine to counter Russian aerial assaults, U.S. officials told CBS News. The plan has not yet been approved by either the Pentagon or the White House, but that could come as early as this week."
This represents a major escalation, and it is also being reported that the Biden administration has given the Ukrainian government the green light to conduct drone strikes deep inside of Russia. Needless to say, the Russians are not pleased at all about having to deal with drone strikes deep inside their own territory. In fact, some prominent Russian voices are warning that the U.S. and Russia are getting dangerously close to the unthinkable. The following comes from a British news source…"Mad Vlad Putin’s henchmen have fired a warning shot that the Ukraine conflict could turn into a “full-scale nuclear war.”
They made the stark comments after the US gave the go-ahead for Kyiv to kick off drone strikes into Russia. We don’t see such talk on U.S. television.
The Biden administration continues to assure all of us that the risk of nuclear war is extremely low, but the Russians see things very differently…"One source in Putin’s circle said: “This is playing with fire, risking full-scale war which could easily go nuclear.” Another added: “Who will now give Moscow the green light for strikes against Ukrainian decision-making centers?”
Most people never imagined that World War I would get as bad as it did. And most people never imagined that World War II would result in tens of millions of deaths. Now we have entered the early stages of a third world war, and this time the major participants are armed with nuclear weapons. If we don’t pull back from the brink, the consequences could potentially be far beyond what most people could even imagine right now. So let us pray for peace, because a global war in which hundreds of millions of people die is not an acceptable option."
"The English word war derives from the 11th-century Old English wordswyrre and werre, from Old Frenchwerre (also guerre as in modern French), in turn from the Frankishwerra, ultimately deriving from the Proto-Germanic werzō 'mixture, confusion'. The word is related to the Old Saxonwerran, Old High Germanwerran, and the German verwirren, meaning "to confuse", "to perplex", and "to bring into confusion"
"The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death."
While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic or ecological circumstances. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace."
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…”
“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.
When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?
We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.
We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.
But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.
But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.
But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.
Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”
“You ask me how it feels to grow older. I’ve learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share with you…
As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante-garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of many years ago, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love… I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it). May our friendship never come apart especially when it’s straight from the heart!”
“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.”
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing major price increases on groceries! 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!"
"My critics sometimes accuse me of being a communist, of all things. I must say, the irony of being accused of being a communist by many of these people is incredibly rich. That’s because the policies I advocate in my writings are far, far more “free market” than any of theirs. I find my critics hide behind the slogan of free market capitalism, while practicing something entirely different - crony capitalism.
What does it mean to be a crony capitalist? It means you don’t rely upon the free and competitive market to earn your profits. You depend instead upon government support in one form or another. Big Pharma and Big Defense are probably the most prominent examples of crony capitalism most people are familiar with. And just look at their profits over the past couple of years. How would they make out on the free and fair market without working hand-in-glove with government?
Meanwhile, the policies I advocate depend upon free people making free decisions. Mankind’s history shows that this is the way to a better tomorrow.
My Critics Doth Protest Too Much: But when I point out that "free market capitalism" in America is neither a real market nor real capitalism, those who equate any criticism of "capitalism" as proof of communist leanings are triggered. The irony is that I've spent 17 years tirelessly critiquing centralized wealth and power - the acme of communism - as the source of our moral, social and economic decay.
Another irony is that communism is absolutely thriving in America in broad daylight: The monopolies, quasi-monopolies and cartels that dominate the American economy and governance are Communism for the Rich.
The core goals and functions of communism and monopolies/cartels are identical: Snuff out unfettered markets (competition, transparent price information for all participants, etc.) and take control of all market functions…Restricting supply and controlling all regulation with the sole goals of further concentrating centralized power and maximizing steady profits (i.e. maximum greed) to benefit those who own/control the concentrated wealth and power. And of course both pump out an endless spew of propaganda about the wonderfulness of the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
A Private-Public Politburo: This centralized power to benefit the few at the expense of the many characterizes both communism and monopolies/cartels. There is no difference between the two other than the structures of control that eliminate competitors, regulate supply and keep prices high enough to further enrich the already-rich.
Those operating monopolies and cartels in America are in effect a private-public Politburo, a concentration of wealth that buys whatever political power is needed to increase profits and protect the monopoly from threats. What's unfettered in America is Communism for the Rich and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. "Markets" and "capitalism" only exist on the fringes of the economy.
But the myth that America is the home of "unfettered capitalism" is extremely useful cover for the actual system, which is Communism for the Rich. And you can’t really talk about Communism for the Rich without addressing the key role central banks like the Fed play. They help make it possible, but they’d like you to think it’s “just the normal way things work.”
The Central Bank Cult: The ideal cult convinces its followers that it isn't a cult, it's simply the natural order of things. In current terms, this normalizes insane behaviors and beliefs. Sacrificing youth to appease the gods isn't a cult; it's simply the natural order of things. If we don't sacrifice youth, bad things will happen, so we have to follow the natural order of things.
Despite the lofty claims made by our rational mind, we want to hear and obey the voices of the gods. This nonrational desire is the root of cults and episodes of mass hysteria, i.e., the madness of crowds.
Humanity is in the grip of the secular cult of central banking. The cult's seers and prophets periodically emerge with arcane signs and readings, offering divinations to guide the followers. The motivation to believe the cult is the natural order of things is powerful: greed. Those who heed the oracles of the cult enrich themselves, unbelievers impoverish themselves.
Rationalists outside the cult discern the structure of the cult and its core beliefs. The cult creates credit and "money" out of thin air and distributes it to the few extremely wealthy to further expand their wealth. These few do not improve productivity or the well-being of the many; they use the cult's gifts to exploit the cult's rigged casino of speculation to maximize their private gains.
The Cult’s Core Beliefs: In other words, the cult benefits the few at the expense of the many - Communism for the Rich - while proclaiming it benefits everyone. This is of course insane. The cult's core beliefs are:
1) enriching the already-rich magically trickles down benefits to the masses, and
2) this vast enrichment of the already-wealthy is cost-free. The economy prospers with no downside or consequences other than the glorious expansion of wealth at the top and the trickle-down of sweet goodness to the masses.
This is of course insane. The costs are borne by the masses and by the socioeconomic system, which is now in thrall to a cult that has made the economy dependent on an ever-expanding credit bubble that feeds an ever-expanding asset bubble, which then enables a further expansion of credit, which then fuels ever-higher assets prices. And so on, forever, because the cult and its ever-expanding bubble are the natural order of things. If we don't sacrifice the many to benefit the few, the sun will stop rising and the Earth will be cast into endless shadow.
This is of course insane, but greed is a powerful motivation to be an ardent believer in the central banking cult. Expanding credit based on the expanding collateral of asset bubbles, each feeding the other, is held up not as insane but as a financial perpetual-motion machine, overseen and managed by the seers and prophets of the central bank cult.
Followers heeding the cult's oracles become rich, nonbelievers and skeptics become impoverished. Alas, cults and bubbles both come to an inglorious end. What seemed self-evidently true for the ages is revealed as a brief moment of self-serving delusion, supported by the immense powers of greed and the madness of crowds.
Do you hear the voices of the gods? Yes, yes, oh yes."
"It's a Big Club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the Big Club." "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Excerpt: "During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.
At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.
Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC. The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.
Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!” Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.
For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty. This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.
When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.
Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through. Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.
Moscow as the New Carthage: The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.
For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War. Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.
Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!” If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.
However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire."
"President Trump had a big announcement on his Truth Social platform, but the Lying Legacy Media (LLM) will never show you this because it about the LLM colluding with the government to censor “We the People.” In short, they suppress the truth about all sorts of things. From the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop to the dangers of the CV19 injections, these are some of the truths they censored. Trump says, “If we don’t have free speech, we don’t have a free country.” He’s right. This is a big part of Trump’s 2024 campaign platform.
The CV19 vax lies keep getting exposed with each new “Died Suddenly” report and new data showing the vax was a deadly and dangerous fraud from the very beginning. There is no stopping what is coming. The rage from the millions who are injured and families whose loved ones have died are not going to stop stacking up. Now, more and more, there are calls for prosecutions of all the people who pushed these clot shots. The truth about the CV19 shots was also censored by the government and Big Tech. The so-called “Twitter Files” are exposing the criminals who hid the truth. Much more is coming out. Count on it.
The Fed is still fighting inflation by raising a key interest rate by another .5%. Is raising rates going to stop inflation? Not according to economist John Williams of ShadowStats.com. Williams says surging inflation is caused by extreme money printing, and with a fresh $1.65 trillion just passed in Congress, don’t expect inflation to retreat. It’s just the opposite, according to Williams. Brace yourself."
“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 three weeks, 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."
"15 Food Products That Will Be Priceless In The Months Ahead"
by Epic Economist
"Grocery prices have become a huge source of anxiety for many American families these days. We're clearly seeing that the current rate of price increases is reaching far higher levels than the official rate of food inflation suggests. While government officials tell us that we're paying around 15% more on groceries, some staple products have faced spikes of over 100% this year.
For instance, a report by Quartz exposes that the price of oats is actually rising faster than the price of oil on global markets. No wonder why store-brand oatmeal prices went from $1.99 to $3.99. Strained oat supplies will continue to push prices up in the year ahead, says one of the world’s largest oat milk producers Oatly. Similarly, due to the cost increase of primary supplies for carton boxes for transport, fertilizers, machinery, and labor shortages at farms, pineapples saw a huge jump in costs over the past two years, going up in price by a staggering 78% since 2020. Adding an aluminum shortage to the mix, the cost of canned pineapples skyrocketed from $0.79 per can to $2.22, marking a 120% surge in 24 months. Countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, which produce 75% of the world’s pineapples have faced a year of record drought, floodings, and pests, and lower supplies indicates that prices can only go in one direction.
Likewise, given that the cost of refined flour is going through the roof, a convenient and easy-to-make dish is doubling in price in many supermarkets. Unfortunately, there’s no relief in sight for skyrocketing flour prices, and customers are already noticing its impact ripple through the cost of many of their favorite foods. On a Facebook group, shopper Guinevere M said: “The other day I went to buy a pack of ramen that used to be 25 cents. Great meal saver on a night before a paycheck hits. Can always find a quarter. I hadn’t bought any in a while and almost passed out to see it was now 45 cents. Can I still find 45 cents? Sure, but it just captures the whole problem. Prices didn’t jump; they did an Olympic pole vault."
And farmers, food makers, and retailers are all warning us that a wide range of grocery products are about to get even more expensive in 2023. As it turns out, the surge in consumer prices wasn't "transitory" after all. And a series of events that continued to impact our food supply chains throughout the entire year are making the outlook for the next few months even more disturbing than it already is right now.
After two years of persistent price oscillations, American consumers really do deserve some good news to start the new year on a good note. But many may agree that honesty is worth more than false hope, and while our leaders continue to deny the seriousness of the problems U.S. families are facing, we have a commitment to our audience to always bring the news no one else seems to be talking about. We firmly believe that the best way of preparing to cope with these wild price swings is to get ahead of the hikes before they begin to ripple though the system, that's why today, we listed 15 grocery items that are set to face significant increases in the near future, according to food industry experts."
