Neil H, "Spellbound"
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Thursday, December 18, 2025
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”
"I Have Accepted The Fact..."
“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”
“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”
- Henry Miller
"There Was Truth..."
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth
even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, “1984”
"Permanent Adolescence: The Epidemic That Will Destroy America"
"Permanent Adolescence:
The Epidemic That Will Destroy America"
by Dr. Paul Kindlon
"As a Humanities professor I have had the opportunity to teach psychology and social psychology for more than 25 years. Occasionally the knowledge obtained in these areas allows me to analyze and understand social behavior and certain cultural trends. This is one those occasions.
If one is able to observe American society in an objective manner (granted no easy task) it becomes clear that the country is suffering from an epidemic of arrested emotional development (AED). This particular illness is characterized by some combination of: addiction, greed, immaturity, fear, blame, shame, resentments, anger, confusion and suffering. What it means is that the vast majority of Americans are stuck in adolescence exhibiting behavior like lying, negative attitudes, disobedience and disrespect, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and issues of sexuality.
One has only to watch American movies or television shows to get a snapshot of juvenile, puerile, and base comedy characteristic of adolescent humor. It’s no accident that 48 year old Jimmy Fallon is essentially the “eternal teenager” performing comedy that mostly includes bathroom humor and gags that are based on and appeal to a silly sense of immaturity. The other darling of late-night shows in America is Stephen Colbert, age 58, who specializes in insulting public figues in an overtly adolescent display of negative attitude and disrespect.
Another hallmark of AED is to evade responsibility and blame others for failure. One had only to observe the millions of Hillary supporters to understand this phenomenon. Also common for AED sufferers is to show disrespect in sophomoric ways usually by damaging property as we see with monuments being defaced and destroyed.
Teenagers, of course, tend to have identity issues often involving sexuality which is another phenomenon all too apparent in contemporary America. It’s almost uncool not to be LGBT or confused about your gender nowadays. Soon there will be as many genders as ice-cream flavors for it’s all just a matter of taste!
In terms of cognitive activity AED is characterized by exaggeration and over-simplification. If you are angry with one of your parents you might refer to them as a Nazi or Fascist.
This negative attitude now is extended to anyone who disagrees with you and can be seen in slogans such as “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA”. Adults are an endangered species. The cognitive effect of exaggeration and over-simplification leads to irrationality and confusion. Witness the millions of people who think they are being anti-racist by opposing “White Supremacy”. No anthropologist on earth would claim that “White” is a race (although a Neo- Nazi would) It’s not even a primary color. The Irish were discriminated against for more than a hundred years in America due to Anglo-Saxon racism yet the Irish are considered “white”. There are millions of Americans of German, Polish, and Scandinavian extraction who have been working-class and lower for a very long time. Are these “white people” guilty of supremacy? Against whom? Themselves?
Of course, what the protestors should be focusing on is class and not race which is really an arbitrary term. Unfortunately. the progressive movement in America has gone from “Occupy Wall street” to “occupy the public bathroom”. Lenin would be turning over in his grave – if he had one. With regard to alcohol and drug addiction in America, the statistics are startling. Opiod addiction alone is becoming a national health issue as is depression. Alcohol abuse, of course, is also quite high. Lying is also becoming commonplace. It used to be just politicians and lawyers who were known to “play with the truth”. Nowadays the mainstream media is widely seen as a mainstream of lies with CNN now wearing the title of FAKE NEWS.
The teenage attempt to rebel and show disobedience is often manifested through the use of profanity intended to shock the older generation. Gratuitous profanity is pervasive in American culture and has replaced the imagination as a form of creativity. It is not an accident that Pussy Riot – a group of “performance artists” using profanity in a Cathedral considered sacred to “shock” the Russian public and “disobey” authorities – has found a home in the United States and been befriended by Madonna, another symbol of eternal adolescence. Her AED was on full display when she publicly offered all men fellatio if they voted for Hillary Clinton. And as any rebellious teenager attempting to shock the “older generation” she had to announce that she “swallows”. Stay classy, Madonna. Keep in mind we’re talking about a 63 year old mother of six.
You see…if everyone is a teenager there is no adult supervision. That is the problem. After an autopsy is conducted years from now to ascertain how and why the American Empire expired, the obituary will include multiple causes of death and AED will be listed prominently. Perhaps a precocious teenager will be allowed to write the epitaph that will read…”When extended, the bridge between adolescence and adulthood can take a heavy toll”.
○
“Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed."
- Maya Angelou
Dan, I Allegedly, "Everyone Looks Rich… Nobody Actually Is"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/18/25
"Everyone Looks Rich… Nobody Actually Is"
"Is $100K really broke? Today, I’m breaking down the illusion of wealth and why making six figures isn’t what it used to be. Living costs are soaring, and many people earning $100K are relying on side hustles like Uber Eats or cutting corners just to stay afloat. It’s a fascinating look into how the American dream is shifting, with people prioritizing appearances over financial stability. We’ll talk about everything from designer goods, extreme budgeting, and financial traps like buy-now-pay-later schemes to shocking stories of fraud in private banking. Plus, I’m sharing tips on cutting unnecessary expenses and why being real about your financial situation is key to thriving in today’s economy."
Comments here:
"The Crash Of The American Economy Is Worse Than You Think"
Full screen recommended.
EconoSilicon, 12/18/25
"The Crash Of The American Economy
Is Worse Than You Think"
"The crash of the American economy is no longer a distant warning - it’s unfolding in real time, and it’s far worse than most people realize. In this video, we break down why the economic stress you feel every day is not a coincidence, not temporary, and not being accurately explained to the public. From record-high consumer debt and collapsing affordability to silent layoffs, shrinking job security, and a system propped up by borrowing instead of growth - this is not a normal slowdown. This is a structural breakdown. While headlines celebrate stock market highs, millions of Americans are falling behind, burning through savings, relying on credit just to survive, and watching the cost of living spiral out of control.
We connect the dots between rising interest costs, government debt approaching historic levels, weakening consumer demand, and the dangerous gap between Wall Street and Main Street. This video explains why official data often hides the real damage, why policy responses keep making the problem bigger, and why confidence - not money - is the final pillar holding the system together. If you’re wondering why everything feels harder despite being told the economy is “strong,” this video gives you the full picture. No hype. No political spin. Just a clear, documentary-style breakdown of what’s happening, why it’s accelerating, and what it means as we move closer to a major economic reset."
Comments here:
"It Is Our Fate..."
"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with one's self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one's mind what matters and what does not matter."
- Dorothy Thompson
"Gaza Tells Us Who We Are"
"All Palestinian Prisoners To Be Executed And Shot In The Head"
"The Minister of National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, says he plans to introduce legislation in the Knesset which reads: "All Palestinian prisoners to be executed and shot in the head." – The Minister of National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir
Watch this monster say it himself!
o
o
The truth is what it is, whether you like it or not, and here's the truth...
And now we know who and what we are, too...
to our eternal shame and disgrace.
o
o
A Comment: There are no words strong enough to condemn YOU, Americans, for allowing and supporting this horror, for paying for every single goddamned bullet, rifle, tank, artillery piece, fighter bomber jet. 80,000 known civilians have been slaughtered, including 21,000 CHILDREN, another 10,000 at least buried under the bombed out rubble, and the Arab countries and the whole world watches it and does nothing! That blood's on YOUR hands too, damn you, to our eternal shame and disgrace! God damn them all to Hell, which is not hot enough, for eternity, which is not long enough... - CP
"Israel’s Biggest Con Trick: Hiding the True Numbers It Has Killed in Gaza"
"Israel’s Biggest Con Trick:
Hiding the True Numbers It Has Killed in Gaza"
by Jonathan Cook
"The biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phoney parameters on a “debate” in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000.
It is not just that we have been endlessly bogged down in rows about whether Gaza’s medical authorities can be trusted, or how many of the dead are Hamas fighters. (Despite Israeli disinformation campaigns, the Israeli military itself believes more than 80 per cent of the dead are civilians.) Or even that these “debates” always ignore the fact that, early on, Israel wrecked Gaza’s capacity to count its dead by destroying the enclave’s governmental offices and its hospitals. The 70,000 figure is likely to be a drastic under-estimate.
No, the biggest con trick is that Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate”, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire. The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods.
These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on.
Imagine your own societies levelled in the way Gaza has been. How long would your elderly parents survive in this hellscape? How well would your diabetic child fare, or your sister with asthma, or your brother with cancer? How well would you cope with catching pneumonia, or even a common cold, if you hadn’t had more than one small meal a day for months on end? How would your wife deal with a difficult childbirth if there were no anasthetics, or no hospital nearby, or a barely functioning hospital overwhelmed with victims from Israel’s latest bombing run.
And what would be the chances of your baby surviving if its mother could produce no milk from her starvation diet? And if you could not give the baby formula feed because Israel was blocking supplies from entry into the enclave? And if, anyway, the contaminated water supply could not be mixed into the formula powder?
None of these kinds of deaths are included in the figure of 70,000. And all precedents show that many, many times more people are killed through these indirect methods than directly through fatal injuries from bombs and bullets.
According to a letter from experts in this field to the Lancet, studies of other wars – most of them far less destructive than Israel’s on the tiny enclave – indicate that between three and 15 times more people are killed by indirect, rather than direct, methods of warfare. The authors conservatively estimate an indirect death toll four times greater than the direct death toll. That would mean, at a minimum, 350,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza through Israel’s actions. The reality is likely to be even worse. That is without even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been left with horrific injuries and psychological trauma.
Israel’s war planners know exactly how this direct-to-indirect ratio works. Which is why they chose to destroy nearly every home in Gaza, to bomb the power, sanitation and water facilities, to level the hospitals, and to block aid month after month. They knew this would be the way Israel could carry out a genocide while offering its allies – western governments and its army of lobbyists – a “get out of jail card” for their active complicity.
Donald Trump’s so-called “ceasefire” is just another layer of deception in this endless game of smoke and mirrors. The UN’s child protection agency, Unicef, reports that less than a quarter of aid trucks are getting into Gaza, past Israel’s continuing starvation blockade, despite Israeli commitments agreed as part of the “ceasefire”. Apparently, this doesn’t register as a gross ceasefire violation. It goes unnoticed. Unicef reports further that in October alone, at the start of the “ceasefire”, nearly 18,000 new mothers and babies had to be hospitalized in Gaza from acute malnutrition.
The genocide isn’t over. Israel may have slowed the rate of direct killings it is committing by bombing Gaza, but the indirect killings continue unabated. And so does the Israeli-engineered “debate” in the West, one designed to obscure and excuse the mass murder of Gaza’s population."
Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel...
"Moscow Walking Tour"
Full screen recommended.
"Moscow Walking Tour", 12/18/25
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 12/18/25
"Russian Typical Brand New Apartment:
Could You Live There?"
"What is it like to live in a brand-new Russian Typical Apartment? Join me on a tour of a brand-new apartment in Moscow, Russia. The apartment is fully furnished and ready for rent. Could you live in this brand new apartment?"
Comments here:
"Doug Casey on 2025’s Defining Events and What Comes Next"
"Doug Casey on 2025’s Defining Events and What Comes Next"
by International Man
"International Man: As we step back and look at 2025 - politically, economically, technologically, and culturally - which developments mattered the most?
Doug Casey: Politically, and in every other way, it’s all about Trump. As Shakespeare said of Julius Caesar, “he doth bestride the narrow world. Like a Colossus, and we petty men. Walk under his huge legs and peep about. To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”
Trump has his finger in everything, in all countries, all spheres of enterprise, everywhere. He’s a political phenomenon with authoritarian tendencies. Which is a natural consequence of an unstable “democracy.” In fact, Caesar rose to power because of the late Roman Republic’s chronic political instability - much of which he caused. Trump could be America’s answer to Caesar.
I made that observation to a friend who, like me, is prone to classical references. He countered that perhaps Trump sees himself as a Cincinnatus lookalike. Cincinnatus, you’ll recall, was a patrician citizen appointed dictator in about 458 BC to deal with a military emergency. He quickly did so. Instead of serving out the rest of his six-month term, he handed back his power and returned to his farm.
Trump sees that the US is on the cusp of a cultural crisis, and wants to avert it. He’s certainly a cultural conservative who wants to return the country to the halcyon days of yesteryear, the way it was in “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.” But he’s also a narcissist and a megalomaniac, trying to reorder the world by signing hundreds of Executive Orders, creating chaos with his tariffs, subsidies, threats, attacks, and arbitrary blustering. At heart, Trump is a Caesar, not a Cincinnatus,
Economically, the U.S. is imitating Argentina. His actions are pretty much those of Perón, who was responsible for the destruction of the Argentine economy: tariffs to protect domestic industries, lots of arbitrary regulations, and government “partnerships” with corporations. Both Peron and Trump are reminiscent of Mussolini. It’s a slippery slope.
He’s surrounded himself with sycophants and lickspittles. His tariffs have an excellent chance of upending both the domestic and world economies. He claims that he will replace the income tax with tariffs, which sounds great. It’s true that tariffs paid for over 75% of government expenditures up to 1916. But that was when Federal spending was tiny, about 1.5% of GDP. Today, the only way to reduce taxes is to reduce spending - but Trump loves spending. DOGE is long forgotten. I predict he’ll outdo FDR by every measure in spending.
He claims to have ended eight wars around the world: Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the DRC and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Israel and Gaza. In each and every case, there’s been zero change in the fundamentals. Any ceasefires were the result of threats and bribery. By intervening, the US is likely to involve itself militarily in these places. Not to mention that he’s at the point of starting a war with Venezuela. Trump loves hyperbole, prevarication, and half-truths. His word is approaching zero value, both inside and outside the US.
There’s so much more. Will ICE ever be disbanded? Will it deport 30 million illegal aliens? Will tourism from advanced countries, worth about $250 billion a year, collapse with Trump’s new demands for vast amounts of personal data? Even though Zelensky can be shown to have personally looted several billion dollars, will he be reinstated as Ukraine’s president? What will the consequences be of Trump’s promiscuously granting pardons to friendly billionaires? Will he get away with the billion-dollar rug pull on his and Melania’s worthless cryptocoins?
We’re in a state of political chaos. Financially, the destruction of the currency can only accelerate when Trump gets his new Fed chairman.
Technologically, we’re in an AI bubble. I don’t doubt that AI will enable huge scientific advances, but I wonder if the hundreds of billions going into AI will ever show an economic return. If not, the losses could result in real upset. The amounts are so large that—apart from the deleterious ways it can be used - they might cause a real drop in the general standard of living. Or at least catalyze a stock market collapse. The old saying “high-tech, big wreck” will likely once again prove true, even if AI changes the world for the better - which is not a certainty.
On the bright side, SpaceX can build giant rockets with large payloads and reuse them multiple times, cutting costs by a factor of 10 or 100. Bezos’ Blue Origin is doing the same. As are the Chinese. Technologically, 2025 was a great year, and in the long run, technology is what drives civilization. Loads of civilizations, governments, religions, and ideologies have risen and fallen in the 12,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. The one thing that’s progressed on an accelerating curve, bringing mankind out of the mud, is technology.
There’s cause for long-term optimism, even if some bad things happen. However, technology needs more capital than ever. And if the economic, financial, political, and cultural problems -including Wokism and the resurgence of Islam - make it impossible to accumulate adequate capital, even the great flywheel of technology could slow down.
The biggest problem is cultural Wokeism. Maybe the election of Trump signals peak Wokeism; many sensible people are reacting against it. But its underlying causes in the educational system, and the hive mind of Boobus americanus, are still there. The optimist in me says that 2025 probably signals a turning point.
International Man: 2025 seemed to accelerate the delegitimization of major institutions - the media, academia, government, and even central banks. Has the loss of trust reached the point of no return? What does that imply for the stability of the US and other countries going forward?
Doug Casey: Not so long ago, the electronic media meant CBS, NBC, and ABC. I’m not saying they were particularly truthful, but newsmen like Huntley and Brinkley, Edward R Murrow, and Walter Cronkite were thoughtful and independent. Their spoken words had more credibility than the writing in manipulative newspaper behemoths like those of Pulitzer and Hearst. Print publishers were replaced by electronic networks. Now, blow-dried lookalike corporate newscasters have lost credibility. They’ve been replaced by independent media, podcasts, and blogs. It’s true that the old institutions have been delegitimized. It’s much as Buckminster Fuller said: “You don’t change things by destroying the old order; you change the old order by making it irrelevant.”
The same thing is happening with academia. It’s become obvious to almost everybody that college is a negative value. Parents are aware that, starting in grade school, their kids are subjected to standardized indoctrination. Schools have become corrupt babysitters that enrich administrators while impoverishing their customers.
Let me draw your attention to a current series called "The Chair "about a totally woke mid-level Ivy League university on the edge of chaos. I mention it because I had trouble figuring out whether it was a spoof of the educational system or a semi-documentary description of it.
As for government, I suppose people are genetically programmed to want leaders. Just in my lifetime, governments have become vastly more powerful and coercive. On the other hand, the concepts of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism have gone from things that nobody had even heard of to being widely discussed. And people are even starting to understand how central banks create fiat money, and that an increase in the money supply is what causes inflation. Even that meme is getting traction.
So there’s some cause for optimism regarding the delegitimization of corrupt old institutions. But if trust collapses too far, and everywhere, that implies bad things for the stability of society.
The U.S. used to be a high-trust culture with shared values and long-term time preferences. But now, with the mass immigration of vastly different cultures with conflicting values and very short-term time preferences, that’s changing - and not for the better. The new migrants sense that traditional American institutions in the U.S. are washing away, and they’re taking advantage of it.
International Man: Economically, 2025 was a paradox: financial markets hit new highs while the average household struggled under rising debt and falling real wages. What does this divergence tell you about the underlying state of the economy - and where does it lead from here?
Doug Casey: The health and direction of the stock market and the economy are two different things. The massive money creation that’s gone on in the U.S. for decades, but especially over the last 10 years, has found its way into the stock market as a place to hide, out of self-preservation. I think both the stock market and the economy are riding for a fall.
International Man: It seems to many that the US is approaching a period of major political, social, and institutional upheaval. Do you think the country is at the beginning of a broader historical shift?
Doug Casey: Strauss and Howe’s book, "The Fourth Turning," predicted a major upset would occur about now. But they didn’t predict who would win. I agree. My only prediction is that the US will be a different place in 10 years. Whether it will be “better” or “worse” is an open question."
Bill Bonner, "A Whole New World"
"A Whole New World"
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "The idea of America was a genuine novus ordo seclorum for a New World. It was a new program...an idea so revolutionary that few people understood it and even fewer were willing to give it a chance. But it is really simplicity itself. Either people rule themselves...or someone else rules over them. Ruling themselves meant controlling their own money...real money, that is...money that told them what things were really worth...and that they could use to pursue happiness in their own way.
Generations of leaders, however, from Tippecanoe to WWII and beyond, had different ideas. The founding fathers warned against it, but today...after more than 100 years of bi-partisan grifting and grasping...the feds and their POTUS throw their weight around pretty much as they please. And in this regard, Donald Trump, is the summa of sumos. He tosses more poundage around than any president in US history.
It is he who gives out ‘stimmie’ or ‘dividend’ checks...or new ‘Trump accounts,’ that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says will “make young people wealthy.” He pressures the Fed to lower interest rates. He, of his own free will and on his own say-so, upends the whole world trading system so as to determine how you spend your money...on what...and at what price.
With no emergency to justify it, he put armed soldiers on streets...and sent out masked men to pluck up people and take them away. And he doesn’t stop at US borders. He presumes to tell the whole world what to do. He threatens tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. He threatens Brazil with tariffs and sanctions on its prosecutor, for going after his pal, Bolsonaro. He threatens tariffs on Canada for quoting Ronald Reagan. And he bombs the hell out of people he doesn’t know, in places he’s never been, for reasons he won’t take the time to understand. From Altitude Post comes this headline: "US Doubles Somalia Airstrikes in 2025, Marks 100th Strike of Year."
Nowhere in the US Constitution does it contemplate such executive power. The president is supposed to ‘faithfully execute’ the laws of the land, not make them up as he goes along. And the poor downtrodden citizen...he can no longer be said to rule himself. He is told what to do by thousands of officials...petty and grand. In that sense, Mr. Trump has done us a favor; no one should have any further delusions about it; America is not so different from other nations. Sometimes a shining ‘city on a hill.’ Sometimes, a sh*thole.
A small example: We bought a piece of property near our farm. The old house on it has been falling down for the last 35 years. Shortly after the purchase the county government told us that the abandoned house was a ‘hazard’’ and we had to tear it down within 20 days. “Ok...we’ll tear it down,” said we. “But wait,” said the nice person representing the local government. “You will need a permit. And I’m afraid we’re a little short-staffed...and what with the holidays...it will take some time. And we’ll have to send out inspectors to check for asbestos and to see if you need to put up a silt fence.” “How long will that take?” “Three to six months.” “I thought this was a safety hazard.” “Well, it is, but we need to be sure you take it down safely.” “Oh...”
Yes, dear reader...the days of ruling ourselves is long gone. Today, we are abused by a jolly duncery of crooks, clowns and incompetents. And the whole experiment - government of the people, by the people, and for the people - was only undertaken at all because of a flukey stroke of luck. The French and British were fighting all over the world. The Marquis de Lafayette harassed British troops in Yorktown, Virginia. Then, the Comte de Grasse brought the French fleet up from West Indies and bottled Cornwallis up, cutting him off from supplies. A French column led by the Vicomte de Deux-Ponts rushed the British positions. And then the siege bombardment, using French guns and gunners, began. Cornwallis soon realized his predicament and asked for peace. The resulting settlement was not the Treaty of New York...or the Peace of Poughkeepsie. It was the Treaty of Paris, in which the two main parties were the French and the British, not the Americans.
Only a third of the American colonists supported the Revolution. Another third actively opposed it. The smartest ones, perhaps, stayed out of it. They must have known it was a lost cause from the get-go. And today, we see how naïve the founding idea was. There is little observable difference between the lives and liberties of Americans and those of the French, Germans or English, for that matter. All line up for government handouts...recycle their trash...pay their taxes...and stagger ahead – with the feds on their backs - as best they can. More to come..."
Adventures With Danno, "Kroger Shopping, Week Before Christmas"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/18/25
"Kroger Shopping, Week Before Christmas"
Comments here:
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
"A War With Venezuela Would Be A War That Is All About Oil, And It Would Absolutely Destroy Our Relationship With China"
"A War With Venezuela Would Be A War That Is All About Oil,
And It Would Absolutely Destroy Our Relationship With China"
by Michael Snyder
"Guess which nation has the most proven oil reserves? It isn’t Saudi Arabia, although the Saudis rank a close second. It isn’t Iran or Iraq either. In fact, the country with the largest proven oil reserves isn’t even in the Middle East. Canada has a lot of oil, and so does Russia, but neither one of them tops the list. At a whopping 303 billion barrels, the nation that currently possesses the most proven oil reserves is actually Venezuela…Venezuela holds the largest proven crude oil reserves globally, estimated at approximately 303 billion barrels as of 2024. These reserves are predominantly located in the Orinoco Belt, containing extra-heavy crude oil that requires advanced extraction techniques.
Oil is what makes Venezuela important. We are being told that we must go to war with Venezuela to stop the flow of illegal drugs, but the truth is that the amount of drugs coming into this country from Mexico absolutely dwarfs the amount of drugs coming into this country from Venezuela. So if stopping the flow of drugs is the priority, why aren’t we going to war with Mexico?
We are also being told that Nicolas Maduro is a tyrant and that the elections in Venezuela are rigged. Of course these days elections are rigged in lots of countries, and there are far worse tyrants than Maduro out there. Kim Jong Un is one name that immediately comes to mind. He is so tyrannical that he makes Nicolas Maduro look like Mother Theresa. So why aren’t we going to war with North Korea?
If we are going to go to war, there needs to be a really good reason. On Tuesday, President Trump told the world that the U.S. will be stopping all sanctioned oil tankers from traveling to or from Venezuela…
"Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us. The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping. For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela. The Illegal Aliens and Criminals that the Maduro Regime has sent into the United States during the weak and inept Biden Administration, are being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace. America will not allow Criminals, Terrorists, or other Countries, to rob, threaten, or harm our Nation and, likewise, will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
Did you notice that President Trump repeatedly focused on the subject of oil throughout that Truth Social post? Imposing a blockade is a very serious step, and a Justice Department memo from 1961 makes this very clear…"A Justice Department memo from 1961, when tensions were running high between the US and Cuba, said the president could institute a blockade of Cuba, but noted “a blockade is a belligerent act which, as a matter of international law, is ordinarily justified only if a state of war, legal or de facto, exists.”
Throughout human history, a naval blockade has always been considered to be an act of war. Needless to say, the Venezuelans are absolutely furious…The statement from Venezuela’s government decried the move, saying Trump “seeks to impose, in an absolutely irrational manner, a so-called naval military blockade on Venezuela with the aim of stealing the riches that belong to our Homeland.” The government reaffirmed Venezuela’s sovereignty and said its ambassador to the United Nations “will immediately proceed to denounce this grave violation of International Law.”
It is not going to be a small job to enforce this blockade. According to CNBC, there are currently 34 sanctioned oil tankers in the Caribbean…"At least 34 U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers with a history of carrying Venezuelan oil are currently at sea in the Caribbean, according to a new analysis obtained by CNBC on Wednesday. And at least 12 of those tankers appear to be filled with crude oil from Venezuela, according to vessel location data from Kpler, a global trade intelligence company."
Are we just going to start grabbing all of them? The oil that the tanker that the U.S. seized last week was carrying was reportedly worth somewhere between 60 million and 100 million dollars… The “Skipper” was loaded with an estimated 1.8 million barrels of oil earlier in December before transferring an estimated 200,000 barrels just before its seizure, Reuters reported. The oil on the tanker is likely worth $60 million to more than $100 million, based on current average oil prices. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for any additional comment on the estimated price tag of the oil but did not immediately receive a reply.
When we seize oil that has been produced by Venezuela, we aren’t just hurting Venezuela. This is such a critical point. In 2025, China has been purchasing approximately 76 percent of all the oil that is being exported by the Venezuelans…Venezuela has produced around 900,000 barrels of crude oil and condensate so far in 2025, accounting for roughly 1% of the total global supply. Kpler data indicates China buys about 76% of Venezuela’s output. The Chinese need this oil. Do you think that they are just going to sit there and let us steal vast amounts of oil that the Chinese economy depends on?
Following the announcement of the blockade, the Chinese accused the U.S. of “bullying” Venezuela…"China has accused the US of “bullying” Venezuela, after Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. In a phone call on Wednesday, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi told his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, that Beijing supported Caracas in defending its sovereignty."
If we keep going down this road, we are going to destroy our relationship with China. Just imagine how we would feel if some other country started grabbing oil tankers that were bringing desperately needed oil to the United States. There is not a president in history that would have hesitated to order military action. But we just expect China to sit there and take it.
If we push the Chinese too far, it could have very serious consequences. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which the Chinese decide that it is an opportune moment to invade Taiwan while U.S. forces are tied up with a regime change war in Venezuela. And why in the world would anyone think that another regime change war is in our national interest? Didn’t we learn anything from our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq?
2025 has certainly been a year of war, but a war in Venezuela would have the potential to take things to an entirely new level in 2026. Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail. Let’s hope that President Trump pulls us back from the brink before it is too late. But from where I am sitting, it appears that the decisions have already been made."
Musical Interlude: Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward, "Nights in White Satin"
Full screen recommended.
Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward,
"Nights in White Satin"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?
Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”
"It Was Ironic..."
"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer
Gerald Celente, "America: Living Under The Rules Of Fools"
Gerald Celente, 12/17/25
"America: Living Under The Rules Of Fools"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Why Is Everyone Still Spending Money If They Don’t Have Any?"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 12/17/25
"Why Is Everyone Still Spending
Money If They Don’t Have Any?"
Comments here:
"People Are Going Broke For Buying A Car In 2025"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/17/25
"People Are Going Broke For Buying A Car In 2025"
People are going broke just trying to buy a car in 2025 and nobody is talking about how bad it's gotten. Car loans are completely out of control, interest rates are destroying people financially, and dealerships are taking advantage of young buyers who just need reliable transportation to get to work. This isn't about luxury cars or people living beyond their means. This is about everyday people making what they thought was a responsible decision and ending up buried in debt for years.
In this video we look at real stories from people who are underwater on their car loans, stuck paying off vehicles that don't even work anymore, and learning the hard way that buying new was the worst financial decision they ever made. We're talking about someone with $60,000 in car debt and $30,000 in negative equity because a dealership scammed them. We're talking about 22 year olds getting handed 13.9% APR loans like that's normal. We're talking about people still making payments on cars that are sitting dead in their driveways.
The car buying system in America is broken and it's keeping an entire generation from building wealth. One in four car owners in this country owe more than their vehicle is worth. The average negative equity is $7,000. That's not a small mistake. That's a financial hole that takes years to climb out of. And the worst part is that most people don't even realize how bad their situation is until it's too late.
We also break down why car debt is considered the worst kind of debt you can have. You're borrowing money and paying interest on something that loses value every single day. The average car payment in America is over $700 a month. If that money went into investments instead, you'd retire with millions. But instead it's going toward something that will be worth half as much in a few years. The math doesn't work and it was never designed to work in your favor.
If you're thinking about financing a car or you're already stuck in a bad loan, this video might change how you see everything. We go through what to watch out for at dealerships, why buying new almost never makes sense, and what people wish they had done differently before signing those papers. This isn't about shaming anyone for their decisions. It's about making sure you have the information to avoid the same traps that have wrecked so many people financially.
Drop a comment below and let me know if you've ever been in a situation like this. Have you been underwater on a car loan? Did a dealership ever pressure you into something you couldn't afford? Or maybe you have advice for people trying to avoid these mistakes. I read all the comments and I want to hear your stories.
Subscribe if you want more videos breaking down why everyday financial decisions are keeping people stuck. New videos every week exposing the systems designed to keep you broke and showing you how to fight back.
Comments here:
"Work. Pay Bills. Die. The Rat Race Starts at School"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, 12/17/25
"Work. Pay Bills. Die.
The Rat Race Starts at School"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "Happiness"
“All the money you make will never buy back your soul. ”
- Bob Dylan
"It Is Common To Assume..."
"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
"How, Then..."
"How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful..."
- Soren Kierkegaard
○
Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"
“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”
“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space,
and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”
“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”
by Maria Popova
“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.
But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as ‘The Life of the Mind’ (public library) – the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning.
In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand:
“Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego – summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s – is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls – and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them – does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.”
Echoing Thomas Mann’s assertion that “the perishableness of life… imparts value, dignity, interest to life,” Arendt adds: “Man’s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world… The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”
T.S. Eliot captured this nowhereness in his exquisite phrase “the still point of the turning world.” But the spatial dimension of thought, Arendt argues, is intersected by a temporal one – thinking invariably forces us to recollect and anticipate, voyaging into the past and the future, thus creating the mental spacetime continuum through which our thought-trains travel. From this arises our sense of the sequential nature of time and its essential ongoingness. Arendt writes:
“The inner time sensation arises when we are not entirely absorbed by the absent non-visibles we are thinking about but begin to direct our attention onto the activity itself. In this situation past and future are equally present precisely because they are equally absent from our sense; thus the no-longer of the past is transformed by virtue of the spatial metaphor into something lying behind us and the not-yet of the future into something that approaches us from ahead.”
[…]
In other words, the time continuum, everlasting change, is broken up into the tenses past, present, future, whereby past and future are antagonistic to each other as the no-longer and the not-yet only because of the presence of man, who himself has an “origin,” his birth, and an end, his death, and therefore stands at any given moment between them; this in-between is called the present. It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change – which we can conceive of cyclically as well as in the form of rectilinear motion without ever being able to conceive of an absolute beginning or an absolute end – into time as we know it.”
Once again, it is our finitude that mediates our experience of time: “Seen from the viewpoint of a continuously flowing everlasting stream, the insertion of man, fighting in both directions, produces a rupture which, by being defended in both directions, is extended to a gap, the present seen as the fighter’s battleground… Seen from the viewpoint of man, at each single moment inserted and caught in the middle between his past and his future, both aimed at the one who is creating his present, the battleground is an in-between, an extended Now on which he spends his life. The present, in ordinary life the most futile and slippery of the tenses – when I say “now” and point to it, it is already gone – is no more than the clash of a past, which is no more, with a future, which is approaching and not yet there. Man lives in this in-between, and what he calls the present is a life-long fight against the dead weight of the past, driving him forward with hope, and the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward toward “the quiet of the past” with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality he can be sure of.”
This fluid conception of time, Arendt points out, is quite different from its representation in ordinary life, where the calendar tells us that the present is contained in today, the past starts at yesterday, and the future at tomorrow. In a sentiment that calls to mind Patti Smith’s magnificent meditation on time and transformation, Arendt writes: "That we can shape the everlasting stream of sheer change into a time continuum we owe not to time itself but to the continuity of our business and our activities in the world, in which we continue what we started yesterday and hope to finish tomorrow. In other words, the time continuum depends on the continuity of our everyday life, and the business of everyday life, in contrast to the activity of the thinking ego – always independent of the spatial circumstances surrounding it – is always spatially determined and conditioned. It is due to this thoroughgoing spatiality of our ordinary life that we can speak plausibly of time in spatial categories, that the past can appear to us as something lying “behind” us and the future as lying “ahead.”
[…]
The gap between past and future opens only in reflection, whose subject matter is what is absent – either what has already disappeared or what has not yet appeared. Reflection draws these absent “regions” into the mind’s presence; from that perspective the activity of thinking can be understood as a fight against time itself.”
This elusive gap, Arendt argues, is where the thinking ego resides – and it is only by mentally inserting ourselves between the past and the future that they come to exist at all: Without [the thinker], there would be no difference between past and future, but only everlasting change. Or else these forces would clash head on and annihilate each other. But thanks to the insertion of a fighting presence, they meet at an angle, and the correct image would then have to be what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.
These two forces, which have an indefinite origin and a definite end point in the present, converge into a third – a diagonal pull that, contrary to the past and the present, has a definite origin in the present and emanates out toward infinity. That diagonal force, Arendt observes, is the perfect metaphor for the activity of thought. She writes:
“This diagonal, though pointing to some infinity, is limited, enclosed, as it were, by the forces of past and future, and thus protected against the void; it remains bound to and is rooted in the present – an entirely human present though it is fully actualized only in the thinking process and lasts no longer than this process lasts. It is the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man; it is somehow, to change the metaphor, the quiet in the center of a storm which, though totally unlike the storm, still belongs to it. In this gap between past and future, we find our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficiently removed from past and future to be relied on to find out their meaning, to assume the position of “umpire,” of arbiter and judge over the manifold, never-ending affairs of human existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to their riddles but ready with ever-new answers to the question of what it may be all about.”
“The Life of the Mind” is one of the most stimulating packets of thought ever published. Complement this particular portion with Virginia Woolf on the elasticity of time, Dan Falk on how our capacity for mental time travel made us human, and T.S. Eliot’s poetic ode to the nature of time.“
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)