Jeremiah Babe, 11/4/22:
"Markets Ignore The FED; 30 Year Mortgage Rates
Are Going Over 10%; Real Estate Agents Jump Ship"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, November 4, 2022
"All Of The Available Data..."
"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about
as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo. "
- Morris Berman
Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...
Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad (Ben-E.dit)"
Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad (Ben-E.dit)"
"A Look to the Heavens"
A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.
Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?
So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).
Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:
1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...
2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.
3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.
4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?
5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.
6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.
7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.
8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.
Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest.
The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.
By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "And Yet"
"And Yet"
"And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:
All life is being lived.
Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?
Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?
Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?"
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Paulo Coelho, "Grave Faults..."
“Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.”
- Paulo Coelho
○
“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”
- "Michael Corleone"
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy
"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "
"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "
by Marc Chernoff
"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.
2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.
3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.
4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.
5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.
6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.
7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.
8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.
9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. " You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.
10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.
11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.
12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need. " Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.
13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.
14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.
15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.
16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it.
And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin. "
"The Only Time..."
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call
you could make, who would you call and what would you say?
And why are you waiting?"
- Stephen Levine
"We All Got Problems..."
"We all got problems. But there's a great book out called "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. " Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another. "
- Quincy Jones
“The 11 Nations Of The United States” (Excerpt)
“The 11 Nations Of The United States”
by Andy Kiersz and Marguerite Ward
Excerpt: “The map above shows how the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures. Author and journalist Colin Woodard identified 11 distinct cultures that have historically divided the US. His book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America” breaks down those cultures and the regions they each dominate. From the utopian “Yankeedom” to the conservative “Greater Appalachia” and liberal “Left Coast,” looking at these cultures sheds an interesting light on America’s political and cultural divides. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, some governors are acting among these factions – like California, Oregon, and Washington, of all which have parts comprising of “The Left Coast” group.”
Please view this complete and fascinating article here:
"Words..."
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they
are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. "
- John Maynard Keynes
"Reality Avoidance"
"Reality Avoidance"
by Morris Berman
"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about race, or gender, or very little that has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?
Judge Napolitano, "Scott Ritter: Ukraine - Russia War What's Happening?"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/4/22:
"Scott Ritter: Ukraine - Russia War What's Happening?"
Comments here:
"From Boom to Bust"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 11/4/22:
"From Boom to Bust"
"It is unbelievable just two years ago people had an abundance of savings and economy looks great. It is completely gone in the opposite direction. We went from boom to bust."
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Liquidity Crisis/Currency Crisis Worsens As The World Economy Crashes"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/4/22:
"Liquidity Crisis/Currency Crisis Worsens
As The World Economy Crashes"
Comments here:
○
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/4/22:
“Con Job: Federal Debt, Public Debt, Personal Debt,
Household Debt, To Explode Higher"
Comments here:
"Stock Up Now At Aldi! Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 11/4/22:
"Stock Up Now At Aldi! Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing that they are having a huge sale on holiday baking items this month! We are stocking up, and showing the best deals as we take you shopping with us. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Emily Oster’s Plea Bargain"
"Emily Oster’s Plea Bargain"
by Jim Kunstler
"By now, everybody and his uncle has seen Emily Oster’s plea for “pandemic amnesty” in The Atlantic magazine, a house organ of the people in America who know better than you do about… really… everything. Emily’s wazoo is so stuffed with gold-plated credentials (BA, PhD, Harvard; economics prof at Brown U) it’s a wonder that she could sit down long enough to peck out her lame argument that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”
Emily wasn’t “in the dark.” She had access to the same information as the Americans who recognized that everything the public health authorities, the medical establishment, and many elected officials shoveled out about Covid and its putative remedies and preventatives was untrue, with a patina of bad faith and malice - especially when it was used to persecute their political adversaries.
These were the people who turned out to be “right for the wrong reasons,” she declared, the main reason being that they were not aligned in good-think with the Woke-Jacobinism of her fellow “progressives” at Brown U, and academics all across the land, who were righteously busy destroying the intellectual life of the nation, making it impossible for the thinking class to think.
Let’s face it: every society actually needs a thinking class, a cohort able to frame important issues-of-the-moment that require argument in the public arena to align our collective thoughts and deeds with reality. America used to have a pretty good thinking class, with a pretty good free press and many other platforms for opinion - all animated by respect for the first amendment to the Constitution.
The thinking class destroyed that by vigorously promoting a new censorship regime in every American institution, shutting down free speech and, more crucially, the necessary debate for aligning our politics with reality. Hence, America’s thinking class became the torchbearers of unreality, in step with the Party of Chaos which held the levers of power. This included the powers of life and death in the matter of Covid-19.
These were the people who militated against effective early treatment protocols (to cynically preserve the drug companies’ emergency use authorization (EUA) and thus their liability shields); the people who enforced the deadly remdesivir-and-ventilator combo in hospital treatment; the people who rolled out the harmful and ineffective “vaccines”; who fired and vilified doctors who disagreed with all that; and who engineered a long list of abusive policies that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, households, reputations, and futures.
How did it happen that the thinking class destroyed thinking and betrayed itself? Because the status competition for moral righteousness in the sick milieu of the campus became more important to them than the truth. In places like Brown U, what you saw was an escalating contest for status brownie-points, which is what virtue-signaling is all about. And the highest virtue was going along with whatever experts and people-in-authority said - the pathetic virtue of submission. Anything that got in the way of going along - such as differences of opinion - had to be crushed, stamped out, and with a vicious edge to teach the dissenters a lesson: dissent will not be tolerated!
Some thinking class. The case of Emily Oster should be particularly and painfully disturbing, since she affects to specialize, as an economist, on “pregnancy and parenting” (her own website declares), while the Covid regime of public health officialdom she supported instigated a horrendous pediatric health crisis that is ongoing - it was only days ago that the CDC added the harmful mRNA “vaccines” to its childhood immunization schedule for the purpose of conferring permanent immunity for the drug companies after the EUA ends, a dastardly act. Where’s Ms. Oster’s plea to the CDC to cease and desist trying to vaccinate kids with mRNA products?
The CDC is still running TV commercials (during World Series ballgames!) touting its “booster” shots when only weeks ago a top Pfizer executive, Janine Small (“Regional President for vaccines of international developed markets”), revealed to the European Union Parliament that her company never tested its “vaccine” for preventing transmission of SARS CoV-2. The CDC under Director Rochelle Walensky is still extra-super-busy concealing or fudging its statistical data to obfuscate the emerging picture that MRNA “vaccines” are responsible for the shocking rise of “all-causes deaths” in the most heavily-vaxxed nations. In short, the authorities are to this minute still running their whole malign operation.
Notably, Ms. Oster’s plea for amnesty and forgiveness, showcased in The Atlantic, omits any discussion of accountability for what amounts to serious crimes against the public. A whole lot of people deserve to be indicted for killing and injuring millions of people. At the heart of her plea is the excuse that “we didn’t know” that official Covid policy was so misguided. That’s just not true, of course, and is simply evidence of the thinking class’s recently acquired allergy to truth. The part that she left out of her petition for pandemic amnesty is: we were only following orders."
○
As I commented in an earlier post...
"Pandemic amnesty?" "Mass forgiveness?" Really?
Here it is...
Stipendium peccati mors est...
Thursday, November 3, 2022
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/4/22"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/4/22"
Voting, Vax & Economy Frauds Will End Quickly
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"As an investigative reporter for two TV stations and two networks (ABC and CNN), I did a lot of financial stories that centered around some sort of fraud. The biggest thing I learned is that frauds end quickly. I use Bernie Madoff as an example. Madoff conducted a $60 billion Ponzi hedge fund for 20 years. It all ended Thursday, December 11, 2008, when Madoff was arrested, and he died in prison. As Forrest Gump said, “And then one day it was over, just like that.” The gigantic voting fraud scheme that put Biden into office is showing signs it is falling apart. How much fraud do Democrats have to commit when the leader of their party has about a 10% approval rating. That is a record my sources say going back all the way to the Civil War.
The CV19 vax fraud is also coming to an end. It started with Dr. Deborah Birx admitting on FOX three months ago that, “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines.” It was all downhill from there. Now, every week, there are reports from around the world of people just dropping over dead, usually from a heart attack. Millions have reported vax injuries. 600 million doses of CV19 poison were injected in America alone, and we are just getting started. The big tell the Vax fraud is coming to an abrupt end happened this week with an article in the Atlantic asking to “Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.” These evil bastards know what’s coming, and it won’t be pretty. The public response has been vicious and vile against the lockdown lunatics and the CV19 clot shot pushers. Soon everyone will know they have been scammed, poisoned, injured and murdered by a bioweapon.
Finally, the financial fraud going on for decades is coming to an end. It was all turbo charged in the 2008 meltdown. The Fed fixed it all with money printing and never stopped. Now, inflation is raging at 16% or more, but they tell you it’s only 8%. Total lie and the money printing that caused it is a total fraud. We were told this week that the Fed was going to “pivot” and cut back on the rate hikes. We were told the Fed was going to raise its inflation target to 3%. It was fake news at its finest, and Fed Head Jay Powell said just the opposite when he announced another .75% rate hike and said they were going to keep coming until the Fed hit the old 2% inflation target. The pain coming from the interest rate hikes are just beginning, and the end of the economic fraud based on free money and low rates is coming to a screeching halt. Remember, frauds end quickly."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 11/4/22.
○
"Pandemic amnesty?" "Mass forgiveness?" Really?
Here it is...
Stipendium peccati mors est...
Musical Interlude: Thomas Bergersen, "Empire of Angels (Sun)"
Thomas Bergersen, "Empire of Angels (Sun)"
"Dire Warning From Hedge Fund! WW3 And Hyperinflation"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 11/3/22:
"Dire Warning From Hedge Fund!
WW3 And Hyperinflation"
"One of the biggest hedge funds just issued a DIRE WARNING! Hyperinflation, conflict spreading, weather woes, it's all falling apart so enjoy it while it lasts!"
Comments here:
A Terrifying Must View! "People Will Be Furious When Gas Prices Triple From Current Levels"
Full screen recommended.
"People Will Be Furious When
Gas Prices Triple From Current Levels"
by Epic Economist
"Are you prepared for panic at the pump? People will be fuming when they hear this, but they should probably start rushing to the gas stations and filling up their tanks while prices are still somewhat reasonable because national reserves of all types of oil-based fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and heating oil, have been depleted, and could run out in less than a month, according to a recent letter released by The Energy Information Administration that is sparking fears of shortages and rising prices starting in the next couple of weeks. In fact, some states are already experiencing gas shortages and seeing prices jump by 30% in a single week. The trend is rapidly spreading all over America, worrying authorities, industry executives, and refineries, which are already operating at 100% capacity but still can’t fulfill the demand. The chaos that will erupt all over the nation when fuel prices double or triple from current levels is going to push millions of people over the edge. This is just the beginning of an unprecedented energy crisis, and the fact that domestic supplies of energy are collapsing before the winter even begins is truly alarming.
The U.S. fuel market is facing a nightmare scenario, with dwindling supplies, drought on the Mississippi River pushing more product to rail and truck, and a looming rail strike leading to a dramatic surge in freight prices that is expected to continue. The Energy Information Administration reported that our national reserves of gasoline, diesel, and heating oil are at an “unacceptably low” level, and can drop to zero before the end of the month.
This crisis is getting worse by the day, EIA said, urging authorities to take swift action to prevent a total collapse of energy reserves. CNBC is calling it a perfect storm, “with low inventories combining with rising demand ahead of the winter, which is a recipe for even higher prices spilling out across industries and hitting consumers’ already emptying pocket”. EIA data shows that while gasoline reserves reached the lowest point since 2008, U.S. diesel reserves have never been so low since 1951. Many cities in California have just seen brand new all-time record highs last week. Meanwhile, gasoline shortages are rippling across the East Coast and pushing up pump prices from New York to Maine.
At the same time, diesel prices are soaring again and shortages are hitting coast to coast. The problem is aggravating to the point of prompting a major fuel supply and logistics company to raise a red flag on upcoming nationwide fuel shortages. "Because conditions are rapidly devolving and market economics are changing significantly each day, Mansfield is moving to Alert Level 4 to address market volatility," Mansfield's press statement said.
If people think a shortage of gasoline is already distressing is because they can’t fully grasp the chaos that would emerge all over the nation due to a worsening shortage of diesel. With diesel supplies collapsing, virtually all of our trains, trucks, and ships would stop running, which means that the delivery of pretty much everything we buy at our stores and supermarkets that comes to us via trains, trucks, and ships would be halted. So the fact that inventories can collapse in less than a month is a really big deal.
Needless to say, that is going to push consumer prices to sky-highs in the coming months because just about everything that we buy has to be transported. This is yet another reason why our standard of living is falling apart at such a frightening pace.
"In less than a month..."
"Will Civilization Collapse?"
Full screen recommended.
Academy of Ideas,
"Will Civilization Collapse?"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Top Secret: The Banks Are Failing! Must Know Right Now!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/3/22:
"Top Secret: The Banks Are Failing! Must Know Right Now!"
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "We Are Going Through the Worst Geopolitical and Socioeconomic Downturns in Our Lifetimes"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, 11/3/22:
"We Are Going Through the Worst Geopolitical and
Socioeconomic Downturns in Our Lifetimes"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing
global current events forming future trends."
Comments here:
"Don't Judge Me, Just Prepare; Fake Economy Now Crashing; Realities of Inflation"
Jeremiah Babe,11/3/22:
"Don't Judge Me, Just Prepare;
Fake Economy Now Crashing; Realities of Inflation"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
"Are There Any Questions?"
"Are There Any Questions?"
by Robert Fulghum
"Are there any questions?" An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, "Can we leave now?" and "What the hell was this meeting for?" and "Where can I get a drink?"
The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool - some earnest idiot - always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said. But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence left in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all: "What is the Meaning of Life?" You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I'd really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it is usually taken as a kind of absurdist move - people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note. Once, and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer…
Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out… he turned. And made the ritual gesture: "Are there any questions?" Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence.
"No questions?" Papaderos swept the room with his eyes.
So. I asked.
"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?"
So. I asked.
"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?"
The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go. Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.
"I will answer your question."
Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this: "When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light - truth, understanding, knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it. I am a fragment of a mirror whose design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life."
And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk."
- Robert Fulghum, "It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It"
"Teach Them..."
"Teach them a spider does not spin a web. Spiders spin meaning.
Cut one strand and the web holds. Cut many, the web falls.
With the web's fall, so too falls the spider.
Break the web. Break the spider. So breaks the circle of life."
- Frederic M. Perrin
- Frederic M. Perrin
The Poet: Jeanne Lohmann, "Questions Before Dark"
"Questions Before Dark"
"Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down,
"Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down,
consider your altered state:
has this day changed you?
Are the corners sharper or rounded off?
Did you live with death?
Make decisions that quieted?
Find one clear word that fit?
At the sun's midpoint did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites the possible?
bewilderment that invites the possible?
What did you learn from things you dropped
and picked up and dropped again?
Did you set a straw parallel to the river,
let the flow carry you downstream?"
- Jeanne Lohmann,
- Jeanne Lohmann,
"The Light of Invisible Bodies"
"Curveballs..."
"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"
"War"
"War doesn't determine who is right - only who's left."
"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 (Beer 1981: 20).] An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...&c.'" The lower figure is more plausible but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total."
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"War Without End"
"War Without End"
What is wrong with the United States of America?
by Philip Giraldi
"Prussian Major General Carl von Clausewitz famously drew on his own experience in the Napoleonic Wars to examine war as a political phenomenon. In his 1832 book “On War” he provided a frequently quoted pithy summary of war versus peace, writing in terms of politico-military strategy that “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.” In other words, war-making is a tool provided to statesmen to achieve a nation’s political objectives when all else fails.
One can reject the ultimate amorality of Clausewitz’s thinking about war while also recognizing that some nations have historically speaking exploited war-making as a tool for physical expansion and the appropriation of foreigners’ resources. As far back as the Roman Republic, the country’s elected leaders doubled as heads of its consular armies, which were expected to go out each spring to expand the imperium. More recently, Britain notably engaged in almost constant colonial wars over the course of centuries to establish what was to become history’s largest empire.
America’s dominant neocons characteristically believe they have inherited the mantle of empire and of the war powers that go hand-in-hand with that attribute, but they have avoided other aspects of the transition in turning the United States into a nation made and empowered by war. First of all, what comes out the other end after one has initiated hostilities with another country is unpredictable. Starting with Korea and continuing with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq as well as other minor operations in Latin America, Africa and Asia, American war-making has brought nothing but grief on those on the receiving end with little positive to show for the death, destruction and accumulated debt. Also forgotten in the rush to use force is the raison d’etre to have a federal national government at all, which is to bring tangible benefit to the American people. There has been none of that since 9/11 and even before, while Washington’s hard-line stance on what has become a proxy war against Russia over Ukraine promises more pain – perhaps disastrously so – and no real gain.
If one has any doubt that going to war has become the principal function of both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, it is only necessary to consider several stories that have appeared in the past several weeks. The first comes from the Republican side, and it includes a possibly positive development. House Minority leader Republican Kevin McCarthy warned two weeks ago that the GOP will not necessarily continue to write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they obtain the House majority in next month’s election, reflecting his party’s growing skepticism about unlimited financial support for the corrupt regime in place in Kiev. McCarthy explained “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check.”
America’s uncritical support for Ukraine, which has been a contrivance by the White House and media since the fighting started, has led to a growing number of Republicans, particularly some of those aligned with Donald Trump’s “America First” approach, to challenge the need for massive federal spending abroad at a time of record-high inflation at home. Since Russia launched its invasion in February, Congress has approved tens of billions in emergency security and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, while the Biden administration has shipped billions more worth of weapons and equipment from military inventories, all done with only limited or even no oversight of where the money and weapons are winding up.
But, unfortunately, the GOP is far from unified on its approach to Ukraine-Russia. Congressman Liz Cheney demonstrated that her apple did not fall far from her father’s tree, taking some time off from trying to hang Donald Trump to denounce what she refers to as the “Putin wing of the Republican Party.” She put it this way: “You know, the Republican Party is the party of Reagan, the party that essentially won the Cold War. And you look now at what I think is really a growing Putin wing of the Republican Party.”
Cheney criticized Fox News for “running propaganda” on the issue and in particular called out Fox host Tucker Carlson as “the biggest propagandist for Putin on that network… You really have to ask yourself, whose side is Fox on in this battle? And how could it be that you have a wing of the Republican Party that thinks that America would be standing with Putin as he conducts that brutal invasion of Ukraine?”
Cheney notably did not address the issue of how the war developed in the first place because the US and UK preferred saber rattling to diplomacy with Moscow. Or why the United States feels compelled to tip-toe to the brink of a possible nuclear war over a foreign policy issue that is of no real national interest to the American people. And where did she make her comments? At the McCain Institute in Arizona. Yes, that’s a legacy of Senator John McCain another Republican who never saw a war he couldn’t enthusiastically support.
Both President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have confirmed that the US is in with Ukraine until “victory” is obtained, whatever that is supposed to mean, while other Administration officials have indicated that the actual purpose of the fighting is to weaken Russia and remove President Putin. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre glibly spouted the party line when asked about McCarthy’s comments. She thanked congressional leaders for bipartisan work to “support Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s war crimes and atrocities,” adding that “We will continue to work with Congress and continue to monitor those conversations on these efforts and support Ukraine as long as it takes. We are going to keep that promise that we’re making to the brave Ukrainians who are fighting every day, to fight for their freedom and their democracy.”
Perhaps more bizarre than Cheney’s comments is the tale of a letter that was prepared by thirty Democratic Party progressives urging US support for negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine. The letter was prepared in June but not released until last week before being quickly retracted under pressure on the following day. Pramila Jayapal, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said it was retracted because it “was being conflated with [the] comments” made by McCarthy over his warning about budget cutting for Ukraine. Jayapal referred to the letter as a “distraction,” but what she really meant was that her group had no desire to make common cause with the Republicans over any issue, including war and peace in an escalating conflict that is manifestly pointless.
A clueless Jayapal also took pains to contradict the message put out by her own group, emphasizing that there has been no opposition to the administration’s Ukraine policy from Democrats in Congress. She said Democrats “have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people.” She doubled down on the White House message, affirming that the war in Ukraine will only end with diplomacy after “a Ukrainian victory.”
So basically, anyone talking sense about Ukraine in Washington is being shut down by forces within the political parties themselves working together with a compliant national media that is mis-representing everything that is taking place on the ground. It is a formula for tragedy as the Biden administration has shown no sign of seeking diplomacy with Russia to end the conflict despite the president’s recent surprising warning that the world is now facing the highest risk of nuclear “Armageddon,” which he, of course, blames on Putin. Given all of that, in my humble opinion a government that is unable or unwilling to take reasonable steps to protect its own citizens while also avoiding a possible nuclear catastrophe that could end up engulfing the entire world is fundamentally evil and has lost all legitimacy. It should recognize that fact before submitting its resignation."
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Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 11/3/22:
"Phil Giraldi: "War Without End -
What is Wrong With The United States of America?"
Comments here:
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Freely download “On War”, by Carl von Clausewitz, here:
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