So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, December 20, 2024
Adventures With Danno, "Aldi Saver Deals Everyone Should Buy Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 12/20/24
"Aldi Saver Deals Everyone Should Buy Now!"
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Full screen recommended.
Finance Economist, 12/20/24
"12 Grocery Products That Will Be Priceless"
"We’re heading into a season where our grocery bills might just blow us away. Inflation, climate chaos, and supply chain breakdowns are hitting harder than ever, and you’ll be feeling it in every aisle. Are you prepared to see your basics become luxuries? These aren’t just stories; they’re cold, hard facts. Crops are failing, prices are climbing, and the essentials we rely on could soon be out of reach."
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"Make It Stop - The Brutal Reality of Today's Economy"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 12/20/24
"Make It Stop -
The Brutal Reality of Today's Economy"
From banking scandals and freight company collapses to skyrocketing prices and merger chaos, we're uncovering the brutal reality of today's economy. USAA's shocking compliance issues, Amazon's controversial postal service deals, and the truth about those "affordable" EV cars - it's all here."
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Bill Bonner, "The Heat is On"
Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar,
burned at the stake by order of King Philip IV of France.
"The Heat is On"
It’s power that holds the guns and calls the shots. And as Musk
channels his immense wealth into political power, he will inevitably
have more and more powerful people wanting to take a shot at him.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "Power vs. Money. Who’s in charge? We’ll find out soon. The Daily Beast: "Shutdown Looms after Trump ‘Blindsided’ by ‘President Elon Musk’. Shaping up is the most important takedown event of the century...a battle of the titans… the world’s richest man vs. the most powerful man in the world. Tyson vs. Paul was nothing in comparison. We’re talking about the biggest prize ever: Control of the United States of America.
Money has always played a big role in politics. In the 12th century, the French crown borrowed heavily from Jewish lenders. Then, when it couldn’t pay, it cancelled its debts by expelling the Jews. King Edward I of England pulled a similar stunt in the following century. Rather than pay his Jewish lenders what he owed them, he ran them out of the country.
In 1307, the French king targeted the wealth of the Templars, who had established their headquarters in Paris after pulling out of their last stronghold in Syria. They were the defenders of Christendom in the Crusades and had been bequeathed vast estates and much gold. Philip IV reportedly asked them for money. When they refused, he burned their leaders at the stake. Later in that same century, the English king borrowed from rich families in Florence, the Bardi and Peruzzi. When he refused to pay, both families were ruined.
Sometimes, wealth alone is enough to bring a man down. Louis 14th visited Nicolas Fouquet and was so impressed by the great opulence with which he was entertained, he had Fouquet arrested and took his fabulous chateau, Vaux-le-Vicomte, for himself.
In the end, it’s power that holds the guns and calls the shots. And as Musk channels his immense wealth into political power, he will inevitably have more and more powerful people wanting to take a shot at him. Including Donald J. Trump himself. “The state is the enemy,” says Javier Milei. But it is not Trump’s enemy. It is his hammer. And Elon Musk might soon look like a nail.
This week, Republicans and Democrats agreed on a “Continuing Resolution” to keep the feds funded through to March. But Elon stepped up and said ‘no.’ We never saw anything like it - a rich guy upstaging the president elect and practically making major policy decisions himself.
But the approach of a government ‘shutdown’ now brings political heat. Whining, complaining, gnashing teeth - the poor will starve... the Russians will land on the Jersey Shore... and there will be no one to plow the snow from the roads. Airports may be closed, Social Security checks undelivered, and the Pentagon shuttered.
Every penny of federal spending goes to someone. And the power people, whose names are on most of the checks... including all the great and good in the media, the universities, the Swamp, the Deep State, Wall Street and the military-industrial-complex...will not like it.
Donald Trump won’t like it either. He’s the guy they’ll blame. And he’s a power guy. Power guys like the government; they use it to pound their enemies and reward their friends. You’ll recall that in his first term, Mr. Trump proved no threat to the powers-that-be. And if he had, there would have been a better shooter on the roof in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Musk’s stated goal is to cut nearly 30% of the feds’ spending power. The military, retirees, sick people, agencies, departments - the pain would be widespread and deep.
Assuming nothing goes wrong, and current tax cuts are allowed to expire on schedule, deficits are still programmed to increase to nearly $3 trillion by 2034. But not only has Mr. Trump pledged to avoid cuts to military or domestic transfer programs, he also intends a collection of tax cuts and spending increases that will add, net, about $1.5 trillion more to the deficit each year. In other words, Mr. Musk’s agenda, and Mr. Trump’s agenda, are not compatible. One wants to use the government. The other aims to get it off our backs. And the primary political trend hangs in the balance.
Pssst. Elon! You might want to make sure your South African passport is up to date."
Jim Kunstler, "Yet Another Christmas Carol"
"Yet Another Christmas Carol"
by Jim Kunstler
“The nation appears to be having a kind of moment involving a gross,
naked emperor and a bunch of people noticing this isn’t a nudist-friendly zone.”
- Jeff Childers
"Hitler was dead, to begin with. As dead as ein Türnagel. At least no one had heard him squawk since the Russkies cracked bottles of Dunkelbrau at the Brandenburg Gate, April, 1945. Nobody ever called Joe Biden “Hitler,” but around his gloomy place-of-business, known as the “White House", they sometimes called him “Joe Biden,” with a titter and a smirk, as they called “a lid” on his bewildered day and stuffed him into the nearest broom closet.
“Joe Biden” was a mere babe in pram when old Adolf bid farewell to his smoldering Reich. But, eight decades later, after being jammed into the Oval Office by his chauffeur, one Barack Obama, the grasping, scraping, flinty, clutching, covetous old bird, sometimes known as “the Big Guy,” from whom no match had ever struck the fire of an original idea, or a good idea, or even a sound, workable idea, shuffled to his bed-chamber in the lonely compartment known as the White House “residence” on Christmas eve.
“Humbug!” he maundered to himself as he struggled aboard the cold presidential bed, absent lately of the doctor who once claimed to be his wedded wife. “Humbug,” was the new flavor that Ben and Jerry had concocted just for the holiday, a “green” ice-cream featuring pureed mealworms and cocoa bean husks for a satisfyingly punitive crunch. Was Dr. Jill dead, too, now, old “JB” wondered, like his old pals Senator Byrd, and feisty Strom Thurmond and other members of “the firm?” (Or was she in the arms of that scoundrel, Emhoff?)
“Humbug,” he mumbled as he fell off into a cruel, blank slumber. He awakened - he knew not how many minutes longer — to a snorting noise, as of pigs rooting in a forest, followed by a thin, sonorous wailing that might have been the revenant of some once-mighty bombast in the Nuremburg Zeppelinfeld. And then resolved out of a mist the very figure of Hitler, his once-smart, gray Führeruniform tattered and threadbare, and the whole of his body wreathed in rotting sausages, the reek of which might have driven a rank of the stoutest, blondest SS leutnants to their knees in abject surrender.
“What do you want of me?” Scrooge cried, but this ghost of Hitler only wailed again and beckoned with gnarled finger. Suddenly, “Joe Biden” seemed to be flying out in the night air across a great swamp, and then north over the Beltway, to Scranton, Pennsylvania. The scene: a slagheap behind the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, 1949. “JB” is a boy again - oh, to be a boy, with loose joints and a clear mind! - playing with his chums, Bob McGee and Sonny Donahoe. They are reenacting the last days of World War Two. “I’ll be Ike,” says Bob, always a leader whom “Joe” liked to please. “Sonny, you be Omar Bradley. And “Joey,” you can be Hitler.”
“Joey” loved playing Hitler: a few minutes of fulminating histrionics! Then, his hand mimicking a Walther P-38 with the muzzle pointed behind the ear, and the plosive pow! And then, writhing upon the heap of cinders acting out the Führer’s last moments.
“You were so good at it!” the ghost wailed. “What happened to you?”
“I wish I knew. Everything’s a blur now. But tell me, spirit: was I a good you?”
“One of the best!” the ghost of Hitler moaned and dissolved into vapor.
“Joe Biden” wakes again in his bedchamber. It is flooded with bright light and trappings of the holiday: a tree festooned with what appear to be gleaming glass ornaments shaped like dildoes. And before it, enrobed in scarlet and muskrat fur, the cheerful figure of Senator-elect Adam Schiff, grinning from ear to ear, with a wreath of holly about his lightbulb-shaped head. The light is blinding.
“What are you doing here?” the president asks. “And remind me what your name is, if it’s not too much to ask.
“I am the ghost of Christmas Present,” Mr. Schiff intones, as though dispensing yet another rumor of Russian collusion. “Come, take my hand.”
“That would be gay,” the president cries, shrinking from him. “Not a joke!”
“Is there a gayer holiday than the Yuletide?” the ghost asks with a belly laugh. “Come!”
Scrooge can’t help but obey. He is out in the night air again, flying across the Potomac, but only over to the cluster of hotels known as Crystal City on the south bank, hard by the DC airport, and then clean through a window on the tenth floor of the Marriott Hotel there. The room is filled mostly with men, powerful political figures of distinction known to cable news audiences from sea to shining sea. Liquor bottles lie strewn everywhere and a small pile of white powder is heaped on the coffee table surrounded by short straws. Everyone present is in various kinds of costume and stages of undress. There, on the sofa, is Rep. Swalwell, wearing what looks like a diaper, in the arms of the ambassador from China; there, Senator McConnell, in an outfit much like little checked frock that Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz," being spanked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, trussed up in the many straps of a leather harness over his blobbish torso; there, bundled together in a wing-chair, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Rep. Liz Cheney, writhing in the fleshy transports of amour; and squatting on the credenza before the flat-screen TV is White House Monkeypox “Czar,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, naked but for the Schirmmütze officer’s cap worn at a jaunty angle upon his shaven head, seeming to direct the goings-on.
“You must pardon them all,” the ghost of Christmas Present declares.
“Pardon them...?
“Yes,” the ghost commands shrilly. “Pardon them all, all, I say, preemptively!”
“But...but...but....my legacy!” cries the president.
“That IS your legacy!” the ghost retorts with a maniacal guffaw.
“Joe Biden” wails pathetically as the scene dissolves in a rank vapor of whisky and sweat. He finds himself laying not upon his bed but on 16th Street between H and K Streets NW, in the nation’s capital. He reclines uneasily on the Black Lives Matter banner painted on the asphalt a few years back, now a bit faded under the onslaught of radial tires. But at this hour, nothing moves there and the windows of the lobbyists offices above are all dark.
“Where am I?” the president inquires of no one in particular. “This doesn’t feel like the beach.” He feels something on his shoulder, turns his head, and sees, with a start of panic, a boney, skeletal hand with a few shreds of flesh still clinging to it. Looming above it, a figure in a cloak, with a hood. Two eyes burn like red LEDs from the sockets of a skull within.
“W-w-w-who are you?” the president cries.
“It’s me...George!” the figure says in a deep bass voice.
“George...? George H. W. Bush?”
“No!”
“George plain Double-U.”
“No!”
“George, uh, you know. The thing...father of the country...whatsisname...? Not a joke!”
“Not him, either, sucker. It’s me: George Floyd! I am the ghost of Christmas Future! Come with me!”
“Joe Biden” can’t help himself. He is transport magically to the Congressional dining room on a winter afternoon. Senators are milling about with cocktails in hand, some of them recognizably very old colleagues from the jolly days when he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, before he got promoted by whatsisname, and all the trouble started, the rumors and lies about his family, something about one of his sons, the dead one, or maybe the live one, he can’t quite remember...Ukraine...Russia - it’s always Russia, isn’t it...those Russkie bastards! Wait, the senators are speaking! About himself, “Joe Biden” realizes.
“Hark, yo ass,” the ghost of Christmas future says. “To the voices of posterity!”
“What a grifter!” Dick Durbin remarks to Tammy Duckworth.
“Worse President in the history of the country,” Susan Collins says.
“Made Millard Fillmore look like a rocket scientist!” Chuck Schumer observes, “and they didn’t even have rockets then.”
“Good thing they finally prosecuted his whole dang family,” adds Tommy Tuberville.
“I hear Dr. Jill is ping-pong champ at Hazelton Federal Correctional,” says Lindsey Graham.
“Yeah, good thing SCOTUS tossed those preemptory pardons,” Rand Paul observes.
“But Hunter’s still on the loose!”
“Well, at least the Big Guy’s gone now,” mutters John Fetterman.
“I’m gone?” the president whimpers.
“’Fraid so,” the Ghost says.
The ghost dissolves. “Joe Biden” finds himself on the steps of the family mausoleum in Brandywine Cemetery, Delaware. The limestone crypt is covered in spray-paint graffiti, terrible imprecations and objurgations too vulgar to report in a genteel blog. “Joe Biden” lies there weeping on the cold, stone in a heap. Then, suddenly, the scene dissolves and he wakes up!
He’s back in the bedroom at the White House. Sunlight streams through the windows. And aide knocks and comes in the room.“What day is it? Where am I?” the president asks.
“It’s January 20th, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to get cracking. Up and at ‘em. Someone else is moving in here today.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“He won the election.”
“How the hell did that happen? I had it all set-up.”
“Well, sir, you didn’t end up running.”
“I didn’t.”
“Sorry. No.”
“Not a joke?”
“Not a joke, sir. Oh, by the way. Someone is here to see you.”
“Who’s that?”
“Name of Kash Patel. Has some documents he’d like you to review.”
“Never heard of him. Go ahead, send’im in. Jake told me to sign anything they put in front of me. And tell the media I’m calling a lid after that. I’m calling a lid on the whole damn thing. And tell them downstairs I could use some ice cream up here. Gawd, that’s a bright light out there. Is it moving closer? What...? I can’t hear you! The light! The light, I tell you! Not a joke! Hey, there’s something wrong with that light..! It’s closing in...! Wait...! No...! Arrrrggggghhhhh...!"
"Merry Christmas to all !!!"
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Canadian Prepper, "WTF Alert: China's Secret Weapon For WW3 That No One Knows About, 90% Dead In First Year"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/19/24
"WTF Alert: China's Secret Weapon For WW3
That No One Knows About, 90% Dead In First Year"
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Gerald Celente, "Market Gloom: Global Slowdown Speeding Up"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 12/19/24
"Market Gloom: Global Slowdown Speeding Up"
"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."
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"A 'State Of Emergency' Has Been Declared, Expect Anything; Hyper Debt"
Gregory Mannarino, 12/19/24
"A 'State Of Emergency' Has Been Declared,
Expect Anything; Hyper Debt"
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"Go To Your Local Bank And Stock Up On Cash While You Can Because Widespread Outages Are Coming"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/19/24
"Go To Your Local Bank And Stock Up On Cash
While You Can Because Widespread Outages Are Coming"
"If you’re still trusting banks with your life savings, stop everything you're doing and pay very close attention to the warnings being shared by billionaire investors, Wall Street analysts, strategists, and multiple real estate industry leaders that we're about to report in this video. Millions of Americans are in danger of losing everything they have ever fought for, and the worst part is that many of them don’t even know it. Thousands of big U.S. banks are now facing an unprecedented wave of distress that could completely wipe out depositors' savings accounts in 2025. This is very serious, folks!
Just a few days ago, Barry Sternlicht, the cofounder, chairman, and CEO of the $115 billion real estate giant Starwood Capital Group, came forward to alert the public about the impending collapse of the U.S. banking system. The head of one of the biggest real estate companies in the country is observing huge distortions in the market happening as we speak."
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"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"
Full screen recommended.
Full screen recommended.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"
"A Christmas Musical Interlude, With Placido Domingo"
Placido Domingo, "La Virgen Lava Pañales"
○
Full screen recommended.
Plácido Domingo, Wiener Sängerknaben,
"Ave Maria" (Franz Schubert)
"A Look to the Heavens"
“These bright rims and flowing shapes suggest to some melting ice cream on a cosmic scale. Looking toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features the swept back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually melting, but they are slowly dissipating under the influence of ionizing ultraviolet radiation from hot,luminous star gamma Cas.
Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae, just off the upper right edge of the frame. In fact, slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as the ionized hydrogen atoms recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows proportionally less H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The field of view spans about 1 degree or 10 light-years at the estimated distance of gamma Cas and friends.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111103.html
“The Christmas Truce of 1914 - 'Joyeux Noel'”
Full screen recommended.
“The Christmas Truce of 1914 - 'Joyeux Noel'”
by Simon Rees
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other -
instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”
- Edward Abbey
“You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over the watch. Having exchanged pleasantries, your bleary-eyed and mud-spattered colleague shuffles off towards his dug out. Despite the horrors and the hardships, your morale is high and you believe that in the New Year the nation’s army march towards a glorious victory.
But for now you stamp your feet in a vain attempt to keep warm. All is quiet when jovial voices call out from both friendly and enemy trenches. Then the men from both sides start singing carols and songs. Next come requests not to fire, and soon the unthinkable happens: you start to see the shadowy shapes of soldiers gathering together in no-man’s land laughing, joking and sharing gifts. Many have exchanged cigarettes, the lit ends of which burn brightly in the inky darkness. Plucking up your courage, you haul yourself up and out of the trench and walk towards the foe…
The meeting of enemies as friends in no-man’s land was experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men on the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Today, 109 years after it occurred, the event is seen as a shining episode of sanity from among the bloody chapters of World War One – a spontaneous effort by the lower ranks to create a peace that could have blossomed were it not for the interference of generals and politicians.
The reality of the Christmas Truce, however, is a slightly less romantic and a more down to earth story. It was an organic affair that in some spots hardly registered a mention and in others left a profound impact upon those who took part. Many accounts were rushed, confused or contradictory. Others, written long after the event, are weighed down by hindsight. These difficulties aside, the true story is still striking precisely because of its rag-tagged nature: it is more ‘human’ and therefore all the more potent.
Months beforehand, millions of servicemen, reservists and volunteers from all over the continent had rushed enthusiastically to the banners of war: the atmosphere was one of holiday rather than conflict. But it was not long before the jovial façade was torn away. Armies equipped with repeating rifles, machine guns and a vast array of artillery tore chunks out of each other, and thousands upon thousands of men perished. To protect against the threat of this vast firepower, the soldiers were ordered to dig in and prepare for next year’s offensives, which most men believed would break the deadlock and deliver victory. The early trenches were often hasty creations and poorly constructed; if the trench was badly sighted it could become a sniping hot spot. In bad weather (the winter of 1914 was a dire one) the positions could flood and fall in. The soldiers – unequipped to face the rigors of the cold and rain – found themselves wallowing in a freezing mire of mud and the decaying bodies of the fallen.
The man at the Front could not help but have a degree of sympathy for his opponents who were having just as miserable a time as they were. Another factor that broke down the animosity between the opposing armies were the surroundings. In 1914 the men at the front could still see the vestiges of civilization. Villages, although badly smashed up, were still standing. Fields, although pitted with shell-holes, had not been turned into muddy lunarscapes. Thus the other world – the civilian world – and the social mores and manners that went with it was still present at the front. Also lacking was the pain, misery and hatred that years of bloody war build up. Then there was the desire, on all sides, to see the enemy up close – was he really as bad as the politicians, papers and priests were saying? It was a combination of these factors, and many more minor ones, that made the Christmas Truce of 1914 possible.
On the eve of the Truce, the British Army (still a relatively small presence on the Western Front) was manning a stretch of the line running south from the infamous Ypres salient for 27 miles to the La Bassee Canal. Along the front the enemy was sometimes no more than 70, 50 or even 30 yards away. Both Tommy and Fritz could quite easily hurl greetings and insults to one another, and, importantly, come to tacit agreements not to fire. Incidents of temporary truces and outright fraternization were more common at this stage in the war than many people today realize – even units that had just taken part in a series of futile and costly assaults, were still willing to talk and come to arrangements with their opponents.
As Christmas approached the festive mood and the desire for a lull in the fighting increased as parcels packed with goodies from home started to arrive. On top of this came gifts care of the state. Tommy received plum puddings and ‘Princess Mary boxes’; a metal case engraved with an outline of George V’s daughter and filled with chocolates and butterscotch, cigarettes and tobacco, a picture card of Princess Mary and a facsimile of George V’s greeting to the troops. ‘May God protect you and bring you safe home,’ it said. Not to be outdone, Fritz received a present from the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche, a large meerschaum pipe for the troops and a box of cigars for NCOs and officers. Towns, villages and cities, and numerous support associations on both sides also flooded the front with gifts of food, warm clothes and letters of thanks.
The Belgians and French also received goods, although not in such an organized fashion as the British or Germans. For these nations the Christmas of 1914 was tinged with sadness – their countries were occupied. It is no wonder that the Truce, although it sprung up in some spots on French and Belgian lines, never really caught hold as it did in the British sector.
With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches. Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain’s birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches. The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides. The Germans then asked the British to join in. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’.
December 24 was a good day weather-wise: the rain had given way to clear skies. On many stretches of the Front the crack of rifles and the dull thud of shells ploughing into the ground continued, but at a far lighter level than normal. In other sectors there was an unnerving silence that was broken by the singing and shouting drifting over, in the main, from the German trenches. Along many parts of the line the Truce was spurred on with the arrival in the German trenches of miniature Christmas trees – Tannenbaum. The sight these small pines, decorated with candles and strung along the German parapets, captured the Tommies’ imagination, as well as the men of the Indian corps who were reminded of the sacred Hindu festival of light. It was the perfect excuse for the opponents to start shouting to one another, to start singing and, in some areas, to pluck up the courage to meet one another in no-man’s land.
By now, the British high command – comfortably ‘entrenched’ in a luxurious châteaux 27 miles behind the front – was beginning to hear of the fraternization. Stern orders were issued by the commander of the BEF, Sir John French against such behavior. Other ‘brass-hats’ (as the Tommies nick-named their high-ranking officers and generals), also made grave pronouncements on the dangers and consequences of parleying with the Germans. However, there were many high-ranking officers who took a surprisingly relaxed view of the situation. If anything, they believed it would at least offer their men an opportunity to strengthen their trenches. This mixed stance meant that very few officers and men involved in the Christmas Truce were disciplined. Interestingly, the German High Command’s ambivalent attitude towards the Truce mirrored that of the British.
Christmas day began quietly but once the sun was up the fraternization began. Again songs were sung and rations thrown to one another. It was not long before troops and officers started to take matters into their own hands and ventured forth. No-man’s land became something of a playground. Men exchanged gifts and buttons. In one or two places soldiers who had been barbers in civilian times gave free haircuts. One German, a juggler and a showman, gave an impromptu, and given the circumstances, somewhat surreal performance of his routine in the centre of no-man’s land.
Captain Sir Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards, in his famous account, remembered the approach of four unarmed Germans at 08.30. He went out to meet them with one of his ensigns. ‘Their spokesmen,’ Hulse wrote, ‘started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce. He came from Suffolk where he had left his best girl and a 3 h.p. motor-bike!’ Having raced off to file a report at headquarters, Hulse returned at 10.00 to find crowds of British soldiers and Germans out together chatting and larking about in no-man’s land, in direct contradiction to his orders. Not that Hulse seemed to care about the fraternization in itself – the need to be seen to follow orders was his concern. Thus he sought out a German officer and arranged for both sides to return to their lines.
While this was going on he still managed to keep his ears and eyes open to the fantastic events that were unfolding. ‘Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir was exchanged addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said, “Virginian?” Our fellow said, “Aye, straight-cut”, the German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish!” It gave us all a good laugh.’ Hulse’s account was in part a letter to his mother, who in turn sent it on to the newspapers for publication, as was the custom at the time. Tragically, Hulse was killed in March 1915.
On many parts of the line the Christmas Day truce was initiated through sadder means. Both sides saw the lull as a chance to get into no-man’s land and seek out the bodies of their compatriots and give them a decent burial. Once this was done the opponents would inevitably begin talking to one another. The 6th Gordon Highlanders, for example, organized a burial truce with the enemy. After the gruesome task of laying friends and comrades to rest was complete, the fraternization began.
With the Truce in full swing up and down the line there were a number of recorded games of soccer, although these were really just ‘kick-abouts’ rather than a structured match. On January 1, 1915, the London Times published a letter from a major in the Medical Corps reporting that in his sector the British played a game against the Germans opposite and were beaten 3-2. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxons recorded in his diary: ‘The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.’
The Truce lasted all day; in places it ended that night, but on other sections of the line it held over Boxing Day and in some areas, a few days more. In fact, there were parts on the front where the absence of aggressive behavior was conspicuous well into 1915.
Captain J C Dunn, the Medical Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, whose unit had fraternized and received two barrels of beer from the Saxon troops opposite, recorded how hostilities re-started on his section of the front. Dunn wrote: ‘At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with “Merry Christmas” on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with “Thank you” on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.’ The war was indeed on again, for the Truce had no hope of being maintained. Despite being wildly reported in Britain and to a lesser extent in Germany, the troops and the populations of both countries were still keen to prosecute the conflict.
Today, pragmatists read the Truce as nothing more than a ‘blip’ – a temporary lull induced by the season of goodwill, but willingly exploited by both sides to better their defenses and eye out one another’s positions. Romantics assert that the Truce was an effort by normal men to bring about an end to the slaughter. In the public’s mind the facts have become irrevocably mythologized, and perhaps this is the most important legacy of the Christmas Truce today. In our age of uncertainty, it comforting to believe, regardless of the real reasoning and motives, that soldiers and officers told to hate, loathe and kill, could still lower their guns and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and Christmas cheer. The Irish poet, Thomas Kettle, who was killed in the War in September 1916, captured that spirit in a poem he wrote to his little daughter, Betty, shortly before he died:
“So, here while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor –
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the secret scripture of the poor.”
The Poet: David Whyte, "In the Beginning"
"In the Beginning"
"Sometimes simplicity rises
like a blossom of fire
from the white silk of your own skin.
You were there in the beginning
you heard the story, you heard the merciless
and tender words telling you where you had to go.
Exile is never easy and the journey
itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,
when you heard that voice, you had to go.
You couldn't sit by the fire, you couldn't live
so close to the live flame of that compassion
you had to go out in the world and make it your own
so you could come back with
that flame in your voice, saying listen...
this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love...
It is all here, it is all here."
~ David Whyte
"The Prophet: On Good and Evil "
"The Prophet: On Good and Evil "
"Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among
perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root
that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root,
Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.
For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep
while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways,
and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and
bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
Wherefore are you slow and halting?
For the truly good ask not the naked,
Where is your garment?
nor the houseless, What has befallen your house?"
- Kahlil Gibran
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Freely download a PDF version of "The Prophet" here:
"Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind"
"Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness
of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind"
by Maria Popova
“Happy people die whole,” Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962) wrote in one of his poems. “Integrity is wholeness,” he wrote in another. For Jeffers, whose verses became revered hymns of the environmental movement as Rachel Carson was making ecology a household word, this meant wholeness not only within oneself but also wholeness with the rest of the natural world, with the integrity of the universe itself - an ethos consonant with his contemporary John Muir’s insistence that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Jeffers coined the term inhumanism to describe the perilous counterpoint to this awareness. Humanity, he worried, had become too solipsistic, too divorced from the rest of nature, too blind to the “astonishing beauty of things” - beauty the protection of and participation in which is both our natural inheritance and our civilizational responsibility.Although Jeffers’s ideas moved and influenced generations of readers, writers, artists, activists, and even policymakers - from Ansel Adams and Edward Weston to Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams - he never formally articulated his spiritual credo outside of verse. Never, except once.In the autumn of 1934, Jeffers received a letter from Sister Mary James Power - a principal and teacher at a girls’ Catholic high school in Massachusetts. A lifelong lover of poetry, Power had endeavored to edit an anthology of prominent poets’ reflections on the spiritual dimensions of their art and their creative motive force. She invited Jeffers to contribute, asking about his “religious attitudes.” His response, originally published in Powers’s 1938 book "Poets at Prayer" and later included in "The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers" (public library), is one of the most beautiful and succinct articulations of a holistic, humanistic moral philosophy ever committed to words — some of the wisest words to live and think and feel by.Jeffers writes: :It is a sort of tradition in this country not to talk about religion for fear of offending - I am still a little subject to the tradition, and rather dislike stating my “attitudes” except in the course of a poem. However, they are simple. I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.)"Writing in the same era in which Carson revolutionized our understanding of the natural world and our place in it with her lyrical writings about the sea, observing that “against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change,” Jeffers adds:"The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that here is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation."But this “salvation,” Jeffers observes in a sensitive caveat, is not something that happens to us, passively - it is something that happens in us, through our active participation in life, through the choices we make during the brief interlude of our existence as animate beings in an animate universe. Wholeness itself is a participatory act - both a faculty of being and a function of becoming, to be mastered and refined in the course of living. (I too have wondered how, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, we attain completeness of being.) Jeffers writes:"I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one’s own life and environment beautiful, so far as one’s power reaches. This includes moral beauty, one of the qualities of humanity, though it seems not to appear elsewhere in the universe. But I would have each person realize that his contribution is not important, its success not really a matter for exultation nor its failure for mourning; the beauty of things is sufficient without him."Complement this fragment of the wholly ravishing "Wild God of the World" with poet and philosopher Parker Palmer, a modern-day Jeffers of a kind, on the elusive art of inner wholeness, neurologist Oliver Sacks on beauty as a lens on the interconnectedness of the universe, evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis on the spirituality of science and the interconnectedness of life."
Greg Hunter, "Will Nuke False Flag Keep Trump Out of Office?"
"Will Nuke False Flag Keep Trump Out of Office?"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Renowned radio host, filmmaker, book author and archeological dig expert Steve Quayle is telling the public to brace themselves for the evil deeds that will be done to try to keep President Elect Donald Trump from taking office. This includes a false flag nuke that will be blamed on Russia. One side of government is trying to nuke America, and another side of government is trying to stop it. This is what some say all the drone traffic is about. Quayle explains, “A false flag is when you initiate an illegal act. In this case, we are talking about the detonation of not only ‘dirty bombs’ but also nuclear warheads. The rumors are there are active nuclear warheads. They that hate Trump and want to literally destroy this country to save the majority of the Democrats and Republicans that appear to have an affinity for China. That came out in the Australian News about how many US politicians are on the China payroll.”
Lots of crime and treason have been going on in Washington D.C., and it only got worse in the Biden Administration. The so-called Swamp is scared. Quayle says, “They are scared because of the revelation that President Elect Trump is sending public signals that he’s going to clean house. The bottom line answer is if you have sold out to the Chinese. Our government was in collusion with the Chinese. We funded (CV19) gain of function experiments that resulted in the deaths of people who were vaccinated and participated in the knowing and willing destruction of American citizens. A top Communist Chinese Party member said with our bioweapon, we defeated the United States. They are afraid because they know what they are guilty of. President Trump has the goods on them - there is evidence.”
Quayle says there is another government group who is working to stop any false flag. Quayle contends, “They are going to use everything in their bag of evil tricks, including false flag nuclear detonations. The Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) are good guys, and they are working tirelessly. They really want to stop this nuclear false flag,”
These people who are against Trump are both desperate and evil. Quayle says, “They will do anything, including detonation of nuclear warheads in the US to stop Donald Trump. These are soulless creatures. Their sole purpose is to destroy mankind. There is only one reason to provoke a nuclear war with Russia, and that is they don’t want Trump in office. They are Luciferian, and they want a mass sacrifice of 250 million Americans.”
In closing, Quayle says to be on the lookout for the big lie coming in the future. Quayle says, “The big lie is aliens created us, and there is no God...”There is more in the 50-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes one-on-one with
Steve Quayle who talks about evil demons that will try
a nuclear false flag detonation to stop Donald Trump from taking office.
"Point Of No Return..."
”There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”
- Graham Greene
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“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when
you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice
is to swim forward into the unknown… and pray for an exit.”
- Dan Brown
○
“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.” - Charles Frazier
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“Never be ashamed of a scar.
It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.”
- Unknown
"Truth, Beauty and the Unseen Craftsperson"
"Truth, Beauty and the Unseen Craftsperson"
I think of Bill whenever the breeze brings his chimes to life.
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Today I want to honor Bill Murath, a friend and fellow craftsperson who recently passed away from AML. (Acute myeloid leukemia). Like the vast majority of those I have come to know through countless emails, Bill and I never met in the physical world, but we bonded in the realms of spirit and craft. Bill was a unique spirit and gifted craftsperson.
Bill was a father, husband, business owner and musician, and in his younger days, a surfer who lived on the North Shore of Oahu and worked in a pizza shop to fund his surfing. I know the North Shore well and when I see a photo of him on his board, in my mind's eye I am swimming beside him.
Bill and I go way back. When he read my post "When an Old Friend Takes Her Own Life" (December 1, 2007), he responded by making two wind chimes of craft and beauty, which he mailed to me in remembrance of my dear friend. That Bill understood my loss and responded by investing his time, skill and artistry in making a gift that continues to enrich my life every day - how can I express my gratitude? I asked what I could do for him in return, he shrugged. It was a gift. When I asked him to explain how he designed the length of each chime to achieve the various tones, his explanation went over my head.
I've learned to avoid discussing beauty in my public posts because it inevitably draws the ire of those anxious to accuse me of elitism, as the mainstays of American culture are "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," i.e. entirely subjective; "only elites can afford beauty," i.e. fine art / costly objets d'art that serve as signifiers of wealth and status, and "aesthetic sensibility is snobbery," so to recognize beauty is verboten. This is a misunderstanding of the meaning of craft, which is an expression of truth and beauty that is not subject to fads or opinion.
I too am a craftsperson, but of a different sort than artists like Bill. My craft is purposefully unseen, invisible, as my skill is in doing work that goes unnoticed because it blends in with what is already there.
Bill understood the Tao of craft. If you read Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu in a previous era), you'll find stories of butchers whose blade never dulls because they never hit bone, and masters who catch birds with sticks. These stories reflect that the Tao flows as skills mastered by years of discipline and effort, as the result of experience with unique situations with uncertain solutions - precisely what is beyond the reach of machines and AI, despite overblown claims to the contrary. Though our culture claims to glorify beauty, it actually glorifies ugliness. This is why it's so verboten to even discuss beauty, for that would inevitably lead to a recognition of the sea of ugliness.
To those imbued with the Tao of craft, there is immutable truth in the materials we work with. This truth is not subjective; we feel it as our second nature. The same holds for beauty: if the work is done right, it has beauty on multiple levels that is not a matter of opinion. This immutability is offensive to those who claim equal rights to "decide what's true and beautiful." The craftsperson knows from long experience, in a way the opinionated non-master-craftsperson cannot.
A machine can mix pie crust dough, and the result is low quality because there is a craft mastery to a truly wonderful pie crust. The master baker knows just how much water to add by the feel of the dough, which is partly based on the humidity and temperature of the environment. The feeling of rightness cannot be measured by instruments or taught online; it must be acquired by long experience of trial and error in unique circumstances with uncertain solutions and outcomes, what author Donald Schon called "reflection in action."
This training is never complete, of course, but the practitioner reaches a point of natural confidence that the ignorant mistake for pride or superiority. The practitioners sense the truth of the materials and the path to beauty.
My own experiences this year illustrate the point. I replaced several delaminating interior doors in a 50-year old house. I had to trim the doors to fit the opening, drill a hole for the existing lockset, and so on. The tricky part wasn't the carpentry, it was the finish. The existing doors had been "blonded," a process of rubbing white paint over the veneer and quickly wiping it off. The same technique had been applied to the tongue-and-groove redwood wall boards.
The technique looks easy, and it is, unless you're seeking to match an existing set of doors that have aged with time. Then the trick is to know how long to let the paint soak in and when to wipe the excess off so it looks like the older doors. If you wait too long, the paint dries and the finish is uneven. If you wipe it off too soon, then it's visibly lighter than the older doors. The goal is to replace the doors in such a way that casual observers don't see the new doors as replacements.
In the same house, an old pipe had been removed long ago in the bathroom and the hole had been filled with an ugly wood plug. There is no way anyone could claim this plug was anything but ugly. So I used a couple of tricks and mixed up several shades of paint to match the existing linoleum flooring. The casual observer won't see it.
A spot of dry rot on an exterior window frame turned out to be a fist-sized sponge of rotted wood that included some of the siding, frame, sill and trim. A robot would have opted for the "obvious" solution which was replacing the entire window frame, window and siding--a job that would cost a lot of money. I knew this was unnecessary and so I set the blade depth of our wormdrive Skilsaw and free-handed a surgery which I completed with a hammer and chisel.
Firing up a Skilsaw to free-hand cut away parts of the window sill, frame, trim and siding of a single-wall house demands a certain level of experience, as each such job is unique. It's not a factory environment. The saw weighs 13 pounds, it's threatening to rain so there's a pressing time element, the ground is uneven and the tool is inherently dangerous. A YouTube video isn't going to give you the skill that only experience provides. It boils down to the feel you have for the blade and the wood.
This is the craft. It becomes part of you, a second nature called up as needed, for your hands do the work "all by themselves," without conscious guidance. Your mind isn't wandering, it's observant, but no more than that. You let the work get done by staying out of its way.
Again, the truth is in the materials: you sense the density and soundness of the wood by the feel of the chisel. The beauty is in the invisibility of the repair, which required fashioning three small complex multi-cut pieces of new wood with a chisel and a hacksaw, as the blade is finer than our handsaw.
I think of Bill whenever the breeze brings his chimes to life. My craft is not up to his, but given my 50 years of experience, I can recognize and honor his achievement, and admire the truth and beauty of his craft and life. I miss you, Bill.
Here are photos of his chimes, and a brief recording of one. One holds court in a corner of our kitchen, where it catches the tradewind breezes from the dining nook windows. It is a musical "kitchen god" for those familiar with Chinese traditions.
The other holds court in our living room, where it comes to life in the tradewinds wafting through the windows overlooking our yard. That it shares the space with our very old embroidered dragon seems appropriate.
This book helps us understand Bill's level of craft. "The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty" (1972)
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