"The Love of Life in the Face of Death: Keith Haring on Self-Doubt, the Fragility of Being, and Creativity as the Antidote to Our Mortal Anxiety"

"The Love of Life in the Face of Death: Keith Haring on Self-Doubt,

the Fragility of Being, and Creativity as the Antidote to Our Mortal Anxiety"

by Maria Popova

“It is very important to be in love with life… Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we ‘understand,’ there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything.”

“Life loves the liver of it,” Maya Angelou observed as she contemplated the meaning of life in 1977, exhorting: “You must live and life will be good to you.”

That spring, the teenage Keith Haring (May 4, 1958–February 16, 1990) - who would grow up to revolutionize not only art and activism, but the spirit of a generation and the soul of a city - grappled with the meaning of his own life and what it really means to live it on the pages of his diary, posthumously published as the quiet, symphonic wonder "Keith Haring Journals" (public library).

Five days before his nineteenth birthday and shortly before he left his hometown of Pittsburgh for a netless leap of faith toward New York City, he confronts the difficulty of knowing what we really want and writes: "This is a blue moment… it’s blue because I’m confused, again; or should I say “still”? I don’t know what I want or how to get it. I act like I know what I want, and I appear to be going after it - fast, but I don’t, when it comes down to it, even know."

In a passage of extraordinary precocity, he echoes the young Van Gogh’s reflection on fear, taking risks, and how inspired mistakes propel us forward, and considers how the trap of self-comparison is keeping him from developing his own artistic and human potential:

"I guess it’s because I’m afraid. Afraid I’m wrong. And I guess I’m afraid I’m wrong, because I constantly relate myself to other people, other experiences, other ideas. I should be looking at both in perspective, not comparing. I relate my life to an idea or an example that is some entirely different life. I should be relating it to my life only in the sense that each has good and bad facets. Each is separate. The only way the other attained enough merit, making it worthy of my admiration, or long to copy it is by taking chances, taking it in its own way. It has grown with different situations and has discovered different heights of happiness and equal sorrows. If I always seek to pattern my life after another, mine is being wasted re-doing things for my own empty acceptance. But, if I live my life my way and only let the other [artists] influence me as a reference, a starting point, I can build an even higher awareness instead of staying dormant… I only wish that I could have more confidence and try to forget all my silly preconceptions, misconceptions, and just live. Just live. Just. Live. Just live till I die."

And then - in a testament to my resolute conviction, along with Blake, that all great natures are lovers of trees - he adds: "I found a tree in this park that I’m gonna come back to, someday. It stretches sideways out over the St. Croix river and I can sit on it and balance lying on it perfectly."

“Perspective” by Maria Popova

Within a decade, Haring’s resolve to “just live” until he dies collided with the sudden proximity of a highly probable death - the spacious until contracted into a span uncertain but almost certainly short as the AIDS epidemic began slaying his generation. A century after the uncommonly perceptive and poetic diarist Alice James - William and Henry James’s brilliant and sidelined sister - wrote upon receiving a terminal diagnosis that the remaining stretch of life before her is “the most supremely interesting moment in life, the only one in fact when living seems life,” Haring, having taken a long break from his own diary, returns to the mirror of the blank page and faces the powerful, paradoxical way in which the proximity of death charges living with life:

"I keep thinking that the main reason I am writing is fear of death. I think I finally realize the importance of being alive. When I was watching the 4th of July fireworks the other night and saw my friend Martin [Burgoyne], I saw death. He says he has been tested and cleared of having AIDS, but when I looked at him I saw death. Life is so fragile."

In a sentiment evocative of neurologist Oliver Sacks’s memorable observation in his poetic and courageous exit from life that when people die, “they leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate -of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death,” Haring adds:

"It is a very fine line between life and death. I realize I am walking this line. Living in New York City and also flying on airplanes so much, I face the possibility of death every day. And when I die there is nobody to take my place… That is true of a lot of people (or everyone) because everyone is an individual and everyone is important in that they cannot be replaced."

But even as he shudders with the fragility of life, Haring continues to shimmer with the largehearted love of life that gives his art its timeless exuberance: "Touching people’s lives in a positive way is as close as I can get to an idea of religion." "Belief in one’s self is only a mirror of belief in other people and every person."

He returns to the love of life that charged his days with meaning and his art with magnetism - a love both huge and humble, at the center of which is our eternal dance with mystery: "I think it is very important to be in love with life. I have met people who are in their 70s and 80s who love life so much that, behind their aged bodies, the numbers disappear. Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we “understand,” there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything."

Again and again, Haring declares on the pages of his journal that he lives for work, for art - the purpose of which, of course, if there is any purpose to art, is to make other lives more livable. As the specter of AIDS hovers closer and closer to him, this creative vitality pulses more and more vigorously through him, reverberating with Albert Camus’s insistence that “there is no love of life without despair of life.”

In early 1988, weeks before his thirtieth birthday and shortly before he finally received the diagnosis perching on the event horizon of his daily life, Haring composes a seething cauldron of a journal entry, about to boil with the overwhelming totality of his love of life: "I love paintings too much, love color too much, love seeing too much, love feeling too much, love art too much, love too much."

By the following month, he has metabolized the terrifying too-muchness into a calm acceptance radiating even more love: "I accept my fate, I accept my life. I accept my shortcomings, I accept the struggle. I accept my inability to understand. I accept what I will never become and what I will never have. I accept death and I accept life."

After the sudden death of one of his closest friends in a crash - a friend so close that Haring was the godfather of his son - he copies one of his friend’s newly poignant poems about life and death into his journal, then writes beneath it: "Creativity, biological or otherwise, is my only link with a relative mortality."

But perhaps his most poignant and prophetic entry came a decade earlier - a short verse-like reflection nested in a sprawling meditation on art, life, kinship, and individuality, penned on Election Day:

"I am not a beginning.

I am not an end.

I am a link in a chain."

Keith Haring died on February 16, 1990, barely into his thirties, leaving us his exuberant love of life encoded in mirthful lines and vibrant colors that have made millions of other lives - mine included - immensely more livable.

Couple with "Drawing on Walls" - a wonderful picture-book biography of Haring inspired by his journals - then revisit a young neurosurgeon’s poignant meditation on the meaning of lifehttps://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/13/when-breath-becomes-paul-kalanithi/ as he faces his own death, an elderly comedian-philosopher on how to live fully while dying, and an astronomer-poet’s sublime “Antidotes to Fear of Death.”

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"Compassion..."

"Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception."

- Sharon Salzberg

The Daily "Near You?"

Salina, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

On your knees you may live to see another day,

but you’ll never live to see better days.

by Robert Gore 

“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.

In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.

While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!

Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.

It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.

But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.

Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.

The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.

We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"It's All About Economic And Social Control"

"It's All About Economic And Social Control"

By Edward Snowden

"Read it and weep. Those in control of our government are pure evil. There is no question about it. We will never vote our way out of this. Collapse or overthrow are the likely options. Which do you choose?"

“When I was working for the NSA, I was sent to Japan to impress the Japanese and show them the reach of advancement that we had made. I showed them how live drone feeds were visible and could be monitored. The NSA then asked Japan to help us spy on the Japanese population. The Japanese government refused and said it was illegal in their country to spy on their population. They said it was against their laws. Of course, we tapped their entire country anyway. And we didn’t stop there. Once we got under their communication systems, we started going after their physical infrastructure. We slipped these little sleeper programs into power grids, dams, and hospitals. The idea was that if the day came when Japan was no longer an ally, it would be lights out for Japan.

It wasn’t just the Japanese. We were planting malware in Mexico, Brazil, Austria, Germany… We were also tasked to follow most world leaders and heads of industry to track trade deals, sex scandals, diplomatic cables in order to give the US an advantage in negotiations at the G8, or leverage over Brazilian oil companies, or to oust some Third World leader who wasn’t playing ball.

Ultimately, the truth sinks in that no matter what justification you’re giving yourself, this is not about terrorism. Terrorism is the excuse. This is about economic and social control, and the only thing you’re really protecting is the supremacy of your government.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hit tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

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How Americans love to view themselves...

How most of the world really views us...

And we wonder why... Questions?

"What Are We Paying For?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 7/16/23

"What Are We Paying For?"

"Imagine this. You have a homers association that’s already raised your rates twice in the last year and then they come and raise them another $350 a month. We are seeing excessive price increases for everything. This includes homeowner's insurance and HOA fees."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

"If you're going to tell people the truth make them laugh, or they'll kill you."

- Oscar Wilde

"Don’t Fear The Reaper"

"Don’t Fear The Reaper"

by John Wilder

“No. Not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.”

- James T. Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"

“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'”

- Carlos Castaneda, "Journey to Ixtlan"

"When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way.  The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?” John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.) The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)

Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.

No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.

I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet. I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?

A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.

Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us. And I’m not sure I care.

Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.

I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.

What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today. I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.

Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today? Hell no.

That’s YOLO. The idea that “You Only Live Once” is a free pass to act in any fashion has corroded society. It’s really at the root of many of the problems we have today. It is, in many ways, the absolute inverse of the philosophy I’m trying to describe. YOLO seeks to elevate hedonism and the passions of the moment as the highest good. YOLO is Tinder® times Planned Parenthood© times SnapFaceGramInstaChat® times Rwanda®.

t’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life. So, not YOLO.

One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.

For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.

I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.

The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.

So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way. Oh, wait... I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

○

Full screen recommended.

Blue Oyster Cult , "Don't Fear The Reaper"

Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls 7/15/23

Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls 7/15/23

"The Russians Are Now Launching An Offensive Towards Kharkov"

"There is so much lying on what's going on in Ukraine, people don't know the truth. At least 300,000 Ukrainians have been killed, probably closer to 350,000. The Ukrainians are losing, some would say they lost."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

And so, while America's disintegrating socially and economically right before our eyes, you and I and all of us have paid at very least $150 billion for this nightmare, for a country who's history and culture you know absolutely nothing about and couldn't find on a map. Shame, shame and disgrace on us... Comments?

"The Jig Is Up"

Zelensky forsaken.

"The Jig Is Up"

This is how the empire ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.

by William Schryver

"The member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – consisting of the teetering Masters of Empire and their tawdry entourage of class-stratified vassals – have just concluded a historic confab in Vilnius, Lithuania, capital of the alpha Baltic chihuahua. In a shockingly transparent but otherwise rather banal series of events it became unmistakably clear that their grand plans to subject Russia to the “rules-based order” have come to naught. Among others, the following consequences will ripple in the wake of this reality:

• Russia will achieve a decisive conclusion to the war on terms they dictate.

• NATO is shattered as a military alliance, and coming apart at the seams as a political alliance.

• Germany is on a trajectory of becoming a failed state, and as it goes, so will go the incoherent iron and clay mixture of the so-called European Union.

• The great myth of overwhelming US armaments supremacy has been exposed as little more than a modestly scaled boutique enterprise utterly ill-suited and ill-prepared to prosecute industrial warfare against a peer adversary.

Of course, many will immediately object: “But the US hasn’t even employed its military in Ukraine! If the US entered this war with its awesome air and naval power, and its “best-in-class” army… well, the Russians would get pounded to dust within a few weeks.” Well, I hope the thesis is never put to the test, because it will NOT end well.

I am now more convinced than ever that Russia’s specific strengths match and will consistently defeat the American military’s perceived strengths. Russia admittedly does not wield an expeditionary military, but the concept and constitution of the military it has built renders it effectively unbeatable in its own neighborhood.

A little over a year has now passed since I published an essay entitled "The United States Could Not Win and Will Not Fight a War Against Russia." I have recently revisited it. I felt no impulse to change a thing. Indeed, I am struck by how much it is more apropos now than it was a year ago. I believe it constitutes an essential element of understanding in relation to the geopolitical realities at work in our world circa 2023.

Since I wrote the article, there have been many twists and turns in the path of the continuing quasi-proxy war in Ukraine between the rapidly descendant American Empire and an increasingly resurgent Russia. But in early July 2022, it had, in my estimation, become undeniably evident that Russia had effectively wrecked the formidable original proxy army the empire had built, trained, and partially equipped on the foundation of Ukrainian flesh and blood, and a substantial collection of legacy Soviet implements of war.

Sure, there were still scattered potent remnants, but it had been degraded at least 60% by that point in time. Despite a few own-goals along the way, the Russians accomplished this using a force less than half the size of the one the Ukrainians arrayed against them, while inflicting severe equipment losses and at least a 7 to 1 casualty ratio.

So NATO was forced to up the ante. Aspiring to address the obvious Russian advantage in firepower, they shipped several batteries of M-777 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine, followed soon by a few dozen M-142 HIMARS rocket launchers.

M-777 155 mm Howitzer

M-142 HIMARS Rocket Launcher

Both weapon systems enjoyed a smattering of early successes that were ecstatically trumpeted by western media and their devout disciples around the world. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Ukrainian young men were being trained in NATO bases dotting Europe and the western hemisphere. They were instructed in the use of NATO equipment, and to fight the Russians according to NATO battlefield doctrine.

By mid-summer, a significant portion of this second iteration of the Ukrainian army had arrived back in Ukraine, along with hundreds of NATO infantry vehicles, mountains of ammunition – and perhaps most significantly – a substantial contingent of NATO-affiliated “volunteers” from many countries within the western alliance, notably Poland.

I am convinced this escalatory step convinced the Russians they must immediately begin to more fully prepare themselves for the prospect that NATO would directly intervene in the war. First they gave priority to learning how best to track down and destroy the limited-mobility M-777 howitzers. And rather than obsess unduly on targeting the elusive HIMARS launcher vehicles, the Russians instead focused on electronically jamming / spoofing the GPS sensors or otherwise shooting down the rockets with their short- and medium-range air defense systems.

(Their success in this respect has been nothing short of a revolution in military affairs. It is unprecedented in the age of aerial warfare. Yes, some missiles still get through, but not many, and typically only in the absence or on the outskirts of Russian ECM and air defense coverage areas.)

The Russians had, throughout early to mid-2022, made significant offensive advances into the Novorossiya regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov. But as the summer waned, they began to perceptibly consolidate the entire line of contact. They then quickly brought to pass popular referenda in all but the Kharkov region – thereby formally assimilating the other four into the Russian Federation.

In mid-August 2022, the AFU began to advance against Russian forces on the western borders of the Dnieper River near Kherson. The Russians savaged the initial attacks, but then assumed a tactical-retreat posture. This continued for many weeks as they methodically contracted their lines into a bridgehead on the western part of Kherson city proper, all the while exacting severe losses on the attacking forces.

They would eventually effect an almost-flawless evacuation of twenty thousand troops and virtually all their heavy equipment to the eastern bank of the river, blow up the Antonovsky bridge, and then proceed to savage the AFU troops on the other side with artillery and airstrikes that continue to this day.

As September rolled around, the Ukrainians (with significant numbers of NATO-affiliated “volunteers” in the vanguard) moved with an even more potent force in the Kharkov region, aiming for the strategic cities of Kupyansk, Izyum, and Kremmenaya.

Again, amid much triumphalism in the western punditsphere, as well as bitter recrimination and hyperbolic dooming from the Russian 6th column and its acolytes, the Russian high command effected what I observed to be an orderly, well-executed fighting retreat to the other side of the Oskol river, where they had prepared fortified lines and installed substantial reinforcements.

At that point, the Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkov region reached its high-water mark, and as autumn turned to winter and then to spring, every attempt to advance further was met with a decisive repulse. Though consistently ignored by those who laud the “lightning advances” of the late-season AFU “counter-offensive” in Kharkov, the attacking Ukrainian forces were horrifically mauled between the first week of September and mid-October – and ever since.

As the Russians contracted their lines to much more defensible positions, they concurrently mobilized and commenced intensive training of several hundred thousand reservists; ramped up armaments production to completely unforeseen levels, and settled in for the next few months to fight a punishing war of attrition against Ukraine and its NATO benefactors – even as they simultaneously prepared to face the credible possibility of direct NATO intervention.

That said, despite a mostly defensive posture throughout late 2022 and early 2023, the Russians did launch an operation against the strategic cities of Soledar and Bakhmut that few foresaw would evolve into the greatest battle on European soil since the Second World War. “Surovikin’s Meat Grinder” would eventually consume many tens of thousands of Ukraine’s best remaining troops and equipment. In the end, the second iteration of the Ukrainian army was degraded even more comprehensively than was the first.

Ukrainian air power has long-since been rendered effectively negligible. Provided with occasional but very sparse deliveries of old Soviet aircraft from the former Warsaw Pact nations, they have continued to manage occasional stand-off missile strikes, but close air support has been nonexistent.

Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in early 2023 served to rapidly deplete the legacy Soviet air defense systems. And all western shipments of would-be replacements have proven to be inferior to Ukraine’s old stocks of S-300 and Buk systems.

Fantastical Ukrainian and western media claims of 90%+ shoot-downs of Russian missiles notwithstanding, the Russians now routinely strike targets throughout Ukraine where and when they will.

Most debilitating of all, persistent ammunition shortages have now become acute. Original and supplemented stocks of Soviet-sized 152 mm artillery are all-but exhausted. And despite the US having coordinated the shipment of millions of NATO 155 mm artillery shells from every nook and cranny in the empire’s vast global network of bases and those of its obedient vassals, the cupboard is now bare.

What was widely (albeit fallaciously) believed to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of equipment and ammunition in the warehouses of the Pentagon and its various less-than-sovereign minions around the globe has been exposed as entirely inadequate to the demands of a real war.

It is an astonishing development in the eyes of a great many in the world. And yet, it shouldn’t be. In my July 2022 article, I prominently cited US Army Col. (Ret.) Alex Vershinin's all-important analysis regarding "The Return of Industrial Warfare," which had appeared in RUSI a couple weeks previous. If you have not already done so, I highly recommend this short but powerful essay. His entire argument has now been confirmed by events. Here in mid-July 2023, almost everything that eighteen months ago was only seen through a glass darkly is now undeniably apparent to all with eyes to see:

Far from being massively attrited, as any number of empire-compromised NATO rent-a-generals and politicians have ludicrously argued from the first weeks of the war, the Russians have employed an extremely impressive economy of force to achieve their objectives. To be certain, they have suffered losses in men and equipment that would be far in excess of anything western nations could abide. But the fact remains that the Russians have inflicted the most disproportionate casualty ratio of any major war in the modern era.

My sense of the matter is that the aggregated total of Russian, Donbass militia, and PMC Wagner combat deaths is probably in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand. On the other side of the line, Ukrainian combat deaths are now almost certainly in the range of 250k to 350k – at least 20k of that total occurring just since the first week of June.

The third iteration of the Ukrainian army, equipped predominantly with imported NATO armor, artillery, and ammunition, has been torn to shreds over the course of the previous six weeks of their last gasp offensive. The AFU very likely has been husbanding its scant remaining stock of NATO equipment and ammunition for one last “charge of the damned”, but otherwise Ukrainian offensive potential is played-out, and there will be no fourth iteration of a Ukrainian army to face the Russians on the field.

Meanwhile, upwards of four-hundred thousand uncommitted Russian reserves are champing at the bit to be turned loose. With Russian military industrial output now in high gear, these troops are better-equipped than any that have yet taken part in this conflict.

The Russian air force has received substantial numbers of new airframes from the production line. Attack helicopters roam the battlefield with near-impunity. Russian supply of strike drones, cruise missiles, and supersonic air-launched missiles appears to meet all its battlefield demands. Its so far modest deployment of hypersonic missiles has shown them to be extremely potent weapons that defy the attempts of antiquated western air defenses to interdict them.

This war is a lost cause for the empire and its hapless allies in Europe and around the world. And that, of course, is the unavoidable conclusion that has finally managed to seep into the otherwise dense skulls of the various participants at the recent NATO summit in Lithuania.

The Masters of Empire now face a no-win scenario. They must abandon their failed Ukraine gambit - and inexorably, over the next few years, yield to maximalist Russian demands regarding the roll-back of NATO to its pre-1997 borders - or else yield to the mad impulse of a futile attempt to subjugate Russia by force of arms in the form of direct US/NATO intervention into this war.

Either way, the decline of the empire will be radically accelerated; NATO will almost immediately cease to function as a credible military/political alliance; the EU will dissolve as a monetary/political "union"; the demise of the global dollar system will rapidly gain momentum.

And though many, if not most, find risible the assertion that these things could possibly come to pass in anything like the near or medium-term (2 - 5 years), I increasingly expect they will be proven catastrophically mistaken."

- https://imetatronink.substack.com/

"5 Nuclear Sites Attacked; Wagner On The Move; Record Temps As Massive Fires Explode!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper 7/16/23

"5 Nuclear Sites Attacked; Wagner On The Move; 

Record Temps As Massive Fires Explode!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Simply beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. 

Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"It Strikes Me..."

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can’t get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they’re not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

The Daily "Near You?"

Richmond Hill, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It's Human Nature..."

“We’ve all heard the warnings and we’ve ignored them. We push our luck. We roll the dice. It’s human nature. When we’re told not to touch something we usually do even if we know better. Maybe because deep down, we’re just asking for trouble.”

- “Meredith Grey”, “Gray’s Anatomy”

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

by Peter McKenzie-Brown

“The Immutable Laws of Nature”

•Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.

•Law of Gravity: Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place.

•Law of Probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

•Law of Random Numbers: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.

•Law of Variable Motion: If you change traffic lanes or checkout queues, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.

•Law of the Bath: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.

•Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases exponentially when you are alongside someone you don’t want to be seen with.

•Law of the Damned Thing: When you try to prove to someone that a machine or device won’t work, it will.

•Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

•Law of the Spectator: At any theatrical, musical or sporting event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, for beer, or to the toilet and who leave before the end of the performance or game. Those who occupy the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay seated beyond the end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

•Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your partner will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

•Murphy’s Law of Lockers: When only 2 people are in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

•Law of Plane Surfaces: The chance that a slice of marmalade toast will land face down on a floor is directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

•Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.

•Law of Physical Appearance: If clothes fit, they’re ugly.

•Law of Public Speaking: A closed mouth gathers no feet

•Law of Commercial Marketing: As soon as you find a product that you really like, it will cease production or the store will stop selling it.

•Law of Psychosomatic Medicine: If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to see to the doctor and by  the time you get there, you’ll feel better. If you don’t make an appointment you’ll stay sick.

“Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

3. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

4. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

5. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

6. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

7. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

8. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

9. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.

10. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

11. The things that come to those who wait, may be the things left by those who got there first.

12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

13. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

14. God gave you toes as a device for finding furniture in the dark.

15. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”

- http://www.24hgold.com/

"When I See..."

"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair." 

- Blaise Pascal

Ahh, but it does...

"Warning: WW3 = No More Food Trucks; You Need To Know This To Survive Famine"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 7/15/22

"Warning: WW3 = No More Food Trucks;

 You Need To Know This To Survive Famine"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

  

"Washington Is Begging For A Preemptive Nuclear Attack From Russia"

"Washington Is Begging For A 

Preemptive Nuclear Attack From Russia"

By Paul Craig Roberts

"We have a concept of domestic security, and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used. So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept." - Vladimir Putin

"The Washington Dumbshits are encouraging Russia to wipe out the US in a desperate act of self-preservation. Russian lawmakers have completed an investigation into Washington’s military-related biological activities at laboratories across Ukraine on the basis of findings made public by Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops over the past year. Washington is working on a “universal” genetically engineered bioweapon designed to cause severe damage to enemies comparable to that of a “nuclear winter,” a Russian parliamentary commission investigating US biolabs in Ukraine has concluded.

“The United States aims to develop a universal genetically engineered biological weapon capable of infecting not only people, but animals as well as agricultural crops. Its use involves, among other things, the goal of inflicting large-scale and irreparable economic damage on the enemy,” the commission wrote in its final report.

“The covert and targeted use of such a weapon in anticipation of a positive inevitable direct military confrontation could create a significant advantage for US forces over the adversary, even against those who possess other types of weapons of mass destruction,” the commission added. “The possession of such highly effective biological weapons creates, in the view of the US military, the real prerequisites to change the nature of contemporary armed conflicts.” - https://sputnikglobe.com/

The question is: what is Putin going to do? Is he going to sit on his butt as in Ukraine and let the threat to Russia widen, or will he decide to protect Russia from the Satanic Evil in Washington? At some point even a liberal Kremlin will realize that there is no mutual security to be had with a country committed to Russia’s destruction."

- https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

o

"Russia had deployed the RS-28 (15A28) Sarmat ICBM, which will replace the Soviet R-36M2 Voyevoda missile. This is the worlds largest nuclear missile that includes 15 warheads each with high nuclear yield. According to Russian information, on April 24, 2022, a Sarmat ICBM test launch took place from Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region with the final destination being the Kura training field in Kamchatka. It is worth noting that this information was leaked to the Russian media immediately after the loss of the Moskva cruiser. The Russians note that there is no reason to follow the example of the US, which canceled the test launches of Minuteman III twice in March and April of this year under the fictitious pretext of "non-escalation" of the situation. Launch is only necessary for a complete re-equipment."

RS-28 Sarmat

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.

Do we really want to do this?

Full screen recommended.

"Poseidon: 

Russian Underwater Drone That Can Sink Britain"

Consider what a 1,640 foot high tsunami wave would do to 

the entire East Coast of the US... from Maine to Florida. 

As far inland as W. Virginia. All gone...

"D.C. Residents Concerned Crack House On Pennsylvania Avenue Will Drag Down Housing Market"

"D.C. Residents Concerned Crack House On Pennsylvania 

Avenue Will Drag Down Housing Market"

By the BabylonBee.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. — "Local residents and landlords in the DC area are concerned after rumors surfaced that a nearby home on Pennsylvania Avenue has become a dangerous crack house. “It’s just not fair. I work hard to maintain my property, only to have real estate values plummet when this riff-raff moves into the neighborhood,” said Carla Biggens, the owner of a middle-income apartment building that offers units at the reasonable price of just $15,000 per month. “I always see suspicious people coming and going from that place. It puts us all on edge. Lord knows what kind of shady things are happening there! Yuck!”

Local authorities confirmed hard drugs were recently found on the premises, but warned they would likely never find the perpetrator because the owner of the crack house pays their salaries. “It’s too much to expect corrupt feds like us to do anything about this shady crack house,” said a spokesperson for the FBI. “This neighborhood has been going downhill for a long time anyway. There’s nothing we can do.”

Residents are being encouraged to take their concerns to the next city council meeting where they will be ignored. At publishing time, DC home values had already plummeted to an average of only $12 million dollars."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

- https://babylonbee.com/news/

"There Are Too Many"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 7/15/23

"There Are Too Many"

"There are too many real estate agents and loan officers right now. The average house price is unaffordable and is going in the wrong direction. The average agent makes no money. People cannot afford the average home."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/