"Homo Credulus"

"Homo Credulus"

by Joel Bowman

"Man: He’ll go along with just about anything. Given the right circumstances…a little programming…and enough time for it all to marinate in his soft, mammalian brain… there is almost nothing Homo Credulus will not learn to embrace. Don’t believe us?

Take a look at the historical record; you’ll soon wonder how we ever got this far. Sure, you’ll discover gizmos and flying contraptions, art and agriculture, music and mathematics. You’ll witness spectacular scientific breakthroughs, the number “0” and a man’s footprint on the moon. You’ll also find automobiles with so many cup holders, you won’t know where to holster your oversized 7/11 Big Gulp.

But you’ll also scratch your head. Perhaps you’ll even weep. And if you think hard enough, you’ll put a few things to serious question…“Central banks?” “Modern democracy?” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show?” How has mankind survived such atrocities? Self inflicted, no less! And why, moreover, does he rush so earnestly to repeat and replay his worst mistakes? (Ellen has been on air since 2003!) Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dear Reader. After all, repetition is nothing new…

You’ll recall that it was the Greeks who first gave the world democracy – from the Greek, dēmokratía, literally “Rule by ‘People’”. (And yes, it was those very same Greeks who put their own beloved Socrates to death, by a majority vote of 361-140.) Today, democracy is a cherished tenet of “the West.” It is woven into the civic religion, sewn into the social fabric. Men march off eagerly to fight for it, to proselytize it, and to die in forgotten ditches defending it.

At least, that’s what they believe they’re doing. As usual, the poor saps have been duped. Herewith, a little historical context…The phrase “Making the world safe for democracy” was actually a marketing slogan, coined back in the 1910s, as a way to sell “The Great War” to America. Weary from their own disastrous Civil War just a few decades earlier, in which hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young men gave up the ghost, Americans were mostly inward looking at the time. That is to say, they wanted little to do with what they largely saw as a “European affair.”

Polls might have indicated no appetite for battle, but the nation’s politicians were nonetheless starved for military misadventure. They sensed big profits abroad, both in manufacturing armaments and making onerous bank loans to foreign lands. Sure, “the nation” would have to fill tank and trench with warm young bodies, but very few soldiers would carry senatorial surnames along with their rifles. And so, after a public relations campaign of truly epic proportions, America marched off to war, wrapped in the delusion they had freshly been sold.

Eddie Bernays, the man who coined the phrase and, thus, peddled the war to America, made a fortune for his efforts. He was even invited by Woodrow Wilson to attend the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, as a show of gratitude for his services. There, Bernays learned the full impact of his “democracy” slogan. An obviously bright fellow, the surreal experience caused him to think. If people will line up to kill one another under the influence of a mere marketing campaign they could surely be convinced to do, say and buy just about anything!

Bernays was right. In fact, he wrote a series of books, detailing his insights. They included "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923), "A Public Relations Counsel" (1927) and a neat little number titled "Propaganda" (1928), in which Bernays laid out the blueprint for mass social and psychological manipulation. The collected works went on to become a huge success, and the favorite of none other than Joseph Goebbles, Reich Minister for Propaganda in Nazi Germany between 1933-45.

Bernays himself, writing in his 1965 autobiography, recalls a dinner at home in 1933 where… "Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. […] Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign."

It is indeed chilling to think of such a heinous undertaking as being engineered, blueprinted, premeditated and carried out according to some kind of script. And yet, there it is, in Bernays’ own words, the “Father of Propaganda.” Having acquired somewhat of a tainted reputation-by-association, propaganda, itself, underwent a “strategic rebranding” after WWII. But make no mistake, the very same métier thrives to this day, under the more socially palatable designation, “Public Relations.” Still, a ruse by any other name…

“Could we be so stupid again?” wonders the gentle reader. “Might the mob still be swayed by what Charles Mackay termed ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds?’” Why, of course! That’s the nature of the mob! Whether in love, finance, politics or any other matter, man is wont to be convinced, assured, persuaded, often against his own best interests. Few are the absurdities in which he will not take refuge, invest his hard-earned capital or squander his morality. All he needs is a good story, something to arrest his imagination and cauterize his capacity for reason. A distraction from his lonely, quotidian existence. That, and a few crumbs to pass his lips.

The Roman poet, Juvenal, recognized as much when he mocked the panem et circenses (bread and circuses) stratagem almost two millennia ago. In his "Satire X", he referred to the Annona (a kind of grain dole) and the famous circus games, held in the Colosseum and elsewhere, as designed to keep the unthinking population fed and happy.

Look around you today, Dear Reader. What do you see, two millennia later, in the Year of Their Lord, 2022 AD? We’ve got reality television and stadium sports matches, food stamp programs and an Everest of transfer payments, we’ve got mask mandates at schools and the whole pretense of safety and security, there’s $31 trillion in national debt and government spending out the wazoo., plus a collapsing workforce, an opioid epidemic (out-killing COVID-19 in < 65s) and Whoopi Goldberg in the sin bin...

And behind it all, the greatest bread and circuses show ever: modern representative democracy. Now, as then, the show goes on!"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

And now, it’s time for more "Fatal Conceits" - 

the podcast about money, markets, mobs and manias...

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Bread And Circuses"

"Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt."

- Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, in English "Juvenal"

"Take away my bread and circuses and all I have left is my pitchfork."

And the bread and circuses are ending...

"The 'A-Word'”

"The 'A-Word'”

Counting the cost of the state... and imagining the alternative.

by Joel Bowman

"They shed their sense of responsibility

Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob

That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,

Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,

Bread and circuses."

~ Juvenal, "Satire X"

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "The news hit the wires like a dead frog landing in the bottom of an abandoned well. Down here on the Pampas, annual inflation accelerated “less than expected” for the month of November. According to government data, prices rose by only 92.4% from the same month a year ago. ¡Que quilombo!

Sure, prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years... in a country where high double-digit inflation is as common as Messi football jerseys in Qatar... but hey, it was mercifully lower than the 94.2% median experts had projected. Small victories, no?

But currency collapse and economic crises can wait for mañana. Today is game day, after all... the final of the Copa Mundial (The Football/Soccer World Cup). Long ago did the poor Argentines lose faith in their votes... their bribes... their hack politicos. Now, in the 35th Year of Their Lord, Lionel Messi, the long-suffering mob place their faith instead in their beloved football team, the Albicelestes.

Facing the defending champions, France’s Les Bleus, the real world-weary Argentines dream of glory and fame on the pitch, of clenching “la tercera” (their third world title), and of waking up tomorrow in a world where rampant inflation is not the only thing in which they are #1.

While we’re on the subject of lofty dreams, allow us a few paragraphs to do as that mopey Beatle once did and “Imagine all the people... with no government...” More in today’s feature essay, below..."

"The 'A-Word'”

by Joel Bowman

"Have you noticed, dear reader? A heretofore unspeakable word is beginning to form at the edge of polite conversation. Long has it lingered on the margins of society... the proud and so-called "fringe." Now, thanks in no small part to the vast and increasing decentralization of information, the word is starting to find a voice.

Many voices, in fact. While the ongoing “Twitter Files” story makes clear the extent to which the previous iteration of the world’s largest digital platform censored “alternative” opinions, there is hope yet that free speech may be yanked from the grasp of bed-wetting censors and narrative toting, mainstream news apologists alike.

But back to our word of the day. For the amateur etymologists and card-carrying logophiles among us, the term in question derives from the Greek arkhos, meaning "rulers." The critical prefix, an, simply denotes "without."

An-arkhos - Anarchy (noun): without rulers.

Not without rules, we hasten to emphasize, just without rulers. No masters, in other words... and therefore, no slaves. Only freely contracting individuals, voluntarily interacting for the benefit of one and, by extension, the other. Put like that... clinically, factually... academically, it almost seems as if the word itself might represent a faintly desirable concept. "A world without rulers," we muse to ourselves, "imagine..." It almost sounds like the lyrics to a John Lennon song; as poetic as it is improbable.

Imagine all the People… But without rulers, administrators, bureaucrats, meddlers, do-gooders, world-improvers and the rest of their irksome ilk, how would society function? Ah... therein lies the hitch.

We're prohibited from ever finding out! (That's one of the rulers' favorite restrictions... and the real reason they don’t like people like Mr. Musk privatizing the government’s favorite media playthings, like Twitter.) Instead, each and every year, tens of thousands of pages' worth of new regulations are added to the Federal Register, the nation’s repository of legislative “sand in the gears.” Likewise, state and local agencies enact their own brands of "Justice."

Statutes, bylaws, edicts, decrees, requirements, orders, mandates, acts, canons, caveats and the rest... all imposed by a group of insider elites claiming to represent some amorphous, esoteric concept they call "the common good." What is this "common good," we wonder, this deliberately ambiguous entity? How is it measured? And what of the plight of the world's smallest minority: the individual? The rulers never seem to say. And too few people bother to ask.

Elsewhere, the masses' attention remains focused on the unproven positives supposedly delivered by politicians and their weird and wacky market interventions... the Fed, the DEA, SEC, IRS, TSA, EPA, and the other 440 odd federal agencies listed in the Register. The benefits, appointed officials assure us, far outweigh the costs. But what are those costs? How do we quantify the unrealized... the potential... the hypothetical value and experience of the road not taken? In short, we can't. Not in any definitive manner. Still... how about a vague figure... a guestimate... a "más o menos," as the Argentines say...

The Cost of the State: It’s been almost a decade since economists John Dawson and John Seater examined the relationship between the growth in regulations (measured by the pages of federal regulations) and economic performance (measured by real GDP growth). The pair followed the paper trail back more than half a century in an attempt to gain some scope for their research. Their results? See for yourself:

Dawson and Seater estimate that federal regulations have potentially lowered real GDP growth by about 2% per year since 1949 and made America 72% poorer. The professors put the figures into context in their conclusion: "Regulation's overall effect on output's growth rate is negative and substantial. Federal regulations added over the past 50 years have reduced real output growth by about two percentage points on average [annually] over the period 1949-2005. That reduction in the growth rate has led to an accumulated reduction in GDP of about $38.8 trillion as of the end of 2011. That is, GDP at the end of 2011 would have been $53.9 trillion instead of $15.1 trillion if regulation had remained at its 1949 level [see chart above]."

Hang on a second. Only $38.8 trillion? Over 6 1/2 decades? The numbers seem a tad lenient to us... Then again, by Dawson and Seater's own admission, they attempted only to account for the costs of federal regulations... leaving aside all those pesky local infringements and market incursions at the state level. Measuring all the rules is simply too arduous a task... like counting the number of lies during a presidential debate.

"Inclusion of state regulation would be highly desirable," the economists lamented, "but data collection is an enormous task, far beyond our resources." And yet, with nary an eye to the spiraling costs, regulations at the local, state and federal levels nevertheless pile ever higher... page after page... promise after promise... vote after vote.

Back when Dawson and Seater set for themselves their monumental task, over 80,000 pages were appended to the Federal Register. The directory alone is enough to make the eyes bleed. The Homeland Security Department has six subdivisions. The Interior Department has 10. And the Agricultural Department (which ostensibly oversees and regulates an activity that humans have managed to do for thousands of years) boasts no fewer than 20 arms, branches, offices and agencies.

Now fast-forward to today. Imagine factoring in the brigades of hyperventilating Covidians... the teams of Diversity Inclusion and Equity (DIE) consultants... the squadrons of ESG zombies and Capital “S” Scientists drawing paychecks and “research” grants for measuring the world’s temperature half a century from now... not to mention their paymasters in Congress and lapdogs in the mainstream media, ceaselessly browbeating us all on how best we (not they, mind) should offer appropriate propitiations to Mother Gaia, making certain sacrifices in the here and now for vague promises about a nebulous, computer-modeled future.

One Nation, Ungovernable: Of course, all this meddling should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention. After all, bureaucrats have a vested interest in conspicuously "doing something"... no matter the consequences, seen or unseen. But again, here we are attempting to account for only the economic cost of State intervention. What about the myriad other weights lumped on the backs of individuals seeking a free and unmolested life?

It is here, in the nebulous "Cost of Empire" column, where the State is allowed (literally) to get away with murder. To illustrate...Imagine discovering that a "friend" routinely stole half your paycheck... but excusing him because he throws a half-decent barbecue once in a while...Or learning that your neighbor routinely deployed Predator drones to rain Hellfire missiles down on children's birthday parties... but pardoning his curious pastime because he once gave you a good deal on your old clunker. In no other walk of life would a reasonable person tolerate the kind of nonsense that passes for critical thinking in the political realm.

Economic historian, Robert Higgs, has written extensively on this very topic. His powerful insights are worth quoting here at length: "Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a "Great Leap Forward" that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children."

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

Dropping the A-Word: By some estimates, the State (in its various machinations and vile expressions) is directly responsible for the death of some 200 million human beings over the past century alone. This figure takes into account both wartime deaths and those who perished as a result of such disastrous undertakings as Mao's "Great Leap Forward," referenced above by Mr. Higgs, which alone accounted for as many as 70 million deaths... during peacetime.

And yet, while those who eschew violence are made to wade through a torrent of hypothetical chaos and "wholly conjectural" mayhem ("But who will build the roads...?"), the basest depravities perpetrated by the State remain beyond the reach of so-called "polite" conversation. For shame!

Day by day... dollar by dollar... death by death... the cost of feeding the State continues to mount. If peace and prosperity are ever to prevail, the alternative must become the imperative. With that in mind, readers grown weary of counting the costs are cordially invited to drop the "A-word" into their next cocktail hour conversation. If it sinks like a lead balloon, you'll know you're onto something good."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Shopping At Hobby Lobby! Massive Holiday Sale, Don't Miss This!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 12/18/22:

"Shopping At Hobby Lobby! 

Massive Holiday Sale, Don't Miss This!"

"In today's vlog we are at Hobby Lobby, and are noticing massive holiday clearance sales! We are one week away from Christmas, and are taking you shopping with us to help save you some money on some amazing holiday gift ideas!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Massive Offensives by the Russians to Terminate Ukraine"

"Massive Offensives by the Russians to Terminate Ukraine"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 12/18/22:

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only. On the other side of the line is Godfrey Bloom."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Holy $%$! US Troops Approach Russian Border, Moscow Preps Nuclear Shelters"

Canadian Prepper, 12/17/22:

"Holy $%$! US Troops Approach Russian Border, 

Moscow Preps Nuclear Shelters"

"US troops are only 20 miles from Russian border; Russia sets the political framework to justify an attack on NATO; Russian claims evidence of US involvement in attack on Nuclear triad; global demand for weapons is about to skyrocket; Food inflation to continue into 2023; medicine shortages due to 100's of millions of Chinese contracting pathogen soon; record global coal usage in 2022; India/China border clash; Japan record military spending for WW3, among other things."

Comments here:

 - https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Even Now”

2002, “Even Now”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.

In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090130.html

"Here We Are..."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. 

There is no why."

- Kurt Vonnegut

○

But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."

"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."

- Viktor Frankl

Freely Read “Shantaram” Online, by Gregory David Roberts"

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope.

Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.

In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until dawn.”

- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

“Shantaram”

by Gregory David Roberts

“Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in “Shantaram,” a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies peformed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.

He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.

Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughout the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel.”

– Valerie Ryan

Freely read “Shantaram” online, by Gregory David Roberts, here:

- https://www.readanybook.com/online/565858

"The More I Learn..."

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog."

- Mark Twain

"5 Global Flashpoints Which Could Absolutely Explode During The Early Stages Of 2023"

"5 Global Flashpoints Which Could 

Absolutely Explode During The Early Stages Of 2023"

By Michael Snyder

"Will 2023 be a year when extremely destructive conflicts erupt all over the world? We are certainly already living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and tensions are approaching the boiling point in a number of key global flashpoints right now. If several more major conflicts were to suddenly begin next year, we could potentially witness an extended period of geopolitical instability that would be unlike anything that we have ever witnessed. It is easy to start wars, but it is much harder to end them. If you doubt this, just look at what is going on in Ukraine. There is no end in sight for that conflict, and there are several other wars that could literally erupt at any time. The following are 5 global flashpoints which could absolutely explode during the early stages of 2023…

#1 Serbia: Are you ready for another war in the Balkans? Ethnic tensions have risen to the highest level in more than two decades, and the president of Serbia just convened an emergency gathering of his national security council…"Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has met his national security council as tensions rise in Kosovo between the authorities there and ethnic Serbs. On Saturday a stun grenade was thrown at EU police in north Kosovo, where Serbs form a majority, and local police exchanged fire with unknown groups. Ethnic Serbs set up road blocks after Kosovan police were deployed in a dispute over car number plates."

Some in the region now believe that war is “inevitable”, and Kosovo is already asking NATO to step in and intervene…"At a news conference in Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Sunday, Prime Minister Albin Kurti asked the Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led international peacekeeping force, to guarantee “freedom of movement,” as he accused “criminal gangs” of blocking roads. A fragile peace has been preserved in Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following the 1998-99 war in which NATO intervened to protect Kosovo’s Albanian majority. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence."

#2 The Disputed Border Between China And India: On Tuesday, we learned that there has been yet another violent clash along the hotly disputed border between China and India…"Soldiers from India and China clashed last week along their disputed border, India’s defense minister said Tuesday, in the latest violence along the contested frontier since June 2020, when troops from both countries were killed in a deadly brawl.

Rajnath Singh, who addressed lawmakers in parliament, said Friday’s encounter along the Tawang sector of eastern Arunachal Pradesh state started when Chinese troops “encroached into Indian territory” and “unilaterally tried to change the status quo” along the disputed border near Yangtze."

The Chinese just can’t seem to stop provoking India, and a full-blown conflict between the two nations could escalate out of control very rapidly. Let us hope that does not happen, because both China and India possess nuclear weapons.

#3 Taiwan: For a long time, we have been warned that China will eventually invade Taiwan. Unfortunately, tensions in the region just continue to escalate, and on Tuesday the Chinese sent more bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone than ever before…"China sent a record 18 nuclear-capable bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone, Taipei said on Tuesday (Dec 13), just days after Beijing banned more Taiwanese imports in the latest sign of deteriorating ties." Democratic Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which sees the self-ruled island as part of its territory to be seized one day.

#4 Iran: There will be a war between Iran and Israel. Of course the IDF has already been regularly hitting Iranian-backed forces inside Syria on a regular basis, but we should be thankful that a full-blown war in which missiles are flying back and forth between the two nations hasn’t started yet.

Unfortunately, we are closer than ever to that point. In fact, it is being reported that Israel is actually warning that it may bomb the airport in Beirut “if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes”…"According to Israeli media reports, Israel has warned Lebanon that Israel Defense Forces could bomb Beirut’s airport if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes destined for the terrorist group Hezbollah. The alleged weapons smuggling was reported by a London-based Arabic language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, which quoted Israeli sources who said Israel issued the warning."

When a full-blown war between Iran and Israel finally starts, there will be no holding back by either side. The death and destruction such a war will cause will shock the entire world, and the global oil trade will be thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos.

#5 Ukraine: The United States and Russia both continue to escalate the horrifying conflict in Ukraine. Now that Russia is bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine’s power grid, the U.S. is choosing to respond by giving Patriot missiles systems to the Ukrainians…"Pentagon officials are in the final stages of preparing a plan to send a Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine to counter Russian aerial assaults, U.S. officials told CBS News. The plan has not yet been approved by either the Pentagon or the White House, but that could come as early as this week."

This represents a major escalation, and it is also being reported that the Biden administration has given the Ukrainian government the green light to conduct drone strikes deep inside of Russia. Needless to say, the Russians are not pleased at all about having to deal with drone strikes deep inside their own territory. In fact, some prominent Russian voices are warning that the U.S. and Russia are getting dangerously close to the unthinkable. The following comes from a British news source…"Mad Vlad Putin’s henchmen have fired a warning shot that the Ukraine conflict could turn into a “full-scale nuclear war.”

They made the stark comments after the US gave the go-ahead for Kyiv to kick off drone strikes into Russia. We don’t see such talk on U.S. television.

The Biden administration continues to assure all of us that the risk of nuclear war is extremely low, but the Russians see things very differently…"One source in Putin’s circle said: “This is playing with fire, risking full-scale war which could easily go nuclear.” Another added: “Who will now give Moscow the green light for strikes against Ukrainian decision-making centers?”

Most people never imagined that World War I would get as bad as it did. And most people never imagined that World War II would result in tens of millions of deaths. Now we have entered the early stages of a third world war, and this time the major participants are armed with nuclear weapons. If we don’t pull back from the brink, the consequences could potentially be far beyond what most people could even imagine right now. So let us pray for peace, because a global war in which hundreds of millions of people die is not an acceptable option."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

o

"War"

"The English word war derives from the 11th-century Old English words wyrre and werre, from Old French werre (also guerre as in modern French), in turn from the Frankish werra, ultimately deriving from the Proto-Germanic werzō 'mixture, confusion'. The word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning "to confuse", "to perplex", and "to bring into confusion"

"The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death."

War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties.

While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic or ecological circumstances. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War

o

And we've learned... absolutely nothing.

The Daily "Near You?"

Robstown, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"Few Really Ask..."

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

- Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,

so I’ll leave it up to you…” 

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”

- http://www.zerohedge.com/

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“As I’ve Aged”

“As I’ve Aged”

- Author Unknown

“You ask me how it feels to grow older. I’ve learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share with you…

As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante-garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of many years ago, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love… I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it). May our friendship never come apart especially when it’s straight from the heart!”

“Reflect On What Happens..."

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance.

Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” 

– Strauss & Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

"Who Can Afford This?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/17/22:

"Who Can Afford This?"

"Inflation is getting worse. Life is so expensive. Who can

 afford this? Rents are out of control globally. What will fix this?"

Comments here:

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