Thursday, June 15, 2023

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving the prodigious outflow of material. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy’s central regions is clear in this sharp composite image, based on data from small telescopes on planet Earth.
The composite highlights emission from filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light-years. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space. Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. M82 is 12 million light-years distant, near the northern boundary of Ursa Major.”
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Fascinating...
"Hubble showed us what our modern day Universe looks like. JWST's big goal was to teach us how the Universe grew up. Here's where we are now."

"Here's A Question..."

“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like – people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore – to control your life? How long?”
- Andy Stanley

“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we’d had the chance to talk before this,” he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. “There’s a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office – ‘There is no grief like the grief that does not speak’ – and it’s true. I’ve found that keeping pain inside doesn’t give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you’re strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn’t heal emotional wounds, and you don’t want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That’s how people self-destruct.”
- Laura Wiess

"Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 6/15/23"

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 6/15/23
"Ukraine Losing Counteroffensive"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
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Col. Douglas Macgregor, 6/15/23
"The Russian Offensive - What’s Left Of Ukrainian Army?"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/15/23
"Ukraine Confirmed Using NATO Weapons Inside Russia"
"Patrick Lancaster reports for Redacted from inside of Russian territory where soldiers captured NATO weapons left behind by fleeing Ukrainian troops. This is something we were told wasn't happening. Debunked." 
Comments here:

"The Commercial Real Estate Tsunami Just Shifted Into Another Gear"

"The Commercial Real Estate Tsunami 
Just Shifted Into Another Gear"
By Michael Snyder

"What is going to happen to our banking system as trillions of dollars worth of commercial real estate loans go bad? Many months ago, I warned that the greatest commercial real estate crisis in U.S. history was coming. At the time, a lot of people didn’t believe me and that was fine. As with so many other things, all I needed to do to be proven right was to wait. Sadly, a commercial real estate tsunami is now here, and it appears to be accelerating even faster than many of the experts had been anticipating. Just within the past few weeks, there have been several more high profile defaults, and San Francisco has become the epicenter of this crisis.

On Monday, we learned that Westfield has decided to purposely default on a $558 million dollar loan on the San Francisco Centre mall…"Shopping center giant Westfield is walking away from its San Francisco Centre mall, becoming the latest major company to leave the California city amid rampant crime problems. Westfield confirmed to FOX Business Monday that the company and partner Brookfield Properties earlier this month stopped making payments on a $558 million loan securing the San Francisco Centre property."

Do you remember in 2008 when millions of Americans that were underwater on their mortgages simply walked away from them? Well, now the same thing is happening, except that instead of homes we are talking about shopping malls and office buildings. The San Francisco Centre mall was the most important retail destination in downtown San Francisco.

But sales have been declining for some time, and just like Park Hotels & Resorts, Westfield is identifying rapidly deteriorating conditions in the downtown area as one of the primary reasons for leaving the city…“Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward.”

Westfield’s move comes less than a week after Park Hotels & Resorts announced it had handed two prominent hotels back to the bank. The real estate investment trust said it was abandoning the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55, saying the city’s streets are unsafe and expressing doubts about the area’s ability to recover.

San Francisco was once such a beautiful city. But now one of the wealthiest cities in the entire world is being systematically transformed into a hellhole, and it is all thanks to the “progressive” policies of the city’s leaders… "Westfield’s struggles will pile fresh pressure on city leaders, after multiple retailers and hotels shuttered in downtown San Francisco as it continues to battle soaring crime, open drug use and homelessness. The famously progressive city has been condemned for its ‘harm reduction’ policies, which critics say have effectively legalized drug taking. Meanwhile, its police department remains short-staffed after woke lawmakers called for defunding in the wake of George Floyd’s murder."

Even Twitter has decided to walk away. The company has not been paying rent on “Twitter headquarters” for months, and Elon Musk has confirmed that there is no plan to ever restart payments…"Twitter ceased paying its rent in November, the report says, and CEO Elon Musk has said he doesn’t intend on restarting payments. Those payments would go to Columbia Property, a REIT that Goldman has lent $1.7 billion to, in a consortium with (of course) Deutsche Bank."

Sadly, this is only just the beginning. As retailers and businesses leave the downtown areas of our major cities, a lot more defaults will inevitably happen. In New York City, the office occupancy rate was close to 100 percent before the pandemic. Now it is hovering around 50 percent.

Of course this commercial real estate tsunami is not the only crisis that we are facing. The residential real estate bubble has also started to burst, and sales have been falling all over the nation for months. Higher interest rates will continue to put downward pressure on home prices, and many analysts are extremely concerned that foreclosure filings have begun to surge…"May foreclosure-related filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, were up 7% from April and up 14% from a year ago, to 35,196 properties, according to the real estate data group ATTOM."

Meanwhile, large companies all over America continue to conduct mass layoffs. As I discussed in a previous article, the number of announced job cuts in the United States during the first five months of this year was 315 percent higher than the number of announced job cuts during the same period last year. And we are being told that the number of media industry layoffs so far this year is the largest figure ever recorded…"The media industry has announced at least 17,436 job cuts so far this year, marking the highest year-to-date level of cuts on record, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas."

Despite everything that I just shared with you, many of the “experts” in the mainstream media continue to insist that the economy is in fine shape. I honestly do not know how they can say that with a straight face. But they are saying it.

Just like in 2008, they simply do not want to believe what is happening right in front of their eyes, and they aren’t interested in ominous warnings about our long-term future either. In the short-term, our economic problems are going to continue to intensify in the months ahead. In the long-term, we are going to have a real nightmare on our hands. But for now, millions upon millions of Americans continue to trust those that are telling them that brighter days are ahead, and so they are doing nothing to prepare for the great storm that is rapidly approaching."
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Full screen recommended.
"Every Store Is Closed In San Francisco"

The Daily "Near You?"

Alexander City, Alabama, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sunset”

“Sunset”

“Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich

Greg Hunter, "Gang of Criminals Trying Trump – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts"

"Gang of Criminals Trying Trump – 
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (PCR), former Assistant Treasury Secretary and international award-winning journalist, is worried about freedom and liberty. PCR says with the latest arrest and prosecution of President Trump, freedom and liberty is dead in America. PCR explains, “What they do makes it clear they have no claim that they are representatives of justice holding lawbreakers responsible. They are the lawbreakers — they themselves. You go to trial and it’s the criminals who are trying you, and that’s what’s happened in the United States. This is happening to President Trump. This is exactly what is happening to him. The Department of Justice, which is a gang of criminals, is trying Trump, and they are getting away with it. I can’t predict, but we are going to find out by the next presidential election, whether we are a country or not. What’s going to happen? Are people going to wake up and stop this? If this coup stays in place, the United States no longer exists.”

PCR says, “What is being done is a lesson is being taught to all future political candidates. If you try to represent the people instead of the elite, we are going to destroy you – period. So, if they succeed in destroying Trump, and if the people permit that and don’t rise up and prevent it, then what you have from now on in the United States is tyranny. If democracy cannot put into office someone who stands for the people who elected that person, then there is no democracy and there is no rule of law. If you have no rule of law, you have the rule of whoever is in power. In other words, it is the total end of any claim there is any freedom, any civil liberty or any accountability. This is extremely serious. This is an all-out assault. The elite are attempting to completely destroy any accountability that would ever get in the way of their agendas. So, this is only to be the agendas of the elite, and never ever any agenda of the people.”

PCR also warns, “The United States is the Constitution. If the Constitution is destroyed, the United States is destroyed. So, if they destroy it, they have destroyed us.”

PCR, who was an Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration, also talks about the coming collapse of the U.S dollar and extreme inflation that is not a matter of if but when. It could be sooner than you think. There is much more in the 57-minute interview."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. 
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"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
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"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "MISC in Action"

"MISC in Action"
A closer look at America's 
Military Industrial Snoop Complex (MISC)...
by Bill Bonner

"While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events. While we are laughing it sprouts, it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck." ~ John Keats

Youghal, Ireland - "es, those were the days…the 1960s…‘We’d sing and dance forever and a day….for we were young, and sure to have our way.” Jimi Hendricks…a ’64 Corvette…Apollo 11…surfin’ safaris…Ruby Tuesday – America was on top of the world…we were on top of America…and we expected things to get better and better. But we didn’t have our way. Then, as the Rolling Stones put it, “we shouted out…who killed the Kennedys? And after all…it was you and me.”

The Great and the Good: The Stones were being poetic. “You and me” did not kill the Kennedys. Charles de Gaulle attended JFK’s funeral, along with other world leaders. When he returned to France he told friends that the CIA had done it. DeGaulle, a soldier, and like Jack Kennedy, a war hero, knew how dangerous the “Deep State” could be. Only two years before, he had barely escaped a coup d’etat, led by retired general Maurice Challe.

Looking back, the death of the Kennedys appears as an important ‘pivot’ in American history. The Kennedy brothers were idealists. They hoped for…and thought they could create…a good country. Lincoln had said that it was by being good that we might be made great. But in politics, “good” and “great” soon part company.

We pause to recall why we care. Most of the news is merely ‘noise.’ To understand what is really going on you have to look beneath the surface chop…down to the deep currents of history.

The Kennedys thought the promise of America should be fully realized. They thought the government would help make it so. That seems to be where all the idealists and do-gooders wash up. Birds gotta fly. Church bells gotta ring. And governments gotta do what governments do…and it has little to do with improving the lot of the common man. At least, that is our ‘cynical’ analysis after watching more or less carefully for the past 60 or so years.

At a more practical level, ‘don’t fight the Fed’ was probably the simplest and most effective investment rule of the last 40 years. So…figure out what the Fed’s gotta do…and get ready for it.

Inflate or Die: You’ll remember that the Fed (and the whole government) is stuck between a rock of inflation and a hard place of stopping it. ‘Inflate or Die,’ is how we put it. Once you have printed money and caused a fake boom, you either have to continue printing…or you stop the presses and the boom dies. Both courses of action are hazardous. Let inflation rip…and you destroy the economy and the middle class. But let the boom die, and you have the rich, the deciders and the elite at your throat…including the most powerful industry group in the world – America’s Military, Industrial, Spook Complex (MISC).

Yesterday, the Fed decided to neither inflate nor die…but simply to await events. Tomorrow, we will look at the events most likely to confront the Fed in the months ahead. Today, we continue looking back at the Kennedys and the events of the last half century.

Bobby Kennedy, like his brother, and like Cato the Younger of ancient Rome, rejected the promise of a great empire. As he rose in the polls, LBJ withdrew from the presidential race. This left Kennedy in position to get the Democratic nomination. Then, in the Ambassador Hotel, on June 5, 1968, Bobby was shot and killed.

With Bobby Kennedy’s death, the last political obstacle was removed. From then on, it was clear sailing for the MISC. The Cold War…which the Kennedys tried to stop…burned hot for another 23 years. And then, despite the lack of any war…or any real enemy…the warmongers got even more of the public’s money. When the Berlin Wall fell, the Pentagon was spending about $270 billion a year. Now, the ‘empire budget’ – including support of international institutions such as the World Bank – is an estimated $1.3 trillion.

MISC in Action: Good soldiers in the Pentagon saw the problem. A real fighting force must be lean…efficient…and decisive. But when they tried to curb an ineffective, expensive weapon…or refused to lard-up the Pentagon with cumbersome, bureaucratic programs…they were overridden by lobbyists, politicians and the top-heavy brass. The insiders knew the real story: the MISC had nothing to do with defense.

But now, the MISC faces another challenge. This time, it is a financial threat. Next year, the interest on the national debt (much of it incurred by the MISC) will surpass the Pentagon’s budget. Since the days of Jimmy Carter, a growing economy…and falling interest rates…have allowed the feds to finance both guns and butter. No hard choices were necessary. But now, real interest rates are rising; it won’t be so easy. The feds will have to choose – either protect asset prices and the wealth and power of the elite…or, protect the value of the dollar and the commitments made to lenders as well as to the taxpayers. Which way will it go? Guns or butter? Stay tuned…"

"More Banks Closing Than Ever"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/15/23
"More Banks Closing Than Ever"
"We have heard that over 10,000 bank branches have closed in the last four years. Now we’re hearing that more bags are closing branches faster than ever. They want to blame AI, but it’s desperation to stay in business."
Comments here:

"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Ridiculous! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/15/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!
 This Is Ridiculous! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are seeing some overwhelming price increases on groceries. With inflation being as high as it has ever been, we are struggling to find items that fit most of the populations budget!"
Comments here:

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

"McDonalds Is In Deep Trouble As Biggest Fast Food Chains In USA Face Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
Investing Future, 6/14/23
"McDonalds Is In Deep Trouble As Biggest Fast 
Food Chains In USA Face Collapse, with Clayton Morris"

"Now, this is very serious, folks. A new report by Tucker Carlson at Fox News has exposed that the McDonald's business model is in its dying days. Believe it or not, the biggest fast food chain in the entire world is facing rising unrest among franchisees that generate over two-thirds of its revenues in the U.S. They say the company is on a destructive path. One of them has gone bankrupt and filed for bankruptcy just 45 days ago. An insider familiar with the matter is saying that systemic risks are rapidly growing for the food service retailer, given that about 30 percent of franchisees are currently insolvent. To make things worse, by the end of 2023, 2,000 McDonald's restaurants may disappear from U.S cities. Pressure from regulators, labor tensions, and financial losses may force the fast food giant to sharply reduce its brick and mortar footprint this year as it faces a reckoning after years of mismanagement, according to the analysis.

A new report released by Franchise Consulting Group, in partnership with VF Franchise Consulting, titled "McDonald's Model in Dying Days: 30% of Franchisees Insolvent," reveals that some really big risks are facing the world's biggest fast food chain. Analysts say that for the first time in over 40 years, the ranks of McDonald's franchisees are dwindling, and hundreds of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. The report notes that management is struggling to justify higher fees and other charges to franchisees that are already coping with rising wages and the unrelenting climbing costs for ingredients and packaging, which have been eroding profits over the past few years.

Franchisees operate 95% of McDonald's locations in the U.S. and generate about 70% of revenue in the country. The National Owners Association estimates that McDonald's restaurants, on average, will generate less cash for a second straight year in 2023. To further complicate the situation for operators that aren't financially sound, in an emailed statement, McDonald's acknowledged that inflation has trimmed profitability for franchisees last year. But executives argued that the higher operating costs were necessary to keep the company aligned with its long-term expansion goals.

Squeezed by higher costs and grumbling at new operating rules, franchisees are joining a meeting this month with the company's board to press their case in person. The session will give U.S. operators an opportunity to share with the board of directors why we believe we are on a destructive path, one group of owners said in an email newsletter to about a thousand members. Backed by analysts, many of them fear the franchise system is nearing a major crisis, some going so far as to suggest that the business model is doomed.

What also came to the fore is that franchisees are in disagreement with the direction of CEO Chris Kempczinski. Franchisees have been complaining about the erratic nature of McDonald's corporate decision-making process and view Oak Brook's leadership as inconsistent and characterized by jumping from one failed marketing scheme to another. "The CEO is sowing the seeds of our demise. We are a Quick Serve fast food restaurant, not a fast casual like Five Guys or Chipotle," said one franchisee. "The system is very lost at the moment," said another franchisee. "Our menu boards are still bloated. We're still trying to be too many things to too many people. Things are broken from the franchisee perspective."
Comments here:

"Debt Is Eating The System Alive; FED Is Losing Control; Death Of The Dollar"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/14/23
"Debt Is Eating The System Alive; 
FED Is Losing Control; Death Of The Dollar"
Comments here:
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"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.” 
– Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”

Musical Interlude: 2002, "The Calling"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "The Calling"

"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo"

“Learning And Yearning”
by Chet Raymo

“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD. I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.

I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.

We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.

Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.

Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.

Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."

Chet Raymo, “The Journey”

“The Journey”
by Chet Raymo

“Here’s a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of Nature. The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale – distance from Earth – is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

A smoke of galaxies! (2 trillion galaxies according to latest estimates.- CP) A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My book, “Walking Zero,” is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:

“Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother’s womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.

As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother’s breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.

What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.

A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother’s enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage – for each individual, and for our species.

Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey – from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time – is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”

"Visiting the World-Famous Gorky Park: Russia Day 2023"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 6/14/23
"Visiting the World-Famous Gorky Park: 
Russia Day 2023"
"Join me on a walk in the world-famous Gorky Park in Moscow, Russia. During the tour I am going to show you some of my faovrite spots in the park. Russia Day 2023 in Gorky Park, together with 1000s of visitors to the park."
Comments here:
Simply incredible...look at this place!
And how are things where you live, Good Citizen? 
How's your life? Yeah...

The Daily "Near You?"

Wayland, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/14/23"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/14/23
"Ukraine War & Nukes Moving Around - Col. Doug Macgregor"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Firstpost, 6/14/23
"Putin: Ukraine's Losses "Catastrophic", 
Who Has the Edge in the War?"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin made some claims to the press about the war in Ukraine. He says Ukraine's losses are catastrophic. He claims Russia has lost 10 times less than Ukraine in terms of ratio. But Putin admits that Russia has lost more in real numbers. What's going on at the battlefield? Is Ukraine being pushed back? Palki Sharma tells more."
Comments here:

"At Last..."

“At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.”
- Richard Bach, “Nothing by Chance”

"This Is Why Nobody Will Do Anything Until It's Too Late"

"This Is Why Nobody Will 
Do Anything Until It's Too Late"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"OK, I get it: we all like Hollywood endings: the superhero saves the world, the evil conspiracy is uncovered and the villains get their just desserts and the impossible romance overcomes all the odds. This is why there are Hollywood endings: we are hard-wired to thrill to happy endings and a successful conclusion to the Hero's/Heroine's Journey. We will tolerate a Tragic Hero/Heroine or the occasional Anti-Hero/Heroine, but there is still a moral victory of some sort to cheer.

The real world doesn't follow a storyline, it operates according to the dictates of systems: inputs are taken up by processes which then generate outputs. If the outputs and processes don't change, the outputs don't change either.

One prevalent manifestation of human hubris is the idea that getting someone to agree with us about something or other is some sort of victory, as if human opinions matter. They don't, unless they change either inputs or processes in extremely consequential ways. Tweaking inputs or policies might make us feel warm and fuzzy ("I'm part of the solution!") but they are too modest to change the system's inputs and processes. The net result is the outputs remain the same.

Put another way: labeling something or other a hoax or an existential threat doesn't change anything in the systems that generate consequences. Whatever is going to happen as output is going to happen regardless of what humans label it or their opinions about it ("El Nino really sucks!").

Existing processes constrain our choices. This is why it's difficult to be an environmentally-sustainable saint. Let's say we're concerned about climate change and the destruction of the planet's biosphere. Let's say we want to lower our carbon footprint and "do the right things" to reduce the negative impact of our consumption and lifestyle.

This is where we substitute Hollywood endings for reality. We like to think that recycling matters. Sorry, it really doesn't change the inputs or processes enough to change the outputs in any consequential way. For example, the percentage of lithium batteries and electronic waste that are currently recycled is near-zero because the batteries and electronics aren't manufactured to be recycled in a cost-effective manner, and nobody in the system pays for costly recycling. So the really important recycling isn't being done.

I still recycle cardboard because that seems like a better choice than dumping it in the landfill, but in terms of total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of recycling versus landfill, I don't have any data. The system isn't set up to measure total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of goods, services and processes, and since we only manage what we measure, we're flying blind: the system is set up to measure "growth" (GDP) and profits, not total lifecycle costs and resource consumption.

Sorry, there's no Hollywood ending until we change the inputs (stop manufacturing lithium batteries) and/or the processes (require 99% recycling of all electronics, batteries, vehicles, etc.). This will require changing the entire manufacturing and resource supply chain systems from the ground up, globally. If we don't do that, the output can't possibly change in any consequential way.

The Hollywood ending is electric vehicles will "save the planet." Too bad this is Hollywood, not reality. Most of the consumption of resources and damage to the planet occur in the mining, smelting and manufacture of the vehicle, regardless of its fuel. Due to their massive consumption of minerals, electric vehicles consume far more of the planet's resources than an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. All vehicles are manufactured (mining, smelting, transport, factories, etc.) with hydrocarbons. There's no difference between vehicles except electric vehicles use even more hydrocarbons in their fabrication.

Then there's the source of the fuel. An electric vehicle manufactured by burning coal and charged with electricity generated by burning coal is in fact a coal-burning vehicle. Calling it "electric" fits the happy story, but it's not actually factual: a coal-burning vehicle is an environmental disaster, regardless of labels, our opinions or the happy-ending PR. In the real world, the least destructive choice of vehicle is a small, light, old ICE vehicle that is well-maintained to conserve fuel and driven only rarely. Hey, look at me, I only drove my old 40-mile-per-gallon Civic 3,000 miles last year--I'm a saint!

Unfortunately, the real world isn't a Hollywood (or Bollywood) movie, and so I don't get to be a saint once we look at the world as a system rather than a movie. The fertilizers I use to grow food in my yard come from afar, and even the organic ones consume huge quantities of hydrocarbons in their processing, bagging and shipping. The "organic" fruit or vegetable shipped from afar is an environmental disaster compared to the organic fruit or vegetable from your own yard, but even those require inputs that are part of the system.

I stepped on airliners a few times in the past year, one long-haul and two short flights, and there is really nothing environmentally saintly about consuming immense resources by jetting around the world. Electric aircraft won't "save the world," either. They're resource-hungry, small, slow, their range is modest and their batteries are no more recyclable or long-lasting than all the vehicle batteries destined for the landfill. And alternative fuels for jet aircraft are incapable of being produced at the scale necessary to replace jet fuel. Sorry, no Hollywood ending.

To really reduce one's consumption of the planet's resources, we would have to grow our own food, get around on our own feet or zero-fuel transport (motorless bicycle or skateboard or boat) and not buy / own / use large resource-consuming devices such as vehicles, aircraft, etc. The system as currently configured makes it nearly impossible to do this. Even growing much of your own food requires delivery of fertilizers (organic or chemical, they still weight a lot). Very few places are bike-skateboard friendly. The world is set up for large, mass-produced fueled vehicles. Outside of a few cities, public transport is incapable of getting people where they need to go in any sort of time-efficient manner.

Consider the foundation of our lifestyle, the financial system. The story is "debt doesn't matter," because we can outgrow rising debt forever. Our bag of financial engineering tricks is bottomless, and there will always be another financial rabbit we can pull out of the hat. This is of course a fantasy. Debt eventually eats the system alive. So do fixed costs, entitlements, demographics and declining productivity. The inputs and processes can't be changed in any material way because they have to remain in their current scale and configuration or the financial system collapses under its own weight.

This brings us to the incentives to keep the inputs and processes exactly as they are, with minor tweaks for PR purposes. The system is set up such that elites and self-serving interests have most of the wealth and political power, and if even the tiniest bit of their skim is diminished, they will instantly devote the entirety of their resources to reversing this outrage, for they all know how power works: if others manage to cut 1% from your skim, they'll sense weakness and come back for 10%.

The only incentive that counts in our stripmined world is maximizing profits and the private gains of the entrenched and powerful. To cloak this reality, the Powers That Be promote public-relations propaganda that depicts their pillage, looting, fraud and destruction as a Hollywood story we can all consume and love, just as we love our servitude once it's been properly packaged into a Hero / Heroine's Journey or a Love Story.

This is why nobody will do anything until it's too late. It's only when we run out of essential inputs and/or essential processes decay and collapse that we'll awaken to the fact that since the global system's inputs and processes materially changed, the outputs we need and love all went away.

By the time inputs and processes have materially changed, it's too late to reverse the process and go back in time. Once resource extraction processes break down, inputs are no longer available in the needed quantities to feed all the processes of globalized, industrialized production and transport. Since all these processes are tightly bound systems, that is, interconnected, the breakdown of any one supply chain or process quickly topples dominoes throughout the system.

In addition to confusing happy stories with systems, human hubris manifests in another way: we like to think that minor tweaks here and there that don't inconvenience us will magically change the negative outputs (resource depletion, environmental ruin, etc.). This is why we love the Hollywood stories about electric aircraft (our very own electric helicopter--yowza!), electric vehicles, recycling the carboard boxes from FedEx, UPS and Amazon, and so on: we get all the comforts and conveniences we're accustomed to, and we get to be environmentally-sustainable saints, too: it's all sustainable and ecological and warm and fuzzy. Except it isn't. That's a fairy tale, not a system. If you question the Hollywood ending, you're dismissed as a doom and gloomer, a discontent who grumbles about happy endings and techno-marvels.

I see this as confusing a story with a system. The story operates by its own rules: here are the obstacles and powerful villains, here are the Hero and Heroine, outmatched and under pressure, but then, against all odds, the villains lose their grip, justice is served and love triumphs.

Systems work by their own implacable rules. There are inputs and processes that generate outputs. The only way to change the outputs in a consequential fashion is to change the inputs and/or processes in a consequential fashion. Little face-saving PR tweaks are too small in scale to materially change either inputs or processes, and so the outputs won't change and indeed, can't possibly change, because that's how systems work.

So by all means, ignore all warnings and run the ship at full speed through an ice field. All too predictably, the ship collides with an iceberg and only then does anyone respond: OK, where's the Hollywood story of brave engineers saving the ship and noble passengers helping each other onto lifeboats? What do you mean, the ship will sink regardless of what's done?

Doesn't our happy-ending story map reality? Unfortunately, no. The current system is sinking and nobody will do anything other than more of what's failed until it's too late. I like a rousing story as much as anyone else, but systems aren't stories, and confusing the two won't actually fix what's not sustainable in the current system's configuration.
This confusion of story with system will generate consequences and opportunities which I discuss in my books "Global Crisis, National Renewal" and "Self-Reliance in the 21st Century."

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "The Great and the Good"

"The Great and the Good"
Examining a crucial historical pivot in recent American history...
By Bill Bonner

"Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall.
Sure we never won a battle – ‘twas Owen won them all.
Had he lived – had he lived – our dear country had been free;
But he’s dead, but he’s dead, and ‘tis slaves we’ll ever be…"
"Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O’Neill", By Thomas Davis

Youghal, Ireland - On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot. He died soon after. Much of the world went into mourning. Never before or since has Washington seen such a gathering of dignitaries…nor so many common folk…all who came to pay their respects.

Jack Kennedy had made many friends. His New Frontier was widely applauded. At home, he lowered the top marginal tax rate from 91% to 65%. Abroad, he sought peace. He explained in a speech at American University that his kind of peace was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. 

And yet, after his death, American weapons were soon at work…creating a world, not at peace, but almost constantly at war. Before his assassination, JFK had sent out an order, bringing US troops back from Vietnam. That order was quickly forgotten. The new president, LBJ, had another program, much more to the liking of the ‘military industrial complex.’ Over the next 11 years, 2.7 million American soldiers would go to fight a war that Johnson had promised would be a war for the Vietnamese to fight. By the time the last US helicopter escaped from the US embassy roof in 1975, 58,000 Americans had died and a trillion dollars had been spent. More importantly, the good had given way to the great.

An Historical Pivot: We are reviewing a ‘pivot’ in recent American history. It was the moment when the military/industrial/spook/Congressional complex – the most powerful industry in the world – took control of US politics...and the empire took on a life of its own.

Specifically, we are recalling the history of the 1960s – aided by the recollections and research of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – and our own personal history. Bob Dylan, the Doors, Aretha Franklin…marijuana…the Rolling stones…bell bottoms – and the hope of a better world – it is all coming back into focus. We were not born cynical, dear reader; it took many fads, rascals, bear markets and political campaigns to make us what we are today.

One clear memory…It was a summer evening in 1967. We had gone with a friend to the banks of the Chesapeake. Percy Sledge’s great hit – ‘When a man loves a woman’ – was on the radio. We were back from college, regaling each other with our adventures. But Tommy had dropped out. He set his sights on a different life – simpler, more local. He had read Faulkner and Hemingway. His goal was success at home…not abroad. It was success as a person he wanted, not as captain of industry nor of infantry. “Aren’t you worried about getting drafted?” “No…I’m going to sign up. Get it over with.” “Aren’t you worried about getting killed? And what’s the point, anyway? The war seems like a waste.” “Yeah…but otherwise, I’ll have to listen to my mother complaining about me dropping out of college.” That was the last time we saw Tommy. .

Life is full of casualties. Some are more tragic and pointless than others. Tommy was one of them.

America the Great? What the Kennedys seemed to be aiming for was a government that practiced restraint and reduced the casualties. A good nation does not tax too heavily, does not spend too much, treats people with respect (even those with whom it doesn’t agree) and only fights when it has to. But after Kennedy was assassinated, the US took a different course. Lyndon Johnson promised action…activism…empire. Bombs and bamboozles. Attila was great. Alexander was great. Caesar was great. Napoleon was great. Why not Lyndon? Why not Ronald…Donald…or Joe?

“The People” took the cue. The masses always come to think what they must think when they must think it. Americans were no different. Flattered by the best military money could buy, they came to believe that they were an exceptional race. Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, must have reached some apotheosis of conceit when she proclaimed that “if we use force, it is because we are America. We stand tall….we see further into the future.”

We have argued that there are patterns to markets (the Primary Trend)…and patterns to history. A normal man is held in check by his friends, his wife, and his children. When he makes a jackass of himself, they are quick to let him know. So too is a humble nation held in check by its neighbors, its resources and its own people. It may be good or bad. But sometimes – with the wind at its back – the lust for greatness takes over. A nation seeks not just to get along, but to dominate…and control; it becomes an empire. But the Kennedys stood in the way.

Concrete Boots: First, Robert Kennedy took on the mobsters. Appointed Attorney General by his brother, RFK had a ‘Manichean approach’ to law enforcement. There were good guys and bad guys. He wanted to put the bad ones in jail.

At the time, the mafia was gaining power…and corrupting the US justice system (suborning witnesses, bribing judges…). He aimed to put them out of business. In Senate hearings, he brought in Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo; Joe “Little Caesar” DiVarco; Carlos “The Little Man” Marcello…and dozens of other colorful mobsters. In his first three years as Attorney General, RFK filed 673 indictments against organized crime figures.

The mafiosos didn’t forget. And didn’t forgive. What’s more, they felt betrayed. They believed that the Kennedys would protect them, not prosecute them. There are several competing stories to explain it. One tells us that Joe Kennedy had made a deal with the mob; if they helped deliver the votes in Chicago… he would tell his sons to lay off them. Another story is that the Kennedy boys were connected to the mob on their own. Their sister, Pat, was married to Peter Lawford, one the famous “Rat Pack,” along with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Sinatra installed a heliport at his residence in Palm Springs so the president could come to visit. Jack Kennedy may even have shared a mistress – Judith Campbell Exner – with Sinatra’s mafia pal, Sam Giancana.

Whatever the origins of the story, the mob felt betrayed when Bobby Kennedy went after them with a vigor they had never seen before. “Livarsi na petra di la scarpa,” said Carlos Marcello in 1962. The old Sicilian curse has an English variant, said to have been invoked by Henry II: “Will no one rid me of that turbulent priest?” In another documented exchange, mobster Santo Trafficante assured Cuban exile leader Jose Aleman that he needn’t worry about President Kennedy: “No, Jose, he is going to be hit.”

An Empire Unchallenged: Another group that didn’t like the Kennedys was the aforementioned War Industry. Their business, too, was being severely hampered by the Kennedys’ desire to give peace a chance…and their general distrust of both the military and the spies. By this time, the CIA and the mobsters were working together. Their target was supposed to be Fidel Castro. The mafia had its connections in Cuba. The CIA’s mission was to assassinate Fidel, at which, it failed.

The assassination of JFK, however…like the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170… was a shocking success. Who did it? Did the CIA aim for Castro and hit Kennedy? Did the mafia settle its score with the Kennedy family? Or was it a ‘lone gunman,’ as the Warren Commission concluded? We don’t know. But since then, no president has ever seriously challenged the empire’s agenda. More to come…"
o
And so...
“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us.... No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

Well, sh*t on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today - and we will not vote for them again. Ever.

Who does vote for these dishonest sh*theads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us - they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. F*ck them.”
-  Hunter S. Thompson,

"High Trust, Low Trust, And The Coming Breakdown"

"High Trust, Low Trust, 
And The Coming Breakdown"
By John Wilder

"One of the places we vacationed once upon a time was Branson, Missouri. It’s absolutely a tourist town. One of the places we went was Silver Dollar City®. It’s like one of the large theme parks you’d find almost anywhere. It’s also a nice place to go, not like that theme park that discriminates against the blind – Seaworld®.

I was walking there with The Mrs., The Boy, and Pugsley when we were all a decade younger than we are today. All of a sudden, a young blonde man who looked like a fullback ran up to me. He was probably 19 or so. “Sir, sir, sir! You dropped this!” He handed me two $20 bills – they’d been in my pocket after getting change from buying sodas for the family. They’d fallen out. I was... stunned. I couldn’t see this happening in most places that I’d been. I thanked the young man, shook his hand, and he loped off to catch back up with his girlfriend.

That is the example of a high trust society. People do things like that because they’re the right thing to do. They get enjoyment out of doing them. When I was surprised by behavior, like I was by that kid handing me cash, it made me feel great. It gave me hope for society. It was also a lesson for The Boy and Pugsley on how to behave. Here is a person who could easily have walked away with $40, but who did the right thing and returned it. No one would have ever known except for him and his girlfriend. But, I’m betting, he didn’t want to have to live with being the type of person who didn’t live his life virtuously. I think it also made the kid feel great to do something nice. He got a great story to tell people about the goofy man with the little kids who dropped forty bucks out of his pocket.

Trust is crucial for a really high-functioning group of any type, from a family to a state to a country. Trust provides a glue that keeps people together, and gives them common ground to collaborate. People who trust each other tend to reciprocate, cooperate, and take care of each other. It’s like the Mafia, but with fewer people being “taken care of”.

Trust also leads to prosperity. Trust plays a huge component in how easy transactions are. In a society where people keep their word, contracts aren’t as important because honor is important.

Trust leads to greater governmental stability. While there have always been awful people in government who were only out for themselves, I think we’ve reached the bottom in having awful people at all levels of government. There are some good ones, but the FBI is generally pretty good at having them transferred to Fairbanks.

One of the things about cities is that they tend to breed anonymity. In Modern Mayberry, we ignore gunshots and get concerned when we hear sirens. In most cities, they ignore sirens and get concerned when they hear gunshots.
A high trust society requires rule of law instead of rule of men or rule of The Party. It’s that trust that the judicial system is impartial and does its best to send guilty folks to jail (or worse) and let innocent folks go free, no matter who they are. There hasn’t ever been a perfect justice system, but if the people feel that it’s as good a system as people can create, it does the trick. So, that’s what it’s like living in Heaven. What does a low trust society look like?

• High levels of apparent corruption,
• Low confidence in public institutions,
• High crime rates,
• Political polarization,
• Lack of any sort of sense of a coherent society, or common goal, and
•Social unrest.

It’s clear that, as a nation, we’re closer to a low trust society than a high trust society. Rather than just being a social or philosophical question – it’s one that costs money and determines what services are available. An example is the new Walgreen’s® store in Chicago. Apparently, Walgreen’s© got tired of having urban hunter-gatherers wander in and loot the store in broad daylight with little fear of any sort of legal jeopardy. Walgreen’s© has closed nearly 30 stores in just San Francisco alone.

Walgreen’s™ decided to build a store with no shelves, just a little kiosk where people can pick products from a digital tablet. The idea of wandering down the shelves, shopping leisurely, comparing one product against another is dead in this store. Pick the Preparation H™ and some clerk will wander to a shelf in the back room and pull a tube down and stick it in a bag. Then, after the customer pays, they’ll hand them the stuff. Walgreen’s© used to trust customers in Chicago. Now, they don’t. Their revenues will go down (nobody ever goes to the store to buy cashews, but when you walk by them...) and their costs of having to have people run to get products will go up. Why? Stores are being looted on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, you could walk into Wal-Mart® here in Modern Mayberry and see every towel neatly stacked, all of the shelves full, and nobody stealing anything. Yeah, they check my receipt as I walk out the door now, but the lady at the door only pretends to look at it.

Wal-Mart™ makes money here. The Walgreen’s© in Chicago doesn’t. San Francisco, plagued by a new breed of criminals that the police won’t arrest (or if they are arrested, the DA won’t charge) systematically loot store after store of products when they’re not busy pooping in the streets. San Francisco is now low trust. This is spreading. I wonder where it will end up next? Oh."

"The US Is In Steep Decline, On The Brink Of War"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/14/23
"The US Is In Steep Decline, On The Brink Of War"
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