Monday, January 1, 2024

"Gaza War Update, 1/1/24"

Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/1/24
"Massive Explosions Shake Israel; Tel Aviv, 
Ashkelon, Kyrat Shimona Hit; This is Huge!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/1/24
"'Tel Aviv Will Be Burned': 
Hamas' Chilling Threat To Israel; Qassam Unveils M90 Rockets"
"Hamas militants have issued a chilling threat, warning they will burn Tel Aviv with rockets and pledged to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem, according to a new video released from Al Qassam Brigades. The group unveiled M90 rockets and shared an undated video of them positioned towards Tel Aviv, hours after bombing Israeli city from Gaza strip."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 1/1/24
"Yemeni Underwater Drones Chase US Ship 
Out Of Red Sea; This is Total Blockade!"
Comments here:
o

Except the Palestinians are there.
o
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 1/1/24
Ex-CIA Larry Johnson: "Israel's Military Superiority 
is a Complete Myth! Israel is a Weak Nation!"
Comments here:

"Fasten Your Seat Belt"

"Fasten Your Seat Belt"
by Jeff Thomas

"Imagine you’re in mid-flight on a passenger jet, and the captain flies directly into a Category Five hurricane. The flight attendant calmly says, "The captain has turned on the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign, as we may be expecting some turbulence." Of course, the above situation is absurd, as no passenger jet pilot would ever put his passengers in such danger. But, tragically, governments sometimes do exactly that.

Sometimes, they do it on a small scale, such as when a small country adopts collectivism, only to discover, decades later, that collectivism doesn’t actually work and, eventually, as Maggie Thatcher said, "You run out of other people’s money." Then, there’s a period of depression, followed by a rebuilding period, during which the electorate decides whether to be sensible and dump collectivism or whether they choose to be foolish and begin the collectivist conundrum anew. (As absurd as this latter choice might seem, it is all too common. Argentina, in particular, has been doing it for nearly eighty years.)

But the larger the country, the greater the catastrophe when it all falls apart. And it, therefore, stands to reason that when it’s the world’s foremost empire that’s passed its sell-by date, the damage will be catastrophic. The damage from the hurricane will be centred on the empire itself and those within the empire will be most directly impacted, but the effects will be felt well outside its borders. The more closely a country is connected to the empire economically, the greater, the lesser country will feel the damage. For example, at the present time, if the US is a country’s major trading partner, that country will experience damage significant enough that its economy might well collapse along with that of the US.

But why should we be talking about this now? Yes, the US is indeed troubled, both internally and externally. Still, the news media have regularly presented national leaders and other pundits who assure us that the storm that’s being flown into will only result in temporary turbulence and that "Category Five" is a gross exaggeration. Well, let’s have a look at that for a moment.

In the last half-century, the US has gone from being the foremost creditor nation to the foremost debtor nation. At that same time, its wage level has risen so high that the US can no longer sell American-made goods, even to Americans, and its factories, predominantly in China and Mexico, are producing the vast majority of goods. Unfortunately, relations are on a steady decline between the US and these countries. The US has even been engaged in sabre-rattling with regard to China. But the US empire has always had an ace in the hole with Europe. Although it’s self-destructively on a campaign to end fossil fuel production domestically, it has for decades provided liquified gas to Europe, shipping primarily into Hamburg harbor and distributing from there.

In the meantime, Germany formed an alliance with Russia, from whom it also receives gas to power the German industry. In recent years, Russia has been building a direct pipeline from Russia to Germany to provide gas more cheaply than any other country can provide (at roughly 11% of what US gas can be provided for). With the understanding that this gas line would come on stream in 2022, Germany foolishly shut down all of its nuclear power plants, thus painting itself into a corner.

Clearly, the opening of the Nord Steam II valve would have been a major, major event, as it would not just mean cheaper gas for Europe, but an end of US hegemony over Europe and a shift in the balance of trade to Russia. But the pipeline was sabotaged before this could happen. It would seem that US hegemony would be saved, as Europe would fall back on US gas, even though it was cripplingly expensive.

But an unexpected wrinkle occurred. Germany went shopping and found that they could buy gas from China, India, and Saudi Arabia. It was more expensive than the Nord Steam gas, but still cheaper than the American gas. Odd, though, as neither China, nor India are gas producers. So, where was this gas coming from? Well, as China, India, and Russia are BRICS countries, the gas was the very gas that Germany was to have received through Nord Stream, but now quite a bit pricier, as it had to be piped quite a lot further and there were also now middlemen to be paid.

So, how did the situation play out? Well, the US gas is still the most expensive and, therefore, least desirable, and Russia, instead of being economically crippled, was now selling more gas than before and experiencing a boom at a time when much of the world was sliding into economic turmoil. And, in the ensuing eighteen months, Germany would find that it could no longer sell its products internationally, as the cost to produce them was now even higher than before. Recently, there have been rumblings in the Bundestag that one out of three German industrial companies is hoping to leave the country, with the majority choosing China as their destination. Unless the US could salvage the situation, its hegemony over Europe (and its claim to empire) was soon to end.

It was, however, true that there were significant oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. If they could be taken hold of, the US might stand a chance. But the rights to those fields were held by Palestine, and the US was known to staunchly support Palestine’s arch-enemy, Israel. What to do?

Well, although the Gaza/Israel border is the one of the most protected in the world, Hamas somehow breached it in multiple locations and went on a killing spree in which, it is claimed, horrendous inhumane acts were committed. Proof of such acts have not been provided, but they’ve been well-publicised and have led to a "self-defense" retaliation by Israel in which Gaza is being systematically destroyed and its people being decimated. In spite of worldwide objection to this retaliation, and repeated warnings from the UN and others that Israel must not take over Gaza, Israel’s President insists that if Israel does not complete the destruction of Gaza and take over the control of its rubble, Israel will never be safe from Hamas.

In the bargain, the oil and gas fields will have a new owner. At this point, it would be advisable for the world, particularly Americans, to sit back and observe such events from a distance. Although Israel is charging ahead, the majority of the world is dividing into BRICS vs. First World Globalists camps. The former is already in the majority and growing rapidly.

In describing his Israel/Palestine position, the US president appears to be changing from a black hat to a white one and back again, repeatedly. While this makes the White House appear to be both hypocritical and untrustworthy in the extreme, there’s little else the President can do. He’s squeezed between a rock and a time bomb.

I rarely write on current events, preferring to focus on the overview – the Big Picture – but this may be a moment when it’s important for the reader to sit far back from the present noise from the media and assess the degree to which his own future is dependent upon the outcome of these events. The jet pilot has turned into a Category Five hurricane, and, for those who are on the flight, this would indeed be the time to fasten seat belts."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Otherwise..."

'If you want to tell people the truth, 
make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.'
- Oscar Wilde

"Credit Card Companies Are Shutting Down Lending in Less Than A Week"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/1/24
"Credit Card Companies Are Shutting Down 
Lending in Less Than A Week"
"In a startling turn of events, credit card companies are facing a crisis as they prepare for a significant policy change that could potentially cripple a substantial portion of their revenue. This impending shift, set to take effect in just a week, revolves around the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule proposal aimed at curbing exorbitant credit card late fees, which currently constitute a lucrative $14.5 billion dollar income stream for these financial giants."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/1/24
"250 - 500 Banks Will Fall In 2024"
"In the ever-evolving financial sector landscape, a foreboding prediction looms over the horizon as analysts and experts foresee the potential downfall of a substantial number of banks in the year 2024. 250 to 500 banks are facing the risk of failure. The implications of such a scenario extend beyond mere numerical statistics, signaling a potential shift in the banking industry's stability."
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "New Year, Same Problems!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 1/1/24
"New Year, Same Problems!"
"Discussing the troubles of 2023 and what we can expect moving into 2024. From food shortages to massive price increases on food at the grocery stores, we're covering everything going on now and what to expect in the future!"
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Who is Going to Pay for This?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/1/24
"Who is Going to Pay for This?"
"We are now hearing from cities that are telling landlords that they must pay for the utilities for their own units. Tenants cannot pay for their own utilities. Plus, we are seeing cities that want to know the name address, and all the pertinent information of every tenant inside the building."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "The Worst Is Yet To Come"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/1/24
"The Worst Is Yet To Come; Major Collisions 
Across The Globe Coming; Get Emergency Food Now"
Comments here:

WTF?! "Confirmed: Israel Planning to Dislocate ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip"

WTF?! "Confirmed: Israel Planning to Dislocate
ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip"
by Hal Turner

"Advertisements are now appearing in Israeli publications touting "Gaza 2030" showing the entire Gaza Strip as a luxury beach front Resort... and no Palestinians. One such ad, shown above, shows what is said to be the actual planning for the Gaza Strip once the Palestinians are forcibly dislocated from their homes.

While rumors of this forced displacement of civilians (a War Crime) have floated for weeks, for the very first time on Christmas Day, the world got confirmation: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud Party conference, that Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that "work is underway to find countries that want to "absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees."

🚨🇮🇱 BIG - Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that work is underway to find countries that want to absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees. The Macro Story (@themacrostory) December 25, 2023

So apparently, there it is: Confirmation that ousting the Palestinian civilian population by dropping 2,000 pound bombs on them from fighter jets, is now (and likely has always been) the actual plan."
o
"2023: The Year Humanity Died"
By Seraj Assi

"As a Palestinian who was born two generations apart from the Nakba, I have never imagined that one day I would witness the genocide of my people unfold before my eyes in broad daylight. While I always feared the prospect of a Second Nakba, as many Palestinians do, I have never dreamed, not even in my worst nightmares, that I would live it, witness it, and write about it.

In my happy Palestinian innocence, I believed that even if Israel was keen on repeating the Nakba, or attempting to “finish the job of 1948,” as many Israeli officials have threatened over the years, the Free World would not allow it to happen. In my wishful thinking, I believed that the world had learned its lesson since the Nakba. Yes, the world failed the Palestinian people in 1948. Yes, it allowed Israel to carry out its ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Yes, it abandoned the Palestinian refugees, and rewarded Israel with a United Nations recognition and membership. But that was 75 years ago, the age of genocides and holocausts. A lot of progress had been made since, I told myself. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The U.N. evolved. Human rights groups mushroomed. Mandela won the Nobel Peace. True, genocide would occur so often and so uncontested in the decades since, but after the horrific genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the leaders of the Free World seemed to have had enough! They seemed adamant not to allow another genocide to happen—Never Again! Not in Palestine, not again!

Summit after summit, they vowed that such atrocities had no place in the new century. Even when the new century in Palestine ushered in the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Oslo Accords, I still believed that the horrors of the past were in check. Even when Israel mushroomed in size, and the settlements tripled, and the apartheid system was closing in on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the merciless siege suffocating those in Gaza, where one million children were born and raised in captivity, I still believed that that was the peak of our suffering and nothing remotely close the terrors of Rwanda or Bosnia, or indeed the First Nakba, would happen to us, because the world was watching, and it was ready to dispatch its postwar moral arsenal to stop it!

As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war.

I was dead wrong. For three bloody months since the Gaza Genocide first unfolded, the Free World has sat there watching, and cheering, and mocking us to death. During the first weeks, I still held onto my naïve optimism. True, the Free World betrayed Palestinians in Gaza; it allowed Israel to act with impunity; it tolerated its war crimes and mass atrocities; it denied the children of Gaza even the pretense of humanity. But ultimately it was bound to come to its senses and unleash its moral diplomacy to end this horror. So I persisted in my optimism. Perhaps the world needed more time to fathom what was happening. Perhaps it was waiting for a few more thousands of Palestinians to be killed before making its drastic move. Yet week after week, the world remained silent, blind to our deaths, deaf to our sufferings.

One month into the bloodshed, after Israel had killed 1,000 children, I said that’s it; the world would make its move now, if only to save the children! But the U.S. responded by vetoing a humanitarian cease-fire that could have saved thousands of innocent lives! A month after, when the death toll of children reached 10,000, I said enough is enough; it’s high time the world acted NOW, because humanity itself is at stake! U.N. officials had already sounded the alarm that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children,” so no one could pretend they did not know. The time to act was now or never! Yet there was another U.S. veto; another cold hand was raised to issue a new death sentence for Palestinians. Another spit in the face of humanity!

Now I’m lost for words. I have lost faith in humanity. The staggering death toll in Gaza is humanly impossible to fathom or accept without losing our sense of shared humanity. As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war. I know for certain that I will not emerge from this tragedy the same person I was before. None of us will.

Gaza may be annihilated, but it’s not going anywhere. When the dust of war settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come. It will be a permanent stain on our humanity. The children of Gaza will not forget, if they survive. The living will remember, and the dead will haunt us forever. Gaza will be remembered not only as the crime of the century, but also as the site of our greatest shame, where humanity failed. 2023 will go down in history as the darkest in Palestine - the year humanity died." 
o
"Gaza Health Ministry: 21,110 Palestinians have been killed, and 55,243 
wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7."

Now 21,110 innocent men, old people, women and 11,000 children killed by US supplied 2,000 lb bombs, which WE to our eternal shame and disgrace allow and support! The monsters doing this are NOT human beings! They're a bloodthirsty, psychopathically genocidal sub-species of humanity! And, except for the Houthis and Hezbollah somewhat, the world sits silently watching this horror and does nothing! Shakespeare wrote, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Sartre said, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just enough to keep us from escaping." I believe them... - CP
o

"Middle East War, Palestine - Israel"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 1/1/24
"Hezbollah Will Shock The World By 
Completely Destroying Israel"
Comments here:
Semper Fi, Scott!
- CP, Veteran, US Marine Corps, MOS 0311
If you weren't there you'd never understand...
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/1/24
"IDF Toothless Without U.S.? Israeli Expert Says
 'Will Have To Fight With Sticks And Stones Without U.S. Support"'
"A stunning claim has been made about Israel's might amid fear of war with Hezbollah. "IDF would be forced to fight Hezbollah with sticks and stones without U.S. support," said an Israeli expert. Amnon Abramovich, a political analyst for Israeli Channel 12, made this claim. The statement comes as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Hezbollah of a response they can't even dream of."
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "The Great Clarification"

"The Great Clarification"
by Jim Kunstler

“Time for The Great Uprising to defeat The Great Reset. 
This isn’t just an R vs. D question in 2023. It’s a 1776 moment.”
- Vivek Ramaswamy

"I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back.

After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you...the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.

We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality. What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness.

It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because...she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.

All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions - a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown.

The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities. There is so much to do.

I keep hearing figures in the public arena say they have a creepy feeling that something big is going to happen. Well, sure, something’s got to give. So much hyper-complexity has been heaped onto the apparatus of shakedown that just about nothing works in America anymore. The Internet is obviously a major part of that. We’ve allowed digital magic to invade every scrap of territory in our daily doings, to the degree that there is no longer enough for humans to do - but, alas, digital magic is only a pale simulacrum of real human magic. The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Why do you think there are so many people barely alive in a haze of opiate drugs splayed on the sidewalks of San Francisco, the epicenter of Internet wealth and power?

The “something big” could well be the Web-down crisis that is nervously tweeted about. If it went on for more than couple of weeks, most everything we depend on would cease to work, from food supplies to clean water to communications to what has been lately operating as “money.” That would be a clarifying interlude for sure. Among the few things that would still work in the event of a massive attack on the Internet are human brains, human bodies, and firearms. That combo could be as much a recipe for order as for chaos. I believe in the fairly short term, most of us would opt for order. As far as I’m concerned, there’s already been enough chaos, just about every bit of it unnecessary.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 2024 is on. It’s the time many of us have been waiting for. We’re in it. Stay alert. Make the right choices. Exercise situational awareness. Get ready to walk with consequence. It’s here, and it’s not “queer.”

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/1/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/1/24"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year folks, see you on the other side!
Kool & The Gang, "Celebration"

"Be Bold Enough..."

 

The Poet: John O’Donohue, "For A New Beginning"

"For A New Beginning"

"In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you."

- John O’Donohue

"We Live In Radical Times..."

"We live in radical times surrounded by tasks that seem impossible. It has become our collective fate to be alive in a time of great tragedies, to live in a period of overwhelming disasters and to stand at the edge of sweeping changes. The river of life is flooding before us, and a tide of poisons affect the air we breathe and the waters we drink and even tarnish the dreams of those who are young and as yet innocent. The snake-bitten condition has already spread throughout the collective body.

However, it is in troubled times that it becomes most important to remember that the wonder of life places the medicine of the self near where the poison dwells. The gifts always lie near the wounds, the remedies are often made from poisonous substances, and love often appears where deep losses become acknowledged. Along the arc of healing the wounds and the poisons of life are created the exact opportunities for bringing out all the medicines and making things whole again."
- Michael Meade, "Fate And Destiny"

The Poet: John O'Donohue, "In These Times "

"In These Times"

 "In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction 
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts 
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage 
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home."

~ John O'Donohue,
from "To Bless the Space Between Us"

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Coming Home"

"Coming Home"

"When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place -
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me."

- Mary Oliver

"The Future..."

 

"Today Is The Day..."

"We are fast moving into something, we are fast flung into something like asteroids cast into space by the death of a planet, we the people of earth are cast into space like burning asteroids and if we wish not to disintegrate into nothingness we must begin to now hold onto only the things that matter while letting go of all that doesn't. For when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos we will be left only with ourselves and nothing else. So if you want to be there in the end, today is the day to start holding onto your children, holding onto your loved ones; onto those who share your soul. Harbor and anchor into your heart justice, truth, courage, bravery, belief, a firm vision, a steadfast and sound mind. Be the person of meaningful and valuable thoughts. Don't look to the left, don't look to the right; we simply don't have the time. Never be afraid of fear."
- C. JoyBell C

Dan, I Allegedly, "How to Get Ready for 2024"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/31/23
"How to Get Ready for 2024"
Comments here:

"How It Really Will Be"

 
"We're so freakin' doomed!" - The Mogambo Guru

Adventures With Danno, "Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/31/23
"Strange Prices At Walmart!
 This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 12/31/23
"Russian Typical Supermarket Tour (On New Years Eve)"
"Together let's see what its like in a Russian typical Shopping Centre on New Years even in Moscow, Russia. Are people shopping in Russian Supermarkets? Are people spending money? This video will give you a true first hand look at Russians shopping on New Years Eve in Russia."
Comments here:

Saturday, December 30, 2023

"Bankruptcies Skyrocket Past 2008 Levels, This Is The Fall Of The US Economy"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 12/30/23
"Bankruptcies Skyrocket Past 2008 Levels, 
This Is The Fall Of The US Economy"
"The ominous shadow of economic distress looms over the United States as bankruptcies surge past the levels witnessed during the 2008 financial crisis. Corporate collapses are escalating at an alarming rate, reflecting the adverse impact of higher interest rates on borrowing costs. This could be the long-feared fall of the US economy."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "America Is Turning Into Mad Max, Please Don't Cry; Demons Running Wild"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/30/23
"America Is Turning Into Mad Max, Please Don't Cry;
 Demons Running Wild"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: 'NATO Attacks'; Russian Emergency; War Begins In Middle East"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/30/23
"Alert: 'NATO Attacks'; Russian Emergency; 
War Begins In Middle East"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

Full screen recommended.
The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“These bright rims and flowing shapes suggest to some melting ice cream on a cosmic scale. Looking toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features the swept back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually melting, but they are slowly dissipating under the influence of ionizing ultraviolet radiation from hot,luminous star gamma Cas. 
 Click image for larger size.
Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae, just off the upper right edge of the frame. In fact, slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as the ionized hydrogen atoms recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows proportionally less H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The field of view spans about 1 degree or 10 light-years at the estimated distance of gamma Cas and friends.”

Chet Raymo, “The Universe Becomes Conscious of Itself”

“The Universe Becomes Conscious of Itself” 
by Chet Raymo

"By now most of us will have seen this spectacular photograph of a dusty star-birthing region of the Carina Nebula, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. I offer a slightly different cropping from what you may have seen in the media or on APOD. Please click the image to see it it all of its glory.
Click image for larger size.
Let me add some context. The image shows an area of the sky that you could cover with the intersection of two crossed sewing pins held at arms length. Think about that for a minute. Hold two imaginary crossed pins up against the sky and think of the area covered by their intersection, what a tiny part of the visible universe you are looking at. The photo shows a nebulosity that is invisible to the naked eye, in the midst of the southern-hemisphere Milky Way. Where is this object? Our Sun is on the inside edge of an arm of our spiral galaxy, about two-thirds of the way - 30,000 light-years - out from the center. The Carina Nebula is in the same spiral arm, trailing along 7500 light-years behind us as we make our languorous 200-million-year rotation about the galactic axis. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, including the ones you see aborning here. And the Milky Way Galaxy is just one of tens of billions of galaxies we could potentially see with present telescopes.

Now, in my usual mischievous way, let me juxtapose two images of the heavens (please click to fill your screen). On the left is Gustave Dore's rendering of Dante and Beatrice looking upon the heavenly realm, the choirs of angels attendant upon the Diety, the anthropomorphic Empyrean Fields where the souls of the Blessed find everlasting life, just up there beyond the spheres of air and aether. And on the right, the new image from the Hubble.
Click image for larger size.
I'm confident that anyone who visits here, and probably most educated people, will agree that the image on the right, and my description above, is the truer representation of the universe we live in. But which universe do we psychologically inhabit? I would maintain that the great majority of educated people today have not yet assimilated the picture on the right, and continue to live as if they were contemporaries of Dante. I know I have a hard time grasping the scale of the universe as revealed by modern astronomy - and I have been studying and teaching this stuff for a lifetime. Coming to terms with the vast size and apparent indifference of the universe is not easy when the tug of culture continually pulls us back into the cozy human-centered cosmos of our ancestors.

Where is our contemporary Beatrice who will take us by the hand and lead us into the swirling star-birthing vortex of the Carina Nebula, and say to us, "See, all this is the gift of the human intellect - human ingenuity and human daring - all this is contained in those convolutions of mortal flesh that sit at the top of your spine"?

"Character..."

 
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. 
Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be 
strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved."
- Helen Keller

The Daily "Near You?"

Maintal, Hessen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!