Tuesday, May 14, 2024

"Look How Civilized Israelis Are"

Full screen recommended.
Richard Medhurst, 5/14/24
"Look How Civilized Israelis Are"
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"Israeli is Evil personified,
Israel is Evil embodied."
- Scott Ritter
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"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 eight 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."
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"A “Restaurant Apocalypse” Is Starting To Sweep Across America, And That Is Really Bad News For The U.S. Economy"

"A “Restaurant Apocalypse” Is Starting To Sweep Across America, 
And That Is Really Bad News For The U.S. Economy"
by Michael Snyder

"You can get a really good idea how the U.S. economy is doing by watching restaurants in your area. When the economy is booming, restaurant parking lots are full and chains are feverishly establishing new locations. But when the economy is struggling, restaurants get a lot less traffic and poor performing locations get shut down. Sadly, in 2024 it appears that a “restaurant apocalypse” has started to sweep across America. Most people have very little discretionary income to spend as a result of our cost of living crisis, and that is particularly true for our young adults. Americans under the age of 40 love to eat out, but these days most of them are experiencing financial stress, and this is having an enormous impact on the restaurant industry.

In 2023, visits to sit-down restaurants dropped by about five percent compared to 2022…"Americans are eating out less as inflation weakens the dollars in their pocket, which is leading to some harsh consequences for restaurants across the country. Visits to sit-down restaurants were down nearly five percent in 2023 from the year prior, according to location analytics firm Placer.ai. So this is a trend that has stretched on for over a year."

People just aren’t eating out as much as they once did. As a result, we are seeing a wave of closures all over the country. Even in the Big Apple, large numbers of restaurants are being shut down…Even big metropolitan areas in the US known for their great dining spots are struggling to maintain an environment where it’s profitable to run a restaurant.

Eater NY reported that over 40 bars and restaurants closed in New York City from December 2023 to January 2024, with some of the owners saying business simply never picked up after the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

When times get tough, difficult decisions need to be made. After closing 46 restaurants last year, Applebee’s has decided to close another 35 locations this year…"Applebee’s is to close another 35 further locations this year, after shutting 46 in 2023. The restaurant chain has shut at least three locations so far this year and has plans to close even more, president Tony Moralejo said in an earnings call on Wednesday. Closing restaurants was ‘an incredibly difficult decision’ and a ‘last resort’ for the company, Moralejo said."

And I am very saddened by what has happened to Boston Market.

At one time they had almost 1,000 locations all over the United States, but now the entire chain is about to go belly up…"In the case of Boston Market, a chain that once had nearly 1,000 locations nationwide, the company’s death has been slow, but the pace of its demise has picked up over the past few months. Now, with its store count continuing to dip, the chain seems to have reached the end even if it won’t confirm that given that there no longer appears to be anyone around to make that decision.

Boston Market owner Jignesh “Jay” Pandya was recently denied Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time and has been barred from filing again for six months. That leaves his company, which faces massive financial obligations, unable to gain court protection from its creditors."

Our ongoing inflation crisis is the primary reason why this is happening. Consumers simply have a lot less discretionary income now. Meanwhile, restaurants are facing much higher costs…"Jessica Dunker, the president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association, said the reason restaurants are shuttering is because the cost of goods is up 30 percent and they are having to shell out higher wages to keep staff on."

Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better any time soon. For example, the cost of orange juice is expected to go up dramatically because of a very bad harvest in Brazil…"Breakfast lovers are in for another jolt as orange juice prices surge to near-record levels. A new report released on Friday indicates that Brazil, the leading global exporter of OJ, is facing its worst harvest in over three decades. This alarming development compounds existing issues in Florida’s citrus groves, which have been plagued by disease and are experiencing collapsing production levels to the lowest in decades.

Fundecitrus wrote in a note that Brazil will produce 232.4 million boxes—each weighing about 90 pounds—for the growing season this year. That’s a 24% collapse from a year earlier and the lowest production levels in 36 years."

We have reached a point where the vast majority of Americans just can’t afford to eat out on a regular basis. Needless to say, that is really bad news for fast food chains like McDonald’s. At one time, serving middle class families was their core business. But now most middle class families just can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s very often.

In a desperate attempt to lure them back, McDonald’s will soon introduce a five dollar meal deal…"McDonald’s is looking to launch a $5 meal in the US in a move to bring back price-sensitive customers. The meal includes four items, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg and Restaurant Business. Customers would choose between two of the chain’s signature burgers - a McChicken or a McDouble - and get four-piece McNuggets, fries, and a drink. The $5 promotion would last for a month, Bloomberg reported."

So they are going to bring back affordable food for one month. That’s just great. Unless they make the five dollar meal deal permanent, I don’t expect that it will make much of a difference.

Consumers are really hurting right now. In fact, consumer sentiment just fell to the lowest level in six months…"Consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level in six months as price increases reaccelerated, according to the latest University of Michigan survey of consumers, released Friday. Additionally, consumers are bracing for even higher price increases in the year ahead compared to readings from prior months, the survey found.

The gauge, which is closely tracked by the Biden administration, plunged 13% from April’s 77.2% reading, to 67.4%. That’s the biggest one-month drop since mid-2021. Economists polled by FactSet were expecting consumer expectations to fall to just 76.9%."

As I have discussed previously, the American people are deeply pessimistic about the economy at this stage. And they have good reason to be pessimistic, because even though our politicians in Washington are engaging in an unprecedented spending spree in a desperate attempt to keep the economy propped up, the truth is that the wheels are starting to come off and tremendous chaos is ahead.

Ed Dowd agrees that big trouble is coming during the months ahead. He just told Greg Hunter that he expects the U.S. economy “to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months”…"What happens to the Biden economy? Dowd says, “The economy is going to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months. The real economy is not doing well. The only thing that has been holding up the GDP growth is government spending. We are spending $1 trillion every 100 days. That’s adding $1 trillion to the deficit. The only job creation is government jobs, and they don’t actually add to the economy. Reports are coming out now that the low-income consumer is getting absolutely hammered. McDonald’s talked about it in their most recent earnings call. So, low-income and the middle-class are getting squeezed while the rich continue to plug along.”

I agree. Of course we don’t have to wait for the economy to come apart at the seams, because that is already happening. At one time, the entire world marveled at the greatness of the mighty U.S. economy, but our leaders have completely wrecked it. There is no way that we are going to be able to avoid disaster, and so I would encourage you to prepare for very hard times while you still can."

"How It Really Is"

 

"US National Debt, Real Time"

Bill Bonner, "The King's Head"

"The King's Head"
That government is best... which is occasionally decapitated.
by Bill Bonner

"The best government is a monarchy…with an occasional beheading."
~ Voltaire

Baltimore, Maryland - "Yes, Karl Marx was right about one thing. There’s a difference between people who work on the assembly lines and the people who own them. About $20 million of difference, per family. That’s the 21st century gap between what the average non-asset owner gained from his wages and what the average member of the asset-owning elite 1% gained. Our friend, David Stockman clarifies:

"Since money-printing went into permanent high gear after the dotcom crash in 2000, the top 1% of households have gained $20 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth. Likewise, the top 0.1% or 131,000 households at the tippy top of the economic ladder have gained $88 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth.

During the last 22 years the median real annual wage, as tracked by Social Security payroll tax records, has risen by only 14.5% or just $235 per annum. And, no, we didn’t omit any zeros from that figure. These piddling gains amount to just $4.50 per week on average.

These annual inflation-adjusted gains in the median wage compare to real net worth gains of nearly $1 million and $4 million per annum for the top 1% and top 0.1%, respectively. In relative terms, these annual wealth gains for the top 1% were 4,250X larger than the median real wage gain and 17,000X larger for the top 0.1%."

We, the Rabble: Pity the “People’… the non-deciders…the middle class… hoi polloi…the majority…the voters! They are like hungry mice waiting for crumbs to fall from the table. But ours is not a whine about ‘inequality.’ We take it for granted that all people are not created equal. Some are leaders. Most are followers. Some are thinkers; most leave the thinking to others. Inequality is inevitable…undeniable…part of the ‘way we are;’ we sort ourselves into teams, tribes, classes, castes, sects, clubs, nations and races. Some become members of the ‘upper’ class of deciders and influencers. Others, mostly do what they are told.

The elites – whether by conquest or ballot box – set themselves up as government…and use their power to rip everyone else off. We are exaggerating, of course. There’s always more to the story. And the ‘more’ here is that the elites are also very useful. They’re responsible for the administration of justice…for much of our science…some of our learning and great breakthroughs of capitalism…for making the trains run on time…keeping the airplanes from falling from the sky…and for much of the output that makes our modern lives more agreeable.

A Government of Laws: But over time, the deciders get more and more power. Power leads to corruption. That’s why the American Constitution was not meant to give them power, but to keep them in check. It expressly limits the power of government to certain things. Of the rest, it says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people, respectively.” The idea was to prevent Washington from getting too big for its britches. This is also why Jefferson remarked that we may need a revolution every 10 years or so. “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion,” he said.

Closer to our own time, Dwight Eisenhower warned, specifically, against the elite that he knew best: "We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

All that was foreseen – by Jefferson, Voltaire and Eisenhower – has now come to pass. And now, a revolt of the masses is not only unavoidable; it’s necessary. Kings are fine. But you need to chop their heads off from time to time. And it falls to the young and the outsiders to do the job.

Not surprisingly, the young voters want a change. They turn neither to the Left nor to the Right… They know the game is rigged against them; they know, too, that both Republicans and Democrats are in on it. So, they turn to upstarts, unknowns…and mavericks. The promise of democracy is that (eventually) the masses will wake up and ‘throw the bums out.’ But both Democrats and Republicans, and all the Powers-that-Be, are desperate to keep the bums right where they are..."

"Does Anyone Know?"

"All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?"
- Andre Comte-Sponville
Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"

Gregory Mannarino, "Disaster! Inflation Report Comes In Worse Than Expected, And It's Not Going To Stop"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/14/24
"Disaster! Inflation Report Comes In Worse Than Expected, 
And It's Not Going To Stop"
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Adventures With Danno, "Food Is Getting Expensive At Meijer! Saving On Whatever We Can!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 5/14/24
"Food Is Getting Expensive At Meijer! 
Saving On Whatever We Can!"
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"Wars And Rumors Of Wars, 5/14/24"

"War Theater: U.S. Aircraft Carriers 
And The Illusion Of Global Dominance"
By Mike Adams
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Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 5/13/24
"Trouble For Israel? Big Nuclear Shocker From Iran; 
Lawmaker Reveals 'Already In Possession Of Nukes'"
"Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program and can decimate Israel with a surprise attack. We now have a blatant admission from an Iranian official who says Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, confirming the warning of US Def. Dept. leaders in 2023 who warned that Iran could build a nuclear weapon in just "12 days." Now, we estimate Iran has 100+ nuclear warheads and the ability to deliver them with precision ballistic missiles. This means the situation in the Middle East is far more volatile than most people realize."
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Full screen recommended.
Times of India, 5/14/24
"'Attacks Won't Stop': Hezbollah Chief Roars 
Against Israel & Arab Leaders Over Gaza Onslaught"
"Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah has sent shockwaves through Israel with his bold declaration to persist in the fight against the nation. Nasrallah's pledge comes amidst escalating tensions, as he warns Israel of an impending historical dilemma in Gaza. He predicts Israel will face either defeat or plunge into an abyss if it continues its military campaign. Moreover, Nasrallah celebrates the recent October 7 attack, hailing it as a revitalization of the Palestinian cause and underscoring the significant support for Palestine's full UN membership. The region braces for further developments as the conflict intensifies." 
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"In 219 days, 35,034 killed,
78,755 injured by 'Israel' in Gaza"
by Al Mayadeen

"The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Wednesday that the number of Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Strip since October 7 has now reached 35,034, with 78,755 injured as the war marks its 219th day. The Ministry also reported that the Israeli occupation carried out eight massacres against families in the past 24 hours in the Strip, killing 63 people and injuring 114.


Thousands of victims of the aggression remain trapped under the rubble and roads remain inaccessible to ambulance and civil defense crews, as the occupation continues to prevent rescue teams from reaching them, the ministry added.

In this context, the Ministry confirmed the death of 500 medical staff and 138 nurses as a result of the Israeli bombing of the Strip so far, calling on the international community to protect medical teams and healthcare institutions in Gaza, and to press for the opening of the crossings to bring medical aid into the Strip.

Earlier this week, the Government Media Office in Gaza said that the Israeli occupation has committed 3,094 massacres during the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, resulting in a toll of 44,844 martyrs and missing persons. The number of children killed by the occupation has reached 15,002, the office said, adding that 30 others died due to the famine brought on by the Israeli siege and blockade.

With the ongoing Israeli invasion of Rafah launched on Monday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) stated that approximately 300,000 people have been forcibly displaced from the city of over 1.3 million residents, emphasizing the lack of safe havens within the Strip.


In conjunction with the Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, the Israeli occupation army announced launching a new operation targeting areas across northern Gaza, due to failure in "eliminating" the Resistance there despite seven months of a brutal war unprecedented in recent history.

Al Mayadeen's correspondent reported on Sunday that occupation vehicles are advancing eastward from the Jabalia camp towards al-Sikka Street, extending to Mazaya Street amid heavy confrontations with Resistance fighters. Additionally, vehicles are stationed west of Mazaya Street in the Riad al-Salheen area. He also noted that the Israeli incursion into the northern regions was accompanied by intense artillery fire, along with support from helicopters and Quadcopter drones.

In Jabalia, the re-intensified Israeli aggression forced the displacement of thousands of Palestinians, now looking for shelter among the rubble of destroyed schools and any standing facility."
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"Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, 
panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is."
- Winston Churchill
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A Comment: Are you proud, Americans, with all that blood on your hands? Hang your head in shame and disgrace! YOU paid for every bomb, every bullet, every tank, every weapon, every single thing these psychopathically degenerate genocidal monsters are using to slaughter all these people, whom these ZioNazis openly call "human animals"! 15,000 CHILDREN murdered! Don't pretend you don't see, don't know! The entire world can now see what these creatures really are, what rabidly vicious mad dogs they are and always have been. So what do you do with a mad dog? Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel...Inshallah, so be it... - CP

Monday, May 13, 2024

Canadian Prepper, "IISS Nuclear Attack; Putin Preps Cabinet For WW III"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/13/24
"IISS Nuclear Attack; Putin Preps Cabinet For WW III
Mass Evac, Full Mobilization"
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"Food Shortages, Price Increases, and Some Empty Shelves! Be Prepared! It's Getting Worse!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 5/13/24
"Food Shortages, Price Increases, and Some Empty Shelves! 
Be Prepared! It's Getting Worse!"
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"The Homelessness Spike Happening All Around Us Is Just A Hint Of What Is Coming Next"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 5/13/24
"The Homelessness Spike Happening All Around Us 
Is Just A Hint Of What Is Coming Next"

"The homelessness crisis that is taking over our core urban areas is getting so out of control that tent cities are emerging everywhere, even next to the U.S. Supreme Court. Soaring rents and the most expensive housing prices in U.S. history are triggering a wave of evictions and foreclosures like nothing we have ever seen. In poorer communities, the lack of access to basic resources is putting millions of people in extreme situations. This crisis is spreading so rapidly that now middle-class Americans are also ending up without a home. That's according to a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Researchers say that the United States is currently facing the biggest homelessness spike since 2012. In fact, since the pandemic, the population of unhoused Americans grew by 48%, with 12% of that increase happening over the past 12 months. From the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024, almost 100,000 Americans started experiencing homelessness, which represented the largest single-year increase ever recorded. Today, it is estimated that more than 653,000 people in our country are living in the streets.

However, housing advocates argue that a more accurate figure for the population of unhoused Americans stands at roughly 3 million people. That includes people living in their vehicles, abandoned buildings, and alternative shelters. The latest statistics indicate that people becoming homeless for the first time were behind much of the surge.

With government assistance out of the reach of everyday Americans, the rate of evictions exceeded a 10-year record high in January 2024, and over 1 million cases were reported year-over-year. "We know there's health consequences, it's an incredibly traumatic event, especially for children," said Daniel Grubs-Donovan, a research specialist with the Princeton University's Eviction Lab.

Within the overall rise, homelessness among individuals went up by 11%, while jumping 7.4% among U.S. veterans, 15.5% among families with children. Additionally, more than a quarter of adults experiencing homelessness were over age 54, which highlights the fact that many Americans nearing or at retirement ages are currently living in poverty."
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Jeremiah Babe, "AirBNB Apocalypse Coming; Homebuyers Bite The Dust"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/13/24
"AirBNB Apocalypse Coming; 
Homebuyers Bite The Dust"
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"Wars And Rumors Of Wars"

Full screen recommended.
Larry C. Johnson, 5/13/24
"Ukraine at Crossroads of Destruction or Survival,
 Russia Sends Message to West"
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Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 5/13/24
"Trouble For Israel? Big Nuclear Shocker From Iran; 
Lawmaker Reveals 'Already In Possession Of Nukes'"
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Full screen recommended.
Richard Medhurst, 5/13/24
"Gaza War Update, Battles in Rafah and Jabalia,
 Egypt Joins ICJ Case vs Israel, and More"
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Wait For Me"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Wait For Me"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is just below center in this telescopic field of view with the angular size of the Full Moon on the sky. 
Click image for larger size.
The cluster itself is about 200 light-years in diameter. Glowing interior ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center. Of course, the more extended wings of emission in the region suggest a popular name for the complex cosmic environment, The Flying Lizard Nebula.”

"I Would Rather Have..."

"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "October"

“October”

"There’s this shape, 
black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.

What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.

I said to the chickadee, 
singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.

The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes -
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something - a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
It pulls me into its trap of attention,
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.

Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive and know it.

Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me - and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful."

- Mary Oliver

"What's He To Do then?"

"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' 
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'" 
- Sydney J. Harris 

"When You Are In Deep Trouble..."

 

Free Download: Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World"

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! 
How beauteous mankind is! 
O, brave new world, That has such people in't!”
- William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” (V, 1)

“Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too- all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides- made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions...” 
- “Brave New World: Suggestions from the State”
Freely download “Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley here:

“Mutiny of the Soul”

“Mutiny of the Soul”
by Charles Eisenstein

"Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new. When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I'm not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive.

The notion of a cure starts with the question, "What has gone wrong?" But there is another, radically different way of seeing fatigue and depression that starts by asking, "What is the body, in its perfect wisdom, responding to?" When would it be the wisest choice for someone to be unable to summon the energy to fully participate in life?

The answer is staring us in the face. When our soul-body is saying No to life, through fatigue or depression, the first thing to ask is, "Is life as I am living it the right life for me right now?" When the soul-body is saying No to participation in the world, the first thing to ask is, "Does the world as it is presented me merit my full participation?"

What if there is something so fundamentally wrong with the world, the lives, and the way of being offered us, that withdrawal is the only sane response? Withdrawal, followed by a reentry into a world, a life, and a way of being wholly different from the one left behind?

The unspoken goal of modern life seems to be to live as long and as comfortably as possible, to minimize risk and to maximize security. We see this priority in the educational system, which tries to train us to be "competitive" so that we can "make a living". We see it in the medical system, where the goal of prolonging life trumps any consideration of whether, sometimes, the time has come to die. We see it in our economic system, which assumes that all people are motivated by "rational self-interest", defined in terms of money, associated with security and survival. (And have you ever thought about the phrase "the cost of living"?) We are supposed to be practical, not idealistic; we are supposed to put work before play. Ask someone why she stays in a job she hates, and as often as not the answer is, "For the health insurance." In other words, we stay in jobs that leave us feeling dead in order to gain the assurance of staying alive. When we choose health insurance over passion, we are choosing survival over life.

On a deep level, which I call the soul level, we want none of that. We recognize that we are here on earth to enact a sacred purpose, and that most of the jobs on offer are beneath our dignity as human beings. But we might be too afraid to leave our jobs, our planned-out lives, our health insurance, or whatever other security and comfort we have received in exchange for our divine gifts. Deep down, we recognize this security and comfort as slaves' wages, and we yearn to be free.

So, the soul rebels. Afraid to make the conscious choice to step away from a slave's life, we make the choice unconsciously instead. We can no longer muster the energy to go through the motions. We enact this withdrawal from life through a variety of means. We might summon the Epstein-Barr virus into our bodies, or mononucleosis, or some other vector of chronic fatigue. We might shut down our thyroid or adrenal glands. We might shut down our production of serotonin in the brain. Other people take a different route, incinerating the excess life energy in the fires of addiction. Either way, we are in some way refusing to participate. We are shying away from ignoble complicity in a world gone wrong. We are refusing to contribute our divine gifts to the aggrandizement of that world.

That is why the conventional approach of fixing the problem so that we can return to normal life will not work. It might work temporarily, but the body will find other ways to resist. Raise serotonin levels with SSRIs, and the brain will prune some receptor sites, thinking in its wisdom, "Hey, I'm not supposed to feel good about the life I am living right now." In the end, there is always suicide, a common endpoint of the pharmaceutical regimes that seek to make us happy with something inimical to our very purpose and being. You can only force yourself to abide in wrongness so long. When the soul's rebellion is suppressed too long, it can explode outward in bloody revolution. Significantly, all of the school shootings in the last decade have involved people on anti-depression medication. All of them! For a jaw-dropping glimpse of the results of the pharmaceutical regime of control, scroll down this compilation of suicide/homicide cases involving SSRIs. I am not using "jaw-dropping" as a figure of speech. My jaw literally dropped open.

Back in the 1970s, dissidents in the Soviet Union were often hospitalized in mental institutions and given drugs similar to the ones used to treat depression today. The reasoning was that you had to be insane to be unhappy in the Socialist Workers' Utopia. When the people treating depression receive status and prestige from the very system that their patients are unhappy with, they are unlikely to affirm the basic validity of the patient's withdrawal from life. "The system has to be sound - after all, it validates my professional status - therefore the problem must be with you."

Unfortunately, "holistic" approaches are no different, as long as they deny the wisdom of the body's rebellion. When they do seem to work, usually that is because they coincide with some other shift. When someone goes out and gets help, or makes a radical switch of modalities, it works as a ritual communication to the unconscious mind of a genuine life change. Rituals have the power to make conscious decisions real to the unconscious. They can be part of taking back one's power.

I have met countless people of great compassion and sensitivity, people who would describe themselves as "conscious" or "spiritual", who have battled with CFS, depression, thyroid deficiency, and so on. These are people who have come to a transition point in their lives where they become physically incapable of living the old life in the old world. That is because, in fact, the world presented to us as normal and acceptable is anything but. It is a monstrosity. Ours is a planet in pain. If you need me to convince you of that, if you are unaware of the destruction of forests, oceans, wetlands, cultures, soil, health, beauty, dignity, and spirit that underlies the System we live in, then I have nothing to say to you. I only am speaking to you if you do believe that there is something deeply wrong with the way we are living on this planet.

A related syndrome comprises various "attention deficit" and anxiety "disorders" (forgive me, I cannot write down these words without the ironic quotation marks) which reflect an unconscious knowledge that something is wrong around here. Anxiety, like all emotions, has a proper function. Suppose you left a pot on the stove and you know you forgot something, you just can't remember what. You cannot rest at ease. Something is bothering you, something is wrong. Subliminally you smell smoke. You obsess: did I leave the water running? Did I forget to pay the mortgage? The anxiety keeps you awake and alert; it doesn't let you rest; it keeps your mind churning, worrying. This is good. This is what saves your life. Eventually you realize - the house is on fire! - and anxiety turns into panic, and action.

So if you suffer from anxiety, maybe you don't have a "disorder" at all - maybe the house is on fire. Anxiety is simply the emotion corresponding to "Something is dangerously wrong and I don't know what it is." That is only a disorder if there is in fact nothing dangerously wrong. "Nothing is wrong, just you" is the message that any therapy gives when it tries to fix you. I disagree with that message. The problem is not with you. You have very good reason to be anxious. Anxiety keeps part of your attention away from your tasks of polishing the silverware as the house burns down, of playing the violin as the Titanic sinks. Unfortunately, the wrongness you are tapping into might be beyond the cognizance of the psychiatrists who treat you, who then conclude that the problem must be your brain.

Similarly, Attention Deficit DisorderADHD, and my favorite, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are only disorders if we believe that the things presented for our attention are worth paying attention to. We cannot admit, without calling into question the whole edifice of our school system, that it may be completely healthy for a ten-year-old boy to not sit still for six hours in a classroom learning about long division and Vasco de Gama. Perhaps the current generation of children, that some call the Indigos, simply have a lower tolerance for school's agenda of conformity, obedience, external motivation, right-and-wrong answers, the quantification of performance, rules and bells, report cards and grades and your permanent record. So we try to enforce their attention with stimulants, and subdue their heroic intuitive rebellion against the spirit-wrecking machine.

As I write about the "wrongness" against which we all rebel, I can hear some readers asking, "What about the metaphysical principle that it's 'all good'?" Just relax, I am told, nothing is wrong, all is part of the divine plan. You only perceive it as wrong because of your limited human perspective. All of this is only here for our own development. War: it gives people wonderful opportunities to make heroic choices and burn off bad karma. Life is wonderful, Charles, why do you have to make it wrong?

I am sorry, but usually such reasoning is just a sop to the conscience. If it is all good, then that is only because we perceive and experience it as terribly wrong. The perception of iniquity moves us to right it.

Nonetheless, it would be ignorant and fruitless to pass judgment upon those who do not see anything wrong, who, oblivious to the facts of destruction, think everything is basically fine. There is a natural awakening process, in which first we proceed full speed ahead participating in the world, believing in it, seeking to contribute to the Ascent of Humanity. Eventually, we encounter something that is undeniably wrong, perhaps a flagrant injustice or a serious health problem or a tragedy near at hand. Our first response is to think this is an isolated problem, remediable with some effort, within a system that is basically sound. But when we try to fix it, we discover deeper and deeper levels of wrongness. The rot spreads; we see that no injustice, no horror can stand in isolation. We see that the disappeared dissidents in South America, the child laborers in Pakistan, the clearcut forests of the Amazon, are all intimately linked together in a grotesque tapestry that includes every aspect of modern life. We realize that the problems are too big to fix. We are called to live in an entirely different way, starting with our most fundamental values and priorities.

All of us go through this process, repeatedly, in various realms of our lives; all parts of the process are right and necessary. The phase of full participation is a growth phase in which we develop gifts that will be applied very differently later. The phase of trying to fix, to endure, to soldier on with a life that isn't working is a maturation phase that develops qualities of patience and determination and strength. The phase of discovering the all-encompassing nature of the problem is usually a phase of despair, but it need not be. Properly, it is a phase of rest, of stillness, of withdrawal, of preparation for a push. The push is a birth-push. Crises in our lives converge and propel us into a new life, a new being that we hardly imagine could exist, except that we'd heard rumors of it, echoes, and maybe even caught a glimpse of it here and there, been granted through grace a brief preview.

If you are in the midst of this process, you need not suffer if you cooperate with it. I can offer you two things. First is self-trust. Trust your own urge to withdraw even when a million messages are telling you, "The world is fine, what's wrong with you? Get with the program." Trust your innate belief that you are here on earth for something magnificent, even when a thousand disappointments have told you you are ordinary. Trust your idealism, buried in your eternal child's heart, that says that a far more beautiful world than this is possible. Trust your impatience that says "good enough" is not good enough. Do not label your noble refusal to participate as laziness and do not medicalize it as an illness. Your heroic body has merely made a few sacrifices to serve your growth.

The second thing I can offer you is a map. The journey I have described is not always linear, and you may find yourself from time to time revisiting earlier territory. When you find the right life, when you find the right expression of your gifts, you will receive an unmistakable signal. You will feel excited and alive. Many people have preceded you on this journey, and many more will follow in times to come. Because the old world is falling apart, and the crises that initiate the journey are converging upon us. Soon many people will follow the paths we have pioneered. Each journey is unique, but all share the same basic dynamics I have described. When you have passed through it, and understood the necessity and rightness of each of its phases, you will be prepared to midwife others through it as well. Your condition, all the years of it, has prepared you for this. It has prepared you to ease the passage of those who will follow. Everything you have gone through, every bit of the despair, has been necessary to forge you into a healer and a guide. The need is great. The time is coming soon.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Napier, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

'In Retrospect..."

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” 
– "The Fourth Turning", Strauss & Howe