Douglas Macgregor, 6/17/23
"The Termination Point for Ukraine's Offensive"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, June 17, 2023
"Hell Is Empty… All the Washington Devils Are Here"
"Hell Is Empty…
All the Washington Devils Are Here"
By Tatiana Obrenovic
"'The Good And The Evil Are Marching Alongside One Another' – this is the title of a book by dearly departed Dr Vladeta Jerotic, a Serbian psychiatrist, philosopher and thinker whom I remembered while writing a befitting title and introductory sentence for this article.
Back in the day, some of us remember the speech given by former American President Ronald Reagan when he projected U.S. blame onto the Soviet Union by blasting it as the “Evil Empire”. Many were gulled into believing the farcical American charade. Fast forward to the year 2023, and mercifully many others around the world are now seeing the light. From the very beginning of this U.S.-led NATO proxy war against Russia, the vehicle for which happens to be unfortunate Ukraine, the wicked value of NATO’s pretend war against terrorism is essentially a war against humanity.
Not by chance, the corporate stock value of Lockheed Martin jumped from 45 dollars per share to over 450 dollars. Northrop Grumman too. General Dynamics from 38 to more than 200 dollars per share. Boeing too. Aptly spoken are Roger Waters’ wise words: “War is hugely profitable; it creates so much money because it’s so easy to spend money very fast. There are huge fortunes to be made. So, there is always an encouragement to promote war and keep it going, to make sure that we identify people who are ‘others’ whom we can legitimately make war upon.”
All in all, the U.S. military-industrial complex is ladled with a hefty sum of money from 50 to 100 per cent growth over the past 20 years. There is no (both legal and illegal) money machine anywhere in the world capable of churning out such lucrative profits as the industry of death.
I personally get overwhelmed by fear when I remember the then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell theatrically brandishing a supposed vial of anthrax while addressing the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003. Powell warned that the alleged contents of the vial could kill everyone in the chamber. It was a mendacious and terroristic ruse for launching an illegal war against Iraq. “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources – solid sources,” he said. Powell was lying through his teeth before the world. He later admitted to doing, and expressed regret before he died.
Or yet another sickening example, and there are only too many on the part of the U.S., recall Madeleine Albright. That wretched U.S. Secretary of State callously said that the death of half a million Iraqi children was “a price worth paying” to achieve U.S. interests. Albright displayed the same psychopathy regarding casualties in the Balkan Wars during the 1990s and the aftermath of the NATO invasion of the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija and the brutal purge of Serbs from their historically owned territories.
Almost two decades after the U.S. launched its savage invasion of Iraq, it turns out that the horrendous price keeps on mounting. Following the alleged terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States has waged and fueled endless wars and military conflicts of all sorts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, among other countries, which have caused at least 4.5 million deaths, according to a report by Brown University.
It is worth noting that these studies are part of a regularly updated and ever-bigger database documenting the dreadful death tolls in the mostly U.S. engineered wars during the two-decade period after 9/11. It is staggering to contemplate the destruction wrought in a mere 20 years. It is even more staggering that the horror is multiplying all the time in repercussions and consequences. Twenty years from now, we can expect the death and injury tolls to at least double just from the latent impacts manifesting.
The Cost of Wars project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs that conducted this comprehensive study came up with these conclusions: "Almost a million of the people who lost their lives died in direct military combat, whereas some 3.6 to 3.7 million were indirect deaths, due to health and economic problems caused by the wars, such as destruction of infrastructure, severe diseases, and shortage of food and water."
The Brown University study also analyzed the effects of wars for instance in Libya and Somalia, which were funded and altogether engineered by the U.S. as well. It was estimated that in the countries studied, there are 7.6 million children under the age of five years suffering from acute malnutrition still today. The children live in abject poverty and are “not getting enough food, literally wasting to skin and bones, putting these children at greater risk of death”. Furthermore, in Afghanistan and Yemen, this includes nearly 50 per cent of children; and, in Somalia, close to 60 per cent.
Brown University’s Cost of Wars project carried out a separate study in 2021 in which it found that the United States’ post-9/11 wars displaced at least 38 million people – more than any conflict since 1900 if we do not take World War II into consideration. Moreover, 38 million appears to be a rather modest estimate. The total number of displaced persons could be closer to 49 to 60 million, which is comparable to that of WWII.
This latest May 2023 study cited above pointed out that substantially large proportions of innocent civilians are still perishing in that they are dying from direct combat or famine to this day. In many instances and to a great extent, the U.S.-engineered wars have impeded or destroyed access to safe drinking water and sanitation for adults and children in which case many succumb to debilitating or deadly diseases which would otherwise be treatable. Due to these U.S. and NATO-orchestrated wars, death tolls have reached imponderable proportions. Millions more innocent civilians have been casualties, suffering inestimable hardships.
After two decades of war under U.S. military occupation, Afghanistan resembles an apocalypse. “Today the Afghans are suffering in misery and dying from war-related causes at higher rates than ever,” Brown University’s Cost of Wars recorded. Significantly higher death rates and lower life expectancies were noted with a considerably high number of people who live in abject poverty and particularly those from deprived circumstances and marginalized groups. In military zones and conflict areas in close proximity, children and minors, in general, are believed to be 20 times more likely to die from, for instance, diarrheal disease than from the military conflict itself. Generally speaking, all wars tend to cause indirect deaths which sadly represent the majority of the lives lost.
In the 2023 report, many long-term war consequences for human health have not been fully accounted for. Some demographic groups, particularly women and children, bear the brunt and suffer the most due to the permanent consequences of the prior wars.
The Brown University study emphasized that the post-9/11 wars have caused widespread economic and financial hardship for people living in the war zones coupled with food insecurity and malnutrition which normally go hand in hand with poverty leading to diseases and death. The trend is particularly severe amongst children under the age of five.
The damage to infrastructure and often total destruction which occurs during wars certainly has devastating cumulative consequences. “Hospitals, clinics, and medical supplies, water and sanitation systems, electricity, roads and traffic signals, infrastructure for farming and shipping goods, and much more are destroyed, damaged and disrupted, with detrimental consequences for human health,” the report acknowledged.
As a stark reminder, we should recall some of the other major wars waged by the U.S. war machine: the Korean War (1950-53); the Vietnam War (1965-1975); and the Gulf War (1990-91).
A detailed list of instances in which the U.S. used its armed forces abroad can be seen in a Congressional Research Service report here.
Among the most prominent military interventions abroad during the Cold War are the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba during Kennedy’s administration (here), Reagan’s deployment of U.S. Marines to Beirut during the Lebanese civil war (here), the invasion of Grenada (here) and the bombing of Tripoli in Libya, both also under Reagan (here).
Under George HW Bush, thousands of U.S. troops invaded Panama in 1989 to overthrow dictator and CIA asset Manuel Noriega (here) and thousands of troops were sent to Somalia on an alleged peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s following the dissolution of the Soviet Union (here).
Under Bill Clinton, U.S. troops were sent to Haiti (here) as well as to the Balkans as part of a larger NATO deployment (here, here).
Under Barack Obama, the United States and its NATO partners conducted months-long air strikes in Libya (here) and military operations against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (here).
Donald Trump launched military operations attacking Syrian government targets (here, here) and sanctioned the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike (here).
Reading about these atrocities and mentally dealing with all the facts and figures somehow logically brings us to the recent blood-curdling words from the abhorrent US Senator Lindsey Graham while visiting Kiev.
Graham gloated about “Russians dying” and how U.S. military aid to the Nazi-infested Kiev regime to fight against Russia was “the best money spent”.
My own stream of consciousness brings me to a beautiful anecdote with a quote: Nikita Mikhalkov famously told prominent Serbian author Momo Kapor: “Have you noticed by any chance that there is no American movie in which at least one hundred people don’t die; they get murdered by a machine gun in rapid fire, they get blown up into the air in their cars just like that and nobody is in mourning for them afterwards, and neither do they find out who their mothers are, nor whether they might have a sister?… But 150 years ago, a student from St Petersburg, Russia, killed an old woman and academic dissertations are written on whether the student had a moral right to kill the old hag or not. Alas, that is the difference between them [Americans] and us [Russians]. The West only thinks of how to live, while we think why we live.”
This is who and what we are, Good Citizen, and what we do,
whether you want to know it or not...
"Putin And What Really Matters On The Chessboard"
"Putin And What Really Matters On The Chessboard"
By Pepe Escobar
"President Putin’s meeting with a group of Russian war correspondents and Telegram bloggers – including Filatov, Poddubny, Pegov from War Gonzo, Podolyaka, Gazdiev from RT – was an extraordinary exercise in freedom of the press. There were among them seriously independent journalists who can be very critical of the way the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) are conducting what can be alternatively defined as a Special Military Operation (SMO); a counter-terror operation (CTO); or an “almost war” (according to some influential business circles in Moscow).
It’s fascinating to see how these patriotic/independent journalists are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR, all of them, in their own way, deeply committed to guiding Russian society towards draining the swamp, slowly but surely. It’s clear Putin not only understands their role but sometimes, “shock to the system-style”, the system he presides actually implements the journalists’ suggestions. As a foreign correspondent working all over the world for nearly 40 years now, I have been quite impressed by the way Russian journalists may enjoy a degree of freedom unimaginable in most latitudes of the collective West.
The Kremlin transcript of the meeting shows Putin definitely not inclined to beat around the bush. He admitted there are “operetta Generals” in the Army; that there was a shortage of drones, precision munitions and communication equipment, now being addressed. He discussed the legality of mercenary outfits; the necessity of sooner or later installing a “buffer zone” to protect Russian citizens from systematic Kiev regime shelling; and he stressed that Russia will not answer Bandera-inspired terrorism with terrorism.
After examining the exchanges, a conclusion is imperative: Russian war media is not staging an offensive even as the collective West attacks Russia 24/7 with its massive NGO/soft power media apparatus. Moscow is not – yet? – fully engaged in the trenches of information warfare; as it stands Russian media is only playing defense.
All the way to Kiev? Arguably the money quote of the whole encounter is Putin’s concise, chilling evaluation of where we now stand in the chessboard: “We were forced to try to end the war that the West started in 2014 by force of arms. And Russia will end this war by force of arms, freeing the entire territory of the former Ukraine from the United States and Ukrainian Nazis. There are no other options. The Ukrainian army of the US and NATO will be defeated, no matter what new types of weapons it receives from the West. The more weapons there are, the fewer Ukrainians and what used to be Ukraine will remain. Direct intervention by NATO’s European armies will not change the outcome. But in this case, the fire of war will engulf the whole of Europe. It looks like the US is ready for that too.”
In a nutshell: this will only end on Russia’s terms, and only when Moscow evaluates all its objectives have been met. Anything else is wishful thinking.
Back on the frontlines, as pointed out by the indispensable Andrei Martyanov, first-class war correspondent Marat Kalinin has conclusively laid out how the current Ukrainian metal coffin counter-offensive has not been able to reach even the first Russian line of defense (they are a long – highway to hell – 10 km away). Everything NATO’s top proxy army ever assembled was able to accomplish so far was to get mercilessly slaughtered on an industrial scale.
Meet General Armageddon in action. Surovikin had eight months to place his footprint in Ukraine and from the beginning he understood exactly how to turn it into a whole new ballgame. Arguably the strategy is to completely destroy the Ukrainian forces between the first line of defense – assuming they ever breach it – and the second line, which is quite substantial. The third line will remain off limits.
Collective West MSM is predictably freaking out, finally starting to show horrendous Ukrainian losses and giving evidence of the utter accumulated incompetence of Kiev goons and their NATO military handlers. And just in case the going gets tough – for now a remote possibility – Putin himself has delivered the road map. Softly, softly. As in, “Do we need a march on Kiev? If yes, we need a new mobilization, if not, we do not need it. There is no need for mobilization right now.” The crucial operative words are “right now”. The end of all your elaborate plans
Meanwhile, away from the battlefield, the Russians are very much aware of the frantic geoeconomic activity. Moscow and Beijing increasingly trade in yuan and rubles. The ASEAN 10 are going all out for regional currencies, bypassing the US dollar. Indonesia and South Korea are turbo-charging trade in rupiah and won. Pakistan is paying for Russian oil in yuan. The UAE and India are increasing non-oil trade in rupees. Everyone and his neighbor are making a beeline to join BRICS+ – forcing a desperate Hegemon to start deploying an array of Hybrid War techniques.
It’s been a long way since Putin examined the chessboard in the early 2000s and then unleashed a crash missile program for defensive and offensive missiles. Over the next 23 years Russia developed hypersonic missiles, advanced ICBMs, and the most advanced defensive missiles on the planet. Russia won the missile race. Period. The Hegemon – obsessed by its own manufactured war against Islam – was completely blindsided and made no material missile advances in nearly two and a half decades. Now the “strategy” is to invent a Taiwan Question out of nothing, which is configuring the chessboard as the ante-chamber of no holds barred Hybrid War against Russia-China.
The proxy attack – via Kiev hyenas – against Russophone Donbass, egged on by the Straussian neocon psychos in charge of US foreign policy, murdered at least 14,000 men, women and children between 2014 to 2022. That was also an attack on China. The ultimate aim of this Divide and Rule gambit was to inflict defeat on China’s ally in the Heartland, so Beijing would be isolated. According to the neocon wet dream, all of the above would have enabled the Hegemon, once it had taken over Russia again as it did with Yeltsin, to blockade China from Russian natural resources using eleven US aircraft carrier task forces plus numerous submarines.
Obviously military science-impaired neocons are oblivious to the fact that Russia is now the strongest military power on the planet. In Ukraine, the neocons were hoping that a provocation would cause Moscow to deploy other secret weapons apart from hypersonic missiles, so Washington could better prepare for all-out war.
All those elaborate plans may have miserably floundered. But a corollary remains: the Straussian neocons firmly believe they may instrumentalize a few million Europeans – who’s next? Poles? Estonians? Latvians? Lithuanians? And why not Germans? – as cannon fodder as the US did in WWI and WWII, fought over the bodies of Europeans (including Russians) sacrificed to the same old Mackinder Anglo-Saxon power grab.
Hordes of European 5th columnists make it so much easier to “trust” the US to protect them, while only a few with an IQ over room temperature have understood who really bombed Nord Stream 1 and 2, with the connivance of the Liver Sausage German Chancellor.
The bottom line is that the Hegemon simply cannot accept a sovereign, self-sufficient Europe; only a dependent vassal, hostage to the seas that the US control. Putin clearly sees how the chessboard has been laid out. And he also sees how “Ukraine” does not even exist anymore. While no one was paying attention, last month the Kiev gang sold Ukraine to $8.5 trillion-worth BlackRock. Just like that. The deal was sealed between the Government of Ukraine and BlackRock’s VP Philipp Hildebrand.
They are setting up a Ukrainian Development Fund (UDF) for “reconstruction”, focused on energy, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and IT. All remaining valuable assets in what will be a rump Ukraine will be gobbled up by BlackRock: from Metinvest, DTEK (energy) and MJP (agriculture) to Naftogaz, Ukrainian Railways, Ukravtodor and Ukrenergo. What’s the point in going to Kiev then? High-grade toxic neoliberalism is already partying on the spot."
"Overwhelming Price Increases At Kroger! What's Next? What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/17/23
"Overwhelming Price Increases At Kroger!
What's Next? What's Coming?"
"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! This is a complete nightmare!"
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Full screen recommended.
The Real Economy, 6/16/233
"Insane High Food Prices Bring Huge Corporate Profits!
Grocery Prices Remain Inflated!"
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Friday, June 16, 2023
"Putin Says "F*** NATO", Will Attack Airbases; Germany To Get Nukes"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/16/23
"Putin Says "F*** NATO", Will Attack Airbases;
Germany To Get Nukes"
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"Can’t Get Cash Out Now"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 6/16/23
"Can’t Get Cash Out Now"
"We are seeing banks in Australia, limiting money that can be taken out. We now hear that crypto exchanges are freezing peoples account without notice or any explanation. Jerome Powell steps forward and says that the housing market has already bottomed out and it’s time to buy a house."
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"Why Are Prices Skyrocketing? Surviving An Economic Collapse; The Economic Data Is A Con"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 6/16/23
"Why Are Prices Skyrocketing?
Surviving An Economic Collapse; The Economic Data Is A Con"
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"20 Facts That Prove Americans Are Going Insane Due To The State Of The US Economy"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Facts That Prove Americans Are Going
Insane Due To The State Of The US Economy"
By Epic Economist
"Are you completely exhausted from seeing your bills piling up every month? Do you feel like no matter what you do, your financial situation never actually improves? Are you noticing that your purchasing power can't afford the same it used to just a few years back?
Money trouble is keeping a growing number of Americans up a night. There has been a lot of uncertainty in recent years about the U.S. economy with inflation, rising interest rates, and the threat of a deep recession. In a new survey by Bankrate, Americans rate financial concerns above health, current events, relationships, and work when it comes to the impact on their mental health. Compared to 42% just a year ago, now 52% of respondents say money has a negative impact on their well-being, causing stress, anxiety, worrisome thoughts, loss of sleep, and depression.
At this point, almost 25% of American adults are food insecure, a jump of about five percentage points from a year earlier as food inflation continues to squeeze household budgets, according to CBS News. Food insecurity indicates that someone isn't able to secure enough food for a nutritious diet, which can lead to skipping meals or cutting back on food. Those compromises, though, can have serious implications for a person's health and well-being, health specialists say. The rise in food insecurity comes as more households are struggling to pay their grocery bills given that costs have surged by over 20% since 2022.
Moreover, the pandemic and the following economic downturn have lowered the living standards of millions of US workers, and according to a study published by Newswire, nearly half of Americans, or 45% say they can't afford their previous lifestyle. Eight out of 10 or 83% of respondents expect the cost of living will become somewhat more or much more expensive in the coming year. Meanwhile, 65% of Americans agree with the statement 'My income has not increased as fast at the cost of food, beverage, and personal care products.'
Bankrate reports that more than two-thirds of Americans say they’re worried they wouldn’t be able to cover their living expenses for just one month if they suddenly lost their primary source of income. In other words, many people out there are hanging by a thread financially, and several workers are just one missed paycheck away from falling into poverty.
On top of that, more people are using their credit cards to finance everyday necessities. Credit card debt has been rising at the fastest pace of any other consumer debt, with 46% of cardholders carrying debt month to month in 2023. One year ago, only 39% carried debt month to month. Data has also shown that 30% of Americans have between $1,001 and $5,000 in credit card debt, 15% have $5,001 or more in credit card debt and about 6% have more than $10,000 in credit card debt. And even though 6% may seem like a small share, that represents over 14 million people. It’s evident that the average American is being hit from all sides, and today, we decided to compile several facts and stats to prove you're not alone in this."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. 
Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."
Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”
“Into The Night”
by Chet Raymo
“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.
Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.
Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.
The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.
In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.
One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.
He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.
That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”
"Just Look At Us..."
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
- Michael Ellner
○
"Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 3000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position.
As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."
- Alan Watts
“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
by Paul Rosenberg
“This is a beautiful planet, filled, in the main, with decent, cooperative humans. And yet, I want out. Give me any kind of functional spaceship and any reasonable chance, and I’ll take it. This place is anti-human. It chokes the best that’s in us, aggressively and self-righteously. I was struck not long ago by a comment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, in which he expressed the same kind of feeling: “I ought to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth…”
All of us who’ve had a moment of transcendence - who made some type of contact with what is truly the best inside ourselves - have also sensed that life in the current world is incompatible with it. I think we should stop burying that understanding beneath piles of “that’s the way things are,” “we should be realistic,” and “you can’t fight City Hall.”
Screw the way things are, screw “realistic,” and screw City Hall too. I was made for better things than this, and you were too.
Everywhere I turn, some kind of ruler, sub-ruler, enforcer, regulator, or “right-thinking” quasi-enforcer demands not only my money but also for me to make myself easy to punish, thus showing myself to be a good subservient. That’s not just wrong; it’s a disease. I don’t care whether such people are “following orders,” “just doing their job,” or whatever else they tell themselves to soothe their rightly troubled souls. That mode of living is perverse, and these people are enforcing a disease.
Let me make this part very clear: The desire to control others is disease; it is corruption. Willing controllers are a morally inferior class. And the truly deranged thing is that these people rule the world! Forget about why this is so - we can debate that later - focus rather on the utter insanity of this: A minority of moral defectives, who think extortion is a virtue, rule people who are happy to live and let live, by force.
That’s outright lunacy. And to support the lunacy, we have lies, intimidation, and slogans: “In a democracy, you’re really ruling yourself,” “Only crazy people disagree,” “It’s always been this way,” and so on. To all of which I reply, How stupid do you think we are? You drilled that crap into us when we were children, but we’re not children anymore. And if “our way” isn’t as bad as North Korea, that makes it right? Only to a fool.
And the results of “the way it’s always been”… my God, the results… A study from the 1980s found that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. During this period there have been 14,531 wars, large and small, in which 3.6 billion people have been killed.
This is what I’m supposed to serve with all my heart and soul? A Bronze Age system that can’t keep itself from slaughter? We’re talking about a 5,600-year track record of mass death, and yet fundamental change is considered unthinkable? Well, screw that too, because I think deep, fundamental change is called for, and was called for a long time ago.
Again, this is a wonderful planet and most of the people on it are decent, but it is ruled by insanity, and I want out. Yes, I know, there’s really nowhere to go. Every place I might go is dominated by the same diseased model, and dissent is punished the same, and in some places worse. That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.
I’ll draw this to a close with a passage from C. Delisle Burns’s wonderful "The First Europe," describing why the Roman Empire collapsed: “Great numbers of men and women were unwilling to make the effort required for the maintenance of the old order, not because they were not good enough to fulfill their civic duties, but because they were too good to be satisfied with a system from which so few derived benefit.”
I, for one, am unwilling to expend any effort to maintain the present order. It is by its nature incompatible with the best that is in us, and always will be. Those of us who want to be more and better cannot support the current order without opposing what’s best in ourselves. Screw that.”
"On The Meridian Of Time..."
“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”
- Henry Miller
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“In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.
Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.
Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.
In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
- William Saroyan,
"The Time of Your Life" (1939)
"RFK Jr. Says He Must "Be Careful" The CIA Doesn't Assassinate Him"
"RFK Jr. Says He Must "Be Careful"
The CIA Doesn't Assassinate Him"
by Steve Watson
"During a discussion with Joe Rogan, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted that he is putting his life in danger by speaking out about the assassinations of his uncle and his father, and that he “takes precautions” to ensure the CIA doesn’t kill him. Rogan asked RFK Jr. what he thought would happen if he managed to get into office, to which Kennedy replied “I gotta be careful.I’m aware of that, you know, I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it - at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions,” he added.
Kennedy spoke about his Uncle JFK being “at war” with the military industrial complex, and asserted that the intelligence agencies were “trying to trick him” into launching military excursions into Cuba and Vietnam. RFK Jr. again spoke about JFK eventually concluding that he must “shatter” the CIA “into a thousands pieces” and “scatter it to the winds.”
“JFK learned very early on that the purpose of the CIA and the intelligence apparatus was to create a constant pipeline of new wars for them, for the military industrial complex,” Kennedy noted, adding that JFK was adamant that “it’s not the United States’ jobs to dictate what kind of governments other countries have.”
RFK Jr. continued, “in October of 1963 he heard that some of his Green Berets had been killed… and he said I want a total casualty list from Vietnam. His aide came to him and said 75 Americans have died, he said that’s too many and he signed that day a national security directive ordering all troops out of Vietnam… the first thousand over the next month and then the rest by the beginning of 1965, and um and then a month later he was killed.” Watch:
"Russia/Ukraine 6/16/23"
Col. Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls, 6/16/23
"The Ukrainians Got Obliterated Far
From The Russian Security Line"
"Ukraine news today and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America. Colonel Douglas Macgregor's Ukraine Russia war update, Russian offensive, Ukraine counter offensive, war update."
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/16/23
"NATO's Bad Plan & the Ukrainian Offensive,
Larry Johnson fmr. CIA"
Comments here:
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"Scott Ritter, 6/16/23
"The Latest Russian Spring Offensive"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Call the Exorcists!"
"Call the Exorcists!"
by Jim Kunstler
“Modern states are powerful things, vast machines built of human components that act according to their own logic and towards their own ends.” - Eugypius on Substack
"As a Jewish American, and a connoisseur of my people’s folklore, I bring to your attention the troublesome figure of the dybbuk (dih-bik), a disembodied demon that, because of its sins, wanders restlessly among us and can enter the flesh of a living person, who will then afflict and torment the community until properly exorcised by a minyan of rabbis garbed in white burial shrouds wielding sacred oaths.
Thus, I give you Andrew Weissmann, Esq., attorney at law, the American chief dybbuk, on the scene for decades now, sowing mischief and woe, leading an unholy host of fellow dybbukim calling itself Lawfare to infest the courts and meddle in elections. Think: Michael Sussman, an imp of RussiaGate; Michael Bromwich, former DOJ Inspector General (!) and then advisor to one Christine Blasey Ford (remember her?), David Laufman, erstwhile DOJ counter-intel goblin and Blasey Ford “beach friend” errand boy, Marc Elias, engineer extraordinaire of ballot harvesting operations in the 2020 election and many related pranks, Dan Goldman, lead counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment against Donald J. Trump…dybbuks all!
The dybbuk Weissmann is best known, of course, for directing the Special Counsel’s “Russian Collusion” campaign (2017 – 2019) in the mental absence of its nominal chief, Robert Mueller, an endeavor that, in the end, could not find any instance of then-President Trump colluding with said Russians - but did, via a firehose of media leaks, succeed in casting a Trump derangement spell over half the US population. Dybbuk Weissmann lately haunts the MSNBC cable news channel as a “legal analyst.”
And yet, this shape-shifting fiend turns up again now in the Biden family global bribery matter, of all things. See if you can follow the convoluted tale coming out of Dybbuk Central a.k.a. Ukraine and the FBI. You may already know that in May, 2014, R. Hunter Biden, son of then-vice president Joe Biden, was appointed to the board of the Ukrainian natgas company Burisma, where he was paid $80,000-a-month for his expertise (he had none) in the global gas industry. As it happened, at exactly the same time Veep Joe Biden was appointed as then-President Barack Obama’s “point man” in Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan Coup, engineered by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the CIA, that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
By and by, Ukraine elected a new American-friendly president, Petro Poroshenko. Burisma was owned by an oligarch name of Mykola Zlochevsky. Apparently, the $80-K-a-month for Hunter Biden was not enough. The friendly American veep, Joe Biden, pressed Burisma’s Zlochevsky to provide $5-million payment each to Hunter and himself for additional Biden family services in Ukraine.
President Petro Poroshenko had a political confident and fixer (problem solver) named Oleksandr Onyshchenko, then a member of Ukraine’s parliament. In the 2015-16 time-frame, Onyshchenko conveyed a message to Zlochevsky that paying large sums of money to the Bidens might not be a good idea. Somehow, Onyshchenko’s complaints about the Bidens’ grift operation made it into the leading Kiev newspaper. As we all know, in November, 2016, Donald Trump was elected US President. Catastrophe! Freak-out in the US embassy in Kiev!
December, 2016, American Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanowicth, sent panicky emails to the folks back home about Onyshschenko’s allegations of Biden bribery. One of the recipients was a CIA agent implanted in the National Security Council name of Eric Ciaramella, later known as the Ukraine Phone Call Whistleblower.
Now, you may recall that in the summer of 2019, the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop, one John Paul Mac Isaac, came into possession of a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden - under law, being left 90-days after repairs were made - and seeing its startling contents, tried to give it to the FBI, but was rebuffed. By then, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella had blown his whistle over a phone call Mr. Trump made to new Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky inquiring about the Bidens’ doings there. Later that fall, with impeachment proceedings started against President Trump, FBI agents came back at Mr. Mac Isaac and took the computer into the agency’s possession.
Consider that FBI Director Christopher Wray must have known about the laptop coming into his HQ and what it contained - and known that throughout the impeachment and Senate trial proceedings of Mr. Trump, And, of course, Mr. Wray did not volunteer any of this evidence about the Bidens to Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys. Nor did then-Attorney General William Barr, Mr. Wray’s superior. Odd, a little bit?
Spool back a few years now: turns out that in December, 2016, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, had gone to the FBI with a hoard of audiotapes made by Burisma chief Zlochevsky of phone calls between Veep Joe Biden and Ukraine President Poroshenko. Zlochevsky was now freaked-out that President-elect Donald Trump might have a whole different attitude toward Ukraine than the Obama-Biden admin had. The Burisma chief had gotten a hold of the tapes as, shall we say, an insurance policy in case his sketchy Ukrainian government and their even sketchier US State Department and CIA handlers happened to give him any guff about his operations. By then, Mr. Onyshchenko had been officially designated an FBI Confidential Human Source. Turns out he had been playing both sides, informing the American Intel Community about dark matters in the upper echelons of Ukraine for some time, was trusted, and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the US for his efforts.
Now, guess who got into the act at just moment (Dec 16, 2016) that Confidential Human Source Mr. Onyshchenko came forward with Zlochevsky’s Poroshenko-Biden tapes: the American Lawfare dybbuk Andrew Weissmann - of all people! What was poor naïve Mr. Onyshchenko thinking when he handed evidence of Democratic Party bigwig Veep Joe Biden’s moneygrubbing over to Barack Obama’s Department of Justice?
And guess what happened to the audiotaped evidence of the extravagant gifts to Hunter and Joe Biden: pffffftttttt…! It went up in a vapor. Dybbuk Weissmann, then working as the chief of the DOJ’s fraud division, made the whole thing go away. Just. Like. That. Dybbuk Weissmann made sure that the DOJ and the FBI officially discontinued having any interest in whatever the Biden family might have been up to in Ukraine.
And guess what happened next to Mr. Onyshchenko: he was charged with lying and corruption by his own (Ukrainian) government and became an international fugitive when the US Intel Community demurred to let him escape to the United States. And guess who is now in fear of his life.
And, by the way, subsequent phone call recordings dating from December 19, 2016, are now circulating freely in the US of then-Ukraine President Poroshenko thanking then-Veep Joe Biden for getting the US DOJ off the case. As reported by Stephen McIntyre on Twitter (@ClimateAudit): Biden re-assured Poroshenko that the FBI had “stopped” and there was “no reason [for FBI] to talk to him again.” Biden undertook to “check that [with FBI] and confirm that with you.”
So fast forward to the present moment. Senator Chuck Grassley made a speech on the Senate Floor this week revealing the existence of all these tape recordings that detail $5-million plus $5-million bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky to the Biden family. Podcaster Dan Bongino has played them on his show several times this past week (episodes 2020, 2031, and 2032). Go there and listen for yourself.
Note, too, that dybbuk Andrew Weissmann is still at large in our land dybbuking-up a storm again just this past week with an article in The Atlantic titled "Jack Smith’s Backup Operation" suggesting that if Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago papers case against Donald Trump happens to fizzle, yet another case can be opened against the former President in the New Jersey federal district court. Isn’t it about time to call in that minyan of rabbinical exorcists and expel this demon from America’s body politic?"
"So What Comes Between Now & 2032?" (Excerpt)
"So What Comes Between Now & 2032?"
by Martin Armstrong
Excerpt: "The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States demonstrates one thing – the rest of the West is not included. Yet 2032 is more than just the culmination of the current 51.6-year wave of the Economic Confidence Model. It is the subsequent set of 309.6 years waves from the peak in the Roman Empire which all historians draw the line in history as the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180AD). That was when Marcus sent an ambassador to the Emperor of China.
If you read Marcus Aurelius’s "Meditations", you are left with the feeling that there is nothing new. History repeats because human nature itself has never changed and people will always act in their own self-interest no matter what century. All we have ever witnessed through time in the memorial is fake news steeped in opinion rather than fact."
Full, extensively illustrated article is here:
Bill Bonner, "Hard Country, Soft Money"
"Hard Country, Soft Money"
When sales go down, prices go down,
and real interest rates go up...
By Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "A cab driver in Dublin: “Are ye from America? I went there once. In the 1980s, that was in New Jersey. In Hoboken. I only intended to stay for a while, but they were paying up to $300 per day for people to work there. On construction. It was a rough place.
One time, I was out at a bar until after midnight. As I was walking home, I got a tap on my shoulder. It was a policeman. “Don’t you worry, Paddy," he said to me. “But check your pocket…that man over there (he pointed out a man on the opposite side of the street) just picked your pocket." So, I checked. And my money was gone. But I only had $11 in my pocket.
The policeman arrested him. And then they were going to have a trial. And they wanted me to testify. But I didn’t want to give up a day’s work for the $11 that was stolen from me…which I had already gotten back. But they told me it was my duty. So, I went to the trial and testified. And the man was convicted of petty theft. And then I got a shocker. The judge gave him an 11 month sentence. One month in jail for every dollar he had stolen. I knew then that it was time to go home. America is a hard country.”
“I’d Rather Be A Hammer…” All week long we’ve been puzzling over how hard America has become. Its military/industrial/prison…etc…complex controls the government. Look in its pockets and you will find almost every member of Congress – Republican or Democrat. Check the list of donors to prominent US think tanks…there, you will find our most prominent ‘defense companies.’
The press and the universities are in on it too – convinced that every nail needs a hammer. At home and abroad, we pound away…targeting ‘terrorists’ in wheelchairs…and locking up dimwits for unauthorized visits to the nation’s Capitol. How that fits into the deep currents of history…and the Primary Trends of our markets…is our main concern. So, let’s see.
The Fed pauses…the Stansberry Wire reports: "After 15 months of consecutive interest rate hikes, Federal Reserve officials decided to pause at their recent meeting. However, they indicated that they are likely to resume tightening measures in the future to address concerns about inflation. In a statement released by the Federal Open Market Committee, they mentioned that keeping the target range steady during this meeting allows them to evaluate additional information and its impact on monetary policy."
Cracked Rear View: What is this ‘additional information’ that the Fed is likely to receive? The whole idea of being ‘data dependent’ is a fraud. The ‘data’ is history. It is only the future that the Fed can influence. And so far, the Fedsters have proven very bad at forecasting. That’s why we have 5% inflation… because the Fed’s 1,000 economists didn’t see it coming. Expecting 2% – they kept its key lending rate far too low for far too long…resulting in far too much debt…and an economy that is far too fragile to survive honest interest rates.
So, it ‘pauses’ – with its key rate only about even with inflation…the real yield on the 10-year Treasury bond still negative…and the S&P 500 still more expensive than it was in 1929. In other words, the Fed is still encouraging people – especially the government and its aforementioned military/industrial…etc…complex – to borrow, spend and invest. And it is hoping that the inflation rate keeps coming down so it can go back into Full Inflation Mode.
But today we will guess about what it is that the Fed has not seen coming this time. The country may be hard. And the money may be soft. But it’s not nearly as soft as it used to be. Here’s Fortune: "Deutsche Bank puts U.S. recession chances near 100%—avoiding hard landing “unprecedented.” “Avoiding a hard landing would be historically unprecedented,” warned group chief economist David Folkerts-Landau in a research report entitled "The Clock is Ticking" published on Wednesday.
What happens in a recession? Sales go down. Prices go down. And real interest rates (after inflation) go up. The higher real rates, along with lower sales and profits, make it harder for companies to pay their bills. Zerohedge tells us what comes next: "The End Of Easy Money: Bankruptcy Filings Pile Up At Fastest Rate Since 2010." "A cleansing process, long overdue, to whittle down the corporate debt overhang and clear out deadwood, at the expense of investors...
It’s turning into a banner year for corporate bankruptcy filings, after years of Easy Money that caused all kinds of excesses, fueled by yield-chasing investors, in an environment where the Fed had repressed yields with all its might. Those yield-chasing investors kept even the most over-indebted zombies supplied with ever-more fresh money. But that era has ended. Interest rates are much higher, and investors are getting a little more prudent, and Easy Money is gone. Companies that couldn’t quite make ends meet when they could borrow money at 3%, explains Wolf Richter, are now forced to borrow at 7%. Unable to refinance…or to carry more expensive debt…they are going belly up."
Dear readers, their quick minds stimulated by the emergency, will have no trouble following the balls as they ricochet across the table. Many of these companies owe money to banks as well as to bond holders. Many of these creditors have creditors of their own. And the US government too, recently released from its debt ceiling ankle bracelet, and eager to keep the money flowing to its favorite cronies, fantasies and incompetents, is now in need of nearly a trillion more dollars in funding.
Alas…“the Easy Money is gone.” Tune in on Monday for more of the story."
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up, 6/16/23"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 6/16/23"
Trump Surrounded, War Closer, Dollar Trouble
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Donald Trump has been charged with 37 felony counts in the infamous “Classified Documents Case” brought by the Biden Department of Justice. Trump appears to be surrounded by evil. It is more of “get Trump at any cost” because the Democrats, let alone Joe Biden cannot beat Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election. As I have said many times before, the real Biden approval rating is just 9%, not the 40% you hear of from the Lying Legacy Media (LLM.) A 9% approval number might make it impossible to cheat Biden in. So, it looks like the Democrats are going to get the GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, any way they can. Trump is ahead of the field by a very wide margin. By the way, the LLM made sure you did not hear from Donald Trump after this historic indictment because they cut him off. The LLM is non-news that lies by omission too.
The Ukraine war continues to go badly for the Ukrainians. The so-called “counter offensive” you may have heard about is over almost before it started because the Russians cremated the Ukrainians and NATO – once again. Now, Putin is warning that Ukraine is not going to be a country in the not-so-distant future. Is a much bigger war coming? It sure looks that way.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (PCR) was on USAWatchdog.com this week to talk about the Trump indictment. PCR called them “A gang of criminals trying Trump.” PCR also took time to comment on the U.S. dollar and all the countries shunning use of the dollar in global trade. Dr. PCR, who was a former Assistant Treasury Secretary, is warning of a “coming collapse of the dollar.” This is what is coming if enough countries ditch use of the U.S. dollar according to PCR. Is this why the Fed is not cutting interest rates and only “pausing” the increases? There is much more in the 52-minute newscast."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/16/23.
Thursday, June 15, 2023
Musical Interlude: Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Full screen recommended
Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Life, magnificent Life...
"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."
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