Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, January 6, 2024
"All We Really Need..."
"Causes do matter. And the world is changed by people who care deeply about causes,about things that matter. We don't have to be particularly smart or talented. We don't need a lot of money or education. All we really need is to be passionate about something important; something bigger than ourselves. And it's that commitment to a worthwhile cause that changes the world."
- Steve Goodier
"Find the things that matter, and hold on to them,
and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."
- Lauren Oliver
"Honey Badgers"
Full screen recommended.
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 1/6/24
"Houthi Continue Red Sea Attacks Targeting US, Israel"
Comments here:
o
"Honey Badgers"
Scott Ritter has humorously described the Yemeni Houthis as "the honey badgers of the Middle East, absolutely fearless and relentlessly ferocious." They just simply don't care. They've declared war on Israel while all the other Muslim states except Algeria just talk, and daily send missiles and drones to attack Israel and attack any ships connected to Israel in any way. They totally control the 12 mile wide Bab-el-Mandab ("Gate of Grief") strait connecting the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, which transits 40% of the world's oil. Closing that would have catastrophic consequences on global economies, and the Houthis know it. And so it is...
Full screen recommended.
"Honey Badger Takes Savagery to a Whole New Level"
"Honey badgers are the Italian mafia of the animal kingdom. No one, and I mean no one, wants to mess with these savages. They literally woke up and chose violence on the daily. They are regarded as the most fearless animal in the wild and they back that up every day, all while looking like a ferret on steroids.
Honey badgers woke up and chose violence. They'll combat anything from lions, leopards, hyenas and even cobras and pythons. But how did they become so fearless? How do these compact sized danger-weasels take on the deadliest predators like it was a regular Sunday’s brunch with the girls? These are moments of honey badgers being straight up savages. Let's get into it."
Comments here:
"War: Geopolitical Ukraine and Middle East Update 1/6/24"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 1/6/24
"Gaza War To Burn Middle East -
Houthi Terror In Red Sea, Hezbollah vs Israel"
Comments here:
Comments: Some valid factual Middle East contextual observations: Game over!
• Gaza: 22,000 innocent men, women, old people and 11,000 children have been killed by the IDF dropping over 6,000 2,000 lb. bombs supplied by the United States. The entire 2 billion Muslim world is absolutely and rightfully enraged.
• Turkey has a 2 million man totally modern and equipped professional military, whom Scott Ritter describes as "ferocious fighters" which includes a powerful air force and navy, and huge missile stockpiles. They could very rapidly eliminate the IDF.
• Syria can and will retake the occupied Golan Heights. The IDF has neither the troops or the resources to stop this.
• Hezzbollah has 100,000 very well trained and equipped professional soldiers, battle hardened by 10 years of involvement in the Syrian civil war. Doug Macgregor states they have 140,000 missiles which can reach anywhere in Israel.
• Hamas in Gaza has fought the IDF to a standstill and withdraw while only using a fraction of their reported 30,000 fighters.
• The entry of Iran into a wider regional war is a distinct probability, adding it's huge military and 10's of thousands of missiles stockpiles to the mix.
• The Yemeni Houthis, whom Ritter describes as the honey badgers of the Middle East, absolutely fearless and ferocious, have closed the Red Sea to all shipping causing enormous financial losses not only to Israel but the global economy. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dare not attempt to intervene under threat of Houthis completely destroying their petroleum facilities.
• The Egyptian government, while reluctant, may be forced into the conflict by the political pressure of their absolutely enraged population which is demanding action.
• Israel's only ally is the United States, which is totally impotent to assist them, lacking the troops and ability to intervene. The US Navy fleet are useless sitting ducks, targets for precise missile strikes, and would very rapidly be destroyed, including the aircraft carriers.
Your thoughts and comments?
Dan, I Allegedly, "Do You See It?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 1/6/24
"Do You See It?"
"The economy is crashing all around us. Now PepsiCo is getting kicked out of 12,000 stores in France because they’re just raising prices too much. My insurance man lost his agency because he was fighting for clients and wanted to make sure that they were getting a fair settlement. What’s next?"
Comments here:
Canadian Prepper, "Here We Go, End Game Begins"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/5/24
"Here We Go, End Game Begins"
Comments here:
Friday, January 5, 2024
"Zombies Flood Target Stores For Stanley Cup; FED Has Crushed The Middle Class; Living In Your Car"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/5/24
"Zombies Flood Target Stores For Stanley Cup;
FED Has Crushed The Middle Class; Living In Your Car"
Comments here:
"Things Just Went From Bad To Worse, It's Shocking How Bad This Is"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/5/24
"Things Just Went From Bad To Worse,
It's Shocking How Bad This Is"
"In the unfolding narrative of America's economic landscape, the situation has taken a distressing turn, progressing from bad to worse in ways that have left many stunned. As we delve into the intricacies of this disconcerting scenario, a cascade of alarming developments reveals a nation grappling with financial hardships, social unrest, and a deepening sense of economic precarity. Things just went from bad to worse, and it's shocking how bad this is."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Who knows what evil lurks in the eyes of galaxies? The Hubble knows -- or in the case of spiral galaxy M64 - is helping to find out. Messier 64, also known as the Evil Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, may seem to have evil in its eye because all of its stars rotate in the same direction as the interstellar gas in the galaxy's central region, but in the opposite direction in the outer regions. Captured here in great detail by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, enormous dust clouds obscure the near-side of M64's central region, which are laced with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen associated with star formation.
M64 lies about 17 million light years away, meaning that the light we see from it today left when the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees roamed the Earth. The dusty eye and bizarre rotation are likely the result of a billion-year-old merger of two different galaxies."
"No Smooth Road..."
"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere
of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,
till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."
- W. C. Doane
Free Download: Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
“The Farewell”
“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”
- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
o
“The Prophet: On Good and Evil”
by Kahlil Gibran
“Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among
perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root
that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root,
“Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.”
For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep
while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways,
and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and
bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
“Wherefore are you slow and halting?”
For the truly good ask not the naked,
“Where is your garment?”
nor the houseless, “What has befallen your house?”
Freely download “The Prophet” here:
o
"The War Within"
"The War Within"
by Ben Bartree
"I fantasized in elaborate detail about killing myself today, an occurrence far more common than I would prefer. This obsessive-compulsive demon has a hold of me, whether literal or figurative. I don’t mean OCD in the colloquial sense that people use it to describe an anal-retentive need for paintings to be straight on the wall or tax records neatly filed.
I mean OCD in the sense of a demon, literal or figurative, hijacking my mind and running it into a wall with nonstop, invasive, recurring, unwanted obsessive thoughts from dawn until dusk, with never anything close to a resolution, followed by soul-crushing, ritualistic compulsions in a vain attempt to exorcise the demon. Since I was ten years old, every waking moment has been spent with this monster. Sometimes it’s quieter than other times, but there are no vacations. I am a prisoner in an invisible prison.
No volume or variety of self-medication - and I’ve tried them all, short of renouncing the world and relocating to a monastery on a Himalayan mountaintop - have thus far yielded any lasting relief. To this demon I attribute years of substance abuse - including a hellish alcohol and Xanax addiction that took years of effort to overcome - and various other coping mechanisms in a desperate attempt at escape, but which have only extended and enhanced the misery.
I remember vividly - the most vivid memory I have, perhaps - like it was yesterday the moment it got ahold of me. The most striking aspect of its onset is that it came apparently apropos of nothing. At ten years old, circa 1997, I sat watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" on the television in the living room. The day was overcast; a drizzle fell outside all around the Georgia pine trees right outside the window. Then it came over me in a flash: existential dread; something was very wrong. I felt sure that tragedy was imminent. But the damnedest thing was that there was no environmental stimulus to cause it.
This was my first panic attack, but I lacked the knowledge or vernacular to understand what was happening. It was far from the last. Maybe if someone had been there with me to nip it in the bud, I might have foregone a lot of pain. But they weren’t, and it festered.
Does writing this down make me weak? Am I supposed to figure this shit out on my own in a closet like old times? It certainly gives ammunition to my enemies. C’est la vie.
I want nothing more than to vanquish it, but at times, like today, I come to the end of my rope. A poet or a philosopher or someone once observed that “irony is the song of the bird that has come to love its cage.” I know the tune - and if you read Armageddon Prose you’ve seen it sung - but I don’t want to sing it anymore. It’s a rotten, dead-end hymnal.
Among such many attempts in vain to fix this, I’ve talked to a Ukrainian psychoanalytic therapist located in Lviv for a while now, whom I digitally met by way of a tangential connection to my wife. While I’ve gained some insights, it hasn’t helped much, which I don’t necessarily fault her for. Anyway, my wife once asked me not to talk about it with her parents - which I wouldn’t have anyway, as I would wish them to believe they’ve given their only daughter over to competent hands - because, in Slavic culture, talking to a shrink is considered a mark of shame.
A guy in her village killed himself a few years ago over some psychological/spiritual affliction, and as a consequence, he was buried in the corner of the cemetery - a tainted soul, even in death. It’s healthy to socially disincentivize self-indulgent navel-gazing and suicide to some extent, which I respect. But that no one got to him before he took the ultimate trip is a tragedy.
Is there a point to all of this suffering, or at least a merciful end to it that doesn’t involve the end of everything? I hope so. What I hope to get out of sharing this intensely personal albatross with you, I surely don’t know - but not pity, a drug as poisonous as fentanyl. Perhaps it’s to feel a little less alone in this prison. Maybe someone can relate. Maybe you. Here’s hoping I summon some better answers in 2024."
"Could Be Worse..."
"I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse."
- Jim Butcher
Dig your way out, they said...
"So You Remember..."
So, you look around in horrified astonishment at how totally insane it all really is, how the never ending bad news is everywhere you look, how truly hopeless it really is, and know there's nothing at all you can do about it, can't save anyone, can't even save yourself. So you remember what they said and how you need to be, and carry on...
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
“That millions of people share the same forms of
mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
- Erich Fromm, "The Sane Society"
“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing
yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”
- Jim Butcher, "Changes"
And yet, sometimes, at the end of another long day,
your defenses are just worn out and it feels like you're losing your mind,
and you lose control and feel like this...
Full screen recommended.
The Trashmen, "Surfin Bird - Bird is the Word," 1963
Until tomorrow, when you do it all over again...
And so it is, lol...
Jim Kunstler, "Replacement Theory"
"Replacement Theory"
by Jim Kunstler
“When DEI is under attack, what do we do?
Stand up, fight back!!! We stand for Claudine Gay.”
- The Rev. Al Sharpton
"Wondering about who the Harvard Board of Trustees might consider for president of that august outfit once Claudine Gay moves to her new professorship in the graduate program for creative writing? The no-brainer, in more ways than one, has got to be Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, launched in 2020, then un-launched in September, 2023, after BU auditors disclosed that $43-million in donations, endowments, and grants to the center could not be accounted for.
Mistakes were made, BU conceded, mostly by white people seeking to discredit the antiracism movement, proving the persistence of structural racism. Dr. Kendi explained to The New York Times that critics were using the situation “to settle old scores and demonstrate that I’m a problem or that antiracism is a problem,” because blaming the victim is one of the core techniques of those behind structural racism. “Unfortunately, we live in such a polarized, spiteful sort of reactionary moment,” he said.
Surely, the firing of President Gay at Harvard was just such a case of spitefully settling old scores, and Dr. Kendi is the best-qualified candidate to root out the remaining reactionary racists on Harvard’s payroll, who pose the gravest threat to democracy, hate-speech elimination, and equity in academia. We could expect President Kendi to double-down on the institution’s commitment to advancing marginalized people at all costs. Also, consider: Boston U is less than a mile across the Charles River from Harvard, so at least no moving costs to get Dr. Kendi on-board — what with some of the school’s biggest donors (e.g., Wall Street’s Bill Ackman) threatening to withhold future giftings to Harvard’s hedge fund, a.k.a., its endowment.
Perhaps a shrewder hire would be Admiral Rachel (née Richard) Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, one of the chief overseers (whoops), I mean, administrators of America’s official Covid-19 policies, and chief promoter of mRNA vaccine mandates. Wikipedia tells us: “Levine was commissioned as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, becoming the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the United States uniformed services as well as the first female four-star admiral in the Commissioned Corps,” evading the fact that s/he is not actually a female, but rather a male pretending to be a female, with scrupulous attention to hair and costume.
Readers can argue as to whether female is interchangeable with the word woman and whether imagining oneself to be a woman is the same as being a woman. But you see this would be exactly the advantage of putting Dr. (pediatrician) Levine in the president’s chair at Harvard: the nation’s attention would shift dramatically from the quandaries of racism and anti-racism to the even richer perplexities of gender identity, while exposing the baleful influence of men who remain on the Harvard faculty in promoting intransigent patriarchy, often tinged with toxic whiteness.
As president of Harvard, Dr. Levine could elevate and emphasize the importance of pretending in higher education. Of course, pretending is already well-established in academic journals and publishing, and especially lately in the medical science surrounding one of Dr. Levine’s specialties, Covid-19 (and its remedies). One can only hope that the admiral will recruit Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, Chief of the Covid Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute, as her chief of staff. As recently as three days ago, Dr. Feigl-Ding tweeted (or X’ed): “Anti-vax campaigns are fueled by disinformation army. Your friends and family are pummeled with disinfo to the point they start to believe it — but don’t fall for it!” Meaning: for goodness sake, go out and get more mRNA booster shots! Especially because, as Dr. F-D also declares on X, “a raging inferno of Covid is surging nationwide.”
One is tempted to ask: if Harvard renewed its Covid vaccine mandate, would Harvard students be intelligent enough to decline the injections? Granted, Harvard’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging policy (DEIB) has front-loaded matters beside intelligence in its admissions procedures. Parents might ask: in the case of a student’s death from myocarditis before the end of a semester, would Harvard refund any or all of the $55,000 tuition? These are some of the perplexities that Dr. (Admiral) Levine is well-equipped to resolve.
Anyone else have some nominations? (hints: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Mika Brzezinski? Ilhan Omar, Megan Rapinoe...?)
"Once Upon a Time, The End"
"Once Upon a Time, The End"
by Martin Zamyatin
"Those that can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire
"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence.
As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!
Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’)
Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.
It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)
The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the obnoxious doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.)
The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)
Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo -whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and -neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.
It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day ofJudgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfil their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."
"A Short History of the End of the World"
The End of Days in Argentina… as imagined by Substack’s AI
and longed for by members of the mainstream media.
"A Short History of the End of the World"
Doomsday cults, armageddon enthusiasts
and bedwetting catastrophizers of all stripes...
by Joel Bowman
“Have the riots started yet?” A dear reader – tongue firmly in cheek – wanted to know about the carnage and anarchy on the streets here in Argentina, at least as (mis)reported in the popular presses. Needless to say, and much to the chagrin of catastrophizing snowflakes everywhere, life here in the Paris of the South goes on. Folks reading in cafés... enjoying the parks... strolling the plazas... As you can plainly see, it’s an inferno of truly Dantean proportions…
Your editor (right) and his daughter (8), brave
the rampaging hordes on today’s morning stroll.
But what about our own "Notes From the End of the World?" Does the title itself (cheekily conceived) not portend an ominous apocalypse? A fiery armageddon? A hellish end of days?After all, the End of the World is not only a convenient geographic location from which to pen these riotous notes... it also implies a long-prophesied day of reckoning. But this, too, can be interpreted in many ways. Looking back over history, we are delighted to discover that there’s nothing new about the end of the world. In fact, doomsday cults are as old as the days are long.
The Beginnings of the Ends: From the Essene order of Jewish ascetics, who saw their rising up against the Romans in 66-70 AD as a prelude to the coming of the Messiah... to Hilary of Poitiers, the French bishop who predicted the end of the world in 365 AD... to the trembling triumvirate of Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus and Irenaeus, who foretold the second coming of Christ (based on the dimensions of Noah's Ark) in 500 AD, history is full of end time predictions. (Sextus later reset his cataclysm clock from 500 to 800 AD, presumably due to a cubit rounding error made while measuring the Ark’s upper deck.)
Over the centuries, brigades of bed-wetting panic artists came forth to wail and gnash their teeth over this or that date of decimation. Popes and priests, astrologers and kabbalists, false prophets, TV evangelists, Malthusians, pyramidologists and hucksters of every stripe stepped up, each with their own crackpot explanation and, usually, a collection plate in hand.
Even allegedly sane individuals fell prey to what Freud called the death wish... mathematician John Napier, artist Sandro Botticelli, navigator Christopher Columbus and gadfly reformer Martin Luther all predicted fire and brimstone of varying descriptions. And yet... here we are, still among what the British author Virginia Woolf called the “army of the upright.” And ready to chart a new journey in our history...
A Precipice, of Sorts: Of course, mankind’s tendency to fear the worst is understandable. In a very real sense, we are always standing at the “End of the World”... carried by the tide of time to the farthest reaches of human achievement and knowledge (such as it is). We exist at the bleeding edge of all that has come before us, on the precipice of all human experience, standing on the shoulders of giants.
Happily, those dusty tomes, when carefully studied, reveal great cycles... the rise and fall of empires, of cultures and currencies, and of grand political movements, the likes of which may be just beginning again. The way is not always easy, or even apparent... but as the great Roman statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero (whose birthday we celebrate this week) once wrote:
“The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.”
"P.S. Although an academic skeptic himself, Cicero (106-43 BC) had plenty to say about the competing philosophies of his day, including epicureanism, cynicism and stoicism. Our friends (read: dear wife) over at Classical Wisdom investigate Cicero’s paradoxes of stoicism – Paradoxa Stoicorum – in this handy article, recommended for further reading."
Bill Bonner , "A Disastrous Rout"
"A Disastrous Rout"
America's declining empire, plus Trumps political buoyancy,
more unwinnable wars and avoiding the Fed's shade...
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "What do we know today that we didn’t know last year at this time? In the markets, 2023 reminded us that there are always surprises. Who would have thought that stocks would mount one of the biggest bull markets ever…while at the same time interest rates were rising more than ever? And who could have foreseen such a big increase in the cost of borrowing without a recession? A recession shoulda happened. Didn’t. But there’s always 2024!
It was also a surprise to us that Donald Trump remained so politically buoyant. It was obvious that the mainstream elite were out to get him. It was also obvious that he was going to be mired in legal battles to keep himself out of jail. What wasn’t so obvious was that he was so useful to so many different groups.
A large part of the electorate see him as their champion…someone who will disrupt a corrupt system. Many Democrats thought he was the only candidate Joe Biden could defeat. And the more cynical elements of the elite saw him as the perfect ‘reform’ candidate – one who would bluff and bluster for the folks in the cheap seats…but leave the ruling class in its skyboxes, unmolested.
Megapolitics: These things were surprises. But none of them change our fundamental outlook. We try to look beneath the market moves and political headlines. What we are looking for is the deep, long-term trends that determine the course of history. ‘Megapolitics’ we call it.
In the markets, we believe that the Primary Trend has changed. Yes, stock prices are near all-time highs, but not when adjusted for inflation. And while there are a lot of flukey and surprising things going on, the Primary Trend reflects a more fundamental movement. From bull to bear…greed to fear…optimism to despair – the Bubble Epoch is over. Or so we believe. Yes, we will still have bubbles…but we can no longer depend on the credit cycle or the Fed to support them.
There are patterns to everything. When you listen to a piece of music, for example, you can anticipate where it is going even though you’ve never heard it before. Stories have beginnings and endings…heroes and villains…moral failings and come-uppances. There are two basic templates for human beings – male and female – and every single one of them follows the same basic sequence…from birth to death, from dust to dust and ashes to ashes. There are no exceptions.
Interest rates follow patterns too. Yields hit an all-time low in July 2020. Since then, yields (and interest rates) are substantially higher, though nowhere near as high as they will probably go, eventually.
Throwing Shade: Putting this in perspective, the interest rate cycle – from major high to major low, and back again – began its last roundtrip about the time we were born. It took rates higher for the first 32 years…and down for the next 40. Why it takes so long, we don’t know…all we know for sure is that interest rates cast a long shadow…and you don’t want to get stuck in the shade.
You may think that this up-cycle in interest rates will end soon, as the Fed begins to cut rates later this year. But down deep, beyond the talking heads and headlines, something has changed. The Fed may cut rates, but the inflation cat is now out of the bag. Additions to the money supply now lead to higher consumer prices, and everyone knows it. And when the Fed resumes its rate-cutting, money-printing fandango, we’ll see inflation begin to rise too. So, it is unlikely that real rates, adjusted for inflation, will see anything like the July 2020 lows again in our lifetimes.
Another ‘megapolitical’ development we are watching is the decline of the US empire. It doesn’t matter what you think or what you want, empires have life cycles too. And it appears to us that the US began the downhill side around 1999. Since then, its wars have been disasters, its GDP growth has been almost cut in half…its politics are a-shamble…and its debt has grown by $28 trillion.
Expensive and Unwinnable: Probably the most remarkable part of this list of failures is the part least often remarked upon – the debt. Who would have imagined that the US – the world’s richest and most powerful nation – couldn’t afford to pay its own way…and had to saddle future generations with trillions of debt?
The decline of an empire can be handled gracefully…or shamefully. Either the empire pulls back willingly. Or it is pushed back. Either it executes a rare and orderly retreat. Or it suffers a disastrous rout. The graceful way to manage it is to cut expenses sharply, balance the budget, abolish the Fed, and bring the troops home, lest they get us involved in another expensive and unwinnable war. Empires, however, are like drug addicts. Yes, that is part of the pattern too. They are corrupt, incompetent, and desperate for their next fix. More to come…"
Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can’t Hide Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/5/24
"You Can’t Hide Anymore"
"People cannot hide behind the anonymity of an LLC anymore. As of 2024 the financial crimes enforcement network is demanding that people turn over all the principles of these companies. This includes your name, address, Social Security number, and your personal email. There is no more hiding."
Comments here:
Thursday, January 4, 2024
"Major Alert! N. Korea Fires Shots; US Bomber Crash At Nuclear Base; Evacuation; Internet Down"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/4/24
"Major Alert! N. Korea Fires Shots; US Bomber
Crash At Nuclear Base; Evacuation; Internet Down"
Comments here:
"Banks Just Made A Massive Change, The Same Thing Happened Before The 2008 Crash"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/4/24
"Banks Just Made A Massive Change,
The Same Thing Happened Before The 2008 Crash"
"Recent developments in the financial landscape are signaling a potential storm on the horizon, reminiscent of the conditions preceding the 2008 economic crisis. A surge in bankruptcy filings, escalating debts, and challenges in the commercial real estate sector show us that trouble is coming. Just like in 2008 before the crash, banks just made a massive change."
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "Gold Gets Golden, World Exploding"
Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal. 1/4/24
"Gold Gets Golden, World Exploding"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”
Full screen recommended.
Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
Chet Raymo, “At Home In An Infinite Universe”
“At Home In An Infinite Universe”
by Chet Raymo
“They are questions that bedeviled thinkers for thousands of years: Is the universe infinite or finite, eternal or of a finite age? It is certainly hard to imagine a universe that extends without limit in every direction, or a universe without a beginning or end. It is equally difficult to imagine a finite universe; what is beyond the edge? Or a beginning or end in time; how can something come from nothing? How can what is cease to be?
The problems are so intractable philosophically that their resolution has generally been left to the theologians, which from a philosophical (or scientific) perspective offers no solution at all. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for proposing a philosophical resolution (an infinite universe) that offended theology.
An escape from befuddlement is provided by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which- for example- can describe a finite universe without a boundary, as the "two-dimensional" surface of a sphere is finite and without an edge. Unfortunately, multi-dimensional curved space-time is so counterintuitive that it is difficult to get one's head around it without mastery of the mathematics. Given a choice between the ancient myths of your local preacher and the obtuse mathematics of the physics professor, it's not hard to guess what most folks will opt for.
Meanwhile, I'm reading a meditation on infinity by physics professor Anthony Aguirre, in a collection of essays called "Future Science." He discusses contemporary cosmological theories based on general relativity, and in particular the rehabilitation of the idea of an infinite and eternal universe, or, more precisely, that our universe might be just one of an infinity of infinite universes. He writes in conclusion: “What seems clear, however, is that infinity can no longer be safely ignored; beautifully constructed, empirically supported, self-consistent theories have brought infinity from idle curiosity to central player in contemporary cosmology. And if correct, the worldview these theories represent constitutes a perspective shift unlike any other: in comparison to the universe, we would be not just small but strictly zero. Well, I can't imagine many folks racing to embrace that conclusion.
Oh, but wait. Aguirre adds one final sentence: "Yet here we are, contemplating - if not quite understanding - it all.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"Only Human..."
“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.” - Sydney J. Harris
And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…
“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably
excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”
- Sydney J. Harris
○
I've always wondered...
Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?
Full screen recommended
Billy Joel, "Only Human"
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Recall On These Meat Products! This Is Getting Bad!"
Adventures With Danno, PM 1/4/24
"Massive Recall On These Meat Products!
This Is Getting Bad!"
"We discuss the massive recall of these different meat products. We discuss the different options on what to do if you're affected and how we need to prepare for the future accordingly."Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "99% Will Stay Broke, Part Time Jobs Won't Save America; Another Great Depression Is Coming"
Jeremiah Babe,1/4/24
"99% Will Stay Broke, Part Time Jobs Won't Save America;
Another Great Depression Is Coming"
Comments here:
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "We Are Those People"
"We Are Those People"
"I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars,
laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war's column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat -
Or if not in the next, then in the next - therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars,
our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors
for bits of chocolate."
- Robinson Jeffers
“One Last Smile For My Old Friend”
Full screen recommended.
“One Last Smile For My Old Friend”
by Iain Burns
“This is the magical moment a dying chimpanzee recognizes her old friend and gives him an emotional farewell. Mama, the 59-year-old former matriarch at Royal Burgers Zoo in the Netherlands, was curled up in a ball and refusing food until the arrival of Professor Jan van Hooff, who she had known since 1972. At first she did not realize that her old friend had come to see her and remained on the floor as he stroked her. But her bond with Professor van Hooff – who co-founded her chimp colony at the Arnhem zoo – was deep enough to shake her from her gloom. The terminally ill chimp, who was fast approaching the end of her life, can be seen reacting with pure joy when she realizes who has come to see her. Mama screeched with delight and beamed with a smile while greeting the professor. Screeching with pleasure and smiling in delight, Mama can be seen stretching out her hand and stroking Professor van Hooff’s head in greeting. The video was filmed in April 2016. Mama died just a week after giving her old friend a heartfelt farewell.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)