Fred Reed, "On Poking Dragons"

"On Poking Dragons"

by Fred Reed

"I wonder how many Americans quite understand what the US is facing in its aggressive confrontation with China. Washington clearly prepares the public for another unnecessary war. Given America’s routine defeat in war and catastrophic miscalculations in fighting small powers, picking a fight with what, increasingly, is again becoming the Middle Kingdom seems less than bright. Yet within the Beltway there is the usual smug complacency, the unshakable arrogance that appears to think the China is just a big Norway or Guatemala that needs to be put in its place.

A quick glance at China: China easily leads the world in civil engineering, building roads, bridges, ports, rail lines, long-distance high-voltage transmission lines, and digital infrastructure. People returning from China, including yours truly, describe it as being like coming back from a more-advanced planet.

Everyone talks about the high-speed trains, with good reason: 180 miles per hour, quiet, comfortable, huge windows, with very short stops at villages between major cities, giving rural populations the speed of air travel without the nuisance. by contrast, American rail looks like something out of 1955.

The importance of civil engineering is more thans symbolic. Infrastructure facilitates commerce. China is of course the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. By contrast, America simply ignores infrastructure, spending instead on the military and long since having largely abandoned manufacturing.

China leads the world in ship-building, with South Korea being another major player in this game. America has almost no ship-building except for military, and this has been criticized by the Government Accounting Office for primitivism and slowness. Ship-building obviously is important for commerce, and also for military purposes–China now having the world’s largest navy.

China leads the world in Five G, in patents, technology, manufacturing capacity, installed base. This is not always well understood. Five G allows the transmission of large amounts of data with short response times–high throughput, low latency, as we say. Huawei now has what it calls Five.five G, an improved version. Five G is important for controlling factories, smart cities, and so on. Beijing takes it seriously, China now having around 3.6 million installed base stations versus something like 100,000 pseudo-Five G base stations in the US.

China finds its brightest students by rigorous testing, and then sends them at government expense to its excellent universities. The US deliberately enstupidates its schools at all levels to make minorities look smarter than they are. How is this going to work?

China dominates the planet in electric vehicles. Its lead over the US is so great as to be insuperable in technology, batteries, price, and productive capacity. If you follow tech news, you see things like a Chinese ev battery that charges in ten minutes. As many have pointed out, BYD’s sub-ten thousand dollar car will find an almost unlimited market in the Global South. No other country is even close. Biden’s high tariffs on Chinese evs will serve only to allow American companies to continue selling wildly over-priced vehicles to Americans who will have no choice.

China, Russia, and Iran have developed hypersonic missiles, of which America doesn’t have any. This is interesting. Americans have always assumed technological superiority over Russia and China. Judging by the poor performance of Western weaponry in the Ukraine, this seems questionable.

In other fields, America maintains a lead, or at least an important part lead, though usually not by competing but by strong-arming, sanctions, and tariffs. The greatest of these is semiconductors. The situation is curious. The Chinese have the brains, engineers,and savvy to design and make high-end chips, but Washington has a stranglehold on the equipment needed to manufacture them. However, China has a recent history of horrifying Washington by doing things it wasn’t supposed to be able to do, such as make chips in seven and five nanometer nodes and stay neck-and-neck with the US in supercomputers. But it has not been able to make the advanced lithography tools needed at the forefront of the chip business. If it does, it will be Katie bar the door, but it hasn’t.

China leads the world inproduction of steel and aluminum. America can’t compete, so it imposes tariffs.

It leads the world in solar panels, leads in technology, production capacity, and price. America can’t compete, so it imposes tariffs.

China remains behind America, but not by much, in aspects of its space program. However, it has an extensive and robust launch capacity, a successful space station in some ways more advanced than the International Space Station, and moves rapidly toward reusable launch vehicles. Years back now, it sent a successful fully automated moon-sample return mission to our satellite, and, later, a combination Mars orbiter, lander, and rover, all functioning perfectly on the first try. NASA and Space X maintain a lead, but it isn’t a growth stock

There are other fields in which America holds a lead. Jet engines, for example. My point is that Washington seems to suffer a recto-cranial inversion, imagining a superiority it only barely has but probably, all things considered, doesn’t. China has four times the US population, the Han by agreement among psychometrists have a five or six point advantage in mean I.Q, and an intelligent government focused on increasing its commercial superiority.

It is all the fashion in America to decry authoritarianism, but this allows Beijing to take decisions and then carry them out, over decades if need be. It also allows a noticeable system approach. In America, individual states or corporations undertake projects like high-speed rail or Five G. China tends to do things on a whole-country basis. The difference in results is clear.

Washington, which subsidizes its own industries, complains that Beijing does the same–but the Chinese system works.

What China doesn’t have is a sprawling, over-extended, low-grade, incomprehensibly costly military draining funds desperately needed to bring America up to modern standards domestically. China is not an appendage of its military. It seems to have figured out that wars cost money and, if there is one thing the Chinese really really like, it’s money.

Sez I, a little more realism in the Yankee Capital might be a good idea, a bit less huff and puff, more spending on America and less on a blood-sucking arms industry. But what do I know?"

- https://fredoneverything.org/

"Russian Missiles, Training To Capture Israeli Soldiers: Hezbollah 'Prepares' For Long War"

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 5/28/24

"Russian Missiles, Training To Capture Israeli Soldiers:

 Hezbollah 'Prepares' For Long War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

According to Col. Doug Macgregor Hezbollah's arsenal of rockets, missiles, and drones is estimated at over 200,000. They also have massive artillery resources. It has over 100,000 extremely well-trained and equipped professional soldiers, battle hardened by 10 years of fighting in the Syrian civil war. If Israel demands war the Israeli Occupation Force will be obliterated and Tel Aviv will look like Gaza after 30,000 missiles rain down on it. Inshallah! So be it... - CP

Jeremiah Babe, "No One Trust The Economy; Millions Are Finished, It's Game Over"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/28/24

"No One Trust The Economy; 

Millions Are Finished, It's Game Over"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Are Always"

2002, "We Are Always"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colorful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. 

Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the ridge of bright emission left of center is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 lies about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"The Holstee Manifesto"

- https://www.holstee.com/pages/manifesto

"Butterflies..."

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever."

 - Carl Sagan

“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”

“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space,

and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”

“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”

by Maria Popova

“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.

But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as ‘The Life of the Mind’ (public library) – the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning.

In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand:

“Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego – summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s – is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls – and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them – does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.”

Echoing Thomas Mann’s assertion that “the perishableness of life… imparts value, dignity, interest to life,” Arendt adds: “Man’s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world… The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”

T.S. Eliot captured this nowhereness in his exquisite phrase “the still point of the turning world.” But the spatial dimension of thought, Arendt argues, is intersected by a temporal one – thinking invariably forces us to recollect and anticipate, voyaging into the past and the future, thus creating the mental spacetime continuum through which our thought-trains travel. From this arises our sense of the sequential nature of time and its essential ongoingness. Arendt writes:

“The inner time sensation arises when we are not entirely absorbed by the absent non-visibles we are thinking about but begin to direct our attention onto the activity itself. In this situation past and future are equally present precisely because they are equally absent from our sense; thus the no-longer of the past is transformed by virtue of the spatial metaphor into something lying behind us and the not-yet of the future into something that approaches us from ahead.”

[…]

In other words, the time continuum, everlasting change, is broken up into the tenses past, present, future, whereby past and future are antagonistic to each other as the no-longer and the not-yet only because of the presence of man, who himself has an “origin,” his birth, and an end, his death, and therefore stands at any given moment between them; this in-between is called the present. It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change – which we can conceive of cyclically as well as in the form of rectilinear motion without ever being able to conceive of an absolute beginning or an absolute end – into time as we know it.”

Once again, it is our finitude that mediates our experience of time: “Seen from the viewpoint of a continuously flowing everlasting stream, the insertion of man, fighting in both directions, produces a rupture which, by being defended in both directions, is extended to a gap, the present seen as the fighter’s battleground… Seen from the viewpoint of man, at each single moment inserted and caught in the middle between his past and his future, both aimed at the one who is creating his present, the battleground is an in-between, an extended Now on which he spends his life. The present, in ordinary life the most futile and slippery of the tenses – when I say “now” and point to it, it is already gone – is no more than the clash of a past, which is no more, with a future, which is approaching and not yet there. Man lives in this in-between, and what he calls the present is a life-long fight against the dead weight of the past, driving him forward with hope, and the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward toward “the quiet of the past” with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality he can be sure of.”

This fluid conception of time, Arendt points out, is quite different from its representation in ordinary life, where the calendar tells us that the present is contained in today, the past starts at yesterday, and the future at tomorrow. In a sentiment that calls to mind Patti Smith’s magnificent meditation on time and transformation, Arendt writes: "That we can shape the everlasting stream of sheer change into a time continuum we owe not to time itself but to the continuity of our business and our activities in the world, in which we continue what we started yesterday and hope to finish tomorrow. In other words, the time continuum depends on the continuity of our everyday life, and the business of everyday life, in contrast to the activity of the thinking ego – always independent of the spatial circumstances surrounding it – is always spatially determined and conditioned. It is due to this thoroughgoing spatiality of our ordinary life that we can speak plausibly of time in spatial categories, that the past can appear to us as something lying “behind” us and the future as lying “ahead.”

[…]

The gap between past and future opens only in reflection, whose subject matter is what is absent – either what has already disappeared or what has not yet appeared. Reflection draws these absent “regions” into the mind’s presence; from that perspective the activity of thinking can be understood as a fight against time itself.”

This elusive gap, Arendt argues, is where the thinking ego resides – and it is only by mentally inserting ourselves between the past and the future that they come to exist at all: Without [the thinker], there would be no difference between past and future, but only everlasting change. Or else these forces would clash head on and annihilate each other. But thanks to the insertion of a fighting presence, they meet at an angle, and the correct image would then have to be what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.

These two forces, which have an indefinite origin and a definite end point in the present, converge into a third – a diagonal pull that, contrary to the past and the present, has a definite origin in the present and emanates out toward infinity. That diagonal force, Arendt observes, is the perfect metaphor for the activity of thought. She writes:

“This diagonal, though pointing to some infinity, is limited, enclosed, as it were, by the forces of past and future, and thus protected against the void; it remains bound to and is rooted in the present – an entirely human present though it is fully actualized only in the thinking process and lasts no longer than this process lasts. It is the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man; it is somehow, to change the metaphor, the quiet in the center of a storm which, though totally unlike the storm, still belongs to it. In this gap between past and future, we find our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficiently removed from past and future to be relied on to find out their meaning, to assume the position of “umpire,” of arbiter and judge over the manifold, never-ending affairs of human existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to their riddles but ready with ever-new answers to the question of what it may be all about.”

“The Life of the Mind” is one of the most stimulating packets of thought ever published. Complement this particular portion with Virginia Woolf on the elasticity of time, Dan Falk on how our capacity for mental time travel made us human, and T.S. Eliot’s poetic ode to the nature of time.“

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"We Are All Like Elephants"

"We Are All Like Elephants"

by Marc Chernoff

"In many ways, our past experiences have conditioned us to believe that we are less capable than we are. All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make. We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true. Of course, an old rejection doesn't mean we aren't good enough; it just means some person or circumstance from our past failed to align with what we had to offer at the time. But somehow we don't see it that way - we hit a mental barricade that stops us in our tracks.

This is one of the most common and damaging thought patterns we as human beings succumb to. Even though we intellectually know that we're gradually growing stronger than we were in the past, our subconscious mind often forgets that our capabilities have grown. Let me give you a quick metaphorical example.

Zookeepers typically strap a thin metal chain to a grown elephants leg and then attach the other end to a small wooden peg that's hammered into the ground. The 10-foot tall, 10,000-pound elephant could easily snap the chain, uproot the wooden peg and escape to freedom with minimal effort. But it doesn't. In fact the elephant never even tries. The worlds most powerful land animal, which can uproot a big tree as easily as you could break a toothpick, remains defeated by a small wooden peg and a flimsy chain.

Why? Because when the elephant was a baby, its trainers used the exact same methods to domesticate it. A thin chain was strapped around its leg and the other end of the chain was tied to a wooden peg in the ground. At the time, the chain and peg were strong enough to restrain the baby elephant. When it tried to break away, the metal chain would pull it back. Sometimes, tempted by the world it could see in the distance, the elephant would pull harder. But the chain would not budge, and soon the baby elephant realized trying to escape was not possible. So it stopped trying.

And now that the elephant is all grown up, it sees the chain and the peg and it remembers what it learned as a baby - the chain and peg are impossible to escape. Of course this is no longer true, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that the 200-pound baby is now a 10,000-pound powerhouse. The elephants self-limiting thoughts and beliefs prevail.

If you think about it, we are all like elephants. We all have incredible power inside us. And certainly, we have our own chains and pegs - the self-limiting thoughts and beliefs that hold us back. Sometimes it's a childhood experience or an old failure. Sometimes it's something we were told when we were a little younger. The key thing to realize here is this: We need to learn from the past, but be ready to update what we learned based on how our circumstances have changed (as they constantly do)." 

- http://www.marcandangel.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Rogersville, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, “From the Shore"

“From the Shore"

“A lone gray bird,

Dim-dipping, far-flying,

Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults

Of night and the sea

And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,

Out into the gloom it swings and batters,

Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,

Out into the pit of a great black world,

Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,

Love of mist and rapture of flight,

Glories of chance and hazards of death

On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,

Beyond the long borders where foam and drift

Of the sundering waves are lost and gone

On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.”

- Carl Sandburg

"And It Was Pointless..."

"And it was pointless to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you."

- Charles Frazier

○

 "Never be ashamed of a scar. 

It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you." 

- Unknown

"When People Get Extremely Desperate And Extremely Hungry, They Will Literally Eat Just About Anything"

"When People Get Extremely Desperate And Extremely Hungry,

 They Will Literally Eat Just About Anything"

by Michael Snyder

"If your family was on the verge of starving to death, to what extremes would you be willing to go in order to get food? Some of the things that I am going to share with you in this article may make you cringe. But you need to understand what people are willing to do when they get extremely desperate and extremely hungry, because the global food crisis that has already begun is going to greatly intensify in the years ahead. Hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry every single night, and children are literally dropping dead from starvation on the other side of the globe right now. Unfortunately, most people in the western world don’t even realize that this is going on because the corporate media rarely reports on it. War, pestilence, natural disasters, bizarre weather patterns and historic crop failures are creating a “perfect storm” for global food production. It is being projected that later this year things will get really bad in some of the poorest areas of the planet, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

When people get hungry enough, they will literally eat just about anything. On Monday, I was stunned to learn that a team of archaeologists has discovered that settlers at Jamestown in the 17th Century actually resorted to eating dogs in a desperate attempt to survive…"The first English settlers to arrive in North America ate dogs to survive an extreme period of starvation, according to a gruesome new study.

Researchers at the University of Iowa discovered the remains of 16 indigenous dogs at an archaeological site in Jamestown, Virginia, that strongly suggest the 17th Century settlers ate at least six canines. Their remains showed hallmark signs that the colonists had skinned the animals, dismembered their limbs and removed the flesh from their bones between 1609 and 1617 AD, the team said."

For many of you, this level of savagery may be difficult to grasp. Sadly, it appears that what the archaeologists found is backed up by written testimony from one of the original settlers of the colony…"By the spring of 1610, only about 60 of the original colonists were still alive and George Percy – one of the original settlers – authored an account of what occurred in the wake of the starvation period.

"Now all of us at James Town, beginning to feel that sharp prick of hunger which no man truly describe but he which has tasted the bitterness thereof. Then having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats, and mice,’ Percy wrote in excerpts of his account called ‘Starving Time,’ archived by the National Humanities Center."

What would you do if you were in their shoes? This is one of the reasons why I am encouraging my readers to store up food while they still can. I never want any of you to be in a position where you are faced with such choices.

A global food crisis is already here. More than a billion people in Africa already do not have enough food to eat on a regular basis, and 30 percent of the children on the entire continent suffer from stunted growth. In East Africa, some of those that are starving “are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells”…"The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) says that in Darfur, Sudan there are reports of children dying of malnutrition. “The situation is dire. People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells. If assistance doesn’t reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict-affected areas in Sudan,” said Michael Dunford, WFP East Africa director."

In other areas of Sudan, people on the brink of starvation are literally eating dirt…"There is so little food in some areas of Sudan that people are taking extreme measures to survive. In the Al Lait refugee camp, they are eating dirt." Yes, you read that correctly. So I don’t want anyone out there trying to tell me that the global food crisis isn’t serious.

One 41-year-old man in Sudan says that his wife and children are so hungry that they have been rolling dirt into a ball and swallowing it with water…"Akok, 41, reached Al Lait in December, but has no work and can’t feed the family. At times, they go two or three days without eating. When that happens, Akok said, he watches helplessly as his wife and children dig holes in the ground with a stick, slide their hands in and grab some soil. Then they roll the soil into a ball, put it in their mouths and swallow it with water. “I keep telling them not to do it, but it’s hunger,” he said. “There is nothing I can do.” What would you do if you and your family were in a similar position?

In West Africa and Central Africa, it is being projected that approximately 55 million hungry people “will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months”…"Soaring prices have helped fuel a food crisis in West and Central Africa, where nearly 55 million people will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months, U.N. humanitarian agencies warned Friday. The number facing hunger during the June-August lean season has quadrupled over the last five years, they said, noting that economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.

In areas south of there, widespread crop failures caused by drought have created a tremendous nightmare…"Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi each declared national disasters as crops failed in a region where 70 percent of smallholder farmers rely on rainfed agriculture for their livelihood. Food prices have risen up to 82 percent in some drought-affected areas, while water scarcity has also impacted livestock and destroyed farmland. According to a United Nations report, more than 18 million people are now in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, with food insecurity levels set to increase dramatically during the regular lean season that typically starts in October. This year, the lean season could begin as early as July as provisions are depleted." North Africa is doing fine for now, but most of the rest of the continent is in enormous trouble.

The good news is that we aren’t facing widespread starvation here in the western world. But 42 million Americans are on food stamps, and 1 out of every 7 children is living in poverty. So our problems are growing too.

Unfortunately, the long-term trends that are driving the global food crisis are only going to intensify in the years ahead, and eventually there will be very serious food shortages here in the United States. What will you do when that day finally arrives? We have already reached a point where fast food is considered to be a “luxury” and the prices of many popular food items have more than doubled. Our world is simply not producing enough food for everyone, and global supplies of food are going to get tighter and tighter during the very difficult days that are in front of us."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

o

"Nine Meals from Anarchy"

"How It Really Is"

 

"The US/UK/NATO May Have Just Crossed Putin's Final Red Line On The Way To WWIII"

"The US/UK/NATO May Have Just Crossed 

Putin's Final Red Line On The Way To WWIII"

By Leo Hohmann

"Russia's nuclear ballistic missile early warning radar network has emerged as a key target of long-range Ukrainian strikes, with three facilities having now been attacked by Kyiv's drones, including two of them in the past week, Newsweek reports. Ukraine drones reportedly made a second hit an advanced radar system of Russia's nuclear early warning system on May 26 and into May 27, then attempted to make a third hit.

The attack upon a second Over-The-Horizon radar inside Russia is an extremely concerning development because it is clearly being done not for Ukraine’s defense, but rather as a NATO strategic move designed to destabilize and degrade the combat command-and-control system of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. This second drone attack struck an advanced over-the-horizon early warning radar system in the Orsk region of Orenburg, 1,800 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Russian analysts stress that a new blow from Ukraine should be expected. According to them, the next NATO target is the radar system in the St. Petersburg region. If Kiev hits this particular radar site, then Russia's defense capability in the northern direction will be significantly reduced. Moscow will lose the ability to detect in time the launch of incoming missiles with nuclear warheads, rendering the country unable to react quickly to what is happening.

In short, NATO is trying to create "blind spots" in Russia's early-warning radar, making Russia vulnerable to a Nuclear First-Strike attack by the West. The Russians are becoming sitting ducks. With regard to the NATO attack on Russia's early warning radar, Austrian Army Col. Markus Reisner provided three key analytical point:

- It will have almost no significance for the Ukrainian battlefield.
- It’s likely a US-led attack to degrade Russia's nuclear deterrent.

- This represents a "Boiling the frog" strategy to increase the chances of success with a first-strike against Russia.

From a purely military perspective, this would make sense. The West knows it cannot field an army large enought, short of a highly unpopular mass conscription of both men and women, to take on Russia-China in a conventional war. The only way the West wins a war with China-Russia is to launch a first-strike nuclear attack, decapitating the Russian power centers and nuclear infrastructure before Russia has a chance to strike back. But this is also a highly risky strategy because if Russia suspects that’s the plan, what’s to stop it from beating the West to the punch and launching its own decapitating first strike, taking out Washington, DC, New York, and all of the silos out west that contain intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Russia?

Brace yourselves, dear readers. The rest of this year and into 2025 could get interesting as it’s becoming clearer by the day that our so-called leaders truly desire a World War III scenario with Russia.

I would say that, before this first-strike on Russia can happen, the warmongers in the West need to provoke some type of drastic attack from Russia, so they can make it look like Russia deserves what it has coming. Putin has thus far shown himself to be highly restrained and avoided stepping into the traps the West has laid for him. But at some point he will almost certainly have to respond to the constant escalations, the biggest and most outrageous of which has Ukraine using Western-supplied weapons to strike deep inside Russia and take out the country’s most critical defensive infrastructure.

It’s interesting how very little is being reported about the upcoming war between NATO and Russia and how NATO is attacking Russia’s missile defense systems which play no role in the Ukraine war. What if Russia starts doing the same thing to the U.S. and/or NATO’s early warning radar systems? According to my online research, NATO has its early warning systems at Thule Air Base, Greenland; Beale Air Force Base, California; Clear Space Force Station, Alaska; Cape Cod Space Force Station, Massachusetts; and Royal Air Force Fylingdales, United Kingdom."

- https://leohohmann.com/

Bill Bonner, "The New Fraud"

"The New Fraud"

Either you decide what to do with your time and money... or someone else decides 

for you. And when others decide, the money tends to go in their direction, not yours.

by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "Sad to report, but a ‘new spirit of cooperation’ has descended on Washington... like a toxic smog. Are they cooperating to lower the deficit... balance the budget, bring the troops home and bring the debt under control? Are they coming together to cut off US support for the bloodshed in the Ukraine and Gaza? Are they rallying to a common cause... of peace and prosperity?

Really, dear reader... you disappoint us. Of course, they’re not. They’ve come together, like a pair of desperadoes, making plans to rob a bank - the bank where you keep your money. Yes, Republicans and Democrats... blue and red... are joining forces to make things worse for all of us. David Leonhardt at The New York Times: "A New Centrism Is Rising in Washington." "Call it neopopulism: a bipartisan attitude that mistrusts the free-market ethos instead of embracing it.

In a country that is supposed to have a gridlocked federal government, the past four years are hard to explain. These years have been arguably the most productive period of Washington bipartisanship in decades.

During the Covid pandemic, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to pass emergency responses. Under President Biden, bipartisan majorities have passed major laws on infrastructure and semiconductor chips, as well as laws on veterans’ health, gun violence, the Postal Service, the aviation system, same-sex marriage, anti-Asian hate crimes and the electoral process. On trade, the Biden administration has kept some of the Trump administration’s signature policies and even expanded them. The trend has continued over the past month, first with the passage of a bipartisan bill to aid Ukraine and other allies and to force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner."

‘The new centrism’ is a fraud. Republicans and Democrats have been conspiring to rip off the public for decades. Lately, they’ve gotten bolder. Poor Leonhardt thinks the two parties collaborate to create a better society... one in which same sex marriage is de rigueur and anti-Asian hate crimes are taboo. But these social norms have nothing to do with capitalism. You can wear your underwear on your head; capitalism doesn’t care.

‘Capitalism’ just describes the infinitely complex and always evolving ways people work together to get what they want. It’s what’s left after the feds interfere. It doesn’t care who you marry or who you hate. Up to you.

Leonhardt rejoices that we now have a Congress that ‘gets things done.’ But the more it does, the less room is left for capitalism to do what it does - produce the goods and services that people actually want.

And there is the real problem. It is an error of commission, not omission. In 1930, the government spent only 4% of GDP. Now, the Federales take 24%. The states take another 12%. And add in the part of the GDP controlled, directed, or subverted by federal and state regulation, and the total easily tops 50%. Capitalism still does what it always does. But it has much less room to do it than it used to.

The fault lies in too much cooperation between Republicans and Democrats - too many laws... too much spending... too much regulation, too many sanctions, too many wars and too much debt.

One of the parties should have been a stick in the mud, quietly resisting... urging caution... preaching humility... and voting ‘no.’ Instead, both vote for more power and wealth for themselves and their friends. Call it what you want, but this has nothing to do with a new, improved form of capitalism. At the end of the day, it all comes down to a simple question: who decides? Either you decide what to do with your time and money... or someone else decides for you. And when others decide, the money tends to go in their direction, not yours.

Click image for larger size.

Source: April 2024 Monthly Statement of the US Treasury

The facts are well known. So far this year, the feds have received $3 trillion in tax revenues. Theoretically, as a voter, you have some say in it. But as a practical matter, what you want hardly matters.

But wait, it’s worse. This fiscal year the feds have already spent almost $4 trillion. And the deficit grows with every one of these vote-buying giveaways that Leonhardt regards as signifying “the most productive period... in decades.” What’s really going on? The politicians buy votes; you pay for them.

At the current rate, the nation is headed for a debt crisis, a depression and a period of sustained inflation - things you probably don’t want, but will be imposed on you by bi-partisan consensus. Dear Readers know all about it already. They are prepared - with gold buried in their backyards... and up-to-date passports in their back pockets. No need to go on. But the more the parties work together... the worse it gets. Gridlock is far better."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Middle East Crisis 5/28/24"

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/28/24

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Escalation at Israel’s Borders"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 5/28/24

"Saudi Arabia's MBS Shocks Israel, 

Embraces Staunch Enemy Of Tel Aviv & Netanyahu"

Saudi Arabia has for the first time appointed its ambassador to Damascus in over a decade following the thaw in ties since 2023. The appointment comes at a time when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is attempting to repair ties with regional rival Iran - a close ally of Syria and also Russia.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

OpenmindedThinker Show, 5/28/24

"8 More European Nations Abandon Israel After Rafah Massacre;

 Netanyahu Loses Europe!"

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- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Tech Show, 5/28/24

"Iranan Just Blamed Israel For The Death Of Their 

President After He Died In A Helicopter Crash!"

In this video, we look at the new and shocking incident in which Iran blames Israel for the untimely death of its President, Ebrahim Raisi. The Iranian leader died in a sudden and deadly helicopter accident, a tragic incident that shocked the country and the entire community. We investigate the facts surrounding the incident, the instant reactions of Iranian officials, and the strong accusations levelled against Israel.

The video presents a full study of the incident's geopolitical consequences, taking into account Iran and Israel's already hostile relations. We examine the historical backdrop of Iran's hatred as well as the current condition of Middle Eastern politics to determine the likely motivations for its charges. In addition, we examine the global response to President Raisi's death, as well as the potential implications for international relations and regional stability.

Our experts discuss the impact of President Ebrahim Raisi's death on Iran's political landscape, including who might succeed him and how this may affect Iran's internal and foreign policies. The video also shows the investigation into the helicopter crash, which sheds light on the ongoing efforts to determine the reason and any potential foul play. Join us as we deconstruct this difficult and delicate issue, presenting you with the most recent developments and in-depth analysis of this unfortunate incident.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel... So be it!

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Death of the Dollar Store"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 5/28/24

"The Death of the Dollar Store"

We are seeing the demise of discount retail stores. We have just witnessed 

the death of the dollar store. Now we are seeing dollar tree have five dollar items.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Saving our Democracy This Memorial Day"

"Saving our Democracy This Memorial Day"

by Jim Kunstler

“We must stop Donald Trump.”

- President “Joe Biden”

"Surely it was the right thing to do for President “Joe Biden” to remind the nation of the tragic loss of George Floyd four years ago this Memorial Day weekend. At the time, the man known as “the Black Thomas Edison” was rumored to be this close to achieving an economically viable system for producing electricity via atomic fusion using the fentanyl molecule (C22H28N2O) combined with the nuclei of alcohol (C2H6O), releasing enough energy from one gram to power a city the size of Minneapolis for a day. The math he left behind on his chalkboard spells it out:

17.6 MeV×1.60218×10?13 J/MeV?2.82×10?12 J

You see how that works? Alas, Dr. Floyd had apparently ingested a small amount of these experimental substances accidently before leaving his lab May 25, 2020, when he encountered the white supremacist police officer Derek Chauvin outside a Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis’s “Powderhorn” neighborhood. For reasons never understood, despite manifold judicial inquiries, the officer dragged the Great Man out of his car - where he was polishing some of the requisite algebra in his notebook - and for no reason at all placed one knee, and all his weight, on Dr. Floyd’s neck, constricting his airway and causing his death. The nation erupted in violence, and you know the rest of the story: no cheap energy for you, you nation of white supremacist asswipes!

And so it has gone since that fateful day: one darn thing after another. Luckily though - and with a little help from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) - the vigilant “Joe Biden” presides in the White House, keeping America safe for democracy, by democracy, and of democracy. The country has never experienced so much democracy. The Brookings Institution even warns that the country might be close to a democracy overload, in which the popular will is so immense that everyone in all fifty states thinks the same morally correct thoughts all day long without giving offense or making any space unsafe or dis-including any diverse category of human (except white supremacists) from his, her, or they’s share of the nation’s limitless wealth.

“Joe Biden” has been especially effective at containing the Grand Golem of all white supremacists, Trump, from deconstructing our utopian democracy. This Trump uttered perfidious misinformation that the 2020 election was less than fair and upright. He is under indictment in Fulton County, GA, for conspiring to transmit this incorrect thinking to other white supremacists and creating an unsafe space for GA Sec’y of State Brad Raffensperger by asking him to “find” additional votes. What log was Bradraff supposed to look under, anyway (ha ha!)?

The case is being guided by Fulton County DA, the indomitable Fani Willis, at least for now, as she awaits a process known as getting the bidness from a white supremacist so-called ethics committee in the Georgia State Senate, where she has been falsely accused of mis-spending state money on vacations with erstwhile special prosecutor Nathan Wade. These trips were, of course, fact-finding efforts. One fact found is that the white supremacist cruise ship directors attempt to kill black people by luring them into all-you-can-eat buffets at sea, from which escape is impossible.

“Joe Biden” also got Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Lawfare paladin Jack Smith to prosecute this nefarious Trump in the most upright of all federal court districts, Washington, DC, for instigating what “Joe Biden” recently called an “erection” against our democracy. Trump, you see, told a gigantic mob of white supremacists to penetrate our nation’s capitol building so as to obstruct certification of the 2020 electoral vote and murder then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if possible, along with all congresspersons of color. Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office) and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody, so the trial under Judge Tanya Chutkan may be unnecessary.

Things are not going quite so well for SC Smith in the Martin County Federal Court of Judge Aileen Cannon, where this Trump stands accused of fobbing off with classified government documents, claiming some fabricated sort of presidential privilege - unlike “Joe Biden” who got his classified docs before he was president and therefore does not have to claim any such privilege (and was understandably “forgetful” when asked about the docs by the other SC Robert Hur). In any case, AG Garland can always dispatch an FBI SWAT team to Judge Cannon’s home to spur an attitude adjustment on the bench, if required.

Hopes really rest, though, on the current case against the Grand Golem Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom, where the most supreme of all white supremacists stands accused of book-keeping irregularities in furtherance of federal crimes so unspeakable that they have never actually been spoken. The case, engineered by veteran DC Golem hunters Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Lisa Monaco, and Matthew Colangelo, fronted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, goes to the jury after final arguments this week.

Judge Merchan is expected to instruct the jury to vote guilty because no other conclusion is possible. Thus, Judge Merchan will be celebrated far and wide for saving our democracy. But that’s not all. After the most excellent verdict of guilty X-23-Plus, he will have the pleasure of sentencing this Trump to life in the Rikers Island prison complex, where it will be difficult for the Grand Golem to organize any white supremacist activities and will be relegated to a diet of baloney sandwiches for the duration of his term.

The only downside for this scenario is that Trump might get elected President of the USA despite conviction, and on January 20, 2025, commence operations to put “Joe Biden” and all the others in his train of officials in jail for the rest of their natural lives. You have to wonder if they were thinking about that this holiday weekend."

- https://kunstler.com/

MUST VIEW! "Israel's Rafah Massacre: They Think They Can Get Away With Anything"

Full screen recommended.

Owen Jones, 5/27/24

"Israel's Rafah Massacre: 

They Think They Can Get Away With Anything"

"Israel is behaving like this because it knows its Western 

protectors will let it get away with everything and anything."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 5/28/24

"'Only Corpses Will Return': 

Hamas' Ultimatum For Netanyahu After Israel's Rafah Assault"

Hamas has issued the most dangerous threat to Benjamin Netanyahu's government. The threat comes after 45 Palestinians were burnt to death in the city of Rafah. Hamas told Israel that all its captives might return as corpses if this massacre continues. Hamas officials accused the Israeli Army of killing its own citizens held in the Gaza Strip.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Putin’s Nuclear Warning To Blinken & NATO Is No Bluff - Scott Ritter"

Danny Haiphong, 5/27/24

"Putin’s Nuclear Warning to Blinken & 

NATO is No Bluff - Scott Ritter"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 5/27/24

"NATO Is Making a Deadly Mistake And WW3

 Will Look Unlike Anything We've Ever Seen" 

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"10 Food Items You Should Be Adding To Your Pantry Right Now!"

Adventures With Danno, 5/27/24

"10 Food Items You Should Be Adding

 To Your Pantry Right Now!"

10 food items that we are expecting a massive shortage of in 2024. These items are

 continuing to disappear on store shelves as well, making the prices very unaffordable!

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Wake Up, The Collapse Is In Progress Right Now

Jeremiah Babe, 5/27/28

"Wake Up, The Collapse Is In Progress Right Now; 

Institutions Are Crumbling All Around You"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"15 Fast Food Chains Being Financially Eviscerated In 2024"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 5/27/24

"15 Fast Food Chains Being 

Financially Eviscerated In 2024"

"Managing a restaurant is not an easy job. Managing hundreds of restaurants can be even more challenging. Amid inflationary pressures and changing consumer preferences, some of the biggest fast food chains in America are struggling to stay afloat. Many are being forced to shut down dozens of restaurants as consumers become more price-sensitive. Others are doing everything they can to survive in this highly competitive environment.

Industry experts say this trend is expected to accelerate as consumer spending continues to slow down. They are telling the public to buckle up because 2024 could see several familiar names disappear from the dining landscape. Is your go-to spot on the line? You will probably find out at the end of this video."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

1.Kona Grill 2.Starbucks 3.KFC 4.McDonald's 5.Sizzler 6.Red Lobster 7.Steak 'n Shake 8.Outback Steakhouse 9.Buffalo Wild Wings 10.Popeyes 11. Joe's Crab Shack 12.Quiznos 13.Fuddrucker's 14.Corner Bakery 15.Old Country Buffet

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Where The Stars And Moon Play”

Full screen recommended.

2002, “Where The Stars And Moon Play”

“Pamela and Randy Copus are the duo known as 2002. Randy Copus plays piano, electric cello, guitar, bass and keyboards. Pamela Copus plays flutes, harp, keyboards and a wind instrument called a WX5. Both musicians also provide all of the vocals on their albums, recording their voices many, many times and layering them to create a "virtual choir" with a celestial, angelic quality.”

"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.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111006.html

John Wilder, "Memorial Day, 2024"

AA gun at Corregidor

"Memorial Day, 2024"

by John Wilder

“If words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”

- Ronald Reagan

This was originally written in 2023. It says what I want to say in 2024.

"Last year when The Mrs. was putting flowers on the graves of her relatives, my job was to drive the car while she located the locations. It was her first year when she actively did that for all of her relatives. Her mother had done that previously, but since my mother-in-law passed, that duty of remembering the family had fallen to The Mrs.

I saw one gravesite in particular, and I decided to research it. It stuck out, because it was the grave of a United States Army officer who died in May of 1942. I was curious. Thankfully, there was at least some information about this officer online. He had been born elsewhere, but went to high school here in Modern Mayberry. His particulars weren’t all that unusual for a young man in the 1930s: he loved baseball, he graduated, went to college, got a degree, got a job, and got married.

While in college, he was in ROTC, so he graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I think even in the mid-1930s people could see the writing on the wall that there was the real possibility of war, so I imagine a core group of people with officer training was just what they wanted on the shelf.

His life was, I imagine, the same as millions of lives in that quasi-Depressionary era. He and his wife welcomed a baby into the world 1940, but by early 1941 the young officer had been drafted back into the Army. He was sent, half a world away, to Manila. I’m sure he told his wife as they shipped him off that his job, thankfully, was to be in the rear with the gear. It would be other people that would really be in the crosshairs of the enemy. Besides, it would be crazy of the Japanese to make a strike at Manilla. That would mean war!

He was at the airfield in Manilla on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. The planes he was supposed to serve hadn’t arrived. The troops that were supposed to protect the airfield hadn’t arrived. Yet his Company had. On Christmas Eve, 1941, his group was given the task of demolishing the airstrip and leaving nothing the Japanese could make use of. This is generally not a good sign.

Then, every man in his Company was given a rifle and told they were now members of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry. This is an even worse sign.

Our young officer and his troops were then ordered to join the defense of Bataan. Bataan is a peninsula that forms the northern part of the entrance to Manila Harbor. To really control Manila and use it as a base, you have to control Bataan. The original allied plans had called for falling back to Bataan and holding out, but MacArthur had thought that defeatist, and planned on a more active defense.

When the Japanese attacked, there weren’t enough supplies for MacArthur’s plan, so they fell back to Bataan, where there also weren’t enough supplies for the defense of Bataan because they stopped shipping those because MacArthur had changed his mind.

The Japanese general who would later be fired because it took him too long to defeat the combined American-Filipino army at Bataan also noted that the Americans had numerical superiority, and in his opinion, could have retaken Manila. I’m not sure that going through this exercise made me think more highly of MacArthur...

If you’re not familiar with the Battle of Bataan, it took over three months, and ended up the largest U.S. Army surrender since the Civil War. Over 76,000 troops were captured. To my knowledge, there is no written record of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry during the Battle of Bataan, though there is a record that on March 4, the 1st Lieutenant was promoted to Captain, just before MacArthur high-tailed it out of the Philippines to safety in Australia.

The troops at Bataan were officially surrendered on April 9, 1942. But in this case, the Provisional Air Corps Infantry was not part of the surrender, and was ordered to the island of Corregidor. Over 20% of the men of the Company had already been lost.

Corregidor was an island that resembled a battleship – at the time of the Japanese invasion, it was bristling with coastal defense guns, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and minefields. Now that Bataan was taken, the last thing required to control Manilla Bay was that the island forts fall. Corregidor was, by far, the biggest of these.

The Navy ran the guns, but the defense of the beach was the responsibility of the 4th Marine Regiment, along with a ragtag group of other orphan units, including at least one Company from the Provisional Air Corps Infantry and a young Captain from Modern Mayberry, who were sent into the foxholes with the Marines to guard the beaches since they had combat experience from Bataan.

Sometime in early May, the young Captain was in one of those foxholes with several Marines, and a Japanese artillery shell hit, killing them all. Even the very date this happened isn’t clear, and his family wouldn’t even hear of his death until a year later.

I don’t know what this young officer from Modern Mayberry did during his time in battle on Bataan and Corregidor – it’s nearly certain that no one alive does. His wife later remarried, half a decade after finding out her husband was dead. His son still bears the name of a father he never knew, if he’s still living.

There is a white cross in a field in Manilla, surrounded by green grass that is regularly cut, where it is said, his body lies. The marker here in Modern Mayberry is only for remembrance, to let people like me know he lived.

And, I saw it, and learned his story, and every year around this time, I tell a few people from Modern Mayberry who haven’t heard about him. The Mrs. plans to put some flowers out for him, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll spend some time thinking about him."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/