Friday, July 12, 2024

"How Stress Affects Your Cholesterol Level: Everything You Wanted to Know"

"How Stress Affects Your Cholesterol Level:
Everything You Wanted to Know"
by Karen Reed

"You’ve heard all about how high cholesterol levels are causing ill health. More importantly, you’ve heard about how bad cholesterol is causing ill health. It affects your arteries and blood flow, putting your heart under more pressure to perform properly. Those with high cholesterol levels are more at risk of stroke, heart attacks, and heart disease.

Cholesterol has long been linked to the food we eat. There are certain foods that we’re recommended to stay away from and others that we should get more off to promote good cholesterol levels and help protect the arteries. Did you know that it’s not just food that affects the cholesterol levels? Stress has been linked to high cholesterol. In fact, some studies now show that stress is worse than the food we eat for cholesterol levels and ill health.

The problem is that stress is a silent killer. We don’t realize that our cortisol levels are up and causing these problems until it’s too late in some cases. It’s important to reduce our stress levels to keep our cholesterol levels down. Here’s a look at just how stress causes high cholesterol and what you can do about it.

What Exactly Is Cholesterol? Before you start looking at stress and how it affects to high cholesterol levels, you need to know more about it. What exactly is it and what does it do?

There are two types of cholesterol: good and bad. The bad cholesterol is known as LDL cholesterol, and you shouldn’t have any more than 100mg/dL of this type in your body. Good cholesterol is HDL, and you should have at least 60mg/dL. A good level of total cholesterol, according to physicians, is 200mg/dL and this can be made up of both good and bad. Considering you shouldn’t have more that 100mg/dL of the bad stuff, you want at least 100mg/dL of the good stuff. The more good cholesterol you have, the better it is for you. Good cholesterol can keep the bad stuff at bay and under control.

What exactly is cholesterol? It’s a fatty substance that is only found in animal products. It is naturally produced by your body, but can also be added to food. The body will make more cholesterol due to trans and saturated fats being added through food. Both types of cholesterol will enter the arteries and build up. The good stuff builds up as a lining to the arteries, protecting them from damage. The lining is soft and makes it easier for the blood to flow through the veins.

On the other hand, bad cholesterol blocks the arteries. It creates a friction layer that stops the blood flowing freely. The heart and brain don’t get the blood that they both need and clogs can appear in the arteries. You’re at a higher risk of suffering various health problems, including stroke and heart disease, because of your high bad cholesterol levels.

There are various types of people more at risk for having high cholesterol levels. There are certainly genetic factors involved, but there are also lifestyle factors. One of those is stress levels, especially in those who are overweight, smoke or have other health problems.

Stress and the Unhealthy Lifestyle: One of the reasons found for the stress and high cholesterol link is bad lifestyle habits. Those who are stressed are more likely to follow less healthy habits in other areas of their life. They’re less likely to exercise and more likely to eat bad food. After all, saturated and trans fat foods tend to be the comfort foods – those that people crave to try to boost their endorphin and serotonin levels.

People who are stressed will look for ways to counter their cortisol levels, and that is usually through unhealthy methods. People are more likely to drink or smoke, which puts other strains on their body. The body isn’t able to produce the good cholesterol and is encouraged to create bad cholesterol. This reason is highly common in men. It is men who tend to deal with stress the worst, possibly due to misconceptions that relaxation techniques are for women. They also tend to have higher stressful jobs than women, since many men are in higher positions of power and authority. Men tend to be in more leadership roles, which means more responsibility and decision making. It may not seem fair, but that’s just a common view.

How the Body Reacts to Stress Causes High Cholesterol Levels: Another study found that people who suffer from high levels of stress have higher bad cholesterol due to the high levels of triglycerides. The triglycerides are the components that encourage the boost of bad cholesterol levels, causing major health problems. It doesn’t matter what your diet is like, although the unhealthier diet will put you more at risk.

The study researchers considered the reasons for the higher triglycerides. While the exact reason isn’t known, the theory is that it is due to the stress hormone cortisol. This is common is people who suffer long term stress, and leads to the release of adrenaline in the body.

Adrenaline is the body’s “flight or fight” response and helps to deal with the stress levels. It pushes people into making decisions and keeps them alert and active when they desperately need to be. Many people in trauma incidents report that they don’t know how they kept going. The adrenaline pushed them forward until they were given a chance to relax. That was when their bodies shut down, and they had the chance to allow the trauma to affect them. Adrenaline can certainly have benefits, but it causes the increase in triglycerides. This then triggers the high levels of bad cholesterol, which can later affect the body in other ways.

Stress Can Cause “Stickiness” in the Arteries: Another study has found that the arteries can be “sticky” due to high-stress levels. This may or may not be linked to high cholesterol levels. It could be a problem on its own that makes it look like someone has high cholesterol levels.

Stress makes the muscles spasm. This affects the arteries, which causes problems with the blood flow. The platelets in people with high-stress levels are commonly “sticky.” They cling to the artery walls and create bumps and friction for the blood flow. The blood is more likely to clog, and other health problems arise. The constriction of the arteries certainly doesn’t help things. When the arteries constrict, the area for the blood flow gets smaller, and it causes the blood flow to slow down. Mixed with the stickiness or high cholesterol problems, the blood gets stuck and clogs. It’s harder for the heart and brain to get the blood that they both need.

Stress causes many other health problems and affects the body in more ways that we currently know or understand. It is possible that stress isn’t just a factor for high cholesterol but makes high cholesterol worse for the health.

Reducing Stress to Prolong Life: Many scientists now recommend not focusing on reducing cholesterol as much as reducing stress. Cholesterol gained a bad rep for a long time, including good cholesterol. It’s taken time for the medical world to realize that not all cholesterol is bad and there are other factors that cause many of the same risks. One of those is the high-stress levels. It’s important to keep them to a minimum so the whole body can work effectively and we can prolong out lives.

The tricky thing is finding a way to reduce stress levels. Understandably reducing stress isn’t always easy and people can end up even more stressed because they’re trying to reduce it. Think about how you feel when you’re struggling to sleep because of stress. You get more worked up, which releases more cortisol and more adrenaline into the body. It’s harder to get to sleep, and this cycle continues until you find a way actually to reduce the stress.

Meditation and exercise are often considered the best ways to reduce stress. Yoga is a popular option since it combines the two together in many ways. You get to become one with yourself, focus on your breathing, and tone your body at the same time.

Both meditation and exercise help to release more happy hormones into your body. The right chemicals help to reduce the levels of cortisol in your body. You’ll have less adrenaline keeping you awake and fewer triglycerides causing your bad cholesterol production to increase.

It will be tempting to reach for a glass or two (or even a bottle) of wine to deal with stress. Smoking is tempting, along with binge watching a TV series while you struggle to sleep. You want to look for healthier ways to handle your stress. The negative ways will just cause more problems for your health.

Long Term vs. Short Term Stress and Cholesterol: If you have the odd day where you feel like you’re at the end of your tether, don’t worry about it too much. It’s not the short-term stress that causes the increase in cholesterol levels. The studies show that those who suffer long term stress are the ones who are most likely to see all the negative side effects.

Sure, stress isn’t good for you, but it is also a normal part of living. There are times that adrenaline and cortisol are needed. They can keep you going when you run out of energy or when going through trauma.

Those who suffer long term stress will have prolonged cortisol and adrenaline levels. Those hormones will be much higher than they need to be and in the body for much longer. They cause a range of health problems when around for long periods of time, including high blood pressure, insomnia, and even Type II diabetes. It shouldn’t be surprising that high cholesterol levels are also a problem.

Healthy eating is an important lifestyle choice. Not only will it help to reduce the foods that cause cholesterol production but it can also reduce the cortisol release. Healthy foods protect the body, supply energy, and help to boost the production of happy hormones, which help to reduce the stress hormones.

When you suffer from long term stress, you will want to look for ways to eliminate the reason for stress as much as possible. I know this isn’t always going to be easy. You may enjoy your career, but there will be times that you struggle to cope with all the demand your job throws at you. It’s not like you can just pick and choose. However, if there is a way that you can reduce the stuff you do that causes stress, such as delegation, then you want to do it where you can.

Long term high-stress levels may not cause immediate problems. There are links to issues years down the line because of the stress levels that you have felt at some point in your life. This issue is linked more with long term stress, but some bouts of short-term stress can also be a problem.

Stress Isn’t the Only Culprit: It is important to note that stress isn’t the only reason we suffer from high cholesterol levels. While it’s a silent killer and common, there are many other reasons your cholesterol levels could be high. Diet is certainly a factor, but so are genetics and other lifestyle choices that you make. The place you work or the chemicals that you inhale from where you live can also cause cholesterol levels to increase.

This is something that scientists are still trying to understand. We have come a long way since believing that all cholesterol was bad. Now we know that some cholesterol is good, and we want it to our bodies, but we need to make sure that it is good. While stress isn’t the only culprit, it is one of the main reasons for high cholesterol levels and other health problems. It’s best to keep the stress levels at bay as much as possible.”
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Full screen highly recommended.
“Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
By Melanie Curtin

“Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. So here’s a science-backed one: make a playlist of the 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one’s health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.

Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.

According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- “Weightless”- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.

Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created “Weightless”, Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or influenza.

In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you’ve got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.

Of the top track, Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, “‘Weightless’ was so effective, many women became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous.” So don’t drive while listening to these, but do take advantage of them:

10. “We Can Fly,” by Rue du Soleil (CafĂ© Del Mar)
7. “Pure Shores, by All Saints
6. “Please Don’t Go, by Barcelona
4. “Watermark,” by Enya
2. “Electra,” by Airstream
1. “Weightless, by Marconi Union

I made a public playlist of all of them on Spotify that runs about 50 minutes (it’s also downloadable).”

The Poet: Charles Mackay, "No Enemies"

 

"It Is Our Fate..."

"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with ones self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in ones mind what matters and what does not matter."
- Dorothy Thompson

"$2.5 Quadrillion Disaster Waiting to Happen"

"$2.5 Quadrillion Disaster Waiting to Happen – 
Egon von Greyerz"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"There is sufficiency in the world 
for Man's need but not for his greed." 
Mahatma Gandhi

"Egon von Greyerz (EvG) stores gold for clients at the biggest private gold vault in the world buried deep in the Swiss Alps. EvG is a financial and precious metals expert. EvG is a former Swiss banker and an expert in risk. He says the risk in the global markets has never been this high.

EvG explains, “Credit has increased dramatically through derivatives. All instruments being issued now by banks, pension funds, stock funds, it’s all synthetic. There is no real underlying payments in anything almost. Therefore, my estimate for derivatives would be at least $2 quadrillion, and I think that is probably conservative. Then, we have debt on top of that of $300 trillion, and we also have a couple hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities. So, we are talking about $2.5 QUADRILLION, and that’s with a global GDP of $88 trillion. So, there is a disaster waiting to happen, and especially because all this created money has created no value whatsoever. I always knew this would collapse, and it’s taken longer than I expected, but I think we are at the end of a major era. 

These derivatives, at some point soon, will actually turn into debt. Central banks will have to cover all the outstanding liabilities of the commercial banks as we are seeing now with Credit Suisse, Bank of England and etc. This is going to happen across the board. Whether it’s called derivatives or called debt, as far as I am concerned, it’s the same thing. It will have the same effect on the world financial system, which will be disastrous, of course.”

EvG says the derivative markets were simply a way for financial institutions to carry debt and not show it on their balance sheets. In the end, everything will balance out. EvG goes on to say, “Nobody can repay the debt, and they can’t even pay interest. So, therefore, when the debt implodes, so will the assets that were financed by this debt. So, both sides of the balance sheet have to come down. Whether it comes down by 50%, 75% or 90%, I don’t know. All I think about is risk, and the financial system will not survive in its present form. Central banks only use one kind of medicine, and that is more printed money. Now, you are getting negative returns on printed money. So, that is not going to save anything. 

Sadly we are looking at a situation when this system will start to implode. The rich are still rich, but the poor are really poor. Overall in the UK, Germany and most European countries, people don’t have enough money to live. This is a human disaster already. With food costs going up 25% and energy going up the same and gasoline, interest rates and rents, people don’t have enough money, and that is happening now. It’s a human disaster of mega proportions. It’s so sad, and governments will have no chance of doing anything about it. The risk is increasing exponentially,  and it is going to get worse.” There is much more in the 43-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Management, which can be found on GoldSwitzerland.com
o

"Bank Runs Will Collapse The Entire System And It's Worse Than Everyone Thought Possible"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 7/12/24
"Bank Runs Will Collapse The Entire System 
And It's Worse Than Everyone Thought Possible"

"This is much worse than everyone thought possible. Three major U.S. banks have gone bust last year, and another one collapsed just a couple of months ago. Though most people think these failures have set off the crisis that is unfolding right now, according to data from American Banker, this trend has started long ago. Since 2020, 10 regional lenders have failed in the U.S. That number climbs to 15 if we go all the way back to 2017. And jumps to 34 going back to 2015. The truth is that the American banking system has been falling apart before our eyes for quite some time now, but we have just started paying attention to it. Now more than ever, we should stay alert.

Experts with the financial services group Nomura have sounded the alarm last week, saying that conditions are deteriorating extremely fast in the sector. They have predicted that the number of bank failures will soar by 500% over the next 12 months. Even Federal Reserve officials have confirmed that more institutions are going to face an inevitable collapse.

The biggest problem is that, today, about half of all deposits in the U.S. are uninsured, meaning that almost 50% of all accounts may be completely wiped out by the ongoing bank crisis."
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Warning! Our Economy Is Collapsing Faster Than You Think!"

Full Screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 7/12/24
"Warning! Our Economy Is 
Collapsing Faster Than You Think!"
"Inflation dropped a mere 1/10th of 1% - big deal, right? Everything from meat to gas is up, and our daily lives are more expensive than ever. We'll also talk about how the housing market is crumbling, with insane policies in places like Los Angeles making it nearly impossible to sell high-value homes. Plus, we'll cover the ripple effects of droughts on food prices and how companies like Tractor Supply and Macy's are struggling to adapt."
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Huntington, Vermont, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Too Often..."

"The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It’s overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt."
- Leo Buscaglia

"Moment Hamas Fighters Invaded IDF Headquarters in Rafah, Then This Happens"

Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 7/12/24
"Moment Hamas Fighters Invaded IDF 
Headquartersin Rafah, Then This Happens"
Comments here:

Americans! To our eternal shame and disgrace YOU paid for all this genocidal horror, every single bullet, every bomb, every tank, and the blood of 38,000 innocent, unarmed old people, men, women and 16,000 CHILDREN, with at least 8,000 more buried under the rubble caused by the 2,000 and 6,000 lb. bombs YOU gave these psychopathic monsters. That blood is on YOUR hands too! And if these cowards can't defeat Hamas after 9 months just wait until Hezbollah totally obliterates the Israeli Occupation Force and Tel Aviv is turned into Gaza by their 200,000 missiles.
Inshallah! So be it!

"The Old Evil"

"The Old Evil"
I returned to occupied Palestine, from where I had reported for The New York Times,
after two decades. I experienced once more the visceral evil of Israel’s occupation.
by Chris Hedges

Ramallah, Occupied Palestine: "It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain. Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements - illegal under international law - dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have grown in number and expanded in size. But they remain protected by blast barriers, concertina wire and watchtowers surrounded by the obscenity of lawns and gardens. The colonists have access to bountiful sources of water in this arid landscape that the Palestinians are denied.

The winding 26-foot high concrete wall that runs the 440 mile length of occupied Palestine, with its graffiti calling for liberation, murals with the Al-Aqsa mosque, faces of martyrs and the grinning and bearded mug of Yasser Arafat - whose concessions to Israel in the Oslo agreement made him, in the words of Edward Said, “the PĂ©tain of the Palestinians” - give the West Bank the feel of an open air prison. The wall lacerates the landscape. It twists and turns like some huge, fossilized antediluvian snake severing Palestinians from their families, slicing Palestinian villages in half, cutting communities off from their orchards, olive trees and fields, dipping and rising out of wadis, trapping Palestinians in the Jewish state’s updated version of a Bantustan.

It has been over two decades since I reported from the West Bank. Time collapses. The smells, sensations, emotions and images, the lilting cadence of Arabic and the miasma of sudden and violent death that lurks in the air, evokes the old evil. It is as if I never left.

I am in a battered black Mercedes driven by a friend in his thirties who I will not name to protect him. He worked construction in Israel but lost his job - like nearly all Palestinians employed in Israel - on Oct. 7. He has four children. He is struggling. His savings have dwindled. It is getting hard to buy food, pay for electricity, water and petrol. He feels under siege. He is under siege. He has little use for the quisling Palestinian Authority. He dislikes Hamas. He has Jewish friends. He speaks Hebrew. The siege is grinding him, and everyone around him, down. “A few more months like this and we’re finished,” he says puffing nervously on a cigarette. “People are desperate. More and more are going hungry.”

We are driving the winding road that hugs the barren sand and scrub hillsides snaking up from Jericho, rising from the salt-rich Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the earth, to Ramallah. I will meet my friend, the novelist Atef Abu Saif, who was in Gaza on Oct. 7 with his 15-year-old son, Yasser. They were visiting family when Israel began its scorched earth campaign. He spent 85 days enduring and writing daily about the nightmare of the genocide. His collection of haunting diary entries have been published in his book “Don’t Look Left.” He escaped the carnage though the border with Egypt at Rafah, traveled to Jordan and returned home to Ramallah. But the scars of the genocide remain. Yasser rarely leaves his room. He does not engage with his friends. Fear, trauma and hatred are the primary commodities imparted by the colonizers to the colonized.

“I still live in Gaza,” Atef tells me later. “I am not out. Yasser still hears bombing. He still sees corpses. He does not eat meat. Red meat reminds him of the flesh he picked up when he joined the rescue parties during the massacre in Jabalia, and the flesh of his cousins. I sleep on a mattress on the floor as I did in Gaza when we lived in a tent. I lie awake. I think of those we left behind waiting for sudden death.”

We turn a corner on a hillside. Cars and trucks are veering spasmodically to the right and left. Several in front of us are in reverse. Ahead is an Israeli checkpoint with thick boxy blocks of dun colored concrete. Soldiers are stopping vehicles and checking papers. Palestinians can wait hours to get past. They can be hauled from their vehicles and detained. Anything is possible at an Israeli checkpoint, often erected with no advance warning. Most of it is not good. We back up. We descend a narrow, dusty road that veers off from the main highway. We travel on bumpy, uneven tracks through impoverished villages.

It was like this for Blacks in the segregated south and Indigenous Americans. It was like this for Algerians under the French. It was like this in India, Ireland and Kenya under the British. The death mask - too often of European extraction - of colonialism does not change. Nor does the God-like authority of colonists who look at the colonized as vermin, who take a perverse delight in their humiliation and suffering and who kill them with impunity.

The Israeli customs official asked me two questions when I crossed into occupied Palestine from Jordan on the King Hussein Bridge. “Do you hold a Palestinian passport?” “Are either of your parents Palestinian?” In short, are you contaminated? This is how apartheid works.

The Palestinians want their land back. Then they will talk of peace. The Israelis want peace, but demand Palestinian land. And that, in three short sentences, is the intractable nature of this conflict.

I see Jerusalem in the distance. Or rather, I see the Jewish colony that lines the hills above Jerusalem. The villas, built in an arc on the hilltop, have windows intentionally narrowed into upright rectangles to double as gun slits.

We reach the outskirts of Ramallah. We are held up in the snarl of traffic in front of the sprawling Israeli military base that oversees the Qalandia checkpoint, the primary checkpoint between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is the scene of frequent demonstrations against the occupation that can end in gunfire.

I meet Atef. We walk to a kebab shop and sit at a small outdoor table. The scars of the latest incursion by the Israeli army are around the corner. At night, a few days ago, Israeli soldiers torched the shops that handle money transfers from abroad. They are charred ruins. Money from abroad will now be harder to get, which I suspect was the point.

Israel has dramatically tightened its stranglehold on the more than 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, who are surrounded by more than 700,000 Jewish colonists housed in some 150 strategically placed developments with their own shopping malls, schools and medical centers. These colonial developments along with special roads that can only be used by the colonists and the military, checkpoints, tracts of land that are off limits to Palestinians, closed military zones, Israeli-declared “nature preserves” and military outposts form concentric circles. They can instantly sever the flow of traffic to isolate Palestinians cities and towns into a series of ringed ghettos.

“Since Oct. 7 it is hard to travel anywhere in the West Bank,” Atef says. “There are checkpoints at the entrances of every city, town and village. Imagine you want to see your mother or your fiancĂ©e. You want to drive from Ramallah to Nablus. It can take seven hours because the main roads are blocked. You are forced to drive through back roads in the mountains.” The trip should take 90 minutes.

Israeli soldiers and colonists have killed 528 Palestinian civilians, including 133 children, and injured more than 5,350 others in the West Bank, since Oct. 7, according to the UN human rights chief. Israel has also detained over 9,700 Palestinians - or should I say hostages? - including hundreds of children and pregnant women. Many have been severely tortured, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli dungeons and aid workers killed upon their release. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to free up space for more.

Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, was in the past spared the worst of Israeli violence. Since Oct. 7, this has changed. Raids and arrests take place almost daily in and around the city, sometimes accompanied by lethal gunfire and aerial bombardments. Israel has bulldozed or confiscated more than 990 Palestinian dwellings and homes in the West Bank since Oct. 7, at times forcing owners to demolish their own buildings or pay exorbitant fines.

Heavily armed Israeli colonists have carried out murderous rampages on villages east of Ramallah, including attacks following the murder of a 14-year-old colonist on April 12 near the village of al Mughayyir. The colonists, in retaliation, burned and destroyed Palestinian homes and vehicles across 11 villages, ripped up roads, killed one Palestinian and wounded more than two dozen others.

Israel has ordered the largest West Bank land seizure in more than three decades, confiscating vast tracts of land northeast of Ramallah. The extreme rightwing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a Jewish colony and is in charge of colonial expansion, has promised to flood the West Bank with a million new colonists.

Smotrich has vowed to obliterate the distinct areas in the West Bank created by the Oslo accords. Area A, which comprises 18 percent of the West Bank, is under exclusive Palestinian control. Area B, nearly 22 percent of the West Bank, is under Israeli military occupation, in collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank, is under total Israeli occupation.

“Israel realizes that the world is blind, that no one will force it to end the genocide in Gaza, and no one will pay attention to the war in the West Bank,” Atef says. “The word war is not even used. This is called a normal Israeli military operation, as if what is happening to us is normal. There is no distinction now between the status of the occupied territories, classified as A, B and C. The settlers are confiscating more land. They are carrying out more attacks. They do not need the army. They have become a shadow army, supported and armed by Israel’s rightwing government. We have lived in a continuous war since 1948. This is simply the newest phase.”

Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp are assaulted daily by Israeli armed units, undercover commando teams, snipers and bulldozers, which level entire neighborhoods. Drones equipped with machine guns and missiles, as well as warplanes and Apache attack helicopters, circle overhead and obliterate dwellings. Medics and doctors, as in Gaza, are assassinated. Usaid Kamal Jabarin, a 50-year-old surgeon, was killed on May 21 by an Israel sniper as he arrived for work at the Jenin Governmental Hospital. Hunger is endemic.

“The Israeli military carries out raids that kill Palestinians and then departs,” Atef says. “But it returns a few days later. It is not enough for the Israelis to steal our land. They seek to kill as many of the original inhabitants as possible. This is why it carries out constant operations. This is why there are constant armed clashes. But these clashes are provoked by Israel. They are the pretext used to continually attack us. We live under constant pressure. We face death daily.” The dramatic escalation of violence in the West Bank is overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. But it has become a second front. If Israel can empty Gaza, the West Bank will be next.

“Israel’s objective has not changed,” he says. “It seeks to shrink the Palestinian population, confiscate larger and larger tracts of Palestinian land and build more and more colonies. It seeks to Judaize Palestine and strip the Palestinians of all the means to sustain themselves. The ultimate goal is the annexation of the West Bank.”

“Even at the height of the peace process, when everyone was mesmerized by peace, Israel was turning this peace proposal into a nightmare,” he goes on. “Most Palestinians were opposed to the peace accords Arafat signed in 1993, but still they welcomed him when he returned. They did not kill him. They wanted to give peace a chance. In Israel, the prime minister who signed the Oslo accords was assassinated.”

“A few years ago, someone daubed a strange slogan on the wall of the U.N. school east of Jabaliya,” Atef wrote from the hell of Gaza. “‘We progress backwards.’ It has a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and our churches. It razes our gardens and parks. Every war takes years to recover from, and before we’ve recovered, a new war arrives. There are no warning sirens, no messages sent to our phones. War just arrives.”

The Jewish settler colonial project is protean. It changes its shape but not its essence. Its tactics vary. Its intensity comes in waves of severe repression and less repression. Its rhetoric about peace masks its intent. It grinds forward with its deadly, perverted, racist logic. And yet, the Palestinians endure, refusing to submit, resisting despite the overwhelming odds, grasping at tiny kernels of hope from bottomless wells of despair. There is a word for this. Heroic."

"How It Really Is"

"Fredwitz on War II"

"Fredwitz on War II"
by Fred Reed

"Oh help. As I write, the mumbling egg plant in the White House shovels money and arms into two wars, neither necessary, and he and Lockheed Martin prepare for a third, also unnecessary, over Taiwan, which is none of their business. Since in the Federal Bubble on the Potomac there is chatter at the mental level of water-dwelling marsupials of sending American troops into these, perhaps a bit of thought might be a good idea.

Begin with the dismal record of the American military in actually fighting wars. Go back a way. In Vietnam American forces, with enormous superiority in air power, artillery, armor, and helicopters lost. In Afghanistan, with even greater superiority over peasants with rifles and not much-else, the American military lost. Just now in the Red Sea an aircraft carrier and several destroyers have for months tried to keep ragtag Yemenis from blocking traffic to the crucial Suez Canal and–failed. After more than two years of of pushing the war in Ukraine, America’s puppet army is losing. And now Washington wants to fight…China.

Why undertake anything so obviously cockamamie? The reasons are several. Start with the insular complacency of a city long accustomed to immense international power and unable to see that it no longer has it. Many who hold the reins in the city are old men who remember the world of decades ago when an aircraft carrier could intimidate almost any country, including China. This isn’t then, but the old have difficulty noticing. Add a Congress incontinently ignorant of anything but the politics of Washington and of their home states There is nobody on the House China committee who reads, speaks, or writes Chinese. Yet Congress inveighs fiercely against Beijing like a swarm of feral hamsters.

We have all heard repeatedly that America is the Indispensable Nation, Exceptional, the Sole Superpower, the Shining City on a Hill that other countries want to imitate. I will hope that most of us take this as the forgettable political boilerplate that it is. But there are many in Washington who actually believe it. They are smug, self-assured, and unable to think beyond the walls imposed by belief. Many are highly intelligent, making it easy to ignore the opinions of lesser mortals. They read each other, talk to each other, and drink together.

The sense of superiority, even invincibility, leads to disasters. If you are the Sole Superpower, you don’t really have to ask what other countries can do, think or want. You don’t have to plan realistically or ask What If?

What if, for example, the Russian fleet shows up in support of China? If North Korea seized the chance and invades South Korea, giving Washington two major wars at once? If China sinks tankers going to Japan and Taiwan, neither of which has oil? If Washington insouciantly bombs the Chinese mainland, which it will, and China or Russia hits the Pentagon and Capitol with sub-launched missiles? What does the sole superpower then do?

Consider the war in Ukraine. Washington went into it (the rest of the country didn’t know where it was) sure that losing was impossible. After all, Russia was backward, technologically primitive, and (as we heard over and over) "a gas station pretending to be a country.” If there was an effort actually to understand what Russia could do no sign of this appeared.

Washington was, however, sure of many things. Russia could not withstand a long war. It has. Its currency would collapse. It didn’t. (Remember Field Marshal Joe in the White House chortling that “The ruble is rubble?” It wasn’t.) The Russian public would rise and oust Putin. It didn’t. The rest of the world would rally around Washington and isolate Russia diplomatically. It didn’t. The sanctions would collapse the Russian economy. They didn’t. NATO’s superior weapons and tactics would crush Russian forces. They didn’t. Russia would run out of artillery ammunition and missiles. It didn’t. NATO did.

All of this demonstrates a catastrophic failure of the intelligence agencies, an ignorance of, among other things, Russia’s economic structure and capacity, will to fight, motives, and weaponry. For this we pay billions.

So: Washington has painted itself into a corner. If it negotiates, this will amount to a surrender. The gargantuan inflamed egos will not easily acceptthat the Sole Superpower has just lost in a war it concocted itself. A loss would disastrously reduce Washington’s military credibility. NATO might realize that it had been taken for a ride and decline to do it again. Taiwan might figure out that it was being set up to fight China, a short distance across the water, as a second Ukraine.

Possibilities Washington didn’t foresee, smugly regarding Russia as an enlarged Guatemala. A desperate Washington is capable of fathomless stupidity. There is talk of provoking a Europe wide war, even attacking Russia itself. Oh good.

Here I offer Fred’s Fourth Military Law: Military stupidity comes in three levels: Normally stupid; really, really stupid; and invading Russia. It isn’t good for you. Charles XII tried it, as did Napoleon and Hitler. With identical results.

Inside the Beltway, “American boots on the ground” sounds scary, even decisive. No. American weaponry, its chief purpose being to funnel money to the arms industry, has performed poorly in the Ukraine. The vaunted M1 tank burns like any other. Russia has a large advantage in missiles, both in numbers and sophistication, including hypersonics. The F-16 fighter, apparently thought of as a sort of hypergalactic Star Wars craft, first flew in 1976, though it is not actually a biplane. The enlisted ranks in particular are rotted by low recruiting standards, diversity hiring, sexual curiosities and homosexuals. One thinks of the 35th Squealing Demons Regiment, or the frightful Tranny Berzerkers.

Bear in mind that a military is less a fighting force than a psychological condition, an element of this being pathological optimism. An army will not fight if it is told that it consists of mediocre infantry, poorly trained and led, and not really as well armed or led as the potential enemy. Consequently they are regularly assured that they are the most formidable, death-dealing troops in this or any nearby universe.

This makes for misjudgement, as does the fact that wars, whatever their alleged causes, are actually consequences of secretions from those parts of men that women say men think with. Countries fight war after war after war after war, not because it is a good idea but because it is what men do, like packs of wild dogs.

This is why wars so seldom turn out as the aggressors expect. In 1914 Germany started WWI, and lost. In 1939, it started WWII, and lost. In 1941 the Japanese attacked America, and lost. After this, the French re-invaded Vietnam, and lost. Then the Americans invaded Vietnam, and lost. The russians invaded Afghanistan, and lost. Then the Americans invaded Afghanistan, and lost. Then the Americans started a war in Ukraine, and are losing. Now they want a war with China.

I’m going to change my phylum. This one doesn’t look to have much future, and anyway it is embarrassing."
o
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
"A visual journey into mankind's
favorite pastime throughout the ages."
o
"War"
"War is an intense armed conflict between statesgovernmentssocieties, or paramilitary groups such as mercenariesinsurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties. While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic, or ecological circumstances.

The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be about 13,400 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, specifically traumatic bone lesions.

Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. Estimates for total deaths due to war vary wildly. For the period 3000 BCE until 1991, estimates range from 145 million to 2 billion. In one estimate, primitive warfare prior to 3000 BCE has been thought to have claimed 400 million victims based on the assumption that it accounted for the 15.1% of all deaths. For comparison, an estimated 1,680,000,000 people died from infectious diseases in the 20th century."

Human nature...We just can't help ourselves, can we? And now the totally insane psychopaths in charge are determined to get us all killed in a world-destroying nuclear war. There's something profoundly, tragically wrong with human DNA...
o
Freely download Carl Von Clausewitz, "On War", here:

"Grave Faults..."

“Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.”
- Paulo Coelho, "Like the Flowing River"

Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up At Costco And Aldi!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 7/12/24
"Stocking Up At Costco!"
"In today's vlog, we travel to Costco, and are buying things, and trying some new food items! We shop around Costco showing what we think are the best deals that make the membership worth it! With grocery prices increasing do to inflation, and other reasons, we are traveling around to find the best sales, and deals, so you don't waste your money! It's getting rough out here with prices skyrocketing, and stores struggling to get in products."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, PM 7/12/24
"Items At Aldi Everyone Should Be Buying!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Aldi and are finding all kinds of their Aldi Saver Deals!  As grocery prices continue to rise in most of our main supermarkets, Aldi has put together some pretty amazing sales that we should definitely take advantage of!  We show you all of the savings, so get your notepad ready!"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "The US Dollar Downfall Will Rapidly Worsen From Here"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/12/24
"The US Dollar Downfall Will Rapidly Worsen From Here"
Comments here:

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable: Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Intel WrapUp"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/12/24
"INTEL Roundtable: 
Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Intel WrapUp"
Comments here
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/12/24
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: US Foreign Policy on the Brink"
Comments here

"WTF Alert! NATO 'Nuclear Capable' F-16s Will Strike Russia Within Days, Border Closures"

Canadian Prepper, 7/12/24
"WTF Alert! NATO 'Nuclear Capable' F-16s 
Will Strike Russia Within Days, Border Closures"
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "The Cover Your Ass Olympics"

"The Cover Your Ass Olympics"
by Jim Kunstler

“If the entire political and media elite can manufacture the lie for 4+ years that candidate now-President Biden isn’t cognitively impaired, what else might they have lied about and are lying about now?” - Stephen Miller

You can’t deny that “Joe Biden” did his goodest last night facing down a half-dozen pre-selected reporters representing blob-adjacent news orgs such as Reuters and NPR at the post-NATO meetup damage-control event billed as a “news conference.” Only a week after he declared himself to be the “first black woman vice-president,” he pivoted to correct the record, telling the DC press corps that he’d “picked Vice-president Trump to be vice-president...” and everyone in the room saw that they were back in that mortifying scene in The Caine Mutiny when the confused and incompetent Captain Queeg reaches for the ball bearings in his pocket.

At the end of the harrowing hour, he minced his way offstage, leaving his Party of Chaos evermore sore perplexed as to how they might lever this burnt-out old hack out of the nomination they foolishly secured for him months ago. It ain’t gonna be easy, as “JB” repeatedly insisted he had no intention of stepping aside, despite the forces mustering against him in Congress, the media, and Hollywood. Even CNN is turning on him. Meanwhile, the #VeepTrump clip went viral on social media. So much for damage control.

You understand, don’t you, what a fiasco the 75th Anniversary DC NATO meetup itself was? Everyone in the room, including the key prime ministers and presidents, could sense how flimsy the alliance now appears, as led by our maundering near-zombie president. Like “Joe Biden,” NATO’s raison d’ĂŞtre has been exposed as badly out-of-date and dangerously unhinged. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kicked things off declaring that “Ukraine is on an ‘irreversible’ path to NATO.” This controverts what everybody in NATO knows is Mr. Putin’s clearest red line, and is therefore either a jape or a bit of recklessly provocative idiocy.

The truth of the matter is this: following its transition out of the failed Soviet experiment thirty years ago, Russia was never a threat to its European neighbors. All the talk of Vladimir Putin seeking to reassemble the old USSR empire was knowingly false, as is the chatter now about Russia looking to invade Europe. What Russia actually sought was to be regarded, once again, as a normal European nation able to conduct normal business with the rest of Europe. The USA wouldn’t allow it.

Exactly why remains partially mysterious. Surely, post-1991, it was in the interest of US military contractors to maintain their Cold War revenue streams. To do that, a foreign hobgoblin had to be invoked - and perhaps China was not the best candidate, since it had begun manufacturing everything on sale in the Walmart - so Russia, with practically no export economy, was cast in that role. And the politicians, too, surely liked creaming off their share of that military-industrial revenue stream, so they went along policy-wise, with figures like John McCain and Lindsay Graham leading the charge. But the US intel blob and State Department had darker motives, driven by an animus that has slowly revealed itself to be insane - just as the Democratic Party has turned obviously insane, adopting a playbook that could have been written by Franz Kafka.

Being likewise insane, the intel blob and the neocons at State harbored an unappeasable hatred toward Russia that, since the Soviet collapse, allowed no accommodation and gelled into a naked avarice for seizing the resources of Russia with a long-term plan to subvert the Russian state, break it up the way they broke up Serbia in the 1990s, and direct a corporate looting operation of Russia’s oil and mineral riches. Ukraine was the doorway they had to go through to get that done.

And so, the blob and State neocons overthrew democratically-elected Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and installed Poroshenko followed by Zelensky. Veep “Joe Biden” was given the Ukraine “portfolio,” making him a sort of viceroy, and he took full advantage, plopping his son Hunter on the board of Burisma, the huge Ukrainian natgas company that American oil and gas companies drooled over. Hunter managed to milk the Ukrainian government for tribute to the Biden Family bank accounts far above the roughly million-dollar-a-year salary he grifted from his no-show job on the Burisma board. (Hunter also apparently dabbled in a set of bioweapons labs set up in Ukraine by the CIA.) Thus, along with the sheer insanity of the CIA and State Department, the Biden family had a deep and criminal involvement in Ukraine that had to be concealed.

That degenerate relationship has been revealed since the discovery of the laptop that Hunter stupidly left in a Wilmington computer repair shop, and all the disclosures that have followed - including the sedulous recovery of bank records for the many shell companies the Bidens used to conceal their moneygrubbing in Ukraine and other foreign lands. When Mr. Trump first scented it in the fall of 2019, they impeached him for it. But now that he threatens to return to the White House, the blobists and the Bidens are running out of options to evade an accounting for all this mischief. That desperation is what drives disintegrating “Joe Biden” to remain president and to continue pressing the malevolent and foolish proxy war against hobgoblin Russia and its vilified president, Mr. Putin. So, now you know."

Oh, the full name of Kunstler's website is so true...

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Prepare For An Economic Crash Landing"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/11/24
"Prepare For An Economic Crash Landing
The FED Is Losing The Fight Against Inflation"
Comments here:

"The Only Question..."

"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether
 it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it." 
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Be kind to yourself, forget all the troubles 
for a little while and enjoy this beautiful video...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars.
Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."

"Humanity Today..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson