Friday, October 25, 2024

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”
by Simon Black

“In the early summer of 1914, Albert Einstein was about to start a prestigious new job as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The position was a big deal for the 35-year old Einstein – confirmation that he was one of the leading scientific minds in the world. And he was excited about what he would be able to achieve there. But within weeks of Einstein’s arrival, the German government canceled plans for the Institute; World War I had broken out, and all of Europe was gearing up for one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

The impact of the Great War was immeasurable. It cost the lives of 20 million people. It bankrupted entire nations. The war ripped two major European powers off the map – the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire – and deposited them in the garbage can of history. Austria-Hungary in particular boasted the second largest land mass in Europe, the third highest population, and one of the biggest economies. Plus it was a leading manufacturer of high-tech machinery. Yet by the end of the war it would no longer exist.

World War I also played a major role in the emergence of communism in Russia through the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Plus it was also a critical factor in the astonishing rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Without the Great War, Adolf Hitler would have been an obscure Austrian vagabond, and our world would be an entirely different place.

One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was. Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans. The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen. To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.

As AJP describes in his book "War by Timetable", the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS. Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time. A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements. In short, there was no room for error.

In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day – not with regards to war, but for monetary policy. Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory. Their success depends on being able to precisely control the [sometimes irrational] behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital. And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.

This is nuts. Economies are comprised of billions of moving pieces that are beyond anyone’s control and often have competing interests. A government that’s $30 trillion in debt requires cheap money (i.e. low interest rates) to stay afloat. Yet low interest rates are severely punishing for savers, retirees, and pension funds (including Social Security) because they’re unable to generate a sufficient rate of return to meet their needs.

Low interest rates are great for capital intensive businesses that need to borrow money. But they also create dangerous asset bubbles and can eventually cause a painful rise in inflation. Raise interest rates too high, however, and it could bankrupt debtors and throw the economy into a tailspin. Like I said, there’s no room for error – they have to find the perfect balance between growth and inflation.

Several years ago hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio summed it up perfectly when he said, “It becomes more and more difficult to balance those things as time goes on. It may not be a problem in the next year or two, but the risk of not getting it right increases with time. The risk of them getting it wrong is clearly growing. I truly hope they don’t get it wrong. But if they ever do, people may finally look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to hand total control of our economy over to an unelected committee of bureaucrats with a mediocre track record… and then expect them to get it right forever. It’s pretty insane when you think about it."

As Einstein quipped at the height of World War I in 1917, “What a pity we don’t live on Mars so that we could observe the futile activities of human beings only through a telescope…”
"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
- H. L. Mencken, 1929
Freely download "Ideas And Opinions", by Albert Einstein, here:

"How Easy It Seems..."

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”
- George R.R. Martin
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“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”
- C. Joybell C.

"Protect Your Money Now Because Banks Are Falling Apart All Around Us"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/25/24
"Protect Your Money Now Because Banks
 Are Falling Apart All Around Us"

"What if I told you that the banks you trust with your life savings are on the brink of collapse? Yes, right now, all around us, hundreds of big U.S. banks are falling apart, and your money is at risk. But there's a solution for those who want to safeguard their finances before the inevitable failure of these institutions. Today, I’m going to explain to you what's happening to the American banking system and show you how to protect your money before it’s too late.

We’ve all heard the whispers: another bank collapse, another bailout, another financial crisis looming. And with everything happening in the world right now - from inflation, to higher interest rates, to recession - it’s hard not to wonder: is my money safe in the bank? In the past year alone, we’ve seen many established financial institutions collapsing in the U.S. But what does this mean for you, and how can you take steps to secure your savings before things get worse? Stick with me, because by the end of this video, you’ll understand the depth of this crisis and know how to keep your money safe.
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 10/25/24
Housing Market in Total Collapse! 
Inventory Up, Interest Rates Up!"
"The US housing market is in complete free fall as inventory continues to rise, mortgage rates continue to rise, buyer demand hit a 30 year low and inflation is roaring back to life.  This is literally the recipe for a housing crash brewing right before our eyes."
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"Trapping Wild Pigs"

"Trapping Wild Pigs"
by Jeff Thomas

"Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look. Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily. However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them. First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground. After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.

Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side. Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.

At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating. You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs. But unfortunately, that’s not always so. In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.

Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor. But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of "entitlements" – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.

Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their "diet," more free stuff is offered. It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements. Then, it’s time to erect the fence.

Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed. And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence. Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.

What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms. You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.

And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.

Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is "temporarily" cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again. The freedoms are gone for good and the entitlements are then slowly removed. This is how it’s possible to begin with a very prosperous country, such as Argentina, Venezuela or the US, and convert it into an impoverished collectivist state. It’s a gradual process and the pattern plays out the same way time and again. It succeeds because human nature remains the same. Collectivism eventually degrades into uniform poverty for 95% of the population, with a small elite who live like kings.

After World War II, the Western world was flying high. There was tremendous prosperity and opportunity for everyone. The system was not totally free market, but enough so that anyone who wished to work hard and take responsibility for himself had the opportunity to prosper. But very early – in the 1960s – The Great Society became the byword for government-provided largesse for all those who were in need – free stuff for those who were disadvantaged in one way or another.

Most Americans, who were then flush with prosperity, were only too happy to share with those who were less fortunate. Unfortunately, they got suckered into the idea that, rather than give voluntarily on an individual basis, they’d entrust their government to become the distributor of largesse, and to pay for it through taxation. Big mistake. From that point on, all that was necessary was to keep redefining who was disadvantaged and to then provide more free stuff.

Few people were aware that the first sections of fence were being erected. But today, it may be easier to understand that the fence has been completed and the gate is closing. It may still be possible to make a hasty exit, but we shall find very few people dashing for the gate. After all, to expatriate to another country would mean leaving all that free stuff – all that security.

At this point, the idea of foraging in the forest looks doubtful. Those who have forgotten how to rely on themselves will understandably fear making an exit. They’ll not only have to change their dependency habits; they’ll have to think for themselves in future. But make no mistake about it – what we’re witnessing today in what was formerly the Free World is a transition into collectivism. It will be a combination of corporatism and socialism, with the remnants of capitalism. The overall will be collectivism.

The gate is closing, and as stated above, some members of the herd will cause a fuss as they watch the gate closing. There will be some confusion and civil unrest, but in the end, the great majority will settle down once again to their corn. Only a few will have both the insight and temerity necessary to make a dash for the gate as it’s now closing.

This was true in Argentina when the government was still generous with the largesse, and it was true in Venezuela when the entitlements were at their peak. It is now true of the US as the final transition into collectivism begins. Rather than make the dash for the gate, the great majority will instead look down at their feed and say, "This is still the best country in the world," and continue eating the corn."

The Daily "Near You?"

Padua, Veneto, Italy. Thanks for stopping by!

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap-Up"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 10/25/24
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: 
Weekly Wrap-Up"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "You Will Live On Less"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 10/25/24
"You Will Live On Less"
"Today we're diving into the scary reality of paycheck to paycheck living, even among those earning over $150K a year. I'm Dan, and it's a wild ride as we explore how the economy is impacting our wallets. From Bank of America’s revealing study to the downfall of Denny’s, we're uncovering the harsh truths that many are facing. Please join our email list for more insights and updates! With businesses cutting back, like a coffee company leaning on AI to slash employee hours, everyone’s feeling the pinch. Even Denny's isn't safe, closing numerous locations due to skyrocketing costs. Can you believe a BLT now costs $18?"
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Travelling with Russell, "I Visited the World Famous Russian Children's Railway"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 10/25/24
"I Visited the World Famous Russian Children's Railway"
"The Moscow Children's Railway is an education organization of the Moscow Railway. It is designed to teach children ages 12-17 all aspects of railway operation. The railway is operated solely by children, with every job fulfilled independently to run the railway."
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Travelling with Russell, "60 Seconds In Russia"

"The Endless Pursuit of Truth"

 "The Endless Pursuit of Truth"
 by Mark Manson

"Each week, I send you three potentially life-changing ideas to help you be a slightly less awful human being. This week, we’re talking about: 1) why we need philosophy today more than ever, 2) the civilizational struggle of fact versus fiction, and 3) setting thresholds of certainty. Let’s get into it. 

1. Why we all need philosophy – My dear intrepid reader, I have a confession to make. Last week… I got triggered by something I read on the internet. I know, I know… it’s shocking. You would think the opinions of strangers on the internet would be delightful to read. But alas, I was accosted by stupidity and malice on a scale previously unimagined by my virgin mind.

What did this hideous brute say? What did I find so upsetting that I now find it necessary to seek solace and comfort in you, my dear reader? Some nitwit wrote a thing saying that philosophy is stupid and a complete waste of time. HOW DARE HE?!?!

I threw my headphones off in a rage. This lout! This brute! I will have my vengeance… I began to pace in my room, stroking my neckbeard. This wrong must be righted, I thought, and not just for me and my precious sensibilities, but for the good of the downtrodden and vulnerable, for the benefit of humanity - for the world! Yes, this malignant force shall be excised from the minds of feeble men. I alone shall be the stalwart savior. I alone shall be the beacon of all that is good. And I will do it… by posting a comment on Facebook. 

Well, you and I know both how Facebook comments go. They reside somewhere between the eighth and ninth circles of hell - a form of masochism reserved for only the truly loathsome. As I wrote, my arguments bled into more points, and then more points. Soon, I found myself spending hours reviewing books I hadn’t read in years, looking for quotes, passages, and citations - any evidence of this pernicious being’s moral failings. 

Eventually, the Comments to End All Comments grew to such a staggering size, it began to teeter under its own weight (that and Facebook has a character limit). I quickly decided to move my treatise to a Word document and continued my crusade. Days passed. Sources piled up. Inappropriate jokes about birthday cakes and sticks of butter magically appeared. And when the dust settled, I was staring down more than 35 pages of linguistic thicket and bramble.  “Nobody’s going to read all of this sh*t,” I said to myself. Yes, friends, I had gone overboard.

Over more days of effort, I chopped about 10 pages and consolidated my ideas into a more easily digestible, multi-part article. And today I proudly present to you the fruit of my labors, the result of my epic struggle against Some Guy On Facebook Who Is Really Wrong But Doesn’t Know It Yet—a most complete summation of all the reasons philosophy is awesome and you should totally read it and stuff… Behold, I give you… "Read: Why We All Need Philosophy"

The main thrust of the article is that the goal of philosophy is to develop tools that can help discern truth and reality. In many ways it has become more difficult to decipher fact from fiction today than ever before. Which brings me to a theory/idea I’ve been playing around with in my head for a while… 

2. The new polarization of fact and fiction – In 1789, at the onset of the French Revolution, the National Constituent Assembly was called where leaders from all across France would meet with King Louis XVI to determine the fate of the country. 

As the assemblymen streamed in, the monarchists who supported the king congregated on the right side of the chamber, where the nobility had traditionally sat in previous eras, to signal their loyalty to the king. Those who desired revolution, wanting to separate themselves as much as possible and make their dissent known, all sat on the left side of the chamber. The two sides soon began referring to each other simply as “the right” and “the left.” The names stuck. 

It’s shifted over the centuries, but typically people “on the right” value structure, order, and tradition, while people “on the left” value equality, personal expression, and change. Most people see this political spectrum as linear and one-dimensional - you’re either on one side or the other (e.g., “you’re with us or against us.”) 

But there is a lesser-known “horseshoe theory” in political science, where the political spectrum actually curves so that the extreme-right and extreme-left end up closer to each other than they do to moderates or centrists in the middle. 

The argument goes that the extremes of each side of the political spectrum generally support more authoritarian states if it means accomplishing their goals. They are both willing to suppress civil liberties, especially of their enemies. They’re both likely to see the world in stark (and often similar) us/them dichotomies. And historically, the extreme right and left have found themselves cooperating for short periods of time to overthrow the status quo. 

In the 1970s, the psychologist Hans Eysenck proposed a similar theory that the political spectrum is not uni-dimensional, but rather two dimensional. People exist on the typical right vs left spectrum, but also an authoritarian vs libertarian spectrum. (You can take a version of this test online to see where you are.) 

Historically, the difference between extremism and centrism has been people’s openness to compromise. Radical Bob and Moderate Jane would both watch the same news channel and get the same information, but Radical Bob refuses to consider other viewpoints whereas Moderate Jane understands that she is biased by her own interests and other people have legitimate views as well. 

But today, something else is going on, this second polarity seems to have shifted… I attended a talk (on Zoom) a few months ago given by a former official from the US State Department and he said something that kind of blew my mind and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since:  “The strategic challenge for every nation in the 21st century is the ability of its people to determine fact from fiction.”

He went on to explain that much of the “cold war” style tactics used by the US, Russia, China, and others, is not about overt displays of military power. It’s more about introducing information that disrupts the cultural status quo in each others’ societies. This is done to generate internal instability and political parties within each country have begun to do this as a means for power as well. 

As a result, I think the 21st-century version of the horseshoe theory could become slightly different from previous eras. Whereas in generations past, the difference between extremists and moderates was the willingness to compromise, today there is a new polarization between those who doggedly pursue facts over fiction regardless of the political implications of those facts and those who only adhere to narratives that fit their political interests, regardless of whether they are true or not. 

To put it another way, in the 20th century, Radical Bob and Moderate Jane were exposed to the same information - they watched the same news channels, read the same articles, and believed the same facts. Radical Bob was simply unwilling to compromise on his interpretation of the facts whereas Moderate Jane was. 

Today, Radical Bob and Moderate Jane don’t even consume the same information. Radical Bob has limited himself to a steady diet of narratives that reinforce his prior convictions and bolster his political aims. Moderate Jane spends most of her time wading through piles of bullshit to hopefully find something that seems reliable and true. 

Each exists in their own world, oblivious to the narratives that define the others’ world. Compromise becomes impossible not just because of Radical Bob’s entrenchment, but because there is no common ground on which to disagree on in the first place. 

3. Thresholds of certainty – If I had to nominate one historical figure who would absolutely dominate Twitter, it would be Nietzsche. In researching the philosophy article, I got to revisit a lot of his work and it’s always a joy. That dude could pack more meaning into fewer words than almost anyone else I’ve ever come across. For example, check this one out: 

“It is not doubt but certainty that drives you mad.”

Goddamn. You could just sit and let that one marinate in your head for hours.  Anyway, given the article and email and crazy times we live in, I have been doing a lot of thinking about doubt and certainty and truth the past week. 

We traditionally see truth as a binary thing. Either it is or it isn’t. True or false.  But given the flood of epistemic uncertainty introduced by the information age, I think that maybe we should think about truth in terms of thresholds of certainty. It’s like a spectrum of how likely a thing is to be true and the further an idea gets up the spectrum the more committed you become to it. The further it slides down the spectrum, the more willing you are to let go and allow it to be wrong. 

For example, my little theory about politics above, I’d file that under “theoretically plausible” - it’s a fun thing to think about and loosely reflects reality but you probably wouldn’t want to bet your life on it. 

Other ideas that have a lot of research behind them but remain theories, you’d move them up to “probably true,” and things that have been around for generations and have a lot of rock-solid evidence, you’d categorize as, “almost certainly true.” 

Then, at the tippy top of the spectrum, you get stuff like gravity and the laws of thermodynamics, the fact that your mom had sex with your dad at some point, and all the other stuff that it’s inconceivable as to how they could not be true. 

Generally, we’re good at moving up the scale of certainty, we’re good at taking something we think might be true and then accepting that it’s probably true. But we’re really bad at coming down the scale of certainty. We suck at taking things that we’re sure are true and admitting that they might not be. In fact, we often do the opposite: we double down on them as if to prove to ourselves we were right all along. And that’s when the trouble starts. 

Nietzsche is right that it’s not flexibility of thought but rigidity of thought that causes irrationality and stupidity. Therefore, changing your mind should be something admirable, not embarrassing. It should be seen as a success and not a failure. It should be celebrated, not ridiculed. 

This is something I’d like to institute into the newsletter at some point soon: once or twice a year, I share things that I’ve recently changed my mind about, and why. Maybe I’ll crowdsource things that you guys have changed your minds about and share those as well. Then we’ll all drink some cheap tequila and eat birthday cake and celebrate the necessary-yet-impossible pursuit of truth. It’ll be fun. Until next week..."

"How It Really Is"

 

"I Believe..."

Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

"The War Prayer"
By TDB

"My curmudgeonly grandpappy, who reveres Mark Twain and George Carlin and H.L. Mencken and people of that lovable cynic variety – or however you would characterize their philosophical disposition – put me onto "The War Prayer" back in the day. This was in the days of innocence before 9/11 and the subsequent War of Terror, and so whatever lack of an impression it made on me at the time was remedied shortly thereafter by apropos events in the real world.

Twain, in his later years when his family had died and the cynicism became more malignant, would often write fiction in which a cynical protagonist would serve as a proxy for himself. This is one such story; the “aged stranger” is Twain. Via Virginia Commonwealth University:

"It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism… on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun… nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. 

Sunday morning came - next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams - visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said …

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work…

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness… he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. 

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside - which the startled minister did - and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: “I come from the Throne - bearing a message from Almighty God! 

God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two - one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

You have heard your servant’s prayer - the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it - that part which the pastor - and also you in your hearts - fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!” It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said."
- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

Twain reportedly caved to pressure not to publish the short story, as it was regarded by his family and publisher as too inflammatory for public consumption. Asked if he had plans to publish it, Twain answered: "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." At any rate, for whatever reason, it remained unpublished until after his death.

War is an ugly business, fraught with moral pitfalls – not to mention existential implications in the nuclear age. It might be necessary at times, but so are limb amputations. Both should be undertaken with all due discretion. I’ll choose my own wars, not the ones the government or MSNBC or the ADL tells me to."

Gregory Mannarino, "Time Is Running Out Before The Selection, And This Is What You Need To Know"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/25/24
"Time Is Running Out Before The Selection, 
And This Is What You Need To Know"
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"The Middle East: War"

Dialogue Works, 10/25/24
Larry C. Johnson, "Israel Facing Total Collapse: 
Crushed by Iran/Hezbollah's Unstoppable Force!"
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Dialogue Works, 10/25/24
Dmitry Orlov, "Israel is Falling Fast - China, Russia, 
and Iran Gear Up for a Showdown with the US!"
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Jim Kunstler, "Fever Dream"

"Fever Dream"

by Jim Kunstler

“The American 'Left' is fully exposed now as a demented,

 vicious, abusive animal of traumatizing narcissism.” 

- Celia Farber


"Do you hear that lonesome whistle blow? Wooooo-wooooo! It’s the last train to Palookaville pulling into the station. At this late hour, two passengers get on: Kamala Harris, mom jeans and blazer, rheumy red eyes, half-gone on chardonnay...and an elderly gentleman with a goatee in a colorful but shabby red-white-and-blue suit, famous long ago as “Uncle Sam.”

There’s an election on, in case you haven’t noticed, imminent even. Kamala, everyone seems to agree, has blown it. Can’t answer simple questions pitched by friendly ringers in the “news” business. Hiding somebody else’s agenda is a tough assignment, you see. All she can really do is cackle or simper and, let’s face it, that gets humiliating fast. Joy has turned to despair. Her punched ticket says “one way.”

Whose idea was it, anyway, over at party HQ, to put her up to this contest? She wishes she knew, as she gazes out the window at the sad lights of the little towns streaking by - East Chugwater, Erehwon, Tanktown, Loserville, onward into the night to the end of the line. How’d they manage to yank her out of the comfort of the Naval Observatory, where she was comfy and cozy watching Netflix rom-coms with Doug, chardonnay refills on-demand, all the Doritos a gal could munch. She was a lover, not a fighter, she repeats to herself, but the self-consolation doesn’t quite avail.

Uncle Sam sits stoically five seats behind her. He is resigned, knowing very well why he is on that train, too. His own country is sending him into exile after swindling him out of his history and his posterity. He doesn’t even recognize the place anymore. What happened to Sandberg’s city of big shoulders? Who turned the fruited plain into a hellscape of muffler shops? How did the heroes of Iwo Jima transition into a legion of TikTok influencers with pierced faces and scrambled brains? When the train gets in, he has no place to go. Perhaps he’ll sleep in a ditch.

You entertain these drear hallucinatory conceits despite the giddiness about Donald Trump’s seeming triumph over adversity - botched assassinations, court cases hatched by malice-crazed ninnies, blob-generated calumnies, conspiracies, ops, and hoaxes galore. And for Halloween, they painted a Hitler mustache on him, just for fun. It remains to be seen what marvels of ballot legerdemain have been concocted by Marc Elias, Esq, lawfare artist supreme, destroyer of the nation’s faith in itself.

But say Mr. Trump overcomes even the planned epic voter fraud to capture the prize. What then? You’re entitled to feel nervous. The army, under Department of Defense directive 5240.01 has just been licensed to gun you down. This is a new thing. Now isn’t is it a queer moment in history for a move like that? What are they expecting, anyway? And, by the way, who exactly is the varlet in the chain-of-command who issued that directive? (Or did it just bubble-up out of the ruling blob like some sulfurous gas from a Yellowstone fumarole?)

People of good faith have reason to believe that the country is about to be blown apart. By another odd coincidence, an outfit called the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International (AFCEA) has scheduled an “exercise simulating a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure” for November 5 in Atlanta, Georgia. That’s election day. In a big swing state. Whose idea was that? Is there already not enough that might go wrong that some treasonous moron had to kick the risk of fiasco up another notch? Or might it be cover for another Three Card Monte caper with the Georgia votes? This is the sort of thing that will dog poor old Uncle Sam’s mind as he tries to fall asleep in that drainage ditch on the ragged edge of Palookaville.

Or perhaps what we’re witnessing is a fabulous bit of what George W. Bush once called “strategery” by the Party of Chaos. Five minutes after Mr. Trump gets elected, a certain unseen hand flips a little toggle somewhere in the banking system that tanks the economy so hard and fast that 2025 will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a Hamptons clam bake...for the next four years we become a land with no money and no way to generate money...and MAGA/MAHA is left to suck eggs in the cold and dark until 2028 when the Democratic Party returns in full Maoist mode, riding in on a unicorn cavalry to rescue us... Nah...They just blew it.

So, more likely, we’re seeing the suicide of the Democratic Party. Even CNN is starting to back away from them, as from a convocation of lepers. They can smell the odor of necrosis. Plus, their own instinct for survival has kicked in. They have a business to run. They want to be around to cover the treason trial of Alejandro Mayorkas - a sure thing to jack those sagging ratings back up. Maybe even Kamala Harris will be called out of retirement to testify and we’ll find out just what was going on in the White House in the summer of 2024, when “Joe Biden” - remember him? - was rattling around the joint like a BB in a packing crate, howling for his ice cream, and no one was around anymore to hear him."

Thursday, October 24, 2024

"Why Some Are Steering Towards a Third World War - A Narrative on Ukraine"

"Why Some Are Steering Towards a Third World War - 
A Narrative on Ukraine"
by Mattias Desmet

"I want to share a few thoughts that are clearly emerging in the early morning air. Why are some people nowadays trying so hard to provoke a third world war? The dark figure of a global nuclear conflict is indeed knocking on our door. The conflict in the Middle East is intensifying, and the conflict in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a third world war. It is mainly about the latter that I want to say something today. The stories about that conflict vary quite a bit.

The story in the media sounds roughly as follows: in the icy Russia, disorganized and divided after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, a cold dictator, a new Hitler, seized power over the last twenty years. His name is Putin. He first became director of the FSB, the successor of the KGB, the ruthless and horrific secret service of the Soviet Union. That says enough about the type of person we are dealing with.

After that, he crept in a sly and ruthless manner onto the Russian presidential throne. Even that did not satisfy his hunger for power. He wanted to expand his Russian empire without limit and become a sort of new Tsar. In 2014, he slyly conquered Crimea by manipulating the population through propaganda and using a – likely falsified – referendum as a pretext to annex Crimea. In 2022, he took his next step: the military conquest of democratic Ukraine.

But fortunately, there is the noble NATO, which under the leadership of the USA courageously opposes this cold criminal. They are trying to allow Ukraine to join their alliance, just like the other helpless Eastern European countries that have already joined earlier, in order to protect it against the Russian threat. That is one story.

There is also another story, also just a story, but a story that deserves to be heard in these ominous times. It also begins with the end of the Soviet Union in 1989 and goes as follows:

The Soviet Union didn’t really lose the Cold War. A complex interplay of internal and external factors led the Soviets to grow tired of their own totalitarian society and made them decide to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and dismantle the Soviet Union. In a sincere moment of political naivety, top Soviets like Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the young Putin believed that the West would welcome them with open arms; Russia would become their playmate in the great democratic playground of the Free Western Market. They quickly realized that the terms 'democratic' and ‘free’ are highly relative in the West.

What they encountered was a velvet totalitarianism that in some respects was as totalitarian as the Soviet Union they had just dismantled. NATO, supposedly established to counterbalance the Soviet Union, refused to disband when the Soviet Union dissolved. Even more: contrary to all implicit and explicit agreements made with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, NATO steadily moved its borders eastward, towards Moscow.

The whole idea of NATO's eastward expansion was devised by an American power bloc with one big goal: to create a unipolar world dominated in which one superpower, the United States, controls and contains the global geopolitical situation. The main geostrategist was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a brilliant American professor born in Poland, whose visceral aversion to Bolshevism, ingrained in his blood, brought everything related to Russia to life. That is, of course, human, just as it is human and understandable that the inhabitants of Eastern European countries transform their deeply ingrained fear of Stalin and the Soviets today into a desire to belong to NATO.

Brzezinski was an advisor to several American presidents and chaired various committees set up to execute the NATO plan. From the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, he outlined his strategy in various articles and interviews: Russia must never again become a world power, and to prevent that, we must isolate the country from the Black Sea by expanding NATO to the east. In doing so, he adopted a Russian strategy that European powers had already followed in the nineteenth century.

When the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire began to lose strength in the nineteenth century, Russia prepared to fill the resulting vacuum and expand its sphere of influence through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This threatened the economic and territorial interests of the then-superpower Great Britain. In the worst case, the British could even see their access to their colonies in the Middle East and India blocked by the Russians.

It was within this tension that the Crimean War started in 1853, a conflict between Russia on the one hand and a European alliance of the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. This war is historically significant in many ways, among other things because it was the first industrialized and heavily propagandized war.

The industrialization of the war (use of advanced firearms, supply of war materials via railroads, use of naval mines, etc.) resulted in enormous numbers of casualties, with estimates ranging from 400,000 to over 750,000 deaths in just three years. What determined the course of the war was no longer the military-tactical intelligence of the leading officers or the size and loyalty of the troops, but rather who had the most sophisticated war industry and technology, and, last but not least, who had the most effective propaganda apparatus.

It is that last point that interests us most, the importance of propaganda. After the French Revolution and the replacement of the ancien régime by the modern democracy, propaganda became an obvious instrument of power. The old elite, before the French Revolution, did not really need to manipulate public opinion that much. Public opinion didn’t matter all that much. They had to massage and manipulate the population here and there, but ultimately, the elite could impose its policy without much justification. If the elite wanted to go to war, they would simply inform the people, and they had to accept it. God had willed it so: some were born to command, and others to obey.

In the new, materialistic worldview, there was no God to be found, and leaders could no longer rely on his authority to send people to war. The only option leaders had to get the population excited about war was large-scale manipulation of public opinion through propaganda.

The nineteenth-century Crimean War was the first war in which modern propaganda was of decisive importance. Emerging technology for the first time gave leaders the material means to directly and massively manipulate the population. The invention of the telegraph and the camera, along with the rise of mass media (primarily the widespread distribution of newspapers), allowed European powers to bring vivid and convincing war stories, illustrated with photos, to the home front within just five days. The Allies perfectly understood that such forms of war communication were crucial to creating public support for the war.

The real reasons for the European countries to go to war against Russia were primarily economic in nature. But those reasons alone would not suffice to overcome the population’s fear of the horrors of war, nor would they make people willing to pay the huge sums of taxes needed for the war. Therefore, the European powers decided to portray Russia as a military threat that urgently needed to be stopped. The lie is often more efficient than the truth in making a population eager for war.

The propagandists carefully spread fabricated, ominous information about the Russian enemy among the population. The Russian soldiers were portrayed as outright savages and barbarians, and Russia as a radically expansionist power. Historians agree that this was a propagandistic and false representation of the facts (see here and here). Once the war had started, the propagandists directed triumphant war stories, supplemented with photographs and neatly supervised by a military censorship apparatus: we are winning, the barbaric Russians are being defeated, humanity is triumphing, but not quite yet—keep paying war taxes for a while longer.

Russia, at that time, was inferior in terms of both industrialization and propaganda. They lost the Crimean War in 1856, and that also marked the fall of Russia as a European great power. Russia would only restore its position after the Russian Revolution and the rise of the totalitarian Soviet Union under Lenin and (especially) Stalin. That marked the point where Russia itself began to fully exploit the power advantages of industrialization, technology, and propaganda.

Now, back to the core strategy during the nineteenth-century Crimean War: the goal of the war was to deny Russia access to the Black Sea. Lord Palmerston, the then British Foreign Secretary, was the first to fully grasp the economic and strategic importance of the Black Sea for Russia and developed a military strategy around it: block Russia’s access to the Black Sea, and you block Russia’s only ice-free gateway to the Mediterranean and the rest of the world. In other words, if you can ensure that Russia no longer has access to the Black Sea, Russia will lose its economic and military power within a few decades.

The same motives are currently at play in the lead-up to the war in Ukraine. Reread the paragraphs above: the current narrative regarding the tensions between Russia and NATO is essentially a reflection of the story from the First Crimean War. We will outline a number of facts concerning the buildup to the current war in Ukraine.

A neoconservative power group in the U.S. reverted to Lord Palmerston’s strategy at the end of the twentieth century, attempting to permanently eliminate Russia as a great power: NATO would isolate Russia from the Black Seathrough a gradual expansion to the East. This strategy was developed by Brzezinski in 1989, immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, notably in his book The Grand Chessboard.

Thanks to the archival documents released after the Freedom of Information Act was enacted in the U.S. in 2017, we also know that this strategy was adopted as a strategic guideline by the Clinton administration in 1994. It was essentially followed by all subsequent American presidents, including Trump, and their administrations. Whether Trump will keep his promise to break with this “tradition” if re-elected remains to be seen.

This strategic plan was gradually implemented from the 1990s onward. In 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were added to NATO; in 2004, the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were added; in 2009, Albania and Croatia; in 2017, Montenegro; and in 2020, North Macedonia. These countries were immediately provided with temporary or permanent NATO military bases. The issue is that NATO is not a lion without military teeth. Somewhere along the way, in 1999, NATO also bombed Belgrade to establish a NATO-supervised state of Kosovo and to set up Camp Bondsteel, the largest NATO base in Southern Europe.

The final step was the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, something that Brzezinski viewed as the crowning achievement of the entire strategy to deliver the final blow to Russia as a great power. Initially, European leaders like Merkel and Sarkozy fiercely resisted because they realized that the annexation of Ukraine made the risk of nuclear war a reality. However, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, President Bush Jr. made it clear that there was no room for discussion: Ukraine would “have the chance” to join NATO. At that same summit, Putin also made something clear: this would be the step too far in NATO’s advance to the East.

The neoconservative faction in America, backed by the whole dismal CIA regime-change machine, was not deterred by the prospect of a war between powers, each possessing around 6,000 nuclear warheads. They began their démarche with the so-called Maidan revolution in 2014, during which President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power. Essentially, there is little doubt that this was not so much a popular uprising but rather a NATO-directed overthrow of a previously neutral and democratically elected president (see, among others, this interview with American top diplomat Professor Jeffrey Sachs and the documentary Ukraine on Fire by Oliver Stone). Yanukovych fled to Russia after the Maidan revolution, not because he was a puppet of Putin, but because Russia was about the only place on earth where he could be somewhat safe. After his departure, his government was replaced by a pro-Europe and pro-NATO regime.

As described above, the motives for bringing Ukraine into NATO were perhaps primarily ideological and strategic in nature. However, they intertwined with enormous economic-commercial motives. This becomes clear when considering the fate of Ukraine’s extraordinary natural wealth. Ukrainian agricultural land is among the most fertile in the world, earning Ukraine the nickname "the breadbasket of Europe."

Moreover, enormous quantities of iron ore, coal, and rare and strategically important minerals such as uraninite (the base raw material for uranium), rutile, and ilmenite (the base raw materials for titanium), as well as lithium (crucial for battery production), are also found in Ukrainian soil. According to some estimates, about 5% of the world’s mineral reserves are located in Ukraine. Depending somewhat on market conditions, its value is estimated to be in the tens of trillions of dollars (some say about 19 trillion dollars) (!).

Immediately after the pro-NATO government came to power in 2014, lobbying began to lift the moratorium that stated foreigners could never buy more than two hectares of Ukrainian land. In an April 2021 report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the monetary infrastructure of NATO, explicitly stated that lifting this moratorium was a necessary condition for providing funds to Ukraine. In June 2021, Ukraine capitulated and effectively lifted the moratorium. Subsequently, giant American companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont bought up approximately 170 million hectares, or one-third of Ukraine’s agricultural land, in no time.

Behind these companies are the financial giants of the world: BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone, asset managers of astronomical proportions. Following the rise in agricultural land prices from €2,500 to €10,000 that followed these massive purchases, these giants immediately multiplied their invested capital. That the land has now become too expensive for countless small Ukrainian farmers to earn a living from should not concern someone striving for world dominance.

In the same movement, the economic giants took another step. BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone are heavily entrenched in the American military industry, and since NATO’s actions would almost inevitably lead to war, they could also prepare for a new round of monstrous profits (at the expense of the American people).

Moreover, BlackRock and Vanguard are also significant shareholders in American construction companies Bechtel and AECOM, which signed contracts at the onset of the war for the future reconstruction of Ukraine once it would have been nearly completely leveled by the war.

Adding to this is the fact that BlackRock, McKinsey, and JPMorgan Chase established a reconstruction bank for Ukraine together, leading to the staggering conclusion: the same companies that earn fortunes from buying up Ukrainian agricultural land and its natural resources also profit immensely from supplying the weapons to devastate Ukraine and will ultimately profit from rebuilding it.

The grinding gears of this money machine have meanwhile crushed more than a million young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers’ bodies; the thrum of the money press drowns out the moans of thousands of tortured bodies, the sobbing of thousands of raped women, the cries of a country bleeding from every pore of its fertile land. Trying to make money is undoubtedly human, but at the top, where it is ruthlessly elevated to the highest goal, it takes on diabolical forms.

After the Maidan power takeover in 2014 and the advancing NATO militarization of the entire Black Sea region, Putin anticipated the next step: after Ukraine, NATO would set its sights on Crimea. This meant that Russia would be cut off from its fleet in Sevastopol. Putin did not wait and annexed Crimea via a referendum, increasing Russia's military presence on the peninsula. As a side note, Putin used social media and the internet for this referendum, which would be the reason Google and social media would significantly ramp up censorship thereafter (see this interview with Mike Benz).

With the referendum, Putin scored a significant victory but also suffered an inevitable defeat in terms of image and propaganda. This step was portrayed in the free West as the definitive outbreak of an emerging dictator who was no longer satisfied with tyrannizing his own people but was now embarking on a foreign conquest. The evidence was now provided: Putin is the new Hitler who wants to conquer all of Europe. This image was further reinforced when Putin made the next counter-move on the great global chessboard: invading Ukraine.

Through this propaganda, a psychological support base was created among the European and American populations, impoverished by the corona and other crises, to gradually mobilize for a large-scale conflict with Russia, or in other words, for World War III. That global conflict is now also approaching on another front. In the Middle East, the same Brzezinski-esque geopolitical strategy is now preparing to bring another strategic line to an end, moving towards the endgame of striving for geopolitical hegemony. Everything is being readied there to level Iran.

Thanks to the work of Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, we know that the list of countries to be destroyed in the Middle East was already on paper in 2001 (and perhaps even earlier). The list began with Iraq, included Syria and Libya, and ended with Iran.

We ultimately ask ourselves: what drives NATO, and particularly the American power bloc that calls the shots, to steer towards a third world war? The causes of any war are complex and usually rooted in a blind destructive and self-destructive death drive. However, at a certain level, they are also simple. The USA still has military power, but economically, it is rapidly losing its position. The USA is part of the economic power bloc of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States); it’s economical counterpart are the BRICS countries, including its arch-enemy Russia (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

To illustrate the decline of the G7 and the rise of the BRICS countries economically: in 1950, the G7 countries accounted for about 70% of global market share, in 1990 this decreased to about 50%, and by 2020, it further dropped to 40%. It is expected to be around 30% by 2040. The BRICS countries are going in the opposite direction. Before 1990, their share was negligible; after 1990, it rose to about 15%, and in 2020 it was approximately 30%. It is expected that by 2030, the BRICS countries could surpass the G7’s share.

The aforementioned American power bloc knows that the loss of economic power inevitably leads to the loss of military power. The only way to maintain power is to use the remaining military superiority to crush the emerging economic power of the BRICS countries and thus restore economic dominance. In other words: to provoke a third world war. The total destruction of humanity and humanity itself does not deter some from relinquishing their grip on power.

To unleash this third world war, the war machinery, again, needs the consent of the populace and must manipulate public opinion. As again: what brings people to war is a highly complex dynamic, yet there are people involved, people who take the lead. This is happening abundantly in light of the war in Ukraine. Thera are people who are blowing up a pipeline or dam here and there, people who produce propaganda in all its diversity. People who are proposing a NATO Secretary-General (the Dutch Mark Rutte) who has already convincingly demonstrated that he is willing to fully escalate the conflict with Russia. The man in question employs a kind of war rhetoric that suggests he is not genuinely inclined to empathize with the hundreds of thousands of war victims that NATO’s strategy in Ukraine has already caused, nor with the billions of potential victims that it could still create. I hope he changes his mind. A human is always a human. It is an ethical duty to assume that he can still turn for the better.

In a sense, all world powers are players on the same ‘Grand Chessboard’ of Brzezinski. The rules of this chess game are set by the symbolic structure within which our global society currently operates: the materialistic-rationalistic worldview. No one escapes the power of this symbolic framework, neither Russia nor America, Europe nor China. They all use propaganda, they all participate in the arms race, and they are all caught in the relentless logic of a market that is only free in appearance.

Ultimately, the enemy is not a Russian or an American or any other person. The enemy lies in an ideology, a way of thinking, in a certain metaphysical force or spirit. The real problem, the actual enemy, is situated in a worldview that reduces the entire world and existence to a material phenomenon, in which human beings are no more than biological machines, biochemical processes devoid of Spirit or Soul. In such a context, biological survival and the pursuit of absolute dominance without any ethical or moral limits easily become the ultimate goal. Within that worldview, this is also perfectly logical: in a purely material world, ethics and morality are nothing more than an illusion arising somewhere in the biochemical machinery of our brains. Why should we allow ourselves to be hindered in the great game of survival of the fittest? Anyone who views life through that lens is already an instrument of destructive drive.

As I type the last letters of this article, I see the sun sending its light through the morning mist, a golden gift at the start of a new day. The trees in the castle park exude a majestic power through the tenderness of their autumn leaves. Their meter-wide trunks fearlessly send their roots into the depths of the dark autumn ground; their branches lift their trembling twigs high above the mists into the sparkling morning light.

I am ready to give a workshop, a workshop in which I will practice the art of sincere speaking with the participants, an art that requires exploring the unfathomably dark depths of the human being, an art that elevates humanity to its highest heights, a strand of words that connects darkness with light, an art that is the opposite of the practice of propaganda. While the thudding of the propaganda drum sets the war machine in motion, I feel people everywhere becoming aware that only the Act of sincere speaking offers a way out of the hopelessness of humanity that has lost itself in appearance and manipulation.

Do not remain silent, stay true to the ethical duty to speak as a human in times when society blindly follows a discourse that leads to ruin. Speak calmly, speak steadily, try not to convince too much, but rather to testify; speak from your belly rather than your head. I hope this article can be a small spark, a small contribution to the rise of a group of people united by the act of sincere speaking, a group where the opinion itself does not take precedence but the right of every person to express their opinion; a group that does not get lost in the narcissism of a collective ideal image and enemy image but cherishes the love for the uniqueness and singularity of each individual; this is the group that can provide a counterweight to the death drive of the propagandized masses."