"One of Seneca's (Dead Roman Philosopher Dude) most famous quotes is, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." What surprises me is that Seneca wrote this before Twitter® existed. But even back in the time of Rome, there were ways to waste time. I’m thinking Facebook® might be that old.
Regardless, his message is timeless: every moment that we’re breathing here on Earth is precious. We may not always get a choice as to how we spend our time (Ted Kaczynski seems to be booked every day) but the true crime is to waste time. Oh, and blowing people up.
I have been as guilty as anyone of wasting time. And one of the biggest wastes of time is to become consumed by negative thoughts and emotions. In reality, most of the time (most) the things that irritate me are small. How small? So small that if I pack up my emotions, and really assess as to why I’m mad, it just looks silly. When Hillary reflects on why she’s mad, well, she calls the Suicide Hotline and places an order.
But that reflection is crucial. It’s called self-control, and although it appears to be unfashionable in certain locations (Chicago, I’m looking at you) it is the only way to be successful. If I threw a temper tantrum when (spins wheel) I drop a sock on the floor, I think there’s a simple word for that in the English language: Leftist feminist the ATF unstable.
No, when I’m upset I stop. I take a deep breath. I ask myself, “Does it matter?” Most of the time, it doesn’t. At all. Very few of the things that have irritated me matter at all over any rational timeframe. The old two rules apply: 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 2. It’s all small stuff.
The second question is, can I control whatever the situation is or influence it? If the answer is no, then that’s like being mad that the Sun is coming up in the morning. Even if it’s my mistake, it’s sillier than being angry over the English coal minimum price subsidy in the 1800s or...anything that happened in 1619.
One concept I’ve come across recently is "amor fati," which is Latin for “put armor on fat people”. Oh, wait, my translator was wrong. It really means, "love your fate." I think I first heard a variation of this when I was a kid: “You get what you get, and you’ll like it, and grease up the fat people so we can put plate mail on them.”
The reality of amor fati is this, though: I am where I am, and I have a choice. I can get up every morning and be mad, or I can be happy where I am. Does that mean I’m content? No. Does that mean I’m not going to fight like hell? No. Does that mean I’m not going to try to change certain things with the fire of a thousand suns? No.
It does mean that if life sucks, I can still find meaning, still find purpose, and still try to create the change that I seek to create. It’s not complacency. Heck, Seneca himself was one of the richest dudes in all of Rome. That didn’t just happen. He didn’t just wake up one morning, and say, “Holy crap, I have an amazing amount of money. How did that happen?” Seneca embraced what he had, and tried to better himself, and change himself. He did okay.
Our choices are our choices, but even more than that, we always have the choice how we feel, even Ted Kaczynski. We may have lost everything else, but we always retain that. We should not be overcome by fear or despair. To be clear – those are just about the most negative things we can let into our lives, unless you know one of the women on 'The View.'
The only proper way to deal with tough times is to face into them. Our obstacles make us stronger. Each obstacle we face with virtue and excellence improves us. Except for bullets. Those sound like they really suck.
Regardless of all of that, the first point is still the most important: our lives aren’t too short – our lives are exactly as long as they are. Deal with it. Love it. Use your time – every minute. Every second you waste? It’s wasting your life. Now, go make something happen."
"I had lived thirty good years before enduring my first food poisoning - odds quite fortunate in the grand scheme of things, but miserably unfortunate in the immediate experience of it. I found myself completely incapacitated to erect the pillars of my daily life - too cognitively foggy to read and write, too physically weak to work out or even meditate. The temporary disability soon elevated the assault on my mind and body to a new height of anguish: an intense experience of stress. Even as I consoled myself with Nabokov’s exceptionally florid account of food poisoning, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming malaise that had engulfed me - somehow, a physical illness had completely colored my psychoemotional reality.
This experience, of course, is far from uncommon. Long before scientists began shedding light on how our minds and bodies actually affect one another, an intuitive understanding of this dialogue between the body and the emotions, or feelings, emerged and permeated our very language: We use “feeling sick” as a grab-bag term for both the sensory symptoms - fever, fatigue, nausea - and the psychological malaise, woven of emotions like sadness and apathy.
Pre-modern medicine, in fact, has recognized this link between disease and emotion for millennia. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian Ayurvedic physicians all enlisted the theory of the four humors - blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm - in their healing practices, believing that imbalances in these four visible secretions of the body caused disease and were themselves often caused by the emotions. These beliefs are fossilized in our present language - melancholy comes from the Latin words for “black” (melan) and “bitter bile” (choler), and we think of a melancholic person as gloomy or embittered; a phlegmatic person is languid and impassive, for phlegm makes one lethargic.
And then French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes came along in the seventeenth century, taking it upon himself to eradicate the superstitions that fueled the religious wars of the era by planting the seed of rationalism. But the very tenets that laid the foundation of modern science - the idea that truth comes only from what can be visibly ascertained and proven beyond doubt - severed this link between the physical body and the emotions; those mysterious and fleeting forces, the biological basis of which the tools of modern neuroscience are only just beginning to understand, seemed to exist entirely outside the realm of what could be examined with the tools of rationalism.
For nearly three centuries, the idea that our emotions could impact our physical health remained scientific taboo - setting out to fight one type of dogma, Descartes had inadvertently created another, which we’re only just beginning to shake off. It was only in the 1950s that Austrian-Canadian physician and physiologist Hans Selye pioneered the notion of stress as we now know it today, drawing the scientific community’s attention to the effects of stress on physical health and popularizing the concept around the world. (In addition to his scientific dedication, Selye also understood the branding component of any successful movement and worked tirelessly to include the word itself in dictionaries around the world; today, “stress” is perhaps the word pronounced most similarly in the greatest number of major languages.)
But no researcher has done more to illuminate the invisible threads that weave mind and body together than Dr. Esther Sternberg. Her groundbreaking work on the link between the central nervous system and the immune system, exploring how immune molecules made in the blood can trigger brain function that profoundly affects our emotions, has revolutionized our understanding of the integrated being we call a human self. In the immeasurably revelatory "The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions" (public library), Sternberg examines the interplay of our emotions and our physical health, mediated by that seemingly nebulous yet, it turns out, remarkably concrete experience called stress.
With an eye to modern medicine’s advances in cellular and molecular biology, which have made it possible to measure how our nervous system and our hormones affect our susceptibility to diseases as varied as depression, arthritis, AIDS, and chronic fatigue syndrome, Sternberg writes: "By parsing these chemical intermediaries, we can begin to understand the biological underpinnings of how emotions affect diseases…
The same parts of the brain that control the stress response… play an important role in susceptibility and resistance to inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. And since it is these parts of the brain that also play a role in depression, we can begin to understand why it is that many patients with inflammatory diseases may also experience depression at different times in their lives… Rather than seeing the psyche as the source of such illnesses, we are discovering that while feelings don’t directly cause or cure disease, the biological mechanisms underlying them may cause or contribute to disease. Thus, many of the nerve pathways and molecules underlying both psychological responses and inflammatory disease are the same, making predisposition to one set of illnesses likely to go along with predisposition to the other.
The questions need to be rephrased, therefore, to ask which of the many components that work together to create emotions also affect that other constellation of biological events, immune responses, which come together to fight or to cause disease. Rather than asking if depressing thoughts can cause an illness of the body, we need to ask what the molecules and nerve pathways are that cause depressing thoughts. And then we need to ask whether these affect the cells and molecules that cause disease.
[…]
We are even beginning to sort out how emotional memories reach the parts of the brain that control the hormonal stress response, and how such emotions can ultimately affect the workings of the immune system and thus affect illnesses as disparate as arthritis and cancer. We are also beginning to piece together how signals from the immune system can affect the brain and the emotional and physical responses it controls: the molecular basis of feeling sick. In all this, the boundaries between mind and body are beginning to blur."
Indeed, the relationship between memory, emotion, and stress is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Sternberg’s work. She considers how we deal with the constant swirl of inputs and outputs as we move through the world, barraged by a stream of stimuli and sensations:
"Every minute of the day and night we feel thousands of sensations that might trigger a positive emotion such as happiness, or a negative emotion such as sadness, or no emotion at all: a trace of perfume, a light touch, a fleeting shadow, a strain of music. And there are thousands of physiological responses, such as palpitations or sweating, that can equally accompany positive emotions such as love, or negative emotions such as fear, or can happen without any emotional tinge at all. What makes these sensory inputs and physiological outputs emotions is the charge that gets added to them somehow, somewhere in our brains. Emotions in their fullest sense comprise all of these components. Each can lead into the black box and produce an emotional experience, or something in the black box can lead out to an emotional response that seems to come from nowhere."
Memory, it turns out, is one of the major factors mediating the dialogue between sensation and emotional experience. Our memories of past experience become encoded into triggers that act as switchers on the rail of psychoemotional response, directing the incoming train of present experience in the direction of one emotional destination or another.
Sternberg writes: "Mood is not homogeneous like cream soup. It is more like Swiss cheese, filled with holes. The triggers are highly specific, tripped by sudden trails of memory: a faint fragrance, a few bars of a tune, a vague silhouette that tapped into a sad memory buried deep, but not completely erased. These sensory inputs from the moment float through layers of time in the parts of the brain that control memory, and they pull out with them not only reminders of sense but also trails of the emotions that were first connected to the memory. These memories become connected to emotions, which are processed in other parts of the brain: the amygdala for fear, the nucleus accumbens for pleasure - those same parts that the anatomists had named for their shapes. And these emotional brain centers are linked by nerve pathways to the sensory parts of the brain and to the frontal lobe and hippocampus - the coordinating centers of thought and memory. The same sensory input can trigger a negative emotion or a positive one, depending on the memories associated with it."
This is where stress comes in - much like memory mediates how we interpret and respond to various experiences, a complex set of biological and psychological factors determine how we respond to stress. Some types of stress can be stimulating and invigorating, mobilizing us into action and creative potency; others can be draining and incapacitating, leaving us frustrated and hopeless. This dichotomy of good vs. bad stress, Sternberg notes, is determined by the biology undergirding our feelings - by the dose and duration of the stress hormones secreted by the body in response to the stressful stimulus. She explains the neurobiological machinery behind this response:
" As soon as the stressful event occurs, it triggers the release of the cascade of hypothalamic, pituitary, and adrenal hormones - the brain’s stress response. It also triggers the adrenal glands to release epinephrine, or adrenaline, and the sympathetic nerves to squirt out the adrenaline-like chemical norepinephrine all over the body: nerves that wire the heart, and gut, and skin. So, the heart is driven to beat faster, the fine hairs of your skin stand up, you sweat, you may feel nausea or the urge to defecate. But your attention is focused, your vision becomes crystal clear, a surge of power helps you run - these same chemicals released from nerves make blood flow to your muscles, preparing you to sprint.
All this occurs quickly. If you were to measure the stress hormones in your blood or saliva, they would already be increased within three minutes of the event. In experimental psychology tests, playing a fast-paced video game will make salivary cortisol increase and norepinephrine spill over into venous blood almost as soon as the virtual battle begins. But if you prolong the stress, by being unable to control it or by making it too potent or long-lived, and these hormones and chemicals still continue to pump out from nerves and glands, then the same molecules that mobilized you for the short haul now debilitate you."
These effects of stress exist on a bell curve - that is, some is good, but too much becomes bad: As the nervous system secretes more and more stress hormones, performance increases, but up to a point; after that tipping point, performance begins to suffer as the hormones continue to flow. What makes stress “bad” - that is, what makes it render us more pervious to disease - is the disparity between the nervous system and immune system’s respective pace. Sternberg explains:
"The nervous system and the hormonal stress response react to a stimulus in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes. The immune system takes parts of hours or days. It takes much longer than two minutes for immune cells to mobilize and respond to an invader, so it is unlikely that a single, even powerful, short-lived stress on the order of moments could have much of an effect on immune responses. However, when the stress turns chronic, immune defenses begin to be impaired. As the stressful stimulus hammers on, stress hormones and chemicals continue to pump out. Immune cells floating in this milieu in blood, or passing through the spleen, or growing up in thymic nurseries never have a chance to recover from the unabated rush of cortisol. Since cortisol shuts down immune cells’ responses, shifting them to a muted form, less able to react to foreign triggers, in the context of continued stress we are less able to defend and fight when faced with new invaders. And so, if you are exposed to, say, a flu or common cold virus when you are chronically stressed out, your immune system is less able to react and you become more susceptible to that infection."
Extended exposure to stress, especially to a variety of stressors at the same time - any combination from the vast existential menu of life-events like moving, divorce, a demanding job, the loss of a loved one, and even ongoing childcare - adds up a state of extreme exhaustion that leads to what we call burnout.
Sternberg writes: "Members of certain professions are more prone to burnout than others - nurses and teachers, for example, are among those at highest risk. These professionals are faced daily with caregiving situations in their work lives, often with inadequate pay, inadequate help in their jobs, and with too many patients or students in their charge. Some studies are beginning to show that burnt-out patients may have not only psychological burnout, but also physiological burnout: a flattened cortisol response and inability to respond to any stress with even a slight burst of cortisol. In other words, chronic unrelenting stress can change the stress response itself. And it can change other hormone systems in the body as well.
One of the most profound such changes affects the reproductive system - extended periods of stress can shut down the secretion of reproductive hormones in both men and women, resulting in lower fertility. But the effects are especially perilous for women - recurring and extended episodes of depression result in permanent changes in bone structure, increasing the risk of osteoporosis. In other words, we register stress literally in our bones."
But stress isn’t a direct causal function of the circumstances we’re in - what either amplifies or ameliorates our experience of stress is, once again, memory. Sternberg writes: "Our perception of stress, and therefore our response to it, is an ever-changing thing that depends a great deal on the circumstances and settings in which we find ourselves. It depends on previous experience and knowledge, as well as on the actual event that has occurred. And it depends on memory, too."
The most acute manifestation of how memory modulates stress is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. For striking evidence of how memory encodes past experience into triggers, which then catalyze present experience, Sternberg points to research by psychologist Rachel Yehuda, who found both Holocaust survivors and their first-degree relatives - that is, children and siblings - exhibited a similar hormonal stress response.
This, Sternberg points out, could be a combination of nature and nurture - the survivors, as young parents for whom the trauma was still fresh, may well have subconsciously taught their children a common style of stress-responsiveness; but it’s also possible that these automatic hormonal stress responses permanently changed the parents’ biology and were transmitted via DNA to their children. Once again, memory encodes stress into our very bodies. Sternberg considers the broader implications:
"Stress need not be on the order of war, rape, or the Holocaust to trigger at least some elements of PTSD. Common stresses that we all experience can trigger the emotional memory of a stressful circumstance - and all its accompanying physiological responses. Prolonged stress - such as divorce, a hostile workplace, the end of a relationship, or the death of a loved one - can all trigger elements of PTSD."
Among the major stressors - which include life-events expected to be on the list, such as divorce and the death of a loved one - is also one somewhat unexpected situation, at least to those who haven’t undergone it: moving. Sternberg considers the commonalities between something as devastating as death and something as mundane as moving:
"One is certainly loss - the loss of someone or something familiar. Another is novelty - finding oneself in a new and unfamiliar place because of the loss. Together these amount to change: moving away from something one knows and toward something one doesn’t. An unfamiliar environment is a universal stressor to nearly all species, no matter how developed or undeveloped."
In the remainder of the thoroughly illuminating "The Balance Within," Sternberg goes on to explore the role of interpersonal relationships in both contributing to stress and shielding us from it, how the immune system changes our moods, and what we can do to harness these neurobiological insights in alleviating our experience of the stressors with which every human life is strewn."
“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:
"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity.
Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities.
Outlawed by all governments everywhere.
Possession is normally punishable by death."
- John Gilmore
A comment: According to statistics compiled by the UN, by the time the sun rises tomorrow morning 30,000 children world wide will have died overnight from malnutrition, disease, lack of potable water, and lack of basic medical care. That's every night, all year long, 30,000 children dying because no one cared. Trillions of dollars wasted on insane wars, economies destroyed by psychopathic greed, the environment dying in front of our eyes, and no one cares. No wonder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described humanity as, "Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." The "instincts of beasts" is evident for all to see... sometimes all this wears me down, and I look around, hoping to see the "aspirations of angels," hoping desperately that we can somehow awaken from the madness crushing us all, that together we can still rise above the despair and hopelessness and make a better world, where no child dies from hunger, where wars are a distant memory, where everyone can live full, dignified and honorable lives in peace. An impossible, hopeless struggle? Perhaps, but how dare we call ourselves "Human" if we don't try to make that vision real, in any way we can, no matter the price? A dream, you say? Yes, that's all it is... but without those dreams, those aspirations, all that's left is the "instincts of beasts", and we all see very clearly what those have brought this world to... - CP
"Egypt have just spelt out detailed plans for what could potentially lead to the end of Benjamin Netanyahu's time in power. Right, so we’ve finally got the details of the Egyptian led plan for the reconstruction of Gaza. It is detailed, it is thorough, it still raises a few questions, but compared to the Israel and Trump endorsed plan, it is orders of magnitude better, not that that was a very high bar to cross, when the alternative is forced displacement of the entire Gaza Strip to neighbouring countries who have not only refused that, but have now come up with and gained the backing of Arab leaders from across the Middle East.
Gaza has endured months of destruction and is now at the mercy of Israel once again as they cut off aid supplies and resume strikes, to all intents and purposes ending the ceasefire as they have because they’ve once again changed the rules and demand everyone else accept that or else. The world is tired at seeing Israel act with impunity, now a plan to restore Gaza is on the table, the small matter of putting Israel in their place and removing them from this equation, much as this plan also removes Hamas from it as well, must be approached. If the entire Middle East can now finally speak with one voice, backing this plan as something they want to see delivered, then how they choose to deal with Israel next, as they must, is critical.
Right, so it is hardly breaking news to anyone on the planet I shouldn’t think by this point that Gaza is in ruins and its population war weary and utterly traumatized by the death and destruction meted out on them and their loved ones, but there may be good news on the horizon in the aftermath of this catastrophe. Egypt as we know has been working on a plan to rebuild and they have now announced a very ambitious $53 billion plan to reconstruct Gaza and their proposal has garnered support from across Middle Eastern Arab nations in attendance in Cairo yesterday for this plan to finally be made public and the Palestinian Authority, massively criticized for their aiding and abetting Israeli atrocity in the West Bank were also in attendance and some intriguing news came from them too, which I’ll come onto in a moment.
The Israeli genocide of Gaza has of course resulted in unprecedented levels of destruction. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, critical infrastructure has been obliterated, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed or injured and many more than that have been forcibly displaced from their homes. War crimes every one of them. The international community, human rights organizations, we as ordinary observers have for months condemned Israel’s actions as disproportionate and genocidal, accusing it of targeting civilian populations and infrastructure because that is exactly what they have been doing. Homes, schools, hospitals, everything levelled because it is Hamas, or a Hamas base, no matter how ridiculous and illegal the act. Israel will justify anything it does without restraint. The devastation has left what is left Gaza’s original 2.3 million inhabitants in dire need of humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction."
"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
"International Man: After spending over $350 billion - half of which is reportedly unaccounted for - the US government is finally pulling the plug on supporting the Ukraine in its war with Russia. What do you make of this?
Doug Casey: It was criminally insane for the US to involve itself in a border war between two countries on the other side of the world. Not many Americans know that "Ukraine," which was previously always known as "the Ukraine," means borderland. It was just a region, like Kurdistan, with undefined shifting borders until Lenin created it in 1921. Why, you might ask, would the West take a chance on starting World War III over the most corrupt country in Europe?
Several reasons. For one, Ukraine has been a highly effective laundromat. Gigantic amounts of American tax dollars disappeared into a black hole to re-emerge in the pockets of NGOs, masquerading as aid. For another, connected scumbags like the Bidens got fat. Scores of billions were redistributed to weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and God knows who else. And, of course, a large coterie of Neocons in DC have made careers out of trying to destroy Russia at any cost. I only hope that as Trump digs into where all the money has gone, it will result in massive clawbacks and long jail terms for lots of people, both in the US and Europe.
International Man: As the post below makes clear, President Trump is displeased with Zelensky. Without US backing, Zelensky's days in power in Kiev seem to be numbered. What are your thoughts on Zelensky's future and that of Ukraine?
Doug Casey: How Zelensky, a second-rate nobody actor in a poor country, became immensely wealthy is a tale that should be widely disseminated. Years ago, the Panama Papers showed that Zelensky was already worth about $300 million and had two ultra-expensive houses in southern Florida. But to this day, nobody's looked into the provenance of that fortune. I'm sure it's grown to billions in the intervening years.
Here's a rule of thumb: Dictators who are responsible for wholesale destruction, millions of casualties, and massive looting should wind up like Mussolini, who was hung by his heels from a lamppost. If Zelensky were smart, he'd hightail to a country without extradition. Israel might work, although they declined to shelter Meyer Lansky, who also had Law of Return rights. At a minimum, he should be indicted for criminally bad taste, prancing around in his faux military olive-green T-shirts and cargo pants for the last three years. Although he went to a nicely laundered black long-sleeve pullover for his formal meeting, last week. It was hilarious watching Trump treat him with the respect he deserved in the White House before kicking him out (link).
International Man: What are the broader geopolitical consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine? How might this impact NATO, the EU, and Europe as a whole?
Doug Casey: Despite Putin having said that he misses the old Soviet Union's borders, the chances of Russia attempting to conquer Europe are zero. In fact, the chances are that Russia itself - which is a multicultural domestic empire - will disintegrate into lots of smaller units over the next few decades. People don't understand that things are very different from the days of the Roman Empire or even before WW1. Back then, it could make sense if you conquered or colonized another country.
Life was cheap; if you won, you got to steal the gold, cattle, artwork, and slaves. Things are different today. If Russia were foolish enough to try to reincorporate the old USSR - forget about the rest of Europe - it will find little "stealable" wealth exists in today's world. They'd wind up with an extraordinarily expensive war followed by an interminable guerrilla war, resulting in the total collapse of Russia. There's absolutely nothing to be gained, and everything to be lost.
How do such insane memes even originate? There are psychological reasons, but now isn't the moment for us to go down that rabbit hole. Russian invasion of Europe is a red herring floated by American and NATO warmongers. Only very stupid and unknowledgeable people even consider it. But that's not to say great dangers haven't been set in motion. Russia has had to triple the size of its army, and that's expensive. If the war ends, it will have to disband most of it, creating back-to-back distortions in their economy.
Another likelihood is that NATO - which should have been abolished after the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early '90s, but has continued to grow like a cancer, even though it no longer serves any useful purpose - will finally fall apart. This is a good thing because NATO is nothing but a provocation to Russia and China.
There will be a wave of emigres from the Ukraine, joining the millions who've already left. Most Ukrainians are reasonably well-educated. Who wants to stay in a poverty-stricken, war-torn country with a predatory government? Millions more will move west.
As far as rebuilding the Ukraine is concerned, the idea of a Marshall Plan is counterproductive. If foreigners want to come in and carpetbag, that's one thing. But bankrupt US or EU governments throwing money at the place will just make things worse. It will inevitably go into the pockets of well-placed rich guys, corrupting both the giver and the receiver.
Ukraine should be totally free-marketized. Entrepreneurs will quickly move in, not to create an altruistic sham, a latter-day Potemkin village, but to make a profit. But who knows? Maybe the UN and EU will jury-rig some kind of solution, and the place will resemble a perpetual Gaza or post-war East Germany.
International Man: After pouring so much blood, treasure, and political capital into the Ukrainian quagmire, defeat will be a bitter pill for the Deep State and advocates of this war. The anti-Russia hysteria remains deeply ingrained in large segments of American and European society. After years of being promised victory, how will these people cope with such a reality check? Do you think the Deep State will attempt to block any US rapprochement with Russia?
Doug Casey: Russia and the Soviet Union have been the bête noire - the national enemy - of the US ever since I was a little kid. We all practiced duck and cover under our desks for fear of an obviously unprovoked attack by the evil Russkies.
Americans should realize that the enemy was never the Russian people, it was a Soviet state steeped in Marxist-Leninist dogma. And the almost equally pathological US Deep State, populated by our own group of warmongers, opportunists, and sociopaths. For the last 30 years, there have been more communists in American universities alone than there are in all of Russia. The real danger is the socialists, fascists, communists, and Woke Europeans who have captured most European governments.
In the US, the Deep State complex (with its military, corporate, academic, financial, and entertainment tentacles) shouldn't be underrated. It needs enemies for the war machine to make essentially useless and obsolescent junk. And for its infotainment arm to keep the hoi polloi in fear, happy to support a government claiming to "defend" them. The real danger, as JD Vance intimated in his speech in Munich, is within.
Do I think the Deep State will attempt to block any rapprochement with Russia? Absolutely. They don't want the chaos to end because it would expose deep layers of crime and corruption, which are as bad throughout the US government as they are in the Ukraine itself. Ending wartime chaos would expose the US government as full of arrogant and entitled grifters.
It would be very inconvenient for them if the Ukraine war, perhaps the most effective money laundromat in all of history, disappeared. Followed by a thorough investigation to determine where the money went. Of course, they'll want to block any rapprochement with Russia. If the "Defense" Department and the 15 agencies in the so-called "Intelligence Community" are thoroughly investigated, however, the lives of investigators will be at serious risk. It's risky business to break the rice bowls of these dudes.
International Man: The previous US administration froze all Russian stock and bond trading in Western financial markets. If the war ends, these assets will presumably be unfrozen and accessible to Western investors. What are your thoughts on Russian stocks? Given the far-reaching consequences of Ukraine losing its war with Russia, what other investment implications do you foresee?
Doug Casey: It'll be great when it's possible to buy Russian stocks and bonds again. There may be some tremendous bargains on offer at that point. Let me re-emphasize what I said earlier: Russia itself will eventually break up into a lot of smaller countries, as did the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Russia isn't the most stable country in the world, but it's several standard deviations better than any place in Africa, for instance.
I don't see Russia as an investment, but rather a high-potential speculation after their markets open again. The country has no debt and could easily go to a gold-backed ruble. The secession of non-Russian possessions could be a very good thing.
Meanwhile in the West, it's not unlikely that we'll see a financial and economic collapse as Trump unwinds numerous distortions at the same time he cranks in new ones. The Greater Depression will likely usher the Democrats back into power, which is bad news.
Given that Kiev loses its war with Moscow, it's pretty certain that now is the time to sell military/industrial stocks, and war stocks. If Trump succeeds in cutting back military spending, as he says, a lot of money will stop flowing to the likes of Lockheed, Raytheon, and Boeing. The "defense" business is absolutely rife with fraud, stupidity and corruption.
They've done extremely well over the last 30 years, but based on changes in the macroeconomic situation, I think the party's over. Not only that, but military technology is changing radically. The type of hi-tech junk that they're producing - e.g., F-35s, B21s, carriers, and $100,000 artillery rounds - makes about as much sense as producing battleships at the end of World War II. Cheap drones make more sense. As do $20,000 Terminators. The nature of the whole world is reorienting in every way. Radically."
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
"Last week I let on that I thought a recession was coming. I mean, I always think a recession is coming, so that was no big surprise, but it looks like from preliminary data that the economy is actually contracting this quarter, so, if we match it with one more quarter of contraction that’s the textbook definition of a recession. Or maybe the economy is having a baby. I slept through that part of health class.
It is a long-used trick of sitting presidents to treat the economy like a 1980s high school kegger in order to get re-elected. The plan is generally simple: lower interest rates, make great big troughs of money available, and, bada-bing, the economy is bada-booming on election day and the cheerleaders are doing keg stands.
Nixon mastered this with his re-election bid in 1972. Well, add the hangover from Nixon’s economic Everclear™ to the crude oil embargo (thanks, Israel) and the result was the miasma of suck that was the 1970s economy – stagflation. Every president has done some variation of this act since then, with varying degrees of success, but since 2000 or so, each president has tried to avoid all of the consequences of the Boozing. How? Boozing some more. I’m guessing that one can avoid a hangover by staying drunk all the time, though I don’t have personal experience in attempting that strategy. Although it is probably more enjoyable than a hangover, there are always consequences to replacing all of your blood with ethanol.
There is a difference with this current economic hangover that we’re working on because, first, we’ve been drinking soooooo long. Like I said, this has been going on since at least 2000. So, there’s that. But that’s not the only thing impacting the economy right now.Another major factor is Trump. I think, like many people, Trump sees the size of the national debt and knows that this can’t go on. He’s also a guy who has nothing at all to lose. He can shoot the Moon and try to go for all of it. He’s doing exactly that? Tariffs? As I’ve written before, when the United States had tariffs, we were a strong economy with manufacturing. Post WW2, when we went away from tariffs to help the rest of the world rebuild out of the rubble? Not so much.
Trump’s America also (so far) is an America that wants peace. For decades we’ve been shadowboxing against Russia, which is like Hulk Hogan™ attempting to defeat a room full of kittens. I mean, jeez, Hulk®, their eyes aren’t even open yet. Russia is not a threat to the United States. Except for the nukes.
To be clear, I’m all in favor of weapons, just ask The Mrs. when I make goo-goo eyes at a .50 cal. I think every father should be given their choice of an M2 or an M60. But to try to mock the United States for not getting profits on weapons that are killing people, right now. That’s...disturbing.
Also as a factor, in Trump’s America government is likely to be D.O.G.E.’d into shrinking for the first time since we demobilized from World War II. When that happened, we transitioned more-or-less seamlessly into the economic boom of the 1950s, but it didn’t hurt that the rest of the world was like Sergeant Hulka: “All blown up, sir
This shrinking government sector will take the heat off of inflation in many things, but tariffs will raise prices. Where it ends up is uncertainty. Who doesn’t like uncertainty? Wall Street®.
The final big factor in this recession is that the insiders who have been putting the Bacardi 151™ into the punch bowl for all these decades don’t want to help Trump. That’s probably a good thing. The more government meddling into the economy, the longer it normally takes to shake itself back into order. I want the recession to be:
• Short.
• Sharp. • Cleansing.
Like hangovers, recessions are painful. They can wreck lives. But they are required to clean out the economy from time to time. And the economy hasn’t been cleaned out in forever. Some areas where it really does need a bit of sprucing up:
So, yes, this is probably a recession coming. The Government-Media-Education complex will certainly try to blame Trump, just as they tried to blame him on day two that he hadn’t yet fixed all of Biden’s booby traps. To be clear, Trump will be partially at fault, but if the result is a true cleansing of the economy? It will be worth it. Now, where’s that black coffee?"
"How do they make food in Russia? What steps are taken to produce ready-made food for Russian supermarkets? Join me as I tour a Russian food factory in the provincial city of Kirov. What does it take to prepare food for sale in a Russian supermarket?"
Baltimore, Maryland - "Elon is right about that. Every penny spent by the feds must come from ‘The People’ via some form of taxation. One of them is in the news today. Tariffs. Yesterday, the Trump team put in place new tariffs against China, Mexico and Canada. And last night, Trump promised an even more aggressive barrage: reciprocal tariffs. Other nations punish their own citizens by denying them quality imports at competitive prices; now, we’ll do it too!
Warren Buffett, as interpreted by Investment Insider: "Tariffs are "an act of war, to some degree," Warren Buffett said. The Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO told CBS, "Over time, they are a tax on goods."
And now, the trade war has begun. Newsweek: "Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Monday that he would block energy exports to the United States "with a smile" if U.S. President Donald Trump moved ahead with plans for a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. The U.S. imposed tariffs of 25 percent of Canadian goods - except for energy products, which face a 10 percent tariff. It also put a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and an additional 10 percent on Chinese goods.
According to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Canada is by some margin the largest source of American energy imports, with 59 percent of all crude oil imported into the U.S. in 2019 coming from the country."
Associated Press: "Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico will respond to 25% tariffs imposed by the United States with its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Sheinbaum said she will announce the products Mexico will target on Sunday in a public event in Mexico City’s central plaza, perhaps indicating Mexico still hopes to de-escalate the trade war set off by U.S. President Donald Trump."
And the first casualties are limping back into camp: "On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta released an estimate for GDP performance in the first quarter of 2025, which showed an economic contraction of 2.8%… the same model-based projection estimated growth of almost 3% in early February."
Whoa. A 5.8% drop in GDP growth estimates. We haven’t seen that since the Great Depression…or Donald Trump’s first term, with the Covid Panic. If that kind of contraction happens, and continues, the feds will have to spend more money on unemployment comp, etc. And the Great Helmsman will be tempted to steer towards more stimmie measures. But where will he get the money?
The feds hold no bake sales. They sell no cookies, door to door, nor engage in charitable fundraising. They produce few goods and offer few services that people would willingly pay for. When they want money…they just take it. So it was that last year they took $4.9 trillion in tax revenue. But they spent $6.7 trillion. Whence cometh the difference? From other forms of taxation - inflation, primarily…and tariffs.
This is why Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut… and the proposal to extend it… are such frauds. They do not actually cut taxes; they simply shift it from direct taxes on income to indirect taxes from inflation or tariffs. Inflation has been called the ‘cruelest tax.’ It falls disproportionately on poor people. If you earn a million and only spend $100,000 per year, inflation is only taking a bite out of 1/10th of your income. If you earn $40,000… and spend all of it… it eats into the whole thing.
Charlie Bilello: "Highest earners also tend to be the biggest owners of assets such as stocks (the top 10% own 87% of stocks) and houses, which have outpaced inflation by a wide margin over the past five years…The result: the top 10% of income earners in the US (households making $250,000 or more) now account for half of all consumer spending, a record high. Three decades ago, they accounted for roughly 36% of all spending."
If you are rich, and you need money, you dig into savings. But what do you do if you’re living hand to mouth? You use a credit card. Bilello continues: "US Credit Card debt hit a record $1.2 trillion in the 4th quarter, rising 7% over the last year. The interest rate on that debt remains near record highs, at 21.5%. The combination of high debt levels and much higher interest rates is leading to an uptick in delinquencies. Over 11% of credit card balances in the US are now 90+ days delinquent, the highest since 2011."
Inflation is simply a tax on goods. As Buffett explains, so is a tariff. And like inflation, the poorest people will shoulder the heaviest portion. But unlike inflation, tariffs are especially suited to Big Man politics. They can be used as carrots or sticks. Trump can punish opponents or reward crony friends. An industry with good lobbyists is likely to get protection from foreign competitors. One that is on the wrong side politically may not. Tariffs make great political theater, but bad economics."
"Credit cards banned for business use? What’s next for the economy? In today’s video, I dive into major changes affecting credit card policies, including US Bank’s new restrictions on their Smartly card, which no longer allows business purchases. We’ll also talk about the IRS cracking down on side hustles and how new regulations could impact your finances. From solar energy surprises in California to banking merger controversies, there’s a lot to unpack in today’s episode of IAllegedly. Are you ready for these changes? Whether it’s shifting credit card perks, maintaining financial records for your side hustle, or navigating the evolving housing market, it’s crucial to stay informed. Let’s talk about how these updates could affect you and why businesses and personal finance strategies need to adapt now."
“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments,
the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people,
to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”
~ Leo Tolstoy, from his essay "On Patriotism" (1894)
"Your editor spent most of the weekend offline; reading, writing and otherwise safely ensconced in what used to be known as the “real world.” We trust we didn’t miss anything... Just jesting. Human beings almost always miss something... and not only when their attention is diverted elsewhere. Often, they are most blinded by an object when they are staring right at it.
When we left off last week – right before “going dark” over the weekend – it appeared as though the world was bracing for the imminent outbreak of peace. The tables had been set... the canapés plated... the Champagne chilled. Volodymyr Zelensky was en route to the White House to meet POTUS, having ironed his favorite t-shirt for the big occasion. The offer on hand – a lucrative minerals agreement binding US economic interest to that of Zelensky’s cratered nation – was supposed to be a stepping stone towards a lasting peace deal.
“The idea,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “is that, with joint U.S.-Ukraine investment in the nation’s resources, the United States will continue to have a stake in Ukraine’s security, stability, and lasting peace and therefore be incentivized to uphold and defend Ukrainian security.” All Hollywood’s favorite actor-president had to do was smile for the cameras, sign on the dotted line and not find Hunter Biden’s stash of Bolivian marching powder hidden under the sink in the guest bathroom. Alas...
Peace, Averted? After forty minutes of live discussion, which provided just enough context for the mainstream media to dutifully ignore it when crafting their prime time cuts, talks descended into a full scale Oval Office communication breakdown. No doubt you’ve seen the clips... and the memes. Following the diplomatic spat, Zelensky was sent back to his country without any supper while, presumably, the White House staff made do with an impromptu luncheon of Berry caviar and Krug Grande Cuvée.
By the time we returned to our desk Monday morning, it appeared as though defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory. Peace had been averted. But by whom? Cue the predictable “he said-she said” cacophony ringing out across the Interwebs, in which all the usual actors began lining up on their respective sides, explaining their own unique version of exactly the same event.
To some, the faultless Zelensky was “ambushed” by Trump and his attack dog, Vice President JD Vance. This was the claim advanced by the chattering class, many of whom have cheered the war from the beginning and would sooner see the world turned to ash than suffer the ignominy of peace in Trump’s time. This camp includes all the usual chickenhawks in DC and the EU, who are only too happy to watch other people’s sons and brothers marched off to the frontlines while they bravely hoist digital Ukrainian flags in their BlueSky bios (having fled the perilous free speech zone that is X).
Others held that Zelensky came across as entitled and disrespectful and even suggested that he should be grateful for any aid – military or otherwise – from a country which, along with having no shortage of its own problems to contend with, also enjoys something of a geographical convenience when it comes to conflicts on the other side of the world. (Indeed, it was Zelensky’s veiled “you have nice ocean, and don’t feel it now... but you will feel it in the future” comment that appeared to rouse Trump’s ire in the first place.)
No, No, NATO: The upshot of all this is that, within the space of a long weekend, the world went from taking one step closer to peace... to key players in and around the United States government calling openly for the immediate withdrawal from not only the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but also the United Nations (UN).
Here’s The Independent: "Elon Musk shared his support for the US leaving NATO and the UN on Saturday night and was joined in the cause by Utah Sen. Mike Lee. The head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took to X to write “I agree” to a post stating “It’s time to leave NATO and the UN” Musk is joined by several Republican lawmakers, such as Lee, who have questioned U.S. membership of NATO.
Hmm... what might a post-NATO world look like, you wonder? For those of us who were not around on April 4, 1949, when NATO was formed – between the member states of Europe’s Western Union (France, the UK and the three Benelux states) plus the United States, Canada, and a handful of other European nations – it is difficult to imagine a world without such a supranational entity.
Of course, the alliance has undergone many transformations during its 75-plus year history and, arguably, even served a purpose during the Cold War years as a necessary counterbalance to Soviet geopolitical interests. (Though there are those who hold that it only served to escalate tensions and further fuel the nuclear arms race.)
Either way, today, more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall (and NATOs repeatedly broken promise not to move “one inch to the east”), it is the United States that is left footing the overwhelming brunt of the alliance’s “defense” budget... even though, as Messrs. Trump and Zelensky point out, in their own ways, there is that “beautiful ocean” separating the continents, one from the other. Here’s a graphic representation of the budget breakdown...
This is what it looks like when, as Polish PM Donald Tusk stated this week, “500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.”
Defund and Defang: News that European NATO states might soon have to “go it alone” must have sent chills through the cold, dark hearts of warmongers from Brussels to Bethesda, Munich to McClean, who were suddenly faced with the threat of a defunded and defanged alliance. We can only imagine their silent prayers, their desperate pleas under drone-free skies, as they envisioned the order books of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman drying up faster than a mother’s tears under the looming prospect of a ceasefire.
Which begs the hypothetical question, without an aggressive military alliance conscripting member states around the world (and orchestrating coups d'état when citizens of those states don’t vote accordingly), who’s going to buy all those shiny Javelin missiles and F-16 fighter jets? Without a US-led NATO to do the heavy lifting, what will become of the poor ol’ Military Industrial Complex?
Jilted former Trump adviser and reliable permahawk, John Bolton, took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal over the weekend to address just that question... only, he did so with a straight face. Note that the article was not titled or “How to Promote and Protect Peace” but rather..."How to Protect NATO and Other Alliances From Trump." In other words, “How to protect supranational military alliances from democratically-elected leaders that don’t toe the line.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is due to address the nation in a joint session of Congress this evening. After his customary fashion, the 47th president has promised to “tell it like it is.” Fathers and daughters... mothers and sons... war pigs and deep state politicians alike...the world will be listening."
“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.
The galaxy's protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872's spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”
