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Thursday, December 11, 2025

"The Demolition of the World Trade Center (The Devil’s Trick)"

The crater in WTC 6
"The Demolition of the World Trade Center 
(The Devil’s Trick)"
by Mark Gaffney

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever 
remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
- Sherlock Holmes

Excerpt: "On the twenty-fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, more than enough evidence exists to draw reasonable conclusions about what happened that day and who was responsible. Most of the basic facts have been known for years, though unfortunately have not been readily available to the general public.

Way back in 2007, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, Dr Steven E. Jones, turned up critical evidence while investigating samples of World Trade Center (WTC) dust. The samples had been collected immediately after September 11, 2001 from the thick deposit of dust that blanketed the WTC site and much of lower Manhattan. Jones found tiny bits of an exotic incendiary known as thermate that can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. Thermate burns at ~5,000°F. The main product of the reaction is molten iron.

Thermate differs from its better known cousin thermite in that it contains sulfur which lowers the melting point of iron, speeding up the reaction. The presence of both sulfur and aluminum was diagnostic for thermate. Jones called this “the last nail in the coffin.” (Dr. Steven E. Jones, Revisiting 9/11/2001. Applying the Scientific Method, 2007)

Jones also found an abundance of tiny iron microspheres in the dust (up to .05% by volume), proof that large amounts of WTC steel had melted. The diameter of the spheres ranged from one micron to 1.5 mm. When Jones obtained some thermate, which is commercially available, and used it to cut through a steel plate, the reaction produced an intense spray of molten droplets which cooled into iron microspheres identical to the spheres in the dust.

Other studies of the WTC dust also reported the iron microspheres. (Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P. Meeker, Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust, posted at https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/508OF05-1165.html ; also see Damage Assessment: 130 Liberty Street Property. WTC Dust Signature Report: Composition and Morphology. December 2003)

Jones and his colleagues learned that thermite/thermate can be made more explosive by reducing the particle size of the ingredients. This more reactive variety is known as super thermate or nano-thermate. (Niels H. Harrit, et al, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, 2009)

And there were other revelations. It is indeed shocking how far the development of thermate had “progressed” by the late 1990s. Jones & Co, learned that a liquid sol-gel form of nano-thermate can be applied to steel simply by spraying or painting it on. This means insiders could have prepped the twin towers for demolition undetected during an elevator retrofit, a fireproofing upgrade, or even during routine maintenance. Nor was it necessary to wire the entire building. Ignition can be accomplished remotely using a specially designed thermitic match triggered by a radio signal. Once thermate is ignited, the reaction is self perpetuating. (Kevin R. Ryan, The Top Ten Connections between NIST and Nano-thermites, July 2, 2008)

All of this is consistent with the many eyewitness accounts of explosions on 9/11. And it is consistent with the testimony of New York City firemen, first responders and clean-up crews who reported seeing copious amounts of molten steel on site. As one fireman put it: “molten steel was flowing down the channel rails like in a foundry…”

(David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor revisited, 2008, pp. 31-37; Mark H. Gaffney, The 9/11 Mystery Plane, 2008, pp.132-139; Graeme MacQueen, 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers)

Office and building fires do not reach temperatures anywhere near hot enough to melt steel which has a melting point of 2,500°F. Nor were there any combustible materials in the WTC, nor any combination thereof, capable of approaching this temperature. Although burning jet fuel has been frequently (and incorrectly) cited as the reason for the WTC collapse, the reality is otherwise. Jet fuel is essentially kerosene and will not burn in air in excess of 1,832°F, far below the melting point of steel.

Not long after the towers collapsed, a hard rain storm drenched Manhattan. Firemen also sprayed millions of gallons of water onto the smoking ruin of the WTC in an attempt to extinguish the fires, all to no effect. This is consistent with burning thermate, which includes its own chemically bound oxygen. This is why a thermate fire cannot be smothered by dowsing and will even burn underwater.

The WTC site was so hot it melted the workmen’s rubber boots. Search-and-rescue dogs brought in to help locate survivors suffered severe burns, and three of the dogs died. Just how hot was the pile? We got an idea on September 16, 2001 when NASA conducted a flyover using an infrared spectrometer (AVIRIS) and detected surface temperatures as high as 1,376° F. Temperatures beneath the pile were undoubtedly much higher. 

The site remained intensely hot for five months. Molten steel was reported as late as February 2002 when clean-up crews finally reached the bottom of the WTC bathtub. (Jennifer Lin, “Recovery Worker Reflects on Months Spent at Ground Zero”, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, May 29, 2002)

The discovery of thermate in the WTC dust should have been front-page headline news across America, and indeed, around the world. Yet, as we know, the US media went deaf and dumb on the issue. Why? If Muslim jihadists were behind the 9/11 attacks, why would the media censor this breaking story? The only plausible reason for suppressing it was to prevent the truth from emerging about what actually happened. Blanket censorship has been the rule, ever since."
Full article here:
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"Pearl Harbor: The Lie America Has Believed for 84 Years"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 12/10/25
"Pearl Harbor: 
The Lie America Has Believed for 84 Years"
"Long before the greatest false flag attack in American history... 9/11 and the controlled demolition of the twin towers and building 7... which got us into the war on terror and destabilized the middle east. There was another massive false flag... Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941."
Comments here:

"The Pentagon Gets $901 Billion. You Get the Bill."

"The Pentagon Gets $901 Billion. You Get the Bill."
by Redacted

"The House of Representatives passed a military budget worth a whopping $901 billion. That is mind boggling! It is nearly $200 billion more than it was just five years ago. The bill not only slaps the American public with more debt, it also prevents the Trump administration from withdrawing troops from Europe or South Korea. Think about that! The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not to wage it, and certainly not to prevent a President from ending it. Yet this bill effectively blocks the Commander in Chief from withdrawing troops from ongoing military commitments.

The budget also includes $400 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which the Trump administration did not ask for. In fact, the sum total is $8 billion more than the Trump administration asked for but this happens most years. The President suggests a military budget and Congress adds to it because, why the heck not? The bill will offer a 3.8% raise for military personnel, which is good, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said over the weekend that he wanted the Trump administration to be remembered for its "great military build up" so undoubtedly this payroll is about to balloon.

The revised bill now goes back to the Senate for a vote before heading to President Trump’s desk. Both of them will pass it and we are all the worse for it because of the skyrocketing debt and endless conflicts that this will enable. It wasn’t always like this. We once had leaders who understood what reckless government spending does to working people. Here is my favorite quote from a President from the past. May we find a leader like him again before it is too late."

"Alert! Worldwide Unrest! US Army Panic! F-16s in Ukraine; Iran Threatens Blinken; Lebanon Prepares"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/10/25
"Alert! Worldwide Unrest! US Army Panic! 
F-16s in Ukraine; Iran Threatens Blinken; Lebanon Prepares"
Comments here:

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

"Alert! Mobs Swarm US Nuke Base; Lebanon/Israel On Brink; Nuclear Sub Near Iran"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/10/25
"Alert! Mobs Swarm US Nuke Base; 
Lebanon/Israel On Brink; Nuclear Sub Near Iran"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Yanni & Samvel Yervinyan, "Until The Last Moment"

Full screen recommended.
Yanni & Samvel Yervinyan, "Until The Last Moment"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, at the top of the image, atop a long stem of glowing hydrogen gas. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244.
These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros)."

"People Are Living In Their Cars Because They Can No Longer Afford Rent In America"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/10/25
"People Are Living In Their Cars Because 
They Can No Longer Afford Rent In America"
"Americans are giving up their apartments and moving into their cars. Some are doing it to escape the rent trap and finally have money to actually live. Others have no choice. When someone working three jobs still can't afford a one bedroom apartment, and millionaires are choosing van life because even they see the system is broken, something has fundamentally shifted in this country. These stories reveal what's really happening behind the housing crisis headlines. From an 18 year old making it work in a small car to a divorced entrepreneur worth five million dollars who walked away from her mansion, the reasons are different but the message is the same. The old path isn't working anymore. What would it take for you to consider living in your vehicle? Have you already made the switch? Share your story in the comments."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Rollin With Over, 12/10/25
"720,000 Fired and Nowhere to Live - 
10 U.S. States Facing Total Collapse"
"America is entering a breaking point in 2025. More than 720,000 workers were fired in the latest wave of mass layoffs, and families across the country are running out of options fast. With rent prices exploding, housing availability collapsing, and shelters full, thousands are turning to RV living as their last remaining lifeline. In this video, we break down the 10 U.S. states facing total collapse, where the combination of job losses, skyrocketing rent, RV homelessness, inflation, economic instability, and statewide crackdowns is pushing ordinary people into a crisis they never imagined. From rising eviction rates to record numbers of families living in campers, vans, and motorhomes, the data shows a disturbing trend: RV living is no longer a lifestyle choice - it’s survival."
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"Winter Night Walk in Russia: Moscow Christmas Lights 2025"

Full screen recommended.
Window to Moscow, 12/10/25
"Winter Night Walk in Russia:
 Moscow Christmas Lights 2025"
"Experience the magical winter atmosphere of Moscow at night - glowing Christmas lights, festive streets, and the warm holiday spirit of Russia. This 4K HDR night walk captures the beauty of the city before Christmas and New Year 2026: illuminated avenues, cozy decorations, snowfall moments, and the unique winter charm of Moscow. Perfect for relaxation, ambience, studying, sleeping, background vibes, travel inspiration, and everyone who loves winter city walks. Enjoy the calm sounds, night streets, and real Moscow holiday mood in stunning 4K HDR."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 12/10/25
"Moscow Typical Apartment: Could You Live There?"
"What does a Russian Typical Apartment look like in Moscow, Russia? Join me as I take a tour of a brand-new studio apartment recently listed for rent. Located 6 km from the centre of Moscow, Russia. How does it look and feel inside?"
Comments here:

Free Download: O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi"

"O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi"
by History.com

"Author O. Henry’s best-known and most beloved story, "The Gift of the Magi," is published in the December 10, 1905 issue of New York "Sunday World Magazine." It tells the poignantly ironic tale of a poor but devoted couple who each sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other. The following April, it is published as part of his story second short story collection, "The Four Million."

O. Henry was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter. Porter began writing in the late 1880s but applied himself to it seriously in 1898, when he was jailed for embezzling from a bank in Austin, Texas. Porter, who came from a poor family in North Carolina, was married and had a daughter. He fled to Honduras to avoid imprisonment but returned to the U.S. when his wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He spent three years in jail and wrote tales of adventure, some set in Honduras, to support his daughter, Margaret. After his release, he moved to New York and was hired by New York World to write one story a week. He kept the job from 1903 to 1906.

In 1904, his first story collection, "Cabbages and Kings", was published. Additional collections appeared in 1906 and 1907, and two collections a year were published from 1908 until his death, in 1910. He specialized in closely observed tales of everyday people, often ending with an unexpected twist. Despite the enormous popularity of the nearly 300 stories he published, he led a difficult life, struggling with financial problems and alcoholism until his death." 

Freely download “The Gift of the Magi”", by O. Henry, here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Athens, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"All The Available Data..."

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about
as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."
- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"
by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about nonsense. Filler, is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."
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Read it and weep...
"Morris Berman On A Dumbed-down America"
by RoryLitwin

Excerpt: "I am sharing a passage from Morris Berman’s book from a few years ago, "The Twilight of American Culture." Berman has generously agreed to let me share this passage, which is about the deplorable state of ignorance of the American people. The facts and data in this passage are a bit old, but all signs suggest that things have gotten worse since then, not better. "The Twilight of American Culture," pp. 33-40.

Turning to Item (c),The collapse of American intelligence, we find a picture that is unambiguously bleak. The following data are going to seem invented; please be assured, they are not.

– Forty-two percent of American adults cannot locate Japan on a world map, and according to Garrison Keillor (National Public Radio, 22 March 1997,) another survey revealed that nearly 15 percent couldn’t locate the United States (!). Keillor remarked that this was like not being able to “grab your rear end with both hands,” and he suggested that we stop being so assiduous, on the eve of elections, about trying to get out the vote.

– A survey taken in October 1996 revealed that one in ten voters did not know who the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. This is particularly sobering when one remembers that one of the questions traditionally asked in psychiatric wards as part of the test for sanity is “Who is the president of the United States?”

– Very few Americans understand the degree to which corporations have taken over their lives. But according to a poll taken by Time magazine, nearly 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels; and another study turned up the fact that 50 percent believe in the presence of UFOs and space aliens on earth, while a Gallup poll (reported on CNN, 19 August 1997) revealed that 71 percent believe that the U.S. government is engaged in a cover-up about the subject. More than 30 percent believe they have made contact with the dead.

– A 1995 article in the New York Times reported the results of a survey that revealed that 40 percent of American adults (this could be upward of 70 million people) did not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II. A Roper survey conducted in 1996 revealed that 84 percent of American college seniors cannot understand a newspaper editorial in any newspaper, and a U.S. Department of Education survey of 22,000 students in 1995 revealed that 50 percent were unaware of the Cold War, and that 60 percent had no idea of how the United States came into existence.

– At one point in 1996, Jay Leno invited a number of high school students to be on his television program and asked them to complete famous quotations from major American documents, such as the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence. Their response in each case was to stare at him blankly. As a kind of follow-up, on his show of 3 June 1999, Leno screened a video of interviews he had conducted a few days before at a university graduation ceremony. He did not identify the institution in question; he told his TV audience only that the students he had interviewed included graduate students as well as undergraduates. The group included men, women, and people of color. Leno posed eight questions, as follows:

1. Who designed the first American flag? Answers included Susan B. Anthony (born in 1820,) and “Betsy Ford.”

2. What were the Thirteen Colonies free from, after the American Revolution? One student said, “The East Coast.”

3. What was the Gettysburg Address? One student replied, “An address to Getty;” another said, “I don’t know the exact address.”

4. Who invented the lightbulb? Answers included Thomas Jefferson

5. What is three squared? One student said, “Twenty-seven;” another said, “Six.”

6. What is the boiling point of water? Answers included 115 degrees?

7. How long does it take the earth to rotate once on its axis? The two answers Leno received here were “Light years” (which is a measure of distance, not time,) and “Twenty-four axises [sic].”

8. How many moons does the earth have? The student questioned said she had taken astronomy a few years back and had gotten an A in the course but that she couldn’t remember the correct answer.

It is important to note that not a single student interviewed had the correct answer to any of these questions. Leno’s comment on this pathetic debacle says it all: “And the Chinese are stealing secrets from us?”

– A 1998 survey by the National Constitution Center revealed that only 41 percent of American teenagers can name the three branches of government, but 59 percent can name the Three Stooges. Only 2 percent can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court; 26 percent were unable to identify the vice president. In the early 1990s, the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that 50 percent of seventeen year olds could not express 9/100 as a percentage, and nearly 50 percent couldn’t place the Civil War in the correct half century–data that the San Antonio Express News characterized as evidence of the “steady lobotomizing” of American culture. In another study of seventeen year olds, only 4 percent could read a bus schedule, and only 12% could arrange six common fractions in order of size.

– Ignorance of the most elementary scientific facts on the part of American adults is nothing less than breathtaking. In a survey conducted for the National Science Foundation in October 1995, 56 percent of those polled said that electrons were larger than atoms; 63 percent stated that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (a chronological error of more than 60 million years;) 53 percent said that the earth revolved around the sun in either a day or a month (that is to say, only 47 percent understood that the correct answer is one year;) and 91 percent were unable to state what a molecule was. A random telephone survey of more than two thousand adults, conducted by Northern Illinois University, revealed that 21 percent believed that the sun revolved around the earth, with an additional 7 percent saying that they did not know which revolved around which.

– Of the 158 countries in the United Nations, the United States ranks forty-ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 percent of the adult population reads as much as one book a year, where book is defined to include Harlequin romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults are illiterate or read at no better than a fifth-grade level. Among readers age twenty-one to thirty-five, 67 percent regularly read a daily newspaper in 1965, as compared with 31 percent in 1998.

– In a telephone survey conducted in 1998, 12 percent of Americans, asked who the wife of the biblical Noah was, said “Joan of Arc” (reported on National Public Radio, 13 June 1998.)

– In 1997, as a hoax, the attorney general of the state of Missouri submitted a proposal to an international academic accrediting agency (not identified) to establish an institution he named Eastern Missouri Business College, which would grant Ph.D’s in marine biology and genetic engineering, as well as in business. The faculty would include, inter alia, Moe Howard, Jerome Howard, and Larry Fine–that is, The Three Stooges; and the proposed motto on the college seal, roughly translated from the Latin, was Education Is for the Birds. The response? Academic accreditation was granted."
Complete article is here. Read it and weep...
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As the great Mogombo Guru said, "We're so freakin' doomed!"
And that's why...

"Society is About to Break"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/10/25
"Society is About to Break"
"Canadian Prepper explores a disturbing trend: growing societal emptiness potentially worsening by 2026. The video analyzes modern life's anxieties, from social media's impact to the high cost of living, offering a unique perspective on prepping's appeal."
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Digital ID Just Went Live, This Is NOT a Drill, Your Privacy is Gone"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/10/25
"Digital ID Just Went Live,
This Is NOT a Drill, Your Privacy is Gone"
"Hi, I’m Dan! Today’s video is packed with critical information you need to hear. The digital ID is being quietly rolled out, starting with Alaska’s MyAlaska app, and it’s raising serious concerns about privacy, biometrics, and government control. From tracking your spending to consolidating all your personal data into a smart wallet, the consequences of this system could be life-altering. This isn’t just a local issue - it’s a warning for everyone, as the groundwork is being laid for broader implementation. What does this mean for your autonomy? Let’s talk about it."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Carl Jung: The Meaning of Your Life Explained Brutally Clearly (No Nonsense)"

Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, 12/8/25
"Carl Jung: The Meaning of Your Life 
Explained Brutally Clearly (No Nonsense)"
"Most people spend their entire lives searching for purpose in the wrong places - careers, achievements, approval, relationships, success. But according to Carl Jung, the real meaning of your life has nothing to do with external results. It has everything to do with confronting your unconscious, understanding your inner conflicts, and integrating the parts of yourself you’ve been running from. Most people spend their entire lives searching for purpose in the wrong places - careers, achievements, approval, relationships, success. But according to Carl Jung, the real meaning of your life has nothing to do with external results. It has everything to do with confronting your unconscious, understanding your inner conflicts, and integrating the parts of yourself you’ve been running from."
Comments here:

"The End Of Free Will"

"The End Of Free Will"
by The ZMan

The late polemicist Christopher Hitchens famous quipped, “Yes, I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.” He was addressing the paradoxical nature of free will in that even if it were an illusion, and we could somehow figure that out, we would be forced to carry on as if it were real. Everything about how we understand ourselves as human beings, and how we get on with one another, depends on the assumption that we have choices and we make those choices freely.

The reason for that is our societies and even our own minds are organized around prescriptive requirements, not descriptive ones. Sure, we know not to step off a roof as the facts tell us we will accelerate toward the sidewalk below, until we reach the sidewalk and suddenly decelerate. It is that rapid deceleration that kills us and that is a fact not subject to opinion. The reason we believe it is immoral to jump off a roof or kill yourself in any other way has nothing to do with physics.

Suicide is a choice. In Western societies at this point in time, making that choice, regardless of the circumstances, is immoral. In other times and other places, suicide was an honorable option. The Japanese used to treat ritual suicide as an honorable end for a man who faced a disgraceful end. The West used to have the idea of leaving a doomed man alone with a bottle of whiskey and revolver. The former was to gain the required courage to use the latter for the honorable act.

As an aside, this is why the liberal project was doomed from the start. It assumed that there was a universally correct way for humans to organize their societies. We could use reason and observations of nature to arrive at the correct way we ought and ought not act and how we should and should not organize our societies. We can reason our way to a set of universal moral principles. Then we can reason our way to building a society around those moral principles.

The liberal project, all of the ideologies that have spring from it, assumes that human beings are programmed to work best in a specific sort of society. We naturally function at our best within a specific set of rules. If we can figure out those rules and then figure out how to impose them, man will be liberated from the oppression of having to live against his nature within a hostile set of rules. This is the goal of libertarianism, anarchism, communism, progressivism and so on.

This brings us back to the issue of free will. Ideologies fail, because they assume that once the rules are imposed, people no longer have to make choices between the things they desire. Free will is no longer be necessary. Even if free will is an illusion, however, it is one necessary for us to be human beings, rather than moist robots. There is something about the nature of man that requires the belief in free will. Without this illusion, if that is what it is, we cease to be human and cease to exist.

It is probably why we lack the language to discuss the descriptive world in purely descriptive terms. You see that in this post by W. M. Briggs. He is taking on a post by former physicist and current YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder, who tries to argue that free will is a myth and you should stop believing in it. As Briggs notes, her language, even when discussing the laws of physics, is prescriptive. Even when we think descriptively, we end up using prescriptive language.

This crackpot notion that we would be better off if we chose to not believe in free will is not new to Sabine Hossenfelder. Like all such arguments, the first person to think about it was the first man with enough free time to waste some of it on contemplating pointless questions like do we have free will? Idle hands do the Devil’s work and the best proof of that is philosophy. Everywhere there have been idle hands we find the philosopher and Hell follows with him.

Of course, free will is a slippery concept. There is libertarian free will, which argues that for any choice we make, we could have chosen otherwise, even if all of the conditions that could impact our decision were identical. For example, you chose to arrive at work on time, but you could have arrived earlier or later, even assuming some negative or positive consequences to the choices. Like so much of libertarianism, this makes sense if you forget that humans live in societies with other humans.

The other form of free will involves morality. Often, oaths have a line where the person taking the oath testifies that he is taking the oath of his own free will. In criminal proceedings we differentiate between knowingly committing a crime and inadvertently or accidentally committing a crime. The driver who purposely runs down a pedestrian is treated differently from the person who does so while trying to avoid a group of school children because of our notion of free will.

Both conceptualizations of free will are most likely illusions, like much of what we think we understand about the natural world. What we think of as physical reality is probably a simplified illusion of reality. Our brains evolved to conceptualize the parts of reality we need to understand in order for our genes to advance to the next round. The concept of free will is just another item in the toolkit. Even our ability to question our conceptualization of reality is probably an illusion.

That is the problem with Sabine Hossenfelder’s argument. Whether or not free will, however defined, is a real thing does not matter, other than it being a useful topic around which to build a post. Whether you believe it or not does not matter, but once you decide to act as if it is not real, then you enter the world in which it is perfectly acceptable to remove the people who cannot fit your model of society. In the end, every ideologue must reject free will in order to pull the trigger.

That is the end of the free will debate. The age of ideology has taught us that in order to have societies that accommodate human nature, we must choose to organize ourselves as comes naturally to use. That means leaving others to organize themselves as comes naturally to them. Once you start down the path of rejecting free will, you end up on the road that leads to industrial slaughter and the menticide that now promises to extinguish the Western world.

We have free will and if we did not have it, we would have no choice but to invent as it is the only way we can live as human beings. That means we have a choice as to how we organize ourselves. We must collectively choose our metaphysics and our morality and choose how we deal with those who undermine our choices. Those who choose otherwise, in effect, choose not to be us. Therefore, we have the choice to exclude them from us, even choosing to use force if necessary."

Bill Bonner, "Beyond the Pale"

"Beyond the Pale"
by Bill Bonner

"I don't know but I'm going to find out about it, 
but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men."
- Donald Trump

Baltimore, Maryland - "USNI News: "4 Dead in Latest U.S. Strike on Suspected Narco Boat. U.S. forces struck a suspected narco drug boat, killing four people on board, Thursday in the Eastern Pacific following a three-week gap in publicized strikes. The death toll has climbed to 87 killed, of which 86 were killed in the strikes and one person was presumed dead after being lost at sea. Two wounded survivors were repatriated to their home countries.

The Independent: "President Donald Trump raged at a female ABC News reporter, calling her “the most obnoxious,” after she asked whether his administration would commit to releasing the double-tap boat strike video.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he didn’t order the second strike against an alleged drug-running vessel on September 2, the first of more than a dozen U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific against what administration officials call “narcoterrorists.” In a tense exchange at a White House roundtable Monday, Trump insisted that he never said he’d release footage of the double-tap strike - which he’d promised to make public just four days earlier - and simultaneously fired off his latest attack against a female reporter."

We join the ‘liberal’ press in chronicling America’s descent into violence and corruption. But unlike the New York Times and the Washington Post we see it as a bi-partisan affair and take no pleasure in reporting it. Our guess is that, like a invasive peste on a banana boat, a dreadful worm came in with our maggot money...and now...

Foreign policy. Domestic policy. The Budget...the dollar...the Department of Justice...the Pentagon - the worm chews through the essential organs. The most dramatic expression of this slimy wiggler is neither $38 trillion of national debt nor a 35x increase in the price of a new Ford F-150 (since 1971). It’s more than just money; as he dollar declined, decency went down with it.

The US began assassinating people, or attempting to do so, in the 1960s. The first target, arguably, was Patrice Lumumba, who led the Congo to independence from Belgium. The CIA thought he had been ‘bought’ by the Soviets. Others simply saw African independence as a disagreeable trend. Even the usually sensible Dwight Eisenhower thought the world would be better off without him. But when it was suggested to Ike that the African leader should be assassinated, he replied: ‘That would be beyond the pale.’

That was in the early ‘60s. But the pale moved. Come the Vietnam war and the US was taking part in dozens of ‘extra-judicial’ killings. The Church Committee heard testimony of 634 different schemes that had been proposed to eliminate Fidel Castro.

Then, after a pause, the Bush administration opened up the throttle on the homicidal machine. Thousands of High Value Targets were struck in Iraq. Good people? Bad people? It turned out, nobody even knew who they were. When Daniel Hale released documents showing that more than 90% of the people killed were not the intended targets, he was charged with stealing classified documents and sent to jail. As we reported yesterday, Barack Obama kept the tradition going with his ‘kill lists.’ And the press did not merely turn a blind eye...it reported the murders approvingly.

And now, once again, the US is on a spree. This time it is killing neither enemies nor terrorists...nor heads of state...nor politicians nor combatants. The US has declared ‘war’ against people with no large calibre weapons, no ships, no planes, no army, no service academies, no official ranks, no tanks, no personnel carriers, no veterans’ benefits, no military bases, no artillery, no uniforms...no nothing.

Karoline Leavitt says of the critics: "They are attacking the brave men and women who have conducted these strikes well within the law, following the orders from their commander-in-chief."

But what would Eisenhower say? He had faced professional soldiers...real enemies, with real weapons - the Luftwaffe, the Panzers, the Wehrmacht. And he went on to be commander-in-chief. Where was the pale, he might wonder? Why couldn’t Admiral Bradley see it? Since when is it okey to whack civilians you don’t even know...who may or may not be transporting illegal drugs...that may or may not do harm to the people taking them (consumers can decide for themselves)... to people who may or may not be in the United States of America. Are these High Value Targets? Or are they Negative Value Targets, whose deaths do more harm than good, each one further undermining the real value of US assets?"

"Why We Fail"

"Why We Fail"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"There are many reasons why we fail, but perhaps the most critical one is continuing to do more of what has failed. This has many potential sources, from the psychological (self-sabotage, etc.) to the ideological (the market is the solution to every problem, etc.) to cognitive biases (recency bias, etc.).

One enduring source of continuing to do more of what has failed is hard-wired on a deeper level than mere cognitive biases. One way to summarize this is: we can't let go of a story that explains how the world works unless we have a replacement story in hand.

In short: we must have a story that accounts for the world around us. Not having any story is not possible. We can have multiple overlapping stories - Jungian psychology, general theory of relativity, Keynesian economics, and so on but we need a story that explains key elements of our experience and what we observe and "know," with know in quotes to indicate that the story we embrace defines what we know and what we can know.

Given this need for a story, we can only relinquish a story that's failing to account for what we observe if we have a better story available: and by "better" I mean one that more accurately accounts for what we observe.

This substitution of a new story for an existing story that no longer makes sense (i.e. offers constructive predictions) of the world is easily confused with another human trait: the power of the Powers That Be rest on a foundational story, and replacing this story removes the source of their power. Replacing the story that empowers them discredits their claim to superiority, effectively stripping away their entitlement to authority and their overweening delusions of grandiosity that come with entering the ranks of the Powers That Be.

This desire to maintain the status quo story as part of maintaining their authority and power is the core dynamic described by Thomas Kuhn in his classic "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:" the Old Guard who embraced the story that the universe revolves around the Earth resists accepting the new story that the Earth is an inconsequential minor planet that orbits the sun in a local system which is in motion in much larger structures even as all the observational data undermines their story and supports the new story.

Fast-forward to the present and we have multiple Old Guards clinging to ideological stories that no longer track what we observe. Yet like all previous Old Guards, the Powers That Be are loathe to accept a new story that strips away their claim to authority and all the perquisites of power they currently enjoy.

We live in a world torn between the artifices needed to make "the Earth is the center of the Universe" somewhat plausible even as that story crumbles into incoherence and the formation of a new story that actually tracks reality. In terms of a metaphor, consider a glossy "lifestyle" publication that simultaneously touts a new chocolate cake recipe that is simply out of this world and a new diet to slim down in a healthier way than taking meds with horrible side effects that must be taken for life.

No wonder the world seems deranged - it is deranged by the immense strength of an Old Guard clinging onto power by any means available even as the world around them spins into incoherence.
Economic incoherence:
Political incoherence:
Psychological incoherence:

"15 Big Retail Chains That Are Falling Apart After Stores Were Empty This Black Friday!"

Full screen recommended.
RV Crisis, 12/10/25
"15 Big Retail Chains That Are Falling Apart 
After Stores Were Empty This Black Friday!"
"Fifteen major retail chains faced surprisingly quiet Black Fridays. The video analyzes footage revealing shifts in consumer behavior and economic pressures impacting these stores. Explore the reasons behind these changes and their potential long-term effects."
Comments here:

John Wilder, "Is Everything Fake?"

"Is Everything Fake?"
by John Wilder

"The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are being looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be." - Ron Paul

"The economy recently feels to me like a(nother) bad sequel to "The Matrix": smoke, mirrors, simulated steaks and guys pretending to be girls directing everything. It made me think of "Bowfinger", a 1999 Steve Martin flick. Steve Martin plays the titular producer, Bobby Bowfinger. His character drops this gem while trying to scam a crew into working on his latest film: “That’s after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash? Every movie costs $2,184.” The rest, it’s like Hollywood? Fake sets, fake stars, fake everything. Our economy, I think, has officially hit 8.9 out of 10 on the Bowfinger scale.

It’s a façade of trillions propped on fraud, fiat, and fairy dust. The evidence is everywhere: from federal slush funds laundering cash to “charities” that fund political hit squads, to Somali scams siphoning billions for terrorist toys, to the AI hype train where Nvidia’s® GPUs vanish into vaporware voids. It makes me ask one question: Have we peaked at “peak fake”?

Start with the government’s golden shower of “aid.” In the last few months, we’ve watched as the public found out that billions flood from Uncle Sam’s coffers to “nonprofits” and foundations that, surprise, boomerang right back to commentators, politicians, and partisan ops that give the opinions to the Democratically-appointed judges to make sure that their cash lifeline is safe from scrutiny. Sibling marriages are less incestuous.

Remember the post-election blitz Democratic blitz? A Free Press® investigation uncovered a $27 billion rush-out-the-door bonanza, with $20B hitting eight leftist nonprofits faster than Kamala could say “unbourboned by what has been.”

It would be one thing if these were soup kitchens serving the starving, but these are slush funds for radical agendas, exploiting tax dollars to bankroll everything from election meddling to “community organizing” that looks suspiciously like astroturf Antifa® activism. It’s like if United Way™ funded Trotsky but funded by the Czar.

And USAID? They shelled $44K to Politico™ for subscriptions chump change, but emblematic of how federal funds feather media nests. Nonprofits are NGO scams, funneling billions to progressive power grabs, sometimes even recycling it from overseas. Ukraine is the country that just keeps giving. I mean, if you’re a Democratic politician.

House hearings exposed how these networks weaponize your taxes for ideological insurgency. You’re paying for the people who keep bleating: “muh democracy.” This is Bowfinger budgeting: real costs hidden, profits pocketed by players who script the narrative.

Speaking of Minnesota Somalisota... (otherwise known as Mogadishu on the Mississippi), the relentless spotlight has turned from Indian invaders to Somalian swindlers. The “Feeding Our Future” fraud, where Somali networks allegedly pilfered over $250M from child nutrition programs during COVID. That’s bad enough, but state audits have found broader scams at over $1 billion in taxpayer theft, with funds funneled overseas to anti-American terrorists. I mean, not just anti-American Democrats, but actual “was given a dowry of AK-47s, goats, and C-4” dirka-dirka terrorists.

This isn’t petty theft: this is peak fake philanthropy that rivals the Clinton Foundation. “Charities” as cover for African clan cash grabs, shipping your dollars to fund foes abroad. If you watch videos of interviews with these people, they have no connection philosophically to the United States, wish to live under sharia law, don’t speak English, and don’t have jobs, other than stealing. I guess the only saving grace is that at least these “charities” didn’t pay for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and the terrorists are fine with using standard NATO rounds.

The next fake? I’ve mentioned it again and again, Nvidia®. It’s not so much Nvidia™ as the hype around A.I. Nvidia® seems to (mostly) be just selling computer chips. Mostly. Their stock has been exploding upward like a Somalian with a grenade, doubling since April, with a market capitalization flirting with $4 trillion. Who is buying all those GPUs, and for what? Is it kids playing Fortnite®?

Ed Zitron, tech industry writer, estimates Big Tech needs $2T in AI revenue by 2030 just to justify their A.I. spending binge, or it’s going to lead to a fall that will leave a mark. We’re back to Wilder’s A.I. Paradox: if A.I. is valuable enough to be worth the money that’s being invested in it, it will wreck the economy with a wave of unemployment. If it’s not, it’ll wreck the economy because it failed. Yay! It’s almost like we don’t have a choice! It’s a lot like the French having a military: if they fight, they lose, and if they run, they lose.

Who is buying this stuff? The usual suspects: OpenAI®, Microsoft™, Oracle©, Amazon™, and Google©. As we’ve shown here before, this investment simply doesn’t have the infrastructure like electricity, PEZ®, or clean water production to support it even if they could build all that stuff. It smells like tulips in the Dutch Republic back around 1637.

Me? I think it’s entirely possible that we’re building a multi-trillion-dollar computer that might wreck our economy if it works. And it might wreck the economy if it doesn’t. So, is this peak fake?

We’ve got governments gifting billions to grifters on an endless cash spin-cycle. We’ve got immigrants importing scams and exporting cash to jihadi Jamal in Jowhar. Also, we have A.I. alchemists turning silicon into massive debts that might be decadal mistakes.

If it was just that, yeah, it might all work out. But there’s this: the economy is a house of cards built on counterfeit confidence: $36 trillion in fiat debt, infinite inflation, and innovations that might wreck everything if they don’t become a robotic overlord. Is it any wonder that the smallest pebble dropped onto this slope might cause a landslide?

Fake fails eventually, but often lasts longer than almost anyone would believe during inertia. Will we reset? I think that’s almost certain. When will we reset? That I can’t tell. As long as everyone agrees that the market is up, the market is up. But Wendy’s™ is getting ready to close 5% of its restaurants because the business is so great. I think the lower end of the income spectrum has thrown in the towel. “A Dave’s Single™? What, do I look like a Rockefeller?”

Going back to "The Matrix": “You know, I know this steak Dave’s Single® doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.” Ignorance, bliss? What do those words even mean? In other news, I’m in a great mood!"

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

"WTF?! The System Crashed, Silver Absolutely Explodes!"

Prepper News, 12/9/25
"WTF?! The System Crashed, 
Silver Absolutely Explodes!"
Comments here:

"America: The Land Of Opportunity Is Now Slavelandia Owned By The Billionaires and Politicians"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 12/9/25
"America: The Land Of Opportunity Is Now Slavelandia
 Owned By The Billionaires and Politicians"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events
forming future trends. To access our premium content, subscribe to the Trends Journal"
Comments here:

Col. Doug Macgregor, "Russia Takes Over Odessa: Ukrainian Army Surrenders and NATO Freaks Out"

Col. Doug Macgregor, "Russia Takes Over Odessa:
 Ukrainian Army Surrenders and NATO Freaks Out"
Comments here:

"The Dollar Is No Longer Safe; 18 Million Californians Told To Stay Indoors"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/9/25
"The Dollar Is No Longer Safe; 
18 Million Californians Told To Stay Indoors"
Comments here;

Adventures with Danno, "Walmart Cracks... It Finally Happened"

Adventures with Danno, 12/9/25
"Walmart Cracks... It Finally Happened"
Comments here:

"People Are Regretting Buying A House As Costs Spiral Out Of Control"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/9/25
"People Are Regretting Buying A 
House As Costs Spiral Out Of Control"

"Millions of Americans are waking up to a harsh reality. The home they thought would build their future is draining them financially. New construction homes are falling apart within months. Buyers are discovering foundation problems, cracking walls, and code violations that cost hundreds of thousands to fix. Even million dollar properties are being sold with serious defects that inspectors are exposing on social media. But construction failures are only part of the problem. Homeowners who bought during the 2021 to 2024 boom are now trapped. Interest rates have locked them into starter homes they can never upgrade from. Monthly payments are so high that families have nothing left after the mortgage clears. They call it being house poor and it is happening everywhere.

The math is brutal. A refinanced mortgage at today's rates can still mean paying nearly double the home's value over 30 years. People who stretched to buy are watching their equity disappear as prices drop nationwide. Almost a million homeowners are now upside down owing more than their homes are worth. Foreclosure filings are surging with some states seeing increases of 20 percent or more.

This is starting to look a lot like the warning signs we saw before 2008. Are we heading for another housing crash that wipes out everything people worked for? Share your story in the comments. Are you stuck in a home you regret buying? Did you discover problems after closing that no one warned you about? Subscribe for more videos on what is really happening in the economy that mainstream news will not tell you."
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A Classic Musical Interlude: "West Side Story," "America"

Full screen recommended.
"West Side Story," "America"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.
Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.”

"This Is Your Life..."

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice.
To be or not to be.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.
Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume
and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"
- Chuck Palahniuk

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood -
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks - is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is -
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke