"A Life of Learning: Earth School"

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOm

"Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul. Life is the province of learning, and the wisdom we acquire throughout our lives is the reward of existence. As we traverse the winding roads that lead from birth to death, experience is our patient teacher. We exist, bound to human bodies as we are, to evolve, enrolled by the universe in earth school, an informal and individualized academy of living, being, and changing. Life’s lessons can take many forms and present us with many challenges. There are scores of mundane lessons that help us learn to navigate with grace, poise, and tolerance in this world. And there are those once-in-a-lifetime lessons that touch us so deeply that they change the course of our lives. The latter can be heartrending, and we may wander through life as unwilling students for a time. But the quality of our lives is based almost entirely on what we derive from our experiences.

Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul, as well as the intellect. The scope of our instruction is dependent on our ability and readiness to accept the lesson laid out before us in the circumstances we face. When we find ourselves blindsided by life, we are free to choose to close our minds or to view the inbuilt lesson in a narrow-minded way. The notion that existence is a never-ending lesson can be dismaying at times. The courses we undertake in earth school can be painful as well as pleasurable, and as taxing as they are eventually rewarding. However, in every situation, relationship, or encounter, a range of lessons can be unearthed. When we choose to consciously take advantage of each of the lessons we are confronted with, we gradually discover that our previous ideas about love, compassion, resilience, grief, fear, trust, and generosity could have been half-formed.

Ultimately, when we acknowledge that growth is an integral part of life and that attending earth school is the responsibility of every individual, the concept of "life as lesson" no longer chafes. We can openly and joyfully look for the blessing buried in the difficulties we face without feeling that we are trapped in a roller-coaster ride of forced learning. Though we cannot always know when we are experiencing a life lesson, the wisdom we accrue will bless us with the keenest hindsight."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

•

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have 

drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."
- Richard Bach

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"Ten Rules For Being Human"

Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three: There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four: A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five: Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six: 'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven: Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about  another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine: Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Rule Ten: You will forget all of this at birth. You can remember it if you want by unravelling the double helix of inner knowing.

- Cherie Carter-Scott, 

From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

"I’m 78 - My Understanding of Faith Has Changed"

Before Time Runs Out

"I’m 78 - My Understanding of Faith Has Changed"

"In this video, I reflect on time, relationships, regrets, success, and what truly holds value in the end.This is honest, unfiltered wisdom from someone who has lived long enough to see what actually matters. Don’t spend decades learning the hard way like I did. Take what I learned and use it while you still can."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Free Download: Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”

“Automaton Conformity”

by Erich Fromm

“In the mechanisms we have been discussing, the individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming power of the world outside himself either by renouncing his individual integrity, or by destroying others so that the world ceases to be threatening. Other mechanisms of escape are the withdrawal from the world so completely that it loses its threat (the picture we find in certain psychotic states), and the inflation of oneself psychologically to such an extent that the world outside becomes small in comparison. Although these mechanisms of escape are important for individual psychology, they are only of minor relevance culturally. I shall not, therefore, discuss them further here, but instead will turn to another mechanism of escape which is of the greatest social significance.

This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.”

- Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”

Freely download “The Fear of Freedom”, by Erich Fromm, here:

- http://realsociology.edublogs.org/files/

"This Day In History: Thomas Paine Publishes “Common Sense” – 1776"

"This Day In History: 

Thomas Paine Publishes “Common Sense” – 1776"

by History.com

"On January 10, 1776, writer Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries.

Originally published anonymously, “Common Sense” advocated independence for the American colonies from Britain and is considered one of the most influential pamphlets in American history. Credited with uniting average citizens and political leaders behind the idea of independence, “Common Sense” played a remarkable role in transforming a colonial squabble into the American Revolution.

At the time Paine wrote “Common Sense,” most colonists considered themselves to be aggrieved Britons. Paine fundamentally changed the tenor of colonists’ argument with the crown when he wrote the following: “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.”

Paine was born in England in 1737 and worked as a corset maker in his teens and, later, as a sailor and schoolteacher before becoming a prominent pamphleteer. In 1774, Paine arrived in Philadelphia and soon came to support American independence. Two years later, his 47-page pamphlet sold some 500,000 copies, powerfully influencing American opinion. Paine went on to serve in the U.S. Army and to work for the Committee of Foreign Affairs before returning to Europe in 1787.

Back in England, he continued writing pamphlets in support of revolution. He released “The Rights of Man,” supporting the French Revolution in 1791-92, in answer to Edmund Burke’s famous “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790). His sentiments were highly unpopular with the still-monarchal British government, so he fled to France, where he was later arrested for his political opinions. He returned to the United States in 1802 and died in New York in 1809."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Freely download "Common Sense", by Thomas Paine, here:

-https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1776ThomasPaine.pdf

"How It Really Is"

 

"Both Sides Gear Up For “War” As An Internal Revolution Begins To Erupt In The United States"

"Both Sides Gear Up For “War” As An Internal 

Revolution Begins To Erupt In The United States"

by Michael Snyder

"The left wants to get millions of activists into the streets during the months ahead, and just like last time around they are hoping that an incident in Minnesota will be the spark. Meanwhile, ICE has initiated a “wartime recruitment” strategy and is planning to meet any protests head on. Both sides absolutely hate one another, and we have already seen so many incidents of violence. This is such a tragedy, because none of us should want to see Americans fighting against Americans. Unfortunately, I am convinced that the civil unrest that we are witnessing will greatly escalate as 2026 rolls along.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, Rachel Maddow revealed what the left’s plan is…"Rachel Maddow Calls for More Protests Against President Trump." “Once you have 3.5% of a population protesting nonviolently against a dictator or an authoritarian, that is essentially an unstoppable force that they can’t oppose.”

If you do the math, that would be more than 10 million people in the United States. They want to flood the streets with far left activists just like they did in 2020, and they fully understand that there will be widespread violence just like we saw back then. And now the death of Renee Nicole Good has given them exactly what they needed.

The mainstream media is portraying her as an innocent victim, but the truth is that she had been recruited as an anti-ICE “warrior” and she was simply doing what she had been recruited to do…"Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE “warrior” and was part of a group of activists who worked to “document and resist” the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, The Post can reveal.

Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and prioritizes “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said. “She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post at a growing vigil where Good was killed Wednesday. She never should have been there. And we all knew that clashes between ICE and anti-ICE radicals would eventually produce this sort of an incident.

In the aftermath of Good’s death, protests immediately erupted nationwide… "Protests have erupted nationwide after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis Wednesday. Renee Nicole Good, 37, was killed during an immigration enforcement operation in a residential neighborhood south of downtown."

While heated protests were happening in Minnesota, demonstrations also took place or were expected to Thursday in New York City, Seattle, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio, New Orleans and Chicago. Protests were also scheduled in smaller cities later this week in Arizona, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.

Needless to say, these protests were very well funded. In fact, we have learned that funding for the protest in New York City came from a very familiar source…"The protest tonight in New York City against ICE is being paid for and organized by ‘PSL New York City – Party for Socialism and Liberation’ They are funded by Neville Roy Singham who lives in China and works with the CCP He donated over $20 million to entities like the Justice and Education Fund, which supports Party for Socialism & Liberation activities like protests He also funds groups with heavy Party for Socialism & Liberation leadership overlap In other words in a huge networks of organization of professional protesters working to take down America

If the left thinks that they can get the Trump administration to back down, they are wrong. According to CBS News, approximately 2,000 federal agents have been deployed to Minneapolis for a 30 day “surge”…"The Trump administration has begun a massive deployment of hundreds of Department of Homeland Security agents to the Twin Cities area as it escalates its federal crackdown amid a widening fraud scandal in Minnesota, multiple law enforcement officials familiar with the plan told CBS News.

The crackdown could involve roughly 2,000 agents and officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch and Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s investigative arm tasked with fighting transnational crimes, the officials said. They requested anonymity to discuss operations that have not been publicly announced. The plan is for the agents and officers to oversee a 30-day surge in operations in the Twin Cities area, making the region the first major target of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration crackdown in the new year, officials said."

We heard the word “surge” being used a lot during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using military terminology is only going to increase tensions. And the Washington Post is telling us that ICE has begun a $100 million “wartime recruitment” strategy…"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign, part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy it said was critical to hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.

The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials this summer detailing ICE’s “surge hiring marketing strategy.”

The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website."

If they are preparing for “war”, who do they intend to fight? I am sure that many of you have seen those ads by now. There are a lot of unemployed people out there these days, and so I am sure that they are getting a lot of applications. Vice-President JD Vance says that as ICE hires more people, we will soon see members of ICE going “door-to-door”… “I think if we’re to see those deportation numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online working for ICE going from door-to-door making sure if you’re an illegal alien you’re going to have to get out of this country and if you want to comeback apply through the proper channels.”

The Trump administration seems to believe that they will be able to get the left to back down. But instead, the violence just continues to increase. In 2025, there was a 1,300% increase in assaults against ICE officers and a 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks against ICE officers…

"The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new statistics Thursday indicating a sharp increase in assaults, vehicular attacks, and death threats against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement officers over the past year. According to DHS, assaults against ICE officers rose more than 1,300 percent during the first year of the Trump administration. DHS reported 275 assaults between January 20 and December 31, 2025, compared to 19 assaults recorded during the same time period in 2024, which the department characterized as a 1,347 percent increase.

DHS also reported a significant rise in vehicular-related incidents involving ICE personnel. Between January 21, 2025, and January 7, 2026, ICE officers experienced 66 vehicular attacks, compared to two during the same time span the previous year, an increase DHS calculated as 3,200 percent. In addition, DHS said it has recorded an 8,000 percent increase in death threats directed at ICE law enforcement officers, though the department did not specify the underlying totals in the release."

It is going to get a lot worse. ICE is ramping up their “wartime recruitment” strategy so that they can conduct more operations in 2026, and the left hopes to mobilize millions of people to oppose them. An internal revolution is brewing. So many of the things that I have been warning my readers about for so many years are now happening right in front of our eyes. This is not going to end well. But most of you already knew that."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Russia All in to Confront the Worst-Case Scenario"

Scott Ritter, 1/10/26

"Russia All in to Confront the Worst-Case Scenario"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"When it Comes to Venezuelan Oil, Trump is Drilling a Dry Hole"

"When it Comes to Venezuelan Oil,

 Trump is Drilling a Dry Hole"

by Larry C. Johnson

"I was wrong. I believed that controlling Venezuelan oil was the primary objective behind Donald Trump’s decision to order the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. After reviewing the actual numbers it is clear that the belief that Venezuelan oil would provide a buffer if the Persian Gulf is closed as a consequence of an Israeli/US attack on Iran is sheer nonsense. My apologies for entertaining that hypothesis before looking at the actual numbers. The following graphic illustrates the reality:

If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz that would be devastating for the world oil market… 72% of OPEC members production comes from the Persian Gulf. Venezuela, who is an OPEC member, only produces 700,000 barrels of oil per day, which represents only 2% of OPEC’s total production per day.

Now let’s examine Trump’s nonsensical claim that the US, by seizing Venezuelan oil, will reap a bonanza and reduce the price of oil. In a Truth Social post (reported January 7, 2026), Trump announced: “Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America.” He added that the oil would be sold at market price, with proceeds controlled by him “to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” During a White House meeting with oil executives on January 9, 2026, Trump reiterated that the U.S. would “immediately begin refining and selling up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, which will continue indefinitely.” He described this as part of a broader plan where U.S. companies would invest at least $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, potentially boosting long-term production and lowering U.S. energy prices (e.g., aiming for $50 per barrel).

Here are the facts: At Venezuela’s current production rate of approximately 700,000 to 1 million barrels per day (bpd), delivering 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. would take 71.4 days if assuming all daily production were dedicated to this delivery.

Now let’s calculate the total production of barrels of oil per day by all of OPEC and non-OPEX countries during that same 71.4 days… the world would produce about 7.17 billion barrels of crude oil, of which Venezuela would contribute roughly 49.7 million barrels, or 0.693% of the global total. Talk about delusional! Does Trump and his advisers really believe that a country that produces a little more that one-half of one percent of global oil production is going to move the price? Ain’t going to happen.

What about Trump’s promise to invest $100 million to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Here’s an analysis of that scenario by the firm, Goehring and Rozencwajg: "When Hugo Chávez came to prominence in the early 2000s, Venezuela moved to nationalize its oil assets, prompting most Western producers to withdraw. The national oil company, PDVSA, then experienced a debilitating strike in 2002–2003, which sharply curtailed production. After the strike ended, output staged a temporary recovery, reaching approximately 3.3 million barrels per day by 2006. That year marked another turning point: contracts were rewritten or voided, capital spending collapsed, and skilled labor began to leave the country. By 2015, production had slipped to 2.8 million barrels per day, before entering a far steeper decline. According to the most recent IEA data, Venezuelan production now stands near 800,000 barrels per day - nearly an eighty percent drop from levels seen in 2000.

In light of recent events, many investors have begun to ask how quickly Venezuelan production might rebound once more. We regard this line of thinking as premature. Much of the infrastructure installed during the late 1990s and early 2000s has since been dismantled or stripped for scrap as the country descended into severe poverty. During the PDVSA strike two decades ago, the disruption was brief and occurred while the broader economic fabric remained somewhat intact. As a result, infrastructure survived largely untouched, allowing production to recover. Today’s circumstances bear little resemblance to that earlier episode.

Restarting Venezuelan heavy-oil production would require capital investment on an extraordinary scale. As one illustrative example, an older industry document indicates that supermajors spent approximately $23 billion in 2010 to bring 600,000 barrels per day of heavy-oil capacity online - roughly $40,000 per flowing barrel. More recent rules of thumb for Canadian heavy oil suggest figures closer to $100,000 per flowing barrel, implying that adding one million barrels per day could require on the order of $100 billion once the cost of an upgrader - an essential component of heavy-oil production - is included. For a guy who has built his reputation on being a shrewd businessman, Donald Trump is demonstrating he is ignorant when it comes to oil and the oil market."

- https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/

Here's a chat late last week with my friend, 

the Polish professor, Mike Krupa:

"Seizing the Orinoco"

"Seizing the Orinoco"

by Joel Bowman

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

~ Edward Norton Lorenz, 

an American meteorologist and mathematician (1917-2008)

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "If a US Delta Force operation flaps its wings in the Caribbean, does it set off a tornado in the Pacific? This time last Friday, a special envoy from China was en route to Venezuela, a strategic trading partner in their global Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI)… Meanwhile, oil tankers in Russia’s “shadow fleet” were crossing the Atlantic, preparing to dock in Venezuela’s offshore lightering points (or “informal” terminals)...

And Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro was considered, by “educated” people of the world – from the American elites to bobble heads in the legacy media to bloviating eurocrats over on the continent – to be an “illegitimate dictator” who was causing “the greatest humanitarian crisis ever in this hemisphere.”

Fast-forward a week. Flap… flap… flap…Today, the Chinese envoy is back home… at least one fleet of alleged “shadow tankers” (flying under Russian flags) has been impounded by the US Coast Guard (5,500 kilometers from the US coast, mind you…) and Maduro, whom President Biden once called “a dictator, plain and simple,” is the new cause du jour of the rent-a-crowd mobs in cities around the world.

Strange days, no? And certainly, there’s plenty of questions in the air regarding national sovereignty… empirical overreach… sand the limits of what Professor John Mearsheimer calls “offensive realism.” But today, just for a change, let us not become mired in heavy, sour sludge that so often characterizes normative discourse. “Wrong or right,” writes guest columnist MN Gordon in today’s Note, “What’s done is done. Once a cucumber has become a pickle it can never be a cucumber again. There’s no going back.”

What does all this portend for global oil prices… for the influence of the BRICS nations in general… and the balance of power between Washington, Beijing and Moscow, in particular? Without trying to derive ought from is, Gordon takes a sober look at the new geopolitical reality facing the world. Please read on for his insights, below.

Oh, and if you’d like to see more of his fine work, do be sure to check out Mr. Gordon’s Economic Prism website, right here. We have no financial arrangement with Gordon and do not benefit from featuring his writing... we simply enjoy what he has to say and hope you do, too."

"Seizing the Orinoco"

by MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

"Last weekend’s capture and extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was both fun and exciting. Disregarding national sovereignty and international law feels good when the outcome is favorable. Doing something reckless, like train surfing or drunk driving, and getting away with it teaches a dangerous lesson. Namely, that you’re invincible and can take things up another notch – or two. Does might make right? The time to answer this question has come and gone. Wrong or right. What’s done is done. Once a cucumber has become a pickle it can never be a cucumber again. There’s no going back.

Perhaps Maduro, a corrupt and illegitimate dictator with a long list of abuses, had it coming. Handcuffs appear fitting. Certainly, opinions abound. Ours is of little concern. What we’re interested in better understanding is, what’s the meaning of it all? The world appears to be significantly different than when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2026.

The headlines are moving fast. By physically removing a head of state and assuming control over the world’s largest oil reserves, the U.S. has put its force behind the recently published Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine – now called the Donroe Doctrine. Specifically, it has cut China off from its strategic oil investments in Venezuela.

Michael Burry, the eccentric contrarian who made a fortune shorting subprime mortgages in 2008-09, said on Monday that this is a “paradigm shift despite the market’s yawning.” To Burry’s point, on the surface, the market’s immediate reaction was quiet. Brent crude climbed less than 1 percent. And while stock futures opened higher on Monday, they didn’t exactly skyrocket. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t significant economic and geopolitical ramifications…

Breaking BRICS in the Hot Sun: Burry believes the “game just changed” for global energy and American consumers. If he’s right, this maneuver will rapidly diminish the influence of the BRICS nations while creating a captive energy supply for American industry. The taking of Maduro and the subsequent U.S. promise to “run” the country is a source of short-term uncertainty. But assuming it doesn’t turn into another military quagmire, this could have long-term advantages for the American economy.

For example, tapping into Venezuela’s massive reserves – the largest proven crude reserves in the world – could lead to a sustained drop in gas, diesel, and jet fuel prices. Cheap, plentiful energy is a critical input for a thriving economy. It’s what America needs to suspend its day of reckoning. As production and transport costs decline, lower fuel costs flow through the entire supply chain. For American consumers, this could be the ultimate answer to the inflation that has dogged the 2020s.

According to Bloomberg, Chevron has 11 ships scheduled to arrive in Venezuela this month. Chevron is the only Western oil company allowed to produce and export oil in Venezuela, operating under a license granted by the Treasury. The expectation is that it will increase production and delivery of crude to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast and East Coast.

This could also be a boon for the big oil service companies like Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes. These companies will likely be tasked with upgrading Venezuela’s crumbling pipelines and refineries and maximizing production. There’s also the question of how the U.S. takeover of Venezuelan oil assets impacts the global balance of power.

Doctrine of Disruption: If Washington succeeds in redirecting the world’s largest oil reserves to the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, then Beijing and Moscow are looking at a major readjustment. For years, China has used its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to extend influence into South America, lending over $60 billion to Maduro’s government. Those loans were collateralized by future oil output. That output is now controlled by the U.S.

From a practical standpoint, about 4 to 5 percent of China’s oil imports currently come from Venezuela. If the U.S. diverts that oil to its own ports, China loses a key source of low-cost oil supply. Moreover, this has a larger impact on China’s BRI throughout Latin-America. It demonstrates to other regional partners that Chinese financing can be severed overnight by a shift in U.S. policy.

In addition, Russia’s development rights to billions of barrels of Venezuelan oil via Roszarubezhneft, a Russian state-owned oil company, are now in legal limbo. So too, by taking control of Venezuelan crude, the U.S. minimizes the influence of Russian oil on the global market. As Venezuela’s output is restored and modernized by American contractors, Russia will lose the strategic leverage it has over energy markets.

If the U.S. successfully ramps Venezuelan production back to its peak of 3 million barrels per day, the resulting global oversupply will drive prices down. A drop in oil prices below $50 per barrel would be devastating for Moscow’s war-inflated finances. While there are reasons to be bullish on the economic upside for America, there’s also potential fallout. The U.S. captured a dictator. But it also took on a nation in collapse.

Seizing the Orinoco: Ask any poker player. A massive win at the table often comes with a ‘bad beat’ for someone else. In this case, the risks are as deep as the Orinoco Belt itself. While the prospect of several decades of $2.00 per gallon gas is tempting, the reality of running a nation in collapse is a potential nightmare.

What President Trump calls a liberation, leaders in Mexico City, Brasília, and Bogotá are calling aggression and recolonization. By invoking the Trump Corollary, the U.S. has effectively told every sovereign nation in the hemisphere that their borders only matter so long as they don’t interfere with America’s interests.

What sort of blowback could result? Could neighbors like Colombia or Brazil be compelled to pivot even harder toward the BRICS bloc for protection? Instead of isolating China, the U.S. might have just given every Latin American nation a reason to sign a mutual defense pact with Beijing.

Likewise, the influx of Venezuelan heavy crude is not without problems. Most U.S. refineries are optimized for light, sweet crude. To process the sludge coming out of Venezuela, massive, multi-billion-dollar upgrades will be needed to Gulf Coast facilities. Also, by centering the Venezuelan recovery entirely on oil, the U.S. risks creating a concentrated economy on a national scale. If oil prices stay low, Venezuela’s economy will continue in chaos, potentially leading to a permanent U.S. military presence just to keep the lights on.

In short, the Donroe Doctrine represents a high-stakes gamble, trading international law for energy dominance. Seizing Venezuela’s reserves could slow inflation and weaken adversaries like China and Russia. But it comes at the risk of regional blowback and costly military entanglements. In the end, long after Trump has taken his last breath, the United States may find that the true cost of seizing the Orinoco is a hemisphere permanently turned against it."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

Joel’s Note: "Where do we go from here, dear reader? Mr. Trump has undoubtedly unsettled the status quo antes with his latest daring maneuver, but will it redound to America’s benefit… or its peril? Will the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” usher in a new era of regional, western security… or push bullied LatAm countries further into the arms of unfriendly state actors? And what might be the blowback… economically, politically… even militarily? Have your say in the comments section, below…"

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

"Millions Are Giving Up on This Economy"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 1/9/26

"Millions Are Giving Up on This Economy"

"People are starting to give up on this economy, and that is leading them to give up on many other things in their life as well. Things that people used to enjoy or even important things like relationships are falling by the wayside as the poor economy is sucking the life out of many Americans."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert: The Final Moves Before the Big One"

Full screen recommended.

Prepper News, 1/9/26

"Alert: The Final Moves Before the Big One"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap 9-JAN"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/9/26

"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern:

 Weekly Wrap 9-JAN"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

Full screen recommended.

Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars and faint dust nebulae of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331. 

Click image for larger size.

A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141023.html

"Sometimes..."

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?'

Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'”
- Charles M. Schulz

"In This World..."

"In this world, the thing people fear the most, and what pains people the most - is giving more than they receive. God forbid I cut off more of my fingernail for you than you cut from your fingernail, for me! Heaven forbid I hold my breath in longer while thinking about you, than the amount of time your breath is held in for me! Not a second longer! It is a sad fact of human nature that there you stand as an Infinite Soul and yet your greatest fear is not receiving from another person in proportion to what you give. Your viewpoint is low, your vision is clouded. You have become, in your eyes, a funny little drawing on the paper pad of the universe. Indeed, this race is yet to evolve. And yet, I am surrounded by such fear, to such a great extent that I begin to fear the same!"

- C. JoyBell C.

Chet Raymo, “Time, Person, Year, Way...”

“Time, Person, Year, Way...”
by Chet Raymo

“According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the 25 most used nouns in the English language are: time, person, year, way, day, thing, man, world, life, hand, part, child, eye, woman, place, work, week, case, point, government, company, number, group, problem, fact.

All very prosaic. Very workaday. Time leads the way, with year, day and week bucking up the calendar. Hand takes precedence over eye. Man, child, woman in her place. Case in point: government and company. Problem precedes fact. Work is always with us, of course; play is not to be found. Nothing in the list that reflects science or technology or the lofty ruminations of academics. More surprising, nothing that reflects religion. When it comes right down to it, it's as the poet Rilke wrote in the Ninth Duino Elegy: "Perhaps we are here only to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate."

"Praise this world to the Angel," says Rilke. "Do not tell him the untellable...Show him some simple thing, refashioned by age after age, till it lives in our hands and eyes as a part of ourselves. Tell him things. He'll stand more astonished."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Big Orly’s Diary: Bulk-Lot Wisdom from Up the Holler"

"Big Orly’s Diary: 

Bulk-Lot Wisdom from Up the Holler"

by Fred Reed

"Saturday morning was sunny and bugs screaming and buzzing, at least in my part of West Virginia, and it was nice and cool. Bugs is pretty much like folk. The boy bugs holler or buzz or I don’t know what all so the girl bugs will love them and they can get laid, and then the boy bugs run off and leave the girl bugs with the eggs. You’d think the girl bugs would learn, but they never do. If you have a choice, it’s better to be a boy bug.

Anyways, I was planning to go see Uncle Hant that makes skull break moonshine back in the woods so he could tell me how to make a living. Hant knows everything. A few years back, he sent the Poverty Office in Wheeling a letter that said he was a one-legged Injun princess named Sighing Cloud with black lung, and they started sending him money in trucks. Then they wrote him a letter saying did he have any children he didn’t know who was the daddy to, so they could send him more money. He told them he had thirteen and he didn’t have no idea where they came from but they all had Down’s Syndrome, whatever that is, and now he’s the richest man in McDowell County. So don’t nobody who says gummint is a bad thing know what he’s talking about.

But Hant don’t get up too early in the morning, so first I went up the holler to see my old school teacher, Mr. Entropy McWilliams that’s got a internet television and lets me look at it sometimes. He was watching what he said was a Sympathy Orchestra and a noise was coming out of it like a blow-out plug on a high-pressure drill rig. It was real awful and I asked Mr. McWilliams what it was and he said somebody was blowing a hobo. I thought that was pretty ripe for a show anybody could watch, even little children, but it turned out it wasn’t so much a hobo as a oboe, which is like a three-foot duck call. I didn’t see much future in it. Neither would our McDowell County ducks, that don’t have much schooling. It might work with city ducks, though.

Anyway, he said it did sound kind of like a cat squalling because of Affirmative Action, which I didn’t know what was. He said it was a newfangled law in Washington, that’s the Yankee capital, that says if you want somebody to do a job, you have to hire someone that can’t do it. I said that made sense, about like taking poison. He said I thought that because I wasn’t in Washington and it was God’s own truth, and it was for Social Justice. The more you couldn’t do a job, the more you had to get it.

That was too many for me. I thought, what if I had cancer in the head and the brain doctor showed up with a claw hammer and a ice pick and didn’t know where to start, so they put a sign on my foot that said Open Other End or something. I’d shoot the sonofabitch before he got in striking distance. Maybe there’s such a thing as too much social justice. At least if it’s my head.

Mr. McWilliams said the Sympathy, that was in New York, used to hire music people by setting them down and listening to them play the fiddle or duck call or banjo and taking the best ones. But then women got into a uproar and started yowling that the Sympathy only got men. They said women could play fiddles and all just fine and it was affirmative action for men and they was madder than wet hornets. So the Congress made a law that the Sympathy had to string up a bed sheet and them as wanted the job had to play behind it and the judges didn’t know who they were and couldn’t let in their sisters and uncles. It made sense, but they did it anyway, and pretty soon the Sympathy was full of ladies blowing and honking and sawing away, and everybody was happy because they did it right.

Well, everybody except American Africans, that said none of them was in the Sympathy. They wanted Social Justice. Best I can tell, Social Justice means getting anything you want or you’ll scream and yell and bite and wet yourself like a two-year-old that needs a whupping and a new diaper. So now they’re going to choose by colors, like they was painting a ‘57 Chevy. I guess that’ll work.

Mr. McWilliams said I just didn’t understand Advanced Thought. Well, I didn’t. I guess it’s because I’m not real smart. I used to be, though. The first time I was in the fourth grade my teacher, it was Miss Purity Perkins, said I was real special and she hoped I’d go far, but I guess she would have settled for the next county over. I told Mr. McWilliams if Affirmative Action meant getting a job because you couldn’t do it, I wanted to be a Space Rocket Driver. At least if I could be one from Lou-Bob’s Billiards and Rib Pit. I was having a lot of fun with my girlfriend Jiffy Lube and I figured I couldn’t drive a Space Rocket at the Rib pit just as good as I couldn’t drive it from Australia or Wheeling or wherever they have Space Rockets.

I said so much Social Justice was giving me a motingator headache and I wanted to go off to Lou-Bob’s that serves bust-head shine under the table if you don’t look like a damn Revenoor.

Then the television started talking about Reparations for Slavery, that I thought they got rid of after World War Two. He said it didn’t matter and it was to pay you for bad stuff that never happened to you, just like Affirmative Action was to give you jobs you couldn’t do, but that was a whole nutheer bucket of crawdads and we could talk about it later. I don’t know. It all sounded like a crooked poker game to let grifters and frauds get paid without going into the mines and getting killed like Christians.

It was still early so I went off to tell Hant about Affirmative Action. He was at his still. Like I said, he makes panther sweat that takes the enamel off your teeth to sell to yuppies from Washington that want a Cultural Experience. He puts it in genuine authentic mountain stone jars he gets from Taiwan. Some folks say he gets a cut from liver doctors in Bluefield, but I don’t know.

Hant’s a tall skinny rascal with arthritis so when he bends over it looks like folding a Buck knife and he’s got a jaw like a front-end loader. Later he said he told the Poverty Office he wanted to be a Orthostatic Ontological Proctologist. I asked him what that was. He said he wasn’t sure but he sure as hell didn’t know how to be one so they had to pay him for it. He said they would never dare say no to a one-legged Injun princess with black lung.

After, I went down the hill to look for Jiffy Lube that I hadn’t seen for weeks. What happened was, Jif is real pretty, and she was in Lou Bob’s, and Lester ‘Callister got smart with her like he didn’t know what parts of her was handles and what parts wasn’t. She laid him out cold with a pool stick and went to hide in the mountains. But after a while the sheriff said he figured the Statue of Limitations was about a month for smacking Lester, and anyway the doctor said he probably be out of a coma in a week, so weren’t no harm done but his teeth might be all cattywumpus. Jif was smiling all happy like. That’s a good sign if you know Jif, and I felt like a man with five aces and a date with somebody else’s wife, so we went off to my doublewide. I figure there’s nothing better on a mountain night than a good girlfriend, a six-pack, and a Bug Zapper."

- https://www.unz.com/freed/

"How To Recover When The World Breaks You"

"How To Recover When The World Breaks You"

by Ryan Holiday

"There is a line attributed to Ernest Hemingway - that the first draft of everything is sh*t - which, of all the beautiful things Hemingway has written, applies most powerfully to the ending of "A Farewell to Arms." There are no fewer than 47 alternate endings to the book. Each one is a window into how much he struggled to get it right. The pages, which now sit in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, show Hemingway writing the same passages over and over. Sometimes the wording was nearly identical, sometimes whole sections were cut out. He would, at one moment of desperation, even send pages to his rival, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for notes.

One passage clearly challenged Hemingway more than the others. It comes at the end of the book when Catherine has died after delivering their stillborn son and Frederic is struggling to make sense of the tragedy that has just befallen him. “The world breaks everyone,” he wrote, “and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

In different drafts, he would experiment with shorter and longer versions. In the handwritten draft he worked on with F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance, Hemingway begins instead with “You learn a few things as you go along…” before beginning with his observation about how the world breaks us. In two typed manuscript pages, Hemingway moved the part about what you learn elsewhere and instead added something that would make the final book - “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them.”

My point in showing this part of Hemingway’s process isn’t just to definitively disprove the myth - partly of Hemingway’s own making - that great writing is something that flows intuitively from the brain of a genius (no, great writing is a slow, painstaking process, even for geniuses). My point is to give some perspective on one of Hemingway’s most profound insights, one that he, considering his tragic suicide some 32 years later, struggled to fully integrate into his life.

The world is a cruel and harsh place. One that, for at least 4.5 billion years, is undefeated. From entire species of apex predators to Hercules to Hemingway himself, it has been home to incredibly strong and powerful creatures. And where are they now? Gone. Dust. As the Bible verse, which Hemingway opens another one of his books with (and which inspired its title) goes: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever…The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…”

The world is undefeated. So really then, for all of us, life is not a matter of “winning” but of surviving as best we can - of breaking and enduring rather than bending the world to our will the way we sometimes suspect we can when we are young and arrogant.

I write about Stoicism, a philosophy of self-discipline and strength. Stoicism promises to help you build an “inner citadel,” a fortress of power and resilience that prepares you for the difficulties of the world. But many people misread this, and assume that Stoicism is a philosophy designed to make you superhuman - to help you eliminate pesky emotions and attachments, and become invincible.

This is wrong. Yes, Stoicism is partly about making it so you don’t break as easily - so you are not so fragile that the slightest change in fortune wrecks you. At the same time, it’s not about filling you with so much courage and hubris that you think you are unbreakable. Only the proud and the stupid think that is even possible. Instead, the Stoic seeks to develop the skills - the true strength - required to deal with a cruel world.

So much of what happens is out of our control: We lose people we love. We are financially ruined by someone we trusted. We put ourselves out there, put every bit of our effort into something, and are crushed when it fails. We are drafted to fight in wars, to bear huge taxes or familial burdens. We are passed over for the thing we wanted so badly. This can knock us down and hurt us. Yes.

Stoicism is there to help you recover when the world breaks you and, in the recovering, to make you stronger at a much, much deeper level. The Stoic heals themselves by focusing on what they can control: Their response. The repairing. The learning of the lessons. Preparing for the future.

This is not an idea exclusive to the West. There is a form of Japanese art called Kintsugi, which dates back to the 15th century. In it, masters repair broken plates and cups and bowls, but instead of simply fixing them back to their original state, they make them better. The broken pieces are not glued together, but instead fused with a special lacquer mixed with gold or silver. The legend is that the art form was created after a broken tea bowl was sent to China for repairs. But the returned bowl was ugly - the same bowl as before, but cracked. Kintsugi was invented as a way to turn the scars of a break into something beautiful.

You can see in this tea bowl, which dates to the Edo period and is now in the Freer Gallery, how the gold seams take an ordinary bowl and add to it what look like roots, or even blood vessels. This plate, also from the Edo period, was clearly a work of art in its original form. Now it has subtle gold filling on the edges where it was clearly chipped and broken by use. This dark tea bowl, now in the Smithsonian, is accented with what look like intensely real lightning bolts of gold. The bowl below it shows that more than just precious metals can improve a broken dish, as the artist clearly inserted shards of an entirely different bowl to replace the original’s missing pieces.

In Zen culture, impermanence is a constant theme. They would have agreed with Hemingway that the world tries to break the rigid and the strong. We are like cups - the second we are made we are simply waiting to be shattered - by accident, by malice, by stupidity or bad luck. The Zen solution to this perilous situation is to embrace it, to be okay with the shattering, perhaps even to seek it out. The idea of wabi-sabi is precisely that. Coming to terms with our imperfections and weaknesses and finding beauty in that.

So both East and West - Stoicism and Buddhism - arrive at similar insights. We’re fragile, they both realize. But out of this fragility, one of the philosophies realizes there is the opportunity for beauty. Hemingway’s prose rediscovers these insights and fuses them into something both tragic and breathtaking, empowering and humbling. The world will break us. It breaks everyone. It always has and always will.

Yet…The author will struggle with the ending of their book and want to quit. The recognition we sought will not come. The insurance settlement we so desperately needed will be rejected. The presentation we practiced for will begin poorly and be beset by technical difficulties. The friend we cherished will betray us. The haunting scene in "A Farewell to Arms" can happen, a child stillborn and a wife lost in labor - and still tragically happens far too often, even in the developed world.

The question is, as always, what will we do with this? How will we respond? Because that’s all there is. The response. his is not to dismiss the immense difficulty of any of these ordeals. It is rather, to first, be prepared for them - humble and aware that they can happen. Next, it is the question: Will we resist breaking? Or will we accept the will of the universe and seek instead to become stronger where we were broken?

Death or Kintsugi? Fragile or, to use that wonderful phrase from Nassim Taleb, 'Antifragile?' Not unbreakable. Not resistant. Because those that cannot break, cannot learn, and cannot be made stronger for what happened. Those that will not break are the ones who the world kills. Not unbreakable. Instead, unruinable."

- https://ryanholiday.net/when-the-world-breaks-you/

○

Freely download "A Farewell To Arms", by Ernest Hemingway, here:

- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.209262

The Daily "Near You?"

Valley Center, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Jung’s Warning: Why We Know What We Should Do But Still Don’t Do It"

Full screen recommended.

The Psyche,

"Jung’s Warning: Why We Know 

What We Should Do But Still Don’t Do It"

"We all know what we should do - eat better, work harder, meditate, change, evolve. And yet… we don’t. Why? In this video, we dive deep into one of Carl Jung’s most profound psychological warnings: the battle between the conscious and the unconscious mind. You’ll discover why knowledge alone doesn’t transform us, why we self-sabotage even when we want to grow, and how the hidden parts of our psyche quietly shape our destiny. This isn’t just psychology - it’s a spiritual mirror that reveals the truth about human resistance, shadow work, and inner transformation. By the end, you’ll understand why your greatest struggle isn’t with the world outside you - but with the unseen world within you. This is not a motivational talk - it’s an awakening. Because once you understand what truly stops you from acting, you’ll never see your own mind the same way again."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "Darkness Falls"

"Darkness Falls"

"Darkness falls upon Humanity

and faces become terrible things

that wanted more than there was.

All our days are marked with

unexpected affronts - 

some disastrous, others less so,

but the process is

wearing and continuous.

Attrition rules.

Most give way,

leaving empty spaces

where people should be.

And now,

as we ready to self-destruct,

there is very little left to kill,

which makes the tragedy

less and more,

much, much more."

- Charles Bukowski

"100 Year Record Snow Cyclone Hits Moscow Overnight!"

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Full screen recommended.

Englishman In Moscow, 1/9/26 

"100 Year Record Snow Cyclone Hits Moscow Overnight!"

 "Historic snowfall in Russia, let's walk through 

Moscow and Red Square together and check it out!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/w

"How It Really Is"

 

Yeah...

"California Governor in Panic as Walmart Shuts Down Hundreds of Stores"

Full screen recommended.

Elizabeth Davis, 1/9/26

"California Governor in Panic

 as Walmart Shuts Down Hundreds of Stores"

"Governor Newsom is panicking as hundreds of Walmart stores across California face potential closure - and the regulatory environment forcing them out reveals exactly why businesses are fleeing the state. This video exposes how California's labor costs, environmental regulations, and complex permitting processes have made it too expensive for the world's largest retailer to operate profitably.

Discover how Walmart's potential exit threatens tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in local tax revenue, why rural communities and low-income neighborhoods will be hit hardest by losing their only source of affordable goods, and how this follows a devastating pattern of major companies relocating to Texas, refineries closing, and truckers being forced out. We'll explore the impossible political standoff between progressive policies and economic reality, the communities that will be left stranded without access to groceries and household essentials, and why California's aggressive regulatory framework is creating a business exodus that experts warn could accelerate dramatically."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Roof Report, 1/9/26

"Denny's CEO Reveals The Real Reason 

It's Closing California Restaurants!"

"Denny's CEO is finally speaking out about the real reasons behind the closure of multiple California restaurants, and the truth is more alarming than you think. In this video, we break down the CEO's shocking revelations about operating costs, labor expenses, regulatory burdens, and the business challenges that are making California unsustainable for restaurant chains. From minimum wage increases and rising rents to declining customer traffic and profitability issues, Denny's closures are a warning sign for California's entire restaurant industry. If you're a California resident, business owner, or concerned about the state's economy, this insider perspective reveals why more closures could be coming."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Hidden Menu, 1/9/26

"6 Fast Food Chains That Lost Millions of Americans"

"Once dominant fast food chains are watching millions of Americans walk away and it’s not just about higher prices. Shrinking portions, declining food quality, and nonstop corporate cost-cutting have shattered trust with longtime customers. In this video, we break down 6 fast food chains that lost millions of Americans and why the damage may be permanent."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/