"The World According to Gaza"

"The World According to Gaza"

by Chris Hedges

"The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.

Hospitals, elementary schools, universities and apartment complexes are reduced to rubble. Doctors, students, journalists, poets, writers, scientists, artists and political leaders - including the heads of negotiating teams - are murdered in the tens of thousands by missiles and killer drones. Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized. Let them eat dirt.

International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished. The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.

They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence. Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.

“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.” “The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”

The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.

They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston -  always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges - who will soon be purged - is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.

Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between. These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement. It won’t be long.

The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions. The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”

Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad. If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state. Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.

True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.

The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths - superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”

We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media. The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.

We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender. Those are the only choices left."

- https://chrishedges.substack.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Deep Blue Sea"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Deep Blue Sea"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Planetary nebula Abell 78 stands out in this colorful telescopic skyscape. In fact the colors of the spiky Milky Way stars depend on their surface temperatures, both cooler (yellowish) and hotter (bluish) than the Sun. But Abell 78 shines by the characteristic emission of ionized atoms in the tenuous shroud of material shrugged off from an intensely hot central star. The atoms are ionized, their electrons stripped away, by the central star's energetic but otherwise invisible ultraviolet light. 

The visible blue-green glow of loops and filaments in the nebula's central region corresponds to emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms, surrounded by strong red emission from electrons recombining with hydrogen atoms. Some 5,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Cygnus, Abell 78 is about three light-years across. A planetary nebula like Abell 78 represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience... in about 5 billion years.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"Good Advice These Days"

 

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything"

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s 

Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and 

Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning"

by Maria Popova

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” Sometimes, life asks this question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living.

That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by reading. Some through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character.

A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing "Man’s Search for Meaning."

As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure - especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame - these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered - as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past - they are now published in English for the first time as "Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything" (public library).

Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit, Frankl writes: "We cannot move toward any spiritual reconstruction with a sense of fatalism such as this."

Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision: "Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age."

Insisting that it takes a measure of moral strength not to succumb to nihilism, be it that of the pessimist or of the optimist, he exclaims: "Give me a sober activism anytime, rather than that rose-tinted fatalism! How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism?

[…]

Through this nihilism, through the pessimism and skepticism, through the soberness of a “new objectivity” that is no longer that “new” but has grown old, we must strive toward a new humanity."

Sophie Scholl, upon whom chance did not smile as favorably as it did upon Frankl, affirmed this notion with her insistence that living with integrity and belief in human goodness is the wellspring of courage as she courageously faced her own untimely death in the hands of the Nazis. But while the Holocaust indisputably disenchanted humanity, Frankl argues, it also indisputably demonstrated “that what is human is still valid… that it is all a question of the individual human being.” Looking back on the brutality of the camps, he reflects:

"What remained was the individual person, the human being - and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down - the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one - the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self."

In a sentiment that bellows from the hallways of history into the great vaulted temple of timeless truth, he adds: "Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being."

Frankl then turns to the question of finding a sense of meaning when the world gives us ample reasons to view life as meaningless - the question of “continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness.” Writing in the post-war pre-dawn of the golden age of consumerism, which has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product, Frankl first dismantles the notion that meaning is to be found in the pursuit and acquisition of various pleasures:

"Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else — preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us."

He quotes a short verse by the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore - the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize, Einstein’s onetime conversation partner in contemplating science and spirituality, and a man who thought deeply about human nature:

"I slept and dreamt

that life was joy.

I awoke and saw

that life was duty.

I worked - and behold,

duty was joy."

In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation - an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity - Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point: "So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down."

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe, Frankl turns the question unto itself: "At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?"

Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life - it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to - of being responsible toward - life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.

Frankl adds a caveat of tremendous importance - triply so in our present culture of self-appointed gurus, self-help demagogues, and endless podcast feeds of interviews with accomplished individuals attempting to distill a universal recipe for self-actualization: "The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.

We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?"

What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms, learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms - terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment:

"One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a meaning. One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions."

With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death - a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe. Frankl writes:

"The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.

[…]

Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or leave unfulfilled - that gives our existence significance. But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole that gives it importance, it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment that represents something that loads our existence with the weight of a terrible and yet so beautiful responsibility! Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness."

In the remainder of the slender and splendid "Yes to Life", Frankl goes on to explore how the imperfections of human nature add to, rather than subtract from, the meaningfulness of our lives and what it means for us to be responsible for our own existence. Complement it with Mary Shelley, writing two centuries ago about a pandemic-savaged world, on what makes life worth living, Walt Whitman contemplating this question after surviving a paralytic stroke, and a vitalizing cosmic antidote to the fear of death from astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson, then revisit Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"A Real Church Sign"

 

"The Minds Of Men..."

"The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished. The name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste. This diminutive stature of mankind was daily sinking below the old standard." 

- Edward Gibbon, 

"The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire"

o

"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...

Chet Raymo, “Trying To Be Good”

“Trying To Be Good”

by Chet Raymo

“A few lines from Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese":

    "You do not have to be good.
    You do not have to walk on your knees
    for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
    You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves."

"I've quoted these lines before, if not here, then elsewhere. When I first read them back in the late 80s, they resonated with what I felt at the time. I had spent part of my earliest adulthood walking on my knees, both literally and metaphorically, seeking to tame what I took to be the animal within. Saint Augustine was whispering in my ear, and Bernanos' gloomy country priest walked at my side. I was ready to follow Thomas Merton into the desert; indeed, I once took myself briefly to the monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky, where Merton was in residence. That was a journey of more than a hundred miles, and I was busy repenting, although of what I don't know.

As I read those lines from Mary Oliver in old age, I had long been cultivating the "soft animal" within, immersing myself in the is-ness of things, the flesh and blood, the gorgeously sensual. No more walking on my knees, repenting. I walked proudly upright, with my sketchbook and my watercolors, my binoculars and my magnifier, sniffing the world like an animal on the prowl. I was letting my body learn to "love what it loves." Those were the years I wrote "The Soul of the Night" and "Honey From Stone" - the most intensely creative years of my life. The world offered itself to my imagination, if I may borrow another line from "Wild Geese."

And now, another half-lifetime has passed. The soft animal dozes, the body seeks repose. And I think of the first line quoted above: "You do not have to be good." What could the poet have possibly meant by that? Of course one has to be good. In a cell at Gethsemane or on the bridge over Queset Brook, one has to be good. And so one tries, one tries. The soft animal of the body that nature has contrived for us is not fine-tuned for goodness.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

The Daily "Near You?"

Ardmore, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"You Can Never Tell..."

"You can never tell what people have inside them

until you start taking it away, one hope at a time."

- Gregory David Roberts

"One Could Make People Believe..."

“One could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

"Wars Are Never About What We're Told They're About, And This One Is No Different"

"Wars Are Never About What We're Told They're About, 

And This One Is No Different"

by Leo Hohmann

"Well, the moment is finally upon us. It’s been obvious to the tuned-in, fully awake folks for at least three years now that the world was being conditioned, indoctrinated and ultimately driven into World War III.

Most people didn’t want to go there. They said we were crazy for even talking or writing about it. As a result, most of America has grown numb to both the Ukraine war and the never-ending Middle East wars. They checked out long ago. The saying “ignorance is bliss,” may be a cliché, but it’s probably the truest of all clichés….until it runs its course and whatever you chose to be ignorant of comes knocking on your door, ready to slap you in the face, refusing to be ignored any longer. And that’s where we are now, my fellow Americans.

President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “Peace President,”authorized the US to join Israel in its war with Iran. We heard all the reports in the media that, as CNN says, “Trump is leaning towards using U.S. military force to strike Iranian nuclear sites.”

The truth is, this decision was made months or even years ago by the real decision-makers, who are not presidents. They are bankers, intelligence operatives, weapons manufacturers, tech oligarchs. They never wanted a diplomatic solution. And the goal was never just to destroy Iran’s nuclear operations. The goal was always regime change. Just ask retired General Wesley Clark about that. He warned us 18 years ago that Iran was on a list of seven countries in the Middle East that Washington had targeted for regime change. It’s taken longer than they thought, but they haven’t given up. They’re still working on that list of seven countries.

So wars are never about what they tell us they’re about. And this war is no different. It’s not about Iran’s nuclear program. Does anyone still think the Iraq war was about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction? Was Afghanistan about wiping out the al-Qaida terrorists? Washington was built for war. And Americans are conditioned to support it. We are taught that supporting war is part of supporting what it means to be American and patriotic. That’s what Washington does best is launch wars. They aren’t very good at winning them. But by golly they are good at launching them.

Trump has called on Iran to “unconditionally surrender.” He’s admitted he was aware of Israel’s war plans all along and supported them. He just needed to make it look like he was trying for peace, even though he broke every rule of diplomacy. He aired his frustrations with the Islamic Republic of Iran in public and he told the whole world the terms of his “deal,” that Iran was given one choice: Take the deal or be bombed. That’s not how diplomacy works and any reasonable person would know better than to use use such a ploy, let alone advertise it, and expect the opposing party to accept it.

Trump sent fleets of U.S. military assets to the Middle East and British PM Kier Starmer. This is Iraq and Afghanistan all over again, or is it? I could be wrong. It could be just another Middle East adventure that makes the neocons a lot of money. But something feels different this time. Like we are heading into uncharted waters, not just another futile and useless war that wastes the lives of American servicemen like in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, etc. It has all the makings of a much bigger event.

For one thing, it comes on the heels of the deceptive war games being played in Ukraine, where the US and NATO have used Ukraine as a proxy against Russia, pissing off Vladimir Putin and backing him into a corner, a corner where no nuclear-armed dictator ought to be pushed.

Secondly, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, this war involves the lightning-rod nation of Israel and many Americans see it as “Israel’s war.” They may not mind us helping supply Israel with Patriot missiles and other defensive-oriented munitions, but they are not willing to risk a scenario where their sons or daughters get sent to die for what is seen as Israel’s national interest.

As Christians, we could argue for days over what the Bible means when it instructs us to “bless Israel,” but I question whether it includes being willing to die or send your children to die in whatever war Benjamin Netanyahu says is vital for his country’s national security.

This sense of Israel dragging the US into another endless Middle East war describes the feelings of roughly half of Trump’s base, known as the MAGA movement. Many loved Trump and voted three times for him exactly because they thought he was the one guy who would put an end to our country being dragged into another foreign war with nebulous connections to our national security. You could argue that some of these wars, the current one included, actually place our national security in jeopardy, creating more terrorist backlash to come our way.

So MAGA is done as a political movement if Trump gets us directly involved in the Iran-Israel war, especially if he ends up putting boots on the ground or we get hit by another wave of Islamic terrorism. Many will say “I’m done” with Trump who lied about being the Peace President when, in fact, his foreign policy is indistinguishable from that of George W. Bush or Joe Biden. He is continuing to fund Biden’s war in Ukraine and he is continuing to fight Bush-like wars in the Middle East.

MAGA cannot survive a major fracture because it already only accounted for roughly half the nation’s voting public. Trump’s party, the Republicans, will lose the mid-terms in grand fashion, and the cycle will repeat itself with a Democrat president promising to get us out of the Iranian quagmire in 2028, only to get us involved in more wars after that, if we still exist as a nation and haven’t been nuked by Russia.

That brings me to my final point of how this war feels different. We now have the real risk of Russia, China and North Korea getting involved directly in a war with America, likely on more than one or two fronts if China were to seize the opportunity to make a move on Taiwan. It was very clever how they drew Trump into their plan. They knew Israel didn’t have the type of ultra-heavy bombs to finish the job that it started and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, which is located more than half a mile underground. The plan all along was to have Israel start it, and the U.S. finish it. Now, who is “they?”

This entire war, along with the one in Ukraine, has been orchestrated from the start by the US, British and Israeli intelligence agencies. Trump, Netanyahu, Keir Starmer, and Vlad Zelensky are just along for the ride. They are globalist puppets.

Trump’s ego and unmatched bravado made him easy to manipulate. That’s why the deep state was not at all disappointed when he won the presidency for a second time, and one could even make the case that he was their preferred choice all along. Yes, even the lawfare, the incessant liberal-media attacks and possibly even the failed assassinations, were all carefully designed to make him more popular in the eyes of voters. Americans love an underdog.

But what if that underdog was working for the globalists all along? Knowingly or unknowingly, I believe he serves their purpose for this time. And what is their overarching purpose? To trigger the final takedown of an already vulnerable America, which is strapped with extreme debt and has an overstretched military force, already teetering on economic collapse. Get us in the final war with multiple foreign powers and watch the ship go down, showing the world that America was a paper tiger all along, built on a perception of strength that was always exaggerated, and finally became untenable.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I hope I am. Maybe Trump really is the master of 3D Chess. Maybe Russia and China will continue to sit back and lick their wounds. The three countries have military cooperation agreements and economic ties. China gets a large chunk of its oil from Iran. But maybe Washington’s plan to destroy Russia and isolate China will work to perfection and secure the world for 100 years of peace. I pray I am wrong and the optimists who tell us to “trust the plan” are right."

- https://leohohmann.substack.com/

"Iran’s Cluster Bombs Rain Freely On Tel Aviv After Iron Dome Got Depleted"

Full screen recommended.

OPTM, 3/15/26

"Iran’s Cluster Bombs Rain Freely On 

Tel Aviv After Iron Dome Got Depleted"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Trump 'Not Ready' For Iran Deal; US Urges Citizens To

 Flee Iraq, Israel Reportedly 'Critically Low' On Interceptors"

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "They Have No Cash!"; "No Soup For You! Businesses Are Collapsing!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 3/15/26

"They Have No Cash!"

This is getting worse and worse for the real estate industry. There are mortgage lenders that are canceling loan applications because they do not have money to lend out. They are out of cash. What does the world look like when they are canceling loans like this?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 3/15/26

"No Soup For You! Businesses Are Collapsing!"

"Major companies are making drastic changes as the economic slowdown begins to impact businesses across the country. In this video, Dan from I Allegedly breaks down the latest business closures, layoffs, and financial red flags that signal consumers are cutting spending. From Campbell Soup shutting down production lines to major sporting goods distributors filing bankruptcy, the retail and logistics industries are showing clear signs that demand is slowing and companies are scrambling to adapt.

Dan also covers shocking stories of corporate fraud, dealerships accused of financial schemes, and even a troubling case where AI facial recognition led to an innocent woman being jailed for months. As spending habits change and businesses struggle to survive, these stories reveal a deeper shift happening across the economy. Stay informed on the latest business news, economic trends, layoffs, bankruptcies, and consumer spending changes that are shaping the financial landscape right now."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"US-Israel-Iran War, 3/15/26""

Full screen recommended.

Dialogue Works, 3/15/26

"Larry Johnson & Col. Wilkerson:

 U.S. Bases Under Siege By Iran"

"This interview argues that official claims of control in the Middle East conflict are mostly propaganda masking a worsening reality. The speakers say U.S. bases and air defenses in the Gulf are under heavy pressure, Iran has gained leverage through the Strait of Hormuz, and rising oil, gas, fertilizer, and food costs could trigger a global economic shock. They also warn that morale inside the military is weakening, leadership is losing credibility, and any move toward ground war would be logistically disastrous and politically explosive."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 3/15/26

"Netanyahu Killed? Israeli PM Misses Security Meet,

 ‘6-Finger Lookalike’ Speech Sparks Frenzy"

"Rumors about the fate of Benjamin Netanyahu have exploded online after the Israeli Prime Minister was absent from a key military council meeting in Tel Aviv on March 14. The high-level meeting was attended by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Eyal Zamir, but Netanyahu’s absence triggered speculation across social media. Some users even pointed to a previous video appearance claiming anomalies in the footage, fueling conspiracy theories about AI-generated clips. US commentator Candace Owens also questioned Netanyahu’s whereabouts online, further amplifying the rumours. However, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office dismissed the claims as “fake news,” insisting Netanyahu is safe. The speculation comes amid a rapidly escalating war in the Middle East following Israeli and US strikes on Iran that killed former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, triggering retaliatory missile and drone attacks across the region."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Daniel Davis/Deep Dive, 3/15/26

"Col. Doug Macgregor: 

Iran War Not Ending Anytime Soon"

"Killing top Iranian leaders (including the Supreme Leader) did not cause the expected collapse of Iran’s government. New leaders quickly replaced them, and the state continued functioning. Iran is still launching ballistic missiles and striking targets in Israel and around the Gulf, showing its military capability remains intact. Important Iranian missile facilities, especially underground “missile cities” in eastern Iran, have not been destroyed because many are out of range of U.S. weapons.

The conflict has severely disrupted the global energy system: About 25% of the world’s oil supply is currently offline. Gulf countries have cut 6.7 million barrels per day (about 33% of regional production) because oil cannot be exported if shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is blocked. Storage tanks filled up, forcing producers to shut down oil extraction. 35% of global fertilizer shipments are also halted, which could increase food prices worldwide.

Higher energy costs will likely lead to: Rising electricity prices. More expensive industrial goods. Higher food and consumer prices. Pressure on central banks like the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high instead of cutting them.

Europe and Asia are especially vulnerable due to low natural gas inventories and heavy reliance on Gulf energy. Even though the U.S. produces large amounts of oil and gas, global oil prices affect the U.S. economy, so inflation and higher costs will eventually impact Americans. The speaker argues the economic effects may start being felt in the U.S. by late spring or summer. International pressure to end the conflict could grow, and countries like China and Russia might support Iran if the economic disruption continues. Attempts by Donald Trump to reassure markets may calm the public temporarily, but analysts believe the energy and economic impacts will eventually become unavoidable.

Iran is unlikely to reopen the Strait because the demands being made (no uranium enrichment, dismantling missiles, and abandoning allies) are seen as equivalent to surrender, which Iran will not accept.

Bottom line: The conflict is not ending soon, Iran’s military capabilities remain active, and the biggest impact may be a global economic shock driven by disrupted oil, gas, and fertilizer supplies."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alea Iacta Est"

"Alea Iacta Est"

by Alexander Macris

"In the closing days of 50 BC, the Roman Senate declared that Julius Caesar’s term as a provincial governor was finished. Roman law afforded its magistrates immunity to prosecution, but this immunity would end with Caesar’s term. As the leader of the populares faction, Caesar had many enemies among the elite optimates, and as soon as he left office, these enemies planned to bury him in litigation. Caesar knew he would lose everything: property, liberty, even his life. Caesar decided it was better to fight for victory than accept certain defeat. In January 49 BC, he crossed the Rubicon River with his army, in violation of sacred Roman law, and began a civil war. “Alea iacta est,” said Caesar: The die is cast."

- https://macris.substack.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Charles Bukowoski, "Roll the Dice"

Read by Tom O'Bedlam

"44 B.C.,The Ides of March"

"44 B.C.,The Ides of March"

by History.com

"Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is stabbed to death in the Roman Senate house by 60 conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus on March 15. The day later became infamous as the Ides of March.

Caesar, born into the Julii, an ancient but not particularly distinguished Roman aristocratic family, began his political career in 78 B.C. as a prosecutor for the anti-patrician Popular Party. He won influence in the party for his reformist ideas and oratorical skills, and aided Roman imperial efforts by raising a private army to combat the king of Pontus in 74 B.C. He was an ally of Pompey, the recognized head of the Popular Party, and essentially took over this position after Pompey left Rome in 67 B.C. to become commander of Roman forces in the east.

In 63 B.C., Caesar was elected pontifex maximus, or “high priest,” allegedly by heavy bribes. Two years later, he was made governor of Farther Spain and in 60 B.C. returned to Rome, ambitious for the office of consul. The consulship, essentially the highest office in the Roman Republic, was shared by two politicians on an annual basis. Consuls commanded the army, presided over the Senate and executed its decrees, and represented the state in foreign affairs. Caesar formed a political alliance - the so-called First Triumvirate - with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome, and in 59 B.C. was elected consul. Although generally opposed by the majority of the Roman Senate, Caesar’s land reforms won him popularity with many Romans.

In 58 B.C., Caesar was given four Roman legions in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, and during the next decade demonstrated brilliant military talents as he expanded the Roman Empire and his reputation. Among other achievements, Caesar conquered all of Gaul, made the first Roman inroads into Britain, and won devoted supporters in his legions. However, his successes also aroused Pompey’s jealousy, leading to the collapse of their political alliance in 53 B.C.

The Roman Senate supported Pompey and asked Caesar to give up his army, which he refused to do. In January 49 B.C., Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy, thus declaring war against Pompey and his forces. Caesar made early gains in the subsequent civil war, defeating Pompey’s army in Italy and Spain, but was later forced into retreat in Greece. In August 48 B.C., with Pompey in pursuit, Caesar paused near Pharsalus, setting up camp at a strategic location. When Pompey’s senatorial forces fell upon Caesar’s smaller army, they were entirely routed, and Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated by an officer of the Egyptian king.

Caesar was subsequently appointed Roman consul and dictator, but before settling in Rome he traveled around the empire for several years and consolidated his rule. In 45 B.C., he returned to Rome and was made dictator for life. As sole Roman ruler, Caesar launched ambitious programs of reform within the empire. The most lasting of these was his establishment of the Julian calendar, which, with the exception of a slight modification and adjustment in the 16th century, remains in use today. He also planned new imperial expansions in central Europe and to the east. In the midst of these vast designs, he was assassinated on March 15, 44 B.C., by a group of conspirators who believed that his death would lead to the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of the “Ides of March” was to plunge Rome into a fresh round of civil wars, out of which Octavian, Caesar’s grand-nephew, would emerge as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, destroying the republic forever."

- https://www.history.com/

"Trump is Trapped, But Doesn’t Know It"

"Trump is Trapped, But Doesn’t Know It"

by Larry Johnson

"The image above reminds us that we are in Deja Vu land with respect to the current war with Iran. Despite Trump’s campaign promise to not start a new war in the Middle East he has done exactly that. Only one little problem… He can’t win it and, even if he declares victory and tries to bring the air force squadrons and carrier strike groups back home, Iran is not going to cooperate.

I was interviewed late Friday night by a 40 year old man who lives in Iran. He was born during the Iraq/Iran war in the 1980s and has no real memory of how that event resonated among the adults at the time. However, the US and Israeli attacks of June 2025 and February 2026 have ignited a spirit of patriotism and nationalism among the generation born between 1980 and 2010. Western hopes that the people of Iran would demand the end of the Islamic Republic have been dashed. Iran is more united now than at anytime since the revolution of 1979.

A story has emerged that explains why Israel and the United States were so confident that the attack on 28 February would produce a regime change and the fall of the Islamic Republic… Israel’s Mossad had recruited General Esmail Qaani. General Esmail Qaani (often spelled Qaani or Qaani) was an Iranian brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who served as the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, the unit in charge of Iran’s overseas and covert operations, until January 2020, when he was appointed to replace Qassem Soleimani after Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad on January 3, 2020. General Qaani reportedly had promised to deliver Iran to the West, but his role in facilitating the murder of the Ayatollah Ali Khameni was exposed and he has been eliminated. Watch this video to understand the extent of his treachery.

During the week following the death of the Ayatollah Khameni and his top generals, Iran military operations and missile strikes were carried out in a decentralized fashion that gave each regional commander complete autonomy to select targets. It now appears that the command-and-control system of Iran’s military and security services has been restored and Iran is now carrying out a very precise, coordinated plan to force the US from the Persian Gulf and to destroy Israel’s ability to attack Iran.

Here’s the report from Iran of its activities on March 14: In the 52nd wave of Operation True Promise 4, under the code “O Zainab al-Kubra, peace be upon her,” IRGC forces carried out combined strikes on targets in the occupied territories and three US bases in retaliation for the blood of martyred workers from Iran’s industrial towns. Ambulance sirens and Zionist admissions of rising killed and wounded reveal the scale of the IRGC missile strikes on the industrial sectors of Tel Aviv. Iranian missiles and drones also struck the industrial sectors and US force gathering points at the Al-Harir base in Erbil and the Ali Al-Salem and Arifjan bases.

The unknown fate of the Zionist Prime Minister and reports he may be dead or fleeing with his family highlight the crisis within the Zionist regime. If this child-killing criminal is alive, we will continue to pursue and kill him with full force.

Iran is carrying out an average of four waves of missile and drone attacks per day. The US and Israel have grossly underestimated Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles. In the event that Donald Trump tries to declare victory and disengage, Iran will not. Iran will continue to pummel US military facilities in the Persian Gulf and Israel’s military and infrastructure. I believe that Iran will not end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz until the US and Israel agree to Iran’s terms. These include the lifting of all sanctions against Iran, the removal of US military installations from the Persian Gulf and reparations for the damage inflicted on Iran during the course of this war.

Trump will face the dilemma of accepting Iran’s terms (a humiliating outcome) or continuing a war of attrition while the while Iran launches at least three waves of missiles every day. The pressure on Trump will be enormous as long as Iran maintains control over the Strait of Hormuz… US allies, particularly in Asia, will be pleading to an end of the war, and the domestic economic picture will worsen. Trump is trapped and does not appear to have a politically viable exit ramp."

- https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/

"Trump, Netanyahu, Epstein Class Are Stuck; Iran Prepared For A Long War"

Trends Journal, 3/14/26

Mohammad Marandi, 3/14/26

"Trump, Netanyahu, Epstein Class Are Stuck;

 Iran Prepared For A Long War"

The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What's Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Millions Warned: Once-In-A-Generation Storm Hitting America"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 3/14/26

"Millions Warned: 

Once-In-A-Generation Storm Hitting America"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Return To Freedom”

Full screen recommended.

2002, “Return To Freedom”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. 

Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/

"The Most Deluded People..."

"There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded

people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”

- John Heywood, 1546