“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”
“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
- Mark Twain
"There comes a time in every man's life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse. Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and 'great thinking'. It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice."
"Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion... is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception."
“People underestimate how much resistance to imperial edicts out of DC there is, they underestimate how many people are waiting for the fall, but they also misunderstand that this resistance is taking a muscular but passive form.” - Deep South SR on Twitter
Of course, the “Joe Biden” classified document scandal is less about the documents per se than it is about the Biden family business, which was accepting large sums of money from shady foreign interests for unspecified services rendered. “Joe Biden,” the brand, is owned, perhaps to the degree that he can be called “a sell-out.” Selling out your country is kind of serious.
For instance, our country is right now deeply involved in a war between a Biden family client, Ukraine, and its angry relative, Russia. The USA has pumped more than $100-billion into Ukraine just this past year. That’s quite a return-on-investment for the million or so Hunter Biden grifted out of the Burisma gas company. It is alleged that Ukraine has operated as a gigantic international money laundry, especially since our State Department and Intel Community overthrew Ukraine’s government in 2014 and put in a series of errand boy presidents.
Ukraine did not have to become a geopolitical hot-spot. We made it a problem on-purpose. The strategy, if you can call it that, was stated explicitly by SecDef Lloyd Austin: “to weaken Russia.” That was based on the NeoCon game theory that the USA had to maintain at least the appearance of dominance over as much of the world as possible - a.k.a. hegemony - at the very moment in history that America’s economy, culture, and institutions had entered a state of collapse, visible to everyone in the world. By the way, our efforts in Ukraine against Russia, have only strengthened Russia - its currency, its balance of trade, its own internal political security, and its military defenses.
The Ukraine fiasco has surely benefited America’s military contractors and the parasitical ecosystem that feeds off them. Ukraine has benefited not so much. To be blunt and concise, Ukraine will come out of this a much-diminished entity, with no ability to cause any more problems in that region of the world. The money laundry will be closing down. As that happens, recriminations will pour out of Ukraine, implicating many American officials in the laundry operations, including former Ambassador Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch and her circle. Wait for that.
So, the tussle over the docs is a smokescreen for those artful machinations. The appointment by praetorian Attorney General Merrick Garland of a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, to investigate the doc affair is the insurance policy. Mr. Hur’s job is to prevent any witness from testifying on these matters before a congressional committee on the grounds of protecting “an ongoing investigation.” You can bet that whichever committee takes on this hairball, it will find workarounds to overcome that gambit and start unraveling the grift behind the docs. It will get ugly.
The evidence for all that is neatly packaged in the notorious laptop computer that Biden family bag-man Hunter Biden dropped off in a Wilmington, DE repair shop and then “forgot about,” so the story goes. I wonder about that. My armchair psychiatrist’s take is that Hunter harbors a not-so-well suppressed wish to destroy the Big Guy, his father, who has sinned grievously against his son and made a monster of him. (A monster of depravity.) The classified docs that the Big Guy stashed in his various properties are quite secondary to the gigantic trove of deal memos with purchasers of influence (and photos of them with the Biden gang) stashed on that radioactive hard-drive.
I’ll never understand - and neither will you - how “Joe Biden” got propelled out of ignominious defeat in the earliest presidential primaries, to sweep the field on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Around the same time, all his rivals magically dropped out of the race for the nomination. Some kind of message must have gone out from Deep State Central. Who wanted this licentious old grifter in White House? Well, probably his old boss, Barack Obama, and just about everyone in officialdom connected to the shenanigans in Ukraine dating back to 2014, and then the RussiaGate illegalities that ensued from it, especially former CIA boss John Brennan and his cronies. Under Mr. Obama, the whole US government had become something like a rotten log infested with sowbugs of grift, deceit, and malfeasance. Installing the dotty old bird in the White House would give Mr. Obama a stealth third term. Mostly, it would prevent the dreaded Golden Golem of populism, Donald Trump, from bringing any harm to that cabal and its, ahem, interests.
We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls, who fine-tuned the mail-in ballot operation during the likewise engineered Covid-19 public health ruse. That wicked election business, of course, is just another grave matter requiring the utmost protection to prevent any inquiry from ever gaining traction. And yet all of it, the monumental government crime spree of recent years, is all unraveling before our eyes - even before Jim Jordan or anyone else has said boo from a House committee chair.
It’s all falling apart - along with America’s economy, our institutions, and our culture. The Biden family’s cover stories are collapsing, the government’s censorship and propaganda machine has thrown a rod, the Covid-19 story looks day-by-day like organized mass murder, election fraud issues still stalk the land despite every effort to squash them - and the grim reality coalesces that Russia is going to clean up the mess we made in Ukraine, and, in the aftermath, probably produce a shit-ton of evidence of American corruption and villainy there.
“Joe Biden,” the phantom president, has entered the air-lock, waiting to be jettisoned into the deep space of ignominy, chocolate mint chip ice cream cone in hand. Kamala Harris watches the action offstage in a fugue of anxiety and depression. She does not want to become president - and, guess what, nobody really wants her to be, either. She won’t even have to be induced to step aside. Her hysteria will be so great that not even the hypnotists of the Intel Community will be able to calm her down. She’ll run shrieking from it back to California. The levers of control finally fail. By a caprice of history, and the genius of the founding fathers, Kevin McCarthy lands in the White House. A page turns. The coup is finally over. That’s my fantasy du jour."
"You have to look at all the changes that are being made to major companies. Massive layoffs are happening. Plus, we just found out that retail sales for last month were down. We also found out that manufacturing is down. Plus, wholesale prices are up as well. Should be."
~ General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s last words.
Normandy, France - "Davos…Davos…Davos. There’s France’s finance jefe on TV this morning, Bruno LeMaire, wearing a scarf. And there’s the Infosys CEO in a hooded parka. They may have flown in on carbon spewing private jets… but when they get in front of the cameras they go green. ‘Turn down the thermostat’ is the message. The news media is back on the Davos story – riding its usual hobby horses, bowing to its sacred gods and promoting its favorite bamboozles.
This year, Ms. Zelenska, wife of Mr. Zelenskyy, is the queen of the prom. Speaking at the confab, words came out of her mouth and were greeted by wide approval: “We are all internally convinced that there is no such global problem that humanity cannot solve…This is more important now when Russia’s aggression in Europe poses various challenges.” Of course, there are plenty of ‘problems’ humans can’t do much about. Rats in Baltimore. Bores at social functions. Morons in Congress. Few people actually want to die. But everybody does.
Then, turning to the war…“…there are no day offs from war…everyone in Ukraine has to risk their lives every day..” Of course, that is not true either. Most people in the Ukraine are nowhere near the combat zone…and the civilian casualty count is low; Russia has apparently tried to limit the collateral damage. The figures show about 8,000 civilian deaths in the country last year, caused by the war. Out of a population of 43 million, that’s a violent death rate of 18 per 100,000.
Volley and Thunder: The Russians will have to do a lot more killing than that to equal the violent death rate of American cities. In Baltimore last year, for instance, the rate was 55 – three times as high.
Later in the program, Ms. Zelenska’s husband took the stage. He and his wife must share the same speechwriter. There are “no accidents at wartime,” said the man on the podium. He was speaking only a few hours after a helicopter crashed in Kyiv. On board was Ukrainian Interior Minister, now dead.
That there are no accidents in war is surely incorrect too. Military history is full of them. In almost every battle, the fog of war is thick with mistakes, lies and accidents. In the famous “Charge of the Light Brigade,” for example, the English cavalry rode valiantly ‘into the valley of death,’ as Kipling put it, in Crimea. (Britain was the America of the era – ready to throw its weight around all over the planet.)
But the Light Brigade was going the wrong way. The commander, Lord Cardigan, had spent so much time out on his private yacht, anchored offshore in the Black Sea, with its own chef aboard, that he was confused by the lay of the land. Lord Lucan, his brother-in-law, whom he detested, ordered him to advance on a Russian gun emplacement and waved his hand generally in the direction to which the Light Brigade later went. Soon, there were indeed cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right of them, and cannons in front of them. All volleyed and thundered. And cut the poor English cavalry to pieces.
The Light Brigade had blundered into the wrong place. And when the dust settled, it had lost more than 200 men and 300 horses. For his part Lord Cardigan rode all the way up the valley to the Russian guns. The Russian commander recognized him as he rode…the two had enjoyed parties together in London before the war. He told his men not to kill him, but to capture him. Perhaps he was looking forward to more charming dinner conversation. But Cardigan, realizing that he was about to be captured, spurred his horse, jumped over the breastworks of the gun emplacement and dashed back down the valley. Leaving the dead and wounded behind him, he went back to his yacht in time for dinner.
Fatal Equations: Take out the accidents, mistakes and miscalculations and not much military history would remain. What was Napoleon’s attack on Moscow if not a giant, boneheaded error? Adolf Hitler might have thought that mechanized transport made it possible for him to succeed where Gustavus Adolphus and Napoleon Bonaparte had failed. But the Soviets had machines too. They moved their heavy industry to the East…and when they got rolling, so to speak, they could turn out dozens of tanks in the time the Germans produced only one.
New York Times economist, Paul Krugman, writes to say that the secret to war is there: “I’m not a defense expert. But I do know something about applied math — and contemporary wars are, to a large extent, about arithmetic.” And yes, of course, numbers play a part. But, Paul, riddle us this: At Rorke’s Drift, in South Africa, 1879, a rag-tag bunch of British soldiers, local militia, and hospital patients were outnumbered by Zulu warriors, 40 to 1. The arithmetic was terrible. But they won. How come?
And Robert McNamara was a numbers guy. He provided detailed statistics, showing our overwhelming superiority against the North Vietnamese. We had more guns, more tanks, more helicopters, more coca cola, and more prostitutes in Saigon. Who won?
The same question could be posed about Afghanistan – now in the hands of the Taliban…and Iraq, now run by Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia killed some 600 US troops after the US invasion. In both countries, the numbers left no doubt; the US would prevail. What happened?
Krugman says the Ukraine will win its battle with Russia, because it is backed by NATO, which has bigger numbers. But ‘accidents’ still happen.
Disarmed: One of the most famous of them occurred in central Virginia in 1863. That was when General Stonewall Jackson was riding back to his lines after reconnoitering the terrain for the morrow’s battle. He had just inflicted a stunning defeat on Union troops, in what came to be known as the Battle of Chancellorsville.
The confederates were outnumbered, 2 to 1, but Jackson still managed to split away from Lee’s army and attack the Northerners from the flank. Then, after dusk, Jackson prepared another assault on the demoralized Yankees. Had he been able to follow up, he might have inflicted such a devastating defeat on the Army of the Potomac, that Lincoln might have been forced to make peace.
After the first day of battle, Jackson studied the lay of the land in the twilight and headed back to his camp. But in the half-light, he was mistaken for the enemy. Jackson was hit by three bullets from his own troops. His arm had to be amputated. He crossed the river soon after. “You have lost your left arm,” General Lee wrote to him on his deathbed, “and I have lost my right.”
But we are not here to quibble with silly talk from Davos. We don’t know why the Ukrainian helicopter crashed. And the only way Zelenskyy can be sure that it wasn’t an accident is if he caused it to crash himself."'
"There was big global news coming out of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, and it’s not the usual tyrannical pompous crap you are used to hearing about. The finance minister of Saudi Arabia signaled death of the petrodollar was officially announced. Mohamad Al-Jadaan said the Kingdom is open to settling trade in currencies other than the dollar. Oil trade has been exclusively done in U.S. dollars since the early 1970’s, and this is a big reason why the dollar became the world reserve currency. This move may not actually kill the dollar, but it will hurt its buying power. You have been warned.
The optic at WEF has never been worse. The conference attendees are being openly mocked by everyone from to Elon Musk to FOX News. Is this showing the world that the WEF is not as important as it thinks, or is every one of the so-called “useless eaters” finally getting wise to the pompous tyrants who think they are running the world? They act more like demons than caring people trying to save the world. It’s the most disrespectful coverage I have ever seen of the WEF, and rightly so. Now, organizations like Rebel News are running down the elite at Davos, such as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Rebel News reporters confront Bourla about his ineffective and deadly CV19 vax. It’s amazing reporting, and bravo, Rebel News. Enjoy the embedded video below:
Finally, forget all the good news you are hearing about the economy because the real news, without the spin, is telling you to get ready for a massive economic downturn. There is the new debt ceiling fight, record high unpayable credit card debt, more big layoffs at big banks and economist John Williams of Shadowstats.com warning of a “new and significant recession” that is already here." There is more in the 36-minute newscast.
"It's quite amazing how the news is endlessly about filler, which is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?
1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.
2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.
3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.
4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.
5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.
Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for the news, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."
"Today we bear grim news: Uncle Samuel has rammed his whelky head against the “debt ceiling” — the debt ceiling set presently to $31.4 trillion. Unless Congress votes to haul the jacks out of storage… and elevate the ceiling once more… the United States government can issue no additional debt… and risks default as its cupboards run bare. Come the evil day when the china is at last depleted…
Every manner of calamity would ensue. Chaos and Old Night? Here you would have them and then some. The federal government would slam its door on the noses of the American people. They would be forced upon very lean rations and thrown into severe desperation. Meantime, the federal government’s creditors would go scratching as it defaults on its debt. Economic woe would spread and spread in ever-widening circles — even to the world beyond.
Run for the Hills! Reports CNN, its breath bated, its voice cracking, its hands quaking: "The U.S. hit the debt ceiling set by Congress on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default… fears are growing that the partisan brinksmanship could result in the nation defaulting on its debt for the first time ever…
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Thursday, informing him that the nation’s outstanding debt is at its statutory limit of $31.4 trillion and that the agency will implement extraordinary measures so it doesn’t default on its debt, which would have enormous consequences on the U.S. economy, global financial stability and many Americans. She said the measures would last through June 5. That is, Ms. Yellen estimates she maintains the wherewithal to keep the government apparatus in funds through June 5, approximately.
“Extraordinary Measures" This she will accomplish through the application of “extraordinary measures." Of what will these consist? CNN: "As part of the debt issuance suspension period, the agency will begin to sell existing investments and suspending reinvestments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. Also, it will suspend the reinvestment of a government securities fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan."
How the nation can endure such privations as these, we do not know. Yet we must discover ways to gutter along as we can. Our hearts are particularly with the civil servants, postal servants and federal employees who will absorb the heaviest blows. They suffer mightily as is. Simply ask them — and they will tell you. Now reinvestment into their health and retirement funds are being suspended to meet higher obligations? Yet we cringe most for our nation’s reputation. And its dignity.
The “Full Faith and Credit of the United States” Is at Stake The world’s greatest power simply cannot be permitted to careen into default. As Ms. Yellen pleaded in a letter to Congress: "I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States."
As well act to protect the virtue of a streetwalker. Here is the Treasury secretary’s argument, stripped to its core: So what if Congress has demonstrated a limitless inability to balance the ledgers? So what if Congress cannot rein itself in — and limit spending to the proceeds of honest taxation? So what, so what? We are simply told the show must continue. We must elevate the debt ceiling this year. And if need be, next year, the year after that, the year after that one, world without end. We must defend our virtue — even at the very price of our soul.
The Bad Guy Is the Good Guy, and Vice Versa If you attempt to impose a halt on the business? You are a reckless and irresponsible hellcat willing to risk the full faith and credit of the United States — such as it is. That is, the grand villains of this tale are not the spenders who bust through debt ceilings and plunge the nation deeper into debt. It is instead the prudent and fiscally responsible fellow. It is the concerned caretaker of the nation’s finances. It is the honest and earnest man after a sound and sustainable accounting.
This is our national fee-fi-fo-fum. He must be locked in a cage. Else he risks the full faith and credit of the United States. He will plunge us into the unfathomable abysses of default. “Wrong!” shrieks our former colleague David Stockman.
They’re Crying Wolf The calamity-howlers are hawking a false tale, argues David. Failure to elevate the debt ceiling does not equal default. Do not forget, the federal government hauls in loads of tax money each month. It can meet its debt obligations with these monies. It may endure something of a squeeze, yes. But it will not fall into default. Here David pounds his table with two tightly clenched fists:
"Failure to raise the debt ceiling absolutely does not mean default. In the most recent month, Uncle Sam took in about $252 billion of receipts, or 5.4 times the $47 billion monthly cost of net debt service. The great beltway lie is that the president is powerless to make these interest payments from available receipts. In fact, rather than prioritizing other spending and allocating the remaining revenues to those priorities, it’s claimed the president must sit on his hands, making default unavoidable and instantaneous. That’s a damn lie!" A “damned lie,” David calls it.
What Crisis? Here David radios in support from Mr. Mick Mulvaney. Like David before him, Mr. Mulvaney is a former congressman who also commanded the Office of Management and Budget. This is what this fellow said about the October 2013 debt ceiling “crisis”: "We’re not going to default; there is no default. There’s an [Office of Management and Budget] directive from the 1980s, the last time we got fairly close to not raising the debt ceiling, that clearly lays out the process by which the Treasury secretary prioritizes interest payments."
Are you not convinced? Here David conscripts into his cause the very “dean of liberal constitutional experts,” Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe: Several weeks prior to the great August 2011 debt crisis professor Tribe declared as follows: "What is the government to do if… it does not have enough money to make all of the expenditures that Congress has required by law? The answer, I think, is that it must prioritize expenditures: some payments simply have to be postponed until the Treasury has enough money to make them." “There you have it,” David adds — “simple as pie.”
Easier Said Than Done Simple as pie, yes — in theory. Yet in practice? Harder than Damascus steel. How many congressmen will agree to scissor the credit card upon which their political career depends? The question is the answer. As David argues with great precision: "The Imperial City fears these words more than Dracula feared a glittering crucifix."
Wicked Congress: Yet we are extremely confident that Imperial City will emerge victorious. Certain House Republicans will raise a rumpus. They will do a lot of shouting against elevating the debt limit. Yet they will be cried down. The debt ceiling will be elevated — certainly by June 5. Depend on it. And so the soda can will go kicking down the road… once again. If wrong, we will devour these very words, without salt. Yet we depart with a biblical injunction against profligacy, for we fear divine retribution. It is our sincere wish that Congress take it aboard — though we are certain it will not: “The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.”
"It’s no secret that the past few years have had a devastating effect on people’s mental health. But what America is facing today is an unprecedented mental health crisis that is affecting large swathes of our population, including our children. For many, the pandemic was the trigger. Others have seen their finances being turned upside down by recent stock market volatility. Millions have lost their jobs, and current economic problems have only added to the pressure. Meanwhile, young Americans have been mentally struggling at rates we have never seen before, and social media is a big contributor to that.
The Kaiser Family Foundation just published a new study in partnership with CNN which found that the vast majority of people in the country think the U.S. is experiencing a severe mental health crisis. Nine out of ten adults, or 90%, said that mental health issues in the U.S. are at crisis levels rather than being merely a problem, with high rates of mental health issues and mental illnesses being reported among children, teenagers, and adults, the study highlights.
One of the main causes of mental distress in children and teenagers is their prolonged exposure to social media. At this point, over 1 in 10 young Americans are experiencing depression that is severely impairing their ability to function at school or work, at home, with family, or in their social life, the research highlights. The problem is reaching such alarming proportions that last year, Seattle’s public schools' district has filed a lawsuit against multiple major social media companies, accusing them of harming young people’s mental health. The lawsuit accused the social media companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth”.
Meanwhile, the CNN and KFF poll also revealed that over 53 million adults say they are currently dealing with a severe mental health issue, with about half of them reporting that their family members suffer from similar problems as well. And although we’re talking about mental health more than at any other period in history, getting psychological and psychiatric care can be difficult and still be a stigma in many communities. Only 20% of those who reported experiencing anxiety and depression in the past year have sought medical care and treatment. The study detailed that most Americans see those issues as significant problems. A majority, 55%, say it’s a big problem that there aren’t enough mental health care providers, about 75% say that insurers not covering mental health the way they do physical health is a significant concern, and 80% say the same about the cost of mental health care.
With all that said, there’s no wonder why this epidemic is only getting worse year after year. Americans of all ages have been coping with increased pressure and a faster way of living. The fact that medical assistance is inaccessible for millions of people that truly need it only aggravates people’s personal mental health issues and makes illnesses persist for longer than they would if patients were getting proper treatment.
Hopelessness and despair continue to sweep through our society, but healing is still possible. If you’re struggling and feeling overwhelmed by painful and unbearable thoughts, know you don’t have to manage them alone. There are online therapy options and trained counselors that can help you get through this. Even when times are tough, there's still hope, and together, we are stronger indeed."
"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."
“A Few Words Inspired By The Tomato Plant” by Chet Raymo
"Mostly we think of life in terms of individuals - this person, this tomato plant, this frog, this oak tree, this gnat. And we talk about birth and death as the beginning and ending of life. But there is another sense in which life is just one thing, whose beginning is lost in the depths of time and whose end is not in sight. Life in this sense embodies itself in matter, temporarily, as a tomato or a frog, puts on matter and puts off matter as we might don or doff clothes. By this account, I am an ephemeral conglomeration of atoms that life is using to perpetuate itself. But what is this thing called life? It cannot exist except as embodied form, but it maintains a continuity independent of any particular embodiment. It is a strange enduring wave that stirs the material world into purposeful and directed avenues. With Johannes Kepler we might call it the facultas formatrix of nature, the formative faculty, but giving something a name doesn't explain it. Whatever life is - in the unitary, enduring sense - it would be surprising if it only existed here on Earth. If I were a betting man I would bet that life is as pervasive as matter itself, or energy. Matter, energy and complexification. We have lots left to learn.
But let's be cautious. There are lots of folks out there with half-baked biocentric theories of the universe. Someone once chided the philosopher W. V. O. Quine with a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” To which Quine is said to have responded: “Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth.”
In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until dawn.”
“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”
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“Shantaram”
by Gregory David Roberts
“Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in “Shantaram,” a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies performed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.
He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.
Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughout the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel.”
– Valerie Ryan
Freely read “Shantaram” online, by Gregory David Roberts, here:
"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.”
rotten social contracts and deadbeat currencies...
by Bill Bonner
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” ~ Charles Dickens, from ‘David Copperfield’
Normandy, France - "All the trains into Paris are canceled. Why? Is it because the western model of democratic socialism is going broke? Because it has allowed its expenses to exceed its income year after year? Is the bankruptcy of the welfare state among the ‘cluster’ of disasters headed our way?
Here’s the story from CNN: "France faces widespread protests and 'hellish Thursday' as anger at pension reform mounts French workers are set to take to the streets Thursday to protest radical reforms to the country’s pension system that, if implemented, will require most people in France to work two years longer before retirement.
Eight of France’s largest unions - covering transportation, education, police, executives and public sectors - called for Thursday to be the “first day of strikes and protests” against the proposed pensions reform. Widespread strikes are expected, and it may be “a hellish Thursday” on public transport networks, Transport Minister Clement Beaune warned French broadcaster France 2 Tuesday. Paris’ transport authority predicts “very disrupted” service on the city’s transport network."
We’re happy to stay where we are, about two hours west of Paris, in an old farmhouse. Outside, it is raining, snowing, sleeting – a typical winter in Normandy. But inside, in front of the open fire, ‘the weather outside is frightful…and the fire is so delightful.’ (Tomorrow, we’ll explain what brings us here.)
Public Disservice: Meanwhile, the French are on strike. Teachers. Air traffic controllers. Police. Many ‘public sector’ employees…that is, the people paid to provide services to the public…are not doing what they are paid to do.
To put this in perspective… Otto von Bismarck invented the model welfare state for Prussia in the late 19th century. What a clever fellow. He launched three short and successful wars, against Austria, Denmark and France. He realized that the masses could be rallied behind the flag in wartime.
But most of Ol’ Blood and Iron Bismarck’s efforts were spent on diplomacy, trying to preserve peace. And in peacetime, ‘the people’ had less need for government. If war was the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne suggested, peace must be its sickness. Bismarck’s medicine is described by Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis as follows: “…granting social rights to enhance the integration of a hierarchical society, to forge a bond between workers and the state so as to strengthen the latter…”
In Sickness and Health: The state was strengthened because its new mission allowed the government elite to take more of the nation’s GDP by promising to provide social services in return. It also unified the people behind the government, in one, shared insurance program, giving citizens a stake in the system itself. They began to see ‘the government’ not just as a nuisance, but as a source of security and wealth. After all, it was the government that would support them in their old age. Today, at least 60% of the French and 50% of Americans receive ‘money’ from their governments.
The trouble with this scheme is mathematical. The feds can only give what they take. Logically, the money to pay for pensions still has to come from the people who get the money. And practically, government is a very poor manager of retirement funds. It wastes much of its revenues (especially in America, where the ‘defense’ budget dwarfs other spending). And much of it is siphoned off to the deciders themselves. So, the actual return on investment for the typical pensioner is low.
This defect was delayed and disguised for more than a century, thanks to the extraordinary growth of the fossil-fueled economy…and the big increase in population. As society became richer, with more people to support the government, the feds were able to pay retirees more than they deserved. So, retirees began to expect more. Politicians raised payouts. The costs crept higher…as revenues lagged behind.
Replacement Value: Every white shoe yearns for mud. And every public policy aims for failure. Today, almost everywhere, public pension programs are under-funded. Almost all the world’s governments are deep in debt. GDP growth rates have slowed to a crawl. Productivity – under the weight of so much social welfare regulation – is failing. And populations are peaking out.
In Europe, the fertility rate – the number of children per woman – was 3 in 1950; now, it’s 1.6, well below replacement level. In America, too, women are not having enough children to maintain the current population level or its Social Security system. Overall, the fertility rate is 1.7. For white women, it is about the same as Europe, at 1.6. That is why the elites tend to favor immigration; it helps keep the Social Security systems solvent.
The French are trying to ease the strain by raising the retirement age (along with other measures.) But those moves merely make Bismarck’s ‘social contract’ less attractive. And now the young Frenchman, who expects to be taken care of, cradle to grave, is wondering how it is going to work out. How can a bankrupt government…heavy with debt and legacy obligations, and managed by a large class of incompetent, over-paid, over-powerful deciders…make good on its promises?
Won’t it have to ‘inflate’ some of them away? Won’t its central banks and central governments have to back away from their ‘tightening’ policies? And won’t that be a death sentence to their currencies and their fixed-rate bonds? Yes."
