"NATO Lost it Hands Down as Russia Crushed Ukraine's Army; Terrorist Attack in Moscow"

Ray McGovern, 3/29/24

"NATO Lost it Hands Down as Russia Crushed

 Ukraine's Army; Terrorist Attack in Moscow"

"Ray came to Washington from his native Bronx in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Don’t Forget How Strange This All Is"

"Don’t Forget How Strange This All Is"

by David Cain

"Jerry Seinfeld joked that if aliens came to earth and saw people walking dogs, they would assume the dogs are the leaders. The dog walks out front, and a gangly creature trailing behind him picks up his feces and carries it for him.

Throughout my life I’ve had moments where I felt like one of these visiting aliens, where something I knew to be normal suddenly seemed bizarre. I remember walking home from somewhere, struck by how strange streets are: flat strips of artificial rock embedded in the earth so that our traveling machines don’t get stuck in the mud.

Everything else seemed strange too. Metal poles bending over the road, tipped by glowing orbs. Rectangular dwellings made of lumber and artificial rocks. The background noise is always the hum of distant traveling machines, and all of this stuff was built and operated by a single species of ape.

Even stranger was the fact that these strange things usually don’t seem strange. I know I’m not the only one who has felt this. A few people have shared similar experiences with me, and according to "The School of Life", it was a central theme in Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel "Nausea."

Sartre apparently believed that the world is far stranger and more absurd than it normally seems. Most of the time, however, we ascribe a kind of logic and order to the world that it doesn’t really have, so that we’re not constantly bewildered by it. Sometimes we momentarily lose track of that logic, and the true strangeness of life is revealed. In these moments, we see the world as it is when it’s been “stripped of any of the prejudices and stabilizing assumptions lent to us by our day-to-day routines.” In other words, we occasionally see the world as if for the first time, which could only be a very strange experience indeed.

Although I know this experience isn’t unique to me, I had no idea whether most people could relate. So when I discovered the surprisingly popular podcast "Welcome to Night Vale," I felt that a small but significant part of my experience had been understood. Night Vale is a fictional desert town, and each episode of the podcast is about 20 minutes of broadcasts from its public radio station. The host reads public service announcements, advertisements, community news and weather, and messages from the City Council. That would be extremely boring, except that almost everything that happens in the "Night Vale" is incredibly strange, even impossible.

"Welcome To Night Vale, Episode 1"

- https://www.youtube.com/

The first announcement in the first episode is a reminder from City Council that dogs are not allowed in the dog park, and neither are citizens, and if you see hooded figures in the park you are not to approach them. In an unrelated matter, there is a cat hovering four feet off the ground next to the sink in the men’s washroom at the radio station. It cannot move from its spot in mid-air, but it seems happy, and staff have left food and water for it.

Wednesday has been canceled, due to a scheduling error. There is a glowing cloud raining small animals on a farm at the edge of town. A large pyramid has appeared in a prominent public space, apparently when nobody was looking.

I imagine that when most people hear about WTNV, they listen to five minutes of it and turn it off. It feels like a joke at first, or at best, bad art. I kept listening, thinking the weird happenings are some kind of allegory, or a code to be deciphered. But they’re not. The story stays absurd, kind of like an over-the-top "Twin Peaks", where none of the weirdness ever gets explained.

Everything is weird until it’s familiar: I was listening to the podcast on headphones, walking down our local riverside path, and I passed an older couple sun-tanning. I’ve seen people tanning a thousand times, but only then did the activity strike me as completely hilarious. In our world, people sometimes take off all their clothes—or at least as much as society will allow—so that they can get radiation burns from a glowing ball in the sky. Even though everyone knows this practice increases your chances of developing a fatal disease, people still do it because they like the color of the burned flesh. Skin burned to a certain tone confers social benefits for a few weeks.

The fact that we live on a planet at all would be unbelievable if we weren’t already used to it. Nobody could have dreamed up this setting: life is set on one of many ball-shaped rocks moving in circles around a bigger, glowing ball. And we have great affection for these other balls. When officials demoted Pluto to a minor ball, people were outraged, even though none of them had ever actually seen it. When the spaceship sent to take pictures of Pluto finally arrived, we discovered it had a giant white heart on its side. It had been loving us back the whole time!

Listening to "Night Vale" reminds us that our world is no less strange, just more familiar. If in our world, as in "Night Vale," taco shops sometimes became encased in amber, we would accept that as a fact of life after seeing it a few times. But that’s no weirder than the fact that in order to live, we must breathe a gas that combusts so easily and so violently that every city has to have specialized departments dedicated to shooting water onto anything at a moment’s notice. (Bill Bryson captures this strangeness beautifully in "A Short History of Nearly Everything.")

You can see the weirdness in almost any normal phenomenon by imagining how you’d describe it to someone not from Earth or any place like it. Water falls uncontrollably from the sky? Pop culture is obsessed with people who pretend to be other people in moving pictures? We eat fresh food grown on the opposite side of the planet? What?

The three options: So our world is really weird and chaotic, which is a helpful thing to realize, because we suffer so much insisting that it should be sensible and orderly. We have to live in a very strange place, and when we forget that it’s strange due to familiarity blindness, it can seem like something’s always gone temporarily wrong. We become preoccupied with returning society to a kind of balance or sanity that it never had, often berating or abusing certain people or certain groups in the process. It’s quite a relief to remember that life was always nuts.

Albert Camus (who is an obvious influence in "Night Vale") argued that the universe is always absurd and chaotic, yet we’re always trying to find meaning and order in it. When you listen to Night Vale, making sense is the first thing your mind tries to do with what it hears, and it can’t. When you relax that need for the events to make sense, something softens. You stop straining. You listen more for the moment and less for how each moment serves everything else. You gain a sense of humor about the whole thing, however dark it gets.

Because it requires listeners to voluntarily open up to extreme strangeness, Night Vale has made me a less uptight about our own society’s political and cultural nonsense. I am seeing society less like a troubled person who was once sane, and more like a funny-looking animal, adorably knocking things over by accident. 

Camus thought our unreasonable demand for meaning and sense was fundamental to human beings, and that it creates a ton of pain for us. He saw only three ways to respond to life’s absurdity: we can deny it (usually by claiming that a God has designed it this way), we can end our lives, or we can embrace the weirdness and live in it wholeheartedly. The last option, he figured, was the only good one. When you stop expecting the world to be sensible, suddenly it all makes sense.

Embracing the weirdness takes the edge off of everything, even death. Whenever you’re worried about “big picture” ideas, such as war, climate change, crime, corporate greed, you can remember that this whole weird thing called life just happened, and it’s always fresh and interesting, even though nobody really asked for it. And in that light, the thought of it ending one day doesn’t seem distressing at all—when your time comes, all you can do is say, “Wow, that was odd.”

- https://www.raptitude.com

"Wake Up, You Are Watching A Social And Economic Collapse In Real Time"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/28/24

"Wake Up, You Are Watching A Social 

And Economic Collapse In Real Time"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Holy Sh*t! Russia Declares 'Holy War'! Ambassador Flees Poland! Nuclear Missiles Move!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 3/28/24

"Holy Sh*t! Russia Declares 'Holy War'! 

Ambassador Flees Poland! Nuclear Missiles Move!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"What's that below those strange clouds? Presidents. If you look closely, you may recognize the heads of four former US Presidents carved into famous Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, USA. More obvious in the featured image are the unusual mammatus clouds that passed briefly overhead. Both were captured together by a surprised tourist with a quick camera.

Click image for larger size.

Unlike normal flat-bottomed clouds which form when moist and calm air plateaus rise and cool, bumpy mammatus clouds form as icy and turbulent air pockets sink and heat up. Such turbulent air is frequently accompanied by a thunderstorm. Each mammatus lobe spans about one kilometer. The greater mountain is known to native Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, deities responsible for the directions north, south, east, west, up, and down."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201207.html

Chet Raymo, “The Journey”

“The Journey”

by Chet Raymo

“Here’s the aboce a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of Nature, in full size. The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale – distance from Earth – is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

A smoke of galaxies! (2 trillion galaxies according to latest estimates.- CP) A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My book, “Walking Zero,” is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:

“Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother’s womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.

As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother’s breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.

What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.

A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother’s enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage – for each individual, and for our species.

Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey – from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time – is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sunset”

“Sunset”

“Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs -

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Daily "Near You?"

Wayland, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"At Last..."

“At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.”

- Richard Bach, “Nothing by Chance”

Bill Bonner, "Don't Cry for Argentina...Just Yet"

"Don't Cry for Argentina...Just Yet"

Milei's remarkable progress at the end of the world...

by Bill Bonner

“The case of Argentina is an empirical demonstration that no matter how rich you may be... if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”

~ Javier Milei

Dublin, Ireland - "Argentina…down at the bottom of the world…upside down in almost every respect. But it is also the home of the world’s most interesting and most promising political/economic experiment. Governments follow the ‘institutional imperative,’ along with everything else. They grow…they expand…they take more and more of the nation’s resources…and their elites become more parasitic. But eventually…they ‘hit bottom.’

If you’ll recall, over the 75 years or so since the socialists (Peronists) won power, Argentina had seen pointless wars…2,000% inflation…mass murder…insurrection…and social and political chaos. It had also dropped from around 6th or 7th place among the world’s richest nations down to, currently, 65th place, behind Kazakhstan and Bulgaria. Argentinians, in the 1960s, had about 40% of Americans’ wealth per capita. Now, they have barely half that much.

‘La Motosierra’: We have a hypothesis. As the weight of government debt and resource misallocation becomes heavier…its elites become more corrupt and incompetent…and real output goes down. Sooner or later, there’s little juice left in the orange. In the case of the Soviet Union, the elite saw that they could get more wealth and power by taking up new careers as oligarchs rather than continuing as government functionaries.

In Argentina, too, many of the ruling elites must have thought it was time to let capitalism rebuild the country’s wealth; that way, there will be something to steal later on. Besides, the Argentine people themselves were ready for a change.

Javier Milei campaigned for president with a chainsaw in his hands…vowing to cut out all unnecessary expenses and state-granted privileges. It looked like a stunt. And many people thought his campaign pledge would end up in the huge Library Of Unfilled Promises, along with so many others.

But Milei is not a typical politician. He sees government through the unsympathetic eyes of Hayek, Rothbard…or Ron Paul. As he told the movers and shakers at Davos, the ‘values of the West’ are in danger. And the path – towards more and more government control of the economy and the society – ‘inevitably leads to socialism…and therefore to poverty.’

Remarkable Progress: Milei promised to free the economy from the fetters that keep it from operating properyl, and, crucially, to reduce the cost of government. His main aim is to get rid of deficits, which force the government to print additional money and cause prices to rise.

Last year the ‘fiscal deficit’ was about 5%. For reference, in the US it was over 6%. The difference is that investors will still lend to the US at reasonable rates. And the US can ‘print’ any money it needs to pay off creditors. Argentina can’t. Nobody wanted to lend to the gauchos and get paid back in pesos. So Argentina borrowed in dollars and became the IMF’s largest debtor. It can’t print dollars. So now, it needs to raise more dollars on the open market to stay current with its debt.

It’s not going to be easy. But so far, Milei has made remarkable progress. He has proposed a balanced budget – reducing the 5% deficit down to zero. Unfortunately, he does not control the legislature; it will be a challenge to get the politicians on board with his program.

The End of the World: Even so, after just 100 days in office, the inflation rate has apparently been cut in half. Chris Wood reports: "CPI inflation has already slowed from a peak of 25.5% MoM in December to 13.2% MoM in February." Joel sees it in the shops: "Now, stores and restaurants – which literally couldn’t ticket items on menus and upon shelves a few months ago, with prices changing by the day – are suddenly awash with discount signs and 2x1 specials."

Our daughter, meanwhile, offers a sobering personal insight. Inflation is moderating, but many prices are still just now catching up: "I got my hair done in Salta last month for 5,000 pesos. This month, it cost me 10,000. (About $9 US)."

It will not be smooth sailing for Milei. The ship is still headed for the bridge. So far, he’s slowed it down. And pointed the way to a safe passage. But it will not turn easily or immediately. Stay tuned."

https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Never Ignore These Warnings"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 3/28/24

"Never Ignore These Warnings"

"We are diving deep into the alarming trend of loan denial and Insurance claims denied/ These warnings are signaling an economic crisis looming on the horizon. Plus we are seeing lenders turn people down at a rate of almost 50%. Big problems."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

"A Much Needed Interlude From Reality"

"A Much Needed Interlude From Reality"

This is some of the most incredibly beautiful work 

I've ever seen. Multiple pages, sound on.

- https://www.facebook.com/

View here, full screen:

- https://www.facebook.com/

o

Hat tip to DBG for this material!

"World War III Prelude: Geopolitics 3/28/24"

Full screen recommended.

"Douglas Macgregor Shock Revelation: 

The Dark Agenda Behind the Ukraine Conflict - The Untold Story!"

"Dive into the hidden truths behind the global power play as Douglas Macgregor unveils deep and previously undisclosed analysis of the Ukraine conflict, Putin's real strategy, and the shadowy financial games at play. This revelatory interview uncovers the intricate web of geopolitical strategies, the manipulation of media narratives, and the stark realities of global financial dominance that have been kept from public knowledge. Prepare for a journey into the depths of global politics and power struggles where the stakes are higher than ever before, and the truths more startling."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Scott Ritter, AM 3/28/24

"Ukraine's Army is Done and Destroyed;

 Terrorist Attack in Moscow"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/28/24

"Lt Col. Tony Shaffer: 

If French Troops Fight Russians"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/28/24

"Patrick Lancaster : Ukrainian Shelling - 

LIVE from Belgorod, Russia"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 3/28/24"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/28/24

"The New One World System Revealed! 

This Is What's Next For All Of Us"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/28/24

"Incredible! Seeing Is Believing! 

The Economic Freefall IsWorsening Faster"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "The Flu, Day 2: Body Aches & My Nyquil Nightmare!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 3/28/24

"The Flu, Day 2: 

Body Aches & My Nyquil Nightmare!"

"In today's vlog, we are discussing our flu symptoms, dealing with body aches, 

and having a crazy nightmare after taking NyQuil before bed."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"WW III D-Day Approaches; Russia Preps For Nuclear War With NATO"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 3/27/24

"WW III D-Day Approaches; 

Russia Preps For Nuclear War With NATO"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "They's Passing Out Free Money While Americans Go Hungry And Homeless"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/27/24

"They's Passing Out Free Money While 

Americans Go Hungry And Homeless"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives.

A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles another galaxy with an abundance of star forming regions that lies within our own local galaxy group, M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. Spiky in appearance, bright stars in this colorful galaxy portrait of NGC 2403 lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150327.html

"The Sane Who Know..."

“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”

- W.H Auden

"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion."

 - Charlyn Khatero

"The Story Of Man"

“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."

- Scott Morse

○

“Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" 

"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" 

"Yes, without doubt," said Candide. 

"Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?”

- Voltaire, "Candide"

○

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men.

And that's the most frightening thing about them.”

- Alice Sebold, "The Lovely Bones"

And so it is...

o

“What a chimera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”

- Blaise Pascal

o

o

Vangelis, "Alpha"

This song always suggested the relentless March of Mankind through

 the ages to our unknown destiny. In spite of ourselves, always... we go on.

Chet Raymo, “The Silence”

“The Silence”

by Chet Raymo

“The hiding places of my power

Seem open; I approach, and then they close;

I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,

May scarcely see at all, and I would give,

While yet we may, as far as words can give,

A substance and a life to what I feel…”

“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.

Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.

This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.

There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Only Human..."

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably

excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”

- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...

Everyone says “I'm only human…” compared to what?

The Daily "Near You?"

Loveland, Colorado,USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"World War III Prelude, 3/27/24"

Full screen recommended.

Danny Haiphong, 3/27/24

"Scott Ritter: NATO Just Made A Fatal Mistake as 

Russia Prepares for War with France and Germany"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Danny Haiphong, 3/27/24

"Scott Ritter: Putin has Destroyed 

NATO's Plan and Ukraine is Doomed"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Douglas MacGregor: "NATO-Russia's Most Dangerous 

Standoff Ever – Global Annihilation Imminent!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Phil Giraldi: Israeli Descent Into Depravity"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/27/24

"Phil Giraldi: Israeli Descent Into Depravity"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

WARNING! Absolutely Horrifying!

Full horrifying screen recommended.

"Everyone in the World Needs to See This:

 Footage Shows IDF Drone Killing Gazans"

By Jessica Corbett

"An Israeli army drone pursued four civilian youths who attempted to reach their destroyed homes and killed them with missiles in Khan Younis at the start of last February. "There is no way they could have been considered combatants," said one writer and analyst. "This is unreal."

Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month. Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.

"Outrageous even after months of outrages," declared Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer. "This video shows an Israeli military drone literally stalking four unarmed civilians posing no threat and eliminating them one after the other!"

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka's U.S. policy fellow, said: "This is among the worst footage I've seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal."

- https://www.commondreams.org/

o

"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil embodied."

- Scott Ritter

A Comment: OMG...33,000 men, women, old people, and 14,000 CHILDREN slaughtered, 76,000 wounded, with 8,000 more missing and buried under the rubble caused by 29,000 2,000 lb. bombs from America! THIS is what these bloodthirsty psychopathically genocidal monsters are! I've never allowed profanity on this blog over 16 years and 90,000 posts, but oh I want to, I'm filled with a ferocious, hate filled rage at this horror! And YOU, Americans, hang your goddamned heads in shame and total disgrace because YOU paid for every bullet, all of it, and allow and support it continuing...

- CP, that's my opinion and I don't give a damn who doesn't like it!

"Stipendium peccati mors est," Israel.

"Fake Terror, Fake Money… Real Problems"

"Fake Terror, Fake Money… Real Problems"

By Addison Wiggin

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, 

you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

– Abraham Maslow

"Yikes. Before we even had time to digest the news of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse here in Baltimore, the team at Paradigm had already begun a marketing campaign insinuating the accident was the result of a terror attack. As far as we can tell, it stemmed from a puzzling account of the incident written by Sean Ring who was at the time sitting in a cafe in Italy. Now, they’re apparently planning a webinar discussing the matter.

Granted, a terror seminar is not nearly as bad as the X post I saw trying to pass off the Karch Bridge attack from months ago in the Ukraine war as the Key Bridge coming down. Or the U.S. military-industrial complex restraining itself from using the opportunity to extend its Patriot Act powers, as implied by Zero Hedge. Still, a candidate for governor in Utah seems to know a lot about the Key Bridge. He’s blaming diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies instituted by Maryland Governor Wes Brown. Neither Kate Middleton nor Kensington Palace appear to have had anything to do with the bridge collapse. But on the issue, they’ve remained mum.

The port closure will cause some real supply chain issues. Baltimore sports the only drive-on/drive-off facility for auto imports on the east coast, for example. That’s going to cause a major headache for car dealers nationwide. Nearly half of the $55.2 billion of imports in 2023 were autos and light trucks. Another $4.8 billion of motor vehicles were exported.

The port also exports 13% of India’s coal supply. That’ll be a problem for the electrical grid in Mumbai. Shares in Consol Energy, the coal exporter, dropped 10% on the news of the port closure. Shares in CXS Corp, the transport company, also fell, but look like they’ve recovered. Trains carrying coal from West Virginia will be primarily diverted to the already busy Norfolk, Virginia and New York/New Jersey areas.

The C0ve Point Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export facility, which we just discovered this morning is owned by the energy wing of Berkshire Hathaway, will not be affected by the crash. It’s upstream from the bridge.

There will be disruptions in ingestible sugar and building supplies. The company that operates the Domino Sugar facility, famous for its giant neon light in the Inner Harbor, isn’t currently waiting for a shipment. But future imports will likely be delayed. Big retailers like Home Depot, Bob’s Furniture, IKEA, and Amazon all have to seek alternative ports for their goods for the foreseeable future. Which is in itself a problem…

Many of the east coast ports are still recovering from supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic. So, diverted trade from Baltimore will add to delays and increase costs. This morning, there were some 30 barges stacked up in the Chesapeake Bay waiting for instructions as to which ports they’ve been diverted to.

The biggest disruption for the everyman of the Mid-Atlantic will be traffic congestion. The Baltimore-Washington area ranks among the most congested driving regions in the United States. Interstate 695 - also known as the beltway - around Baltimore is already a nightmare. But the area is also on the southern tip of the Washington-Boston I-95 corridor, consistently a thoroughfare for cars, trucks, trailers, busses, hitches, motorcycles, caravans, horses, bicycles, hitchhikers, guns, and other contraband up and down the east coast.

The bridge was the only easy route to bypass the city for trucks carrying hazardous materials, as they’re restricted from using the tunnels under the Patapsco river on the I-95 throughway. People who’ve been staying home for work won’t have an issue. But what is already a gnarly commute for others will get a lot worse.

There’s not currently an estimate available for how long it will take for the tons of steel bridge debris to be moved out of the way for the port to reopen. The “black box” recorder aboard the container vessel has been taken into custody.

“There is no reason from an engineering, management, demolition point of view,” writes Nathan B. one of the more credible reactions sitting in our inbox. “That it should take months to clear away the wreckage enough to allow ships to travel in and out of Baltimore Harbor. We have the skills and equipment available. Not just in the private sector both in the States and foreign. But also in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (and its contractors), and the U.S. Navy's Seabees and UDT.

Massive dredges are available all up and down the east coast and Gulf: floating cranes, underwater equipment to cut up the pieces and at least pull them out of the way to open at least two traffic lanes of 100 or more meters width. We could do it, but it is virtually a certainty that we will not: the politicians, including that greedy gut of a mayor, will ensure that. They will milk this for all they are worth, not caring about the destruction of their economy and the damage to that of the other forty-nine."

“I watched the bridge cam footage” writes Robert from Houston. “The boat oversteered to starboard and hit the pylon head-on. Just about the worst imaginable thing, knocking it all over. Our Houston Ship Channel Bridge gets routinely clipped underside, but nothing like this. It appears the control computers (Yokogawa?) were slow to reboot or the pilot/helm reacted incorrectly. There will be a long investigation and the wrong things will be blamed per even longer maritime custom. In the meantime, U.S. and other ports will take precautions (slowerspeeds, more pilots, tugs) that will slow them down. Reducing port capacity beyond the months B'more will be clearing wreckage. Could have been much worse -- imagine if an LNG carrier hit the bridge.”

As we were collecting our thoughts, the Bonner Private Research daily email popped into our inbox and expressed some of them exactly. You know what they say about great minds… heh."

o

"Showbiz and Propaganda"

Whacked bridges, military failures and monetary hijinks…

by Bill Bonner

"To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they 

misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace." 

~ Tacitus

Dublin, Ireland- "Baltimore made the news worldwide yesterday. “Six missing after bridge collapse,” says a headline in this morning’s Irish Times. The headline is a little misleading. The bridge didn’t just ‘collapse’…no more than a person shot through the head just ‘dies.’ The bridge got whacked. But not to worry. Comes more news from TheGuardian: "Biden pledged that the U.S. federal government would pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge in Baltimore, which has also halted activity at a major port for the country. “It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” the U.S. president said."

That is more than misleading. Biden has no authority to pledge U.S. funds for bridge building. Nor does the federal government have any money with which to do the work. The cost will have to be paid by the public, one way or another. Meanwhile, in more theater, Baltimore honchos announced a ‘state of emergency.’ What the emergency is was never clarified. The bridge is already in the water.

So much of what passes for ‘news’ is just showbiz. Propaganda. And blah blah. What really matters are the actual trends and events. Bridges get knocked down. People die. And the debt grows.

Barely noticed in the Fed’s announcement last week were a couple of contradictory details. Chairman Jerome Powell said he would hold rates steady but that investors could nevertheless expect three rate cuts this year. The Fed is committed…come Hell or high water…rain or shine…to a 2% inflation target. But that is just theater too. The data drivel last week included the Fed’s own forecasts of higher GDP growth and higher inflation (2.6% for core PCE). It makes no sense to promise lower borrowing rates as you also foresee higher inflation…while still claiming to have a 2% inflation target."

The reality of it, as per Charlie Bilello: "The Fed’s 2% inflation target is a farce… Instead, they want to error on the side of easing, and start cutting rates before the war against inflation has been definitively won."

Keep the Money Flowing: The important thing is to keep the money flowing; everything else is play-acting. Annual inflation rates have averaged 5.7% over the last three years and 2.8% over the last ten years. There is no sign of the 2% inflation the Fed claims to be looking for; the 2% target is just a convenient make-believe. Also in the realm of make-believe is U.S. foreign policy.

Just in the last six months, the U.S. has lost two important battles. In the Ukraine, troops armed with U.S./NATO weapons…and guided by U.S./NATO military advisors and doctrines…were crushed by Russian forces. While ‘The West’ was defeated militarily in the Ukraine, it may have suffered an even bigger blow in Gaza.

Selective Interpretations: Last week, the UN Security Council called on Israel to cease fire. The U.S., trying to salvage a bit of its prestige and reputation, abstained from the vote. The Biden Team, eyeing the upcoming election, and perhaps noticing a change in the way the winds are blowing, seeks to position itself as a ‘good guy’…while still supplying the Israelis with weapons. But Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, revealed that it is all just a stage-managed razz-ma-tazz: "It is our interpretation of this resolution that it is non-binding."

Non-binding? A rules-based order in which the rules are just suggestions? Which is our point. It is all theater…except for the part that isn’t. Talk is ‘non-binding.’ But death…debt…and destruction – like a bridge-butting cargo ship – all are very binding. So it goes..."

- https://www.linkedin.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Get a Grip on Reality"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 3/27/24

"Get a Grip on Reality"

"So much is happening right now we’re getting warning after warning.

 People need to accept their fate and how the economy truly is."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Crowd..."

"In terms of evolutionary psychology, 

the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest."

– Will Self

"The Baltimore Bridge Collapse Is Going To Have An Enormous Impact On U.S. Supply Chains"

"The Baltimore Bridge Collapse Is Going To Have

An Enormous Impact On U.S. Supply Chains"

by Michael Snyder

"When I awoke early on Tuesday morning, I was stunned to learn that the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore had collapsed. We are being told that it was a tragic “accident” and that there is no evidence that any foul play was involved. Hopefully that is true. But no matter how it was caused, this tragedy is going to have an enormous impact on U.S. supply chains. And of course this comes at a really bad time, because Houthi missile strikes in the Red Sea and low water levels in the Panama Canal have been putting a tremendous amount of strain on global supply chains recently.

According to Bloomberg, it appears that the Port of Baltimore will be “out of commission indefinitely”…"The Port of Baltimore — the biggest handler of US imports and exports of cars and light trucks — looks to be out of commission indefinitely. The resulting bottleneck could accelerate a shift of goods through West Coast ports. Another crucial question: Which other ports have spare capacity to handle the Ro-Ro vessels that carry automobiles if Baltimore is closed for an extended period."

This is a really big deal, because over 750,000 vehicles came through that port last year alone…"The port is the busiest in the U.S. for car shipments, handling more than 750,000 vehicles in 2023, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration. It is also the largest U.S. port by volume for handling farm and construction machinery, as well as agricultural products."

In addition, a whole host of prominent retailers are very dependent on the Port of Baltimore… Retailers like Home Depot, Bob’s Furniture, IKEA, and Amazon are just some of the companies that use the port to import goods. Other top imports include sugar and gypsum. “This will have an impact for trade all along the East Coast and it will continue until we know how quickly” the port can reopen, said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of the shipping journal Lloyd’s List."

Vessels were already being diverted to New York and down to Virginia on Tuesday, said Meade. “There will be dozens of diversions in the next week and hundreds in the coming months as long as Baltimore is shut down.” This isn’t the end of the world, and shipments can certainly be diverted to other ports.

But we are talking about the 11th largest port in the entire nation, and so this will definitely be a serious blow…"More than 52 million tons of foreign cargo, worth some $80 billion were transported out of the port last year, according to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. The 11th largest port in the nation, Baltimore served an average of 207 calls a month last year, according to the shipping journal Lloyd’s List."

In addition, it is going to take a very long time for the Francis Scott Key Bridge to be rebuilt. As Lara Logan has pointed out, that section of I-695 was the “second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material”…"Second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material now down for 4-5 years – which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material – fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels – that supply chain now crippled."

One expert is projecting that it will take more than two years to rebuild the bridge…"While trade is nimble and will reroute, over the long term the bridge will need to be fundamentally engineered and rebuilt, and that will take years. “It will be in excess of two years,” said Meade, of Lloyd’s List. “There will be significant disruption and cost to this infrastructure project. In 1977, the bridge cost $60 million. Take in inflation and the rapid pace to redesign and build will increase procurement premiums. This will be a very expensive project.”

I would be shocked if it happens that quickly. We shall see. In any event, we are talking about a multi-faceted crisis that is going to be affecting U.S. supply chains for the foreseeable future. At a press conference following the collapse of the bridge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg openly admitted that we are looking at a “major and protracted impact on supply chains”… “There is no question this will be a major and protracted impact on supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference in Baltimore."

I think that this is the first time I have ever agreed with Pete Buttigieg on anything. Sadly, this is just the beginning. In the months ahead, U.S. supply chains will be hit with additional challenges. So if there are things that you are planning to purchase, I would do that now.

Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention. Global supplies of cocoa just keep getting tighter and tighter, and on Tuesday the price of cocoa jumped above $10,000 per metric ton for the first time ever…"Cocoa prices hit a record Tuesday as supply constraints fuel prices higher. Futures for May delivery were up 3.9% at $10,030 per metric ton, marking the first time the commodity breaks above the $10,000 mark. Cocoa has been on a tear this year, soaring nearly 138%.

Difficult weather conditions and disease have affected production in West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The two largest producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have been hit by a combination of heavy rain, dry heat and disease recently."

In January, it was less than half that price. If you love chocolate, stock up on it while you still can. Of course the same thing could be said about countless other things. Do you remember the supply chain problems that we experienced a couple of years ago? Well, what is eventually coming is going to absolutely dwarf that.

Many are using the term “black swan event” to describe the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, but the truth is that we are moving into a time when there will be one “black swan event” after another. So get prepared while there is still an opportunity to do so, because the months and years ahead of us are going to be extremely chaotic."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/