Camberwell, Southwark, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
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Friday, June 20, 2025
"Truth..."
"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth. We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde
"The American Game: Playing and Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War"
"The American Game: Playing and
Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War"
by Edward Curtin
“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”
- Eugene O’Neill, "The Iceman Cometh"
"There is a good chance that very shortly the United States will overtly join its proxy Israel in attacking Iran. Only a fool would be surprised. Plausible deniability only goes so far. Pipe dreams perdure as the nuclear war that could never happen gets closer to happening.
That Donald Trump is a diabolic liar and his administration is composed of depraved war criminals is a fact. That those who bought his no foreign wars bullshit were deluded is a fact. That Trump fully supports the genocidal lunatic Netanyahu is a fact. That the U.S.A. is already supporting Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran is a fact. That the American electorate is always fooled by the linguistic mind control of its presidents is a fact.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” George W. Bush said at a staged pseudo-event on October 7, 2002 as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was all predictable, blatant deception. And the media played along with such an absurdity. Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S. The same is true for Iran today.
Trump is, after all, a United States President. The job’s requirements insist that he be a war criminal at the head of a terrorist state, and that he support the apartheid state of Israel’s killing regime, as the United States has done since its founding – actually long before.
The CIA and its ilk provide the shifting propaganda narratives that take many forms: smooth, blustery, halting, etc., but they are all aimed at creating two minds in the American population by sending mixed messages (a Trump specialty), creating mental double-binds, and using various techniques to mystify people’s experience of reality and truth.
The CIA always liked to attract literary types to its propaganda efforts. Their objective is to create through verbal contradictory word usage a sense of schizoid confusion in the population. To provide pipe dreams for those who feel that their politician will set things right next time around. Or to provide ex post facto justifications for the last president’s innocence.
Think of the bullshit media headlines such as “Trump is weighing his options” or “Trump weighing Involvement” about attacking Iran. As I wrote about Trump and Iran in June 2019 – The War Hoax Redux – in a repeat of what I wrote about Bush and Iraq in February 2003 by simply substituting names:
"As in 1991 and 2003 concerning Iraq, the MSM play along with Trump, who repeatedly says, or has his spokespeople say, that the decision hasn’t been made [to attack Iran] and that the U.S. wants peace. Within a few hours this is contradicted and confusion and uncertainty reign, as planned. Chaos is the name of the game. But everyone in the know knows the decision to attack has been made at some level, especially once the propaganda dummies are all in place. But they pretend, while the media wait with baited breath as they anticipate their countdown to the dramatic moment when they report the incident that will “compel” the U.S. to attack."
Now that Biden has made sure a terrorist runs Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon is rendered weak, allowing Israel full control over their air spaces, and Gaza pulverized with genocide well underway, the pieces are in place for Trump to bomb Iran.
Commentators often blame the actions – like Trump’s vis-à-vis Iran – on pressure from the so-called “deep state.” Excuses abound. But there is no deep state. The official American government is the “deep state.” The use of the term is a prime example of the efficacy of linguistic mind control. The use of words that have contradictory meanings – contronyms – to create untenable double-binds that result in mental checkmate. Create false opposites to frame the mind control.
Innocence – give a sardonic laugh! These are the men who have waged endless wars, overt and covert, for decade upon decade, have dispatched special forces and CIA death squads throughout the world, and support genocide in Gaza and the destruction of Russia as their bosses require. Those who seek the office know this. Only those who are known to pledge allegiance to American imperialism and the love of war are allowed anywhere near the U.S. presidency. The present war on Iran has been long in the making, as has the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Russia, China, etc.
These bloodthirsty hyenas with polished faces come in all varieties, from Slick Willy to Dumb Georgie to Smiling Barack to Gross Don to Malarkey Joe and around and around we go again and again. Each is cast to perform the script – to speak the lingo – appropriate to his actor’s ability and his looks (let’s not forget this), but to serve the same ends. If it were not so, the U.S. would have stopped waging non-stop wars long ago. It’s simple to understand if one retains a smidgeon of logic. If you think otherwise, you are deluded. I will not waste much time explaining why. The historical facts confirm it.
The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that. Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse. It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 36 trillion dollars that will never be repaid. That’s another illusion. But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?
And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world. But that’s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the electoral stage of the masquerade ball every four years. Liars all. But they all speak the double-speak that creates pipe-dreams on the road to nuclear war. Will we ever stop believing them before it is too late?"
"The Middle East"
"The Middle East"
by Martin Armstrong
"Approximately 8,500–9,000 Jews remain in Iran (down from around 100,000 before the 1979 Islamic Revolution). The total population of Iran is roughly 87 million people (as of 2023–2024). Jews comprise approximately 0.01% of Iran’s population. As far as Christians in Iran are concerned, (Armenians & Assyrians), their population is estimated between 100,000 and 150,000. These are primarily members of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. Their numbers have also significantly declined due to emigration over the past decades. If you add the converts from Islam, you end up with roughly 200,000 – 300,000 Christians.
Israel Will Not Win: Israel’s Iron Dome is mostly propaganda. Israel is running critically low on key missile defence interceptors, particularly the Arrow system, amid intensified missile barrages from Iran. Iran also has developed supersonic missiles that can hit Israel in 5 minutes from launch. Netanyahu is a hardline Neocon, and they make decisions based on hatred. The Neocons have not won a single war yet. They had the US in Vietnam and lost. They had us in Afghanistan for 20 years and lost. They have NEVER made a single rational decision yet.
Netanyahu has assumed this would be a 6-day war, and he thought that the US would come to his aid and attack Iran without any consideration that Iran is not Iraq. It is a strategic ally of Russia, China, and North Korea. The American people are not in favor of war. Trump runs the risk of losing his support and is championing the very people who tried to assassinate him and launched countless attempts to legally prevent him from taking office. Why the hell now support the same people who have been stabbing him in the back and obstructing any peace deal with Russia.
Even Matt Gaetz came out today against Trump and war. He pointed out that Israel does not allow IAEA inspector to visit their nuclear program. The IAEA is the world’s centre for cooperation in the nuclear field, promoting the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technology. It works in a wide range of areas, including energy generation, health, food and agriculture, and environmental protection.
Tulsi Gabbard has come out and said that if Trump attacks Iran, she will resign. I hope Trump is bluffing. I can confirm that confidential sources have confirmed that talks between the United States and Iran are indeed still ongoing. Trump has been sucked in by Netanyahu who is a Neocon and has been deeply associated with Bill Kristol who destroyed his own magazine, the Weekly Standard, because he was so anti-Trump all because Trump was anti-war. Now, Trump is listening to Netanyahu? I hope not. Netanyahu KNOWS that Israel could not win this war. They do not even have enough ammo to shoot down all the missiles that Iran has stockpiled, not to mention these supersonic versions.
Tel Aviv: Netanyahu is dangerously putting Israel at risk. The Israeli people do not support him overwhelmingly, and his comments directed at Iran also mention Pakistan. This is not about nuclear weapons. This is like the Weapon Of Mass Destruction in Iraq. This was and is about regime change, which is why he tried to decapitate the leadership and failed. That was his strategy in Gaza and Lebanon. But like taking out Saddam, they do not comprehend what would happen if they did remove the Iranian government. You may see civil uprisings in Egypt and Jordan, and view this as a religious war, and then it gets much worse."
"The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease"
"The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions
Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease"
by Maria Popova
"I had lived thirty good years before enduring my first food poisoning - odds quite fortunate in the grand scheme of things, but miserably unfortunate in the immediate experience of it. I found myself completely incapacitated to erect the pillars of my daily life - too cognitively foggy to read and write, too physically weak to work out or even meditate. The temporary disability soon elevated the assault on my mind and body to a new height of anguish: an intense experience of stress. Even as I consoled myself with Nabokov’s exceptionally florid account of food poisoning, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming malaise that had engulfed me - somehow, a physical illness had completely colored my psychoemotional reality.
This experience, of course, is far from uncommon. Long before scientists began shedding light on how our minds and bodies actually affect one another, an intuitive understanding of this dialogue between the body and the emotions, or feelings, emerged and permeated our very language: We use “feeling sick” as a grab-bag term for both the sensory symptoms - fever, fatigue, nausea - and the psychological malaise, woven of emotions like sadness and apathy.
Pre-modern medicine, in fact, has recognized this link between disease and emotion for millennia. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian Ayurvedic physicians all enlisted the theory of the four humors - blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm - in their healing practices, believing that imbalances in these four visible secretions of the body caused disease and were themselves often caused by the emotions. These beliefs are fossilized in our present language - melancholy comes from the Latin words for “black” (melan) and “bitter bile” (choler), and we think of a melancholic person as gloomy or embittered; a phlegmatic person is languid and impassive, for phlegm makes one lethargic.
And then French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes came along in the seventeenth century, taking it upon himself to eradicate the superstitions that fueled the religious wars of the era by planting the seed of rationalism. But the very tenets that laid the foundation of modern science - the idea that truth comes only from what can be visibly ascertained and proven beyond doubt - severed this link between the physical body and the emotions; those mysterious and fleeting forces, the biological basis of which the tools of modern neuroscience are only just beginning to understand, seemed to exist entirely outside the realm of what could be examined with the tools of rationalism.
For nearly three centuries, the idea that our emotions could impact our physical health remained scientific taboo - setting out to fight one type of dogma, Descartes had inadvertently created another, which we’re only just beginning to shake off. It was only in the 1950s that Austrian-Canadian physician and physiologist Hans Selye pioneered the notion of stress as we now know it today, drawing the scientific community’s attention to the effects of stress on physical health and popularizing the concept around the world. (In addition to his scientific dedication, Selye also understood the branding component of any successful movement and worked tirelessly to include the word itself in dictionaries around the world; today, “stress” is perhaps the word pronounced most similarly in the greatest number of major languages.)
But no researcher has done more to illuminate the invisible threads that weave mind and body together than Dr. Esther Sternberg. Her groundbreaking work on the link between the central nervous system and the immune system, exploring how immune molecules made in the blood can trigger brain function that profoundly affects our emotions, has revolutionized our understanding of the integrated being we call a human self. In the immeasurably revelatory "The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions" (public library), Sternberg examines the interplay of our emotions and our physical health, mediated by that seemingly nebulous yet, it turns out, remarkably concrete experience called stress.
With an eye to modern medicine’s advances in cellular and molecular biology, which have made it possible to measure how our nervous system and our hormones affect our susceptibility to diseases as varied as depression, arthritis, AIDS, and chronic fatigue syndrome, Sternberg writes: "By parsing these chemical intermediaries, we can begin to understand the biological underpinnings of how emotions affect diseases…
The same parts of the brain that control the stress response… play an important role in susceptibility and resistance to inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. And since it is these parts of the brain that also play a role in depression, we can begin to understand why it is that many patients with inflammatory diseases may also experience depression at different times in their lives… Rather than seeing the psyche as the source of such illnesses, we are discovering that while feelings don’t directly cause or cure disease, the biological mechanisms underlying them may cause or contribute to disease. Thus, many of the nerve pathways and molecules underlying both psychological responses and inflammatory disease are the same, making predisposition to one set of illnesses likely to go along with predisposition to the other.
The questions need to be rephrased, therefore, to ask which of the many components that work together to create emotions also affect that other constellation of biological events, immune responses, which come together to fight or to cause disease. Rather than asking if depressing thoughts can cause an illness of the body, we need to ask what the molecules and nerve pathways are that cause depressing thoughts. And then we need to ask whether these affect the cells and molecules that cause disease.
[…]
We are even beginning to sort out how emotional memories reach the parts of the brain that control the hormonal stress response, and how such emotions can ultimately affect the workings of the immune system and thus affect illnesses as disparate as arthritis and cancer. We are also beginning to piece together how signals from the immune system can affect the brain and the emotional and physical responses it controls: the molecular basis of feeling sick. In all this, the boundaries between mind and body are beginning to blur."
Indeed, the relationship between memory, emotion, and stress is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Sternberg’s work. She considers how we deal with the constant swirl of inputs and outputs as we move through the world, barraged by a stream of stimuli and sensations:
"Every minute of the day and night we feel thousands of sensations that might trigger a positive emotion such as happiness, or a negative emotion such as sadness, or no emotion at all: a trace of perfume, a light touch, a fleeting shadow, a strain of music. And there are thousands of physiological responses, such as palpitations or sweating, that can equally accompany positive emotions such as love, or negative emotions such as fear, or can happen without any emotional tinge at all. What makes these sensory inputs and physiological outputs emotions is the charge that gets added to them somehow, somewhere in our brains. Emotions in their fullest sense comprise all of these components. Each can lead into the black box and produce an emotional experience, or something in the black box can lead out to an emotional response that seems to come from nowhere."
Memory, it turns out, is one of the major factors mediating the dialogue between sensation and emotional experience. Our memories of past experience become encoded into triggers that act as switchers on the rail of psychoemotional response, directing the incoming train of present experience in the direction of one emotional destination or another.
Sternberg writes: "Mood is not homogeneous like cream soup. It is more like Swiss cheese, filled with holes. The triggers are highly specific, tripped by sudden trails of memory: a faint fragrance, a few bars of a tune, a vague silhouette that tapped into a sad memory buried deep, but not completely erased. These sensory inputs from the moment float through layers of time in the parts of the brain that control memory, and they pull out with them not only reminders of sense but also trails of the emotions that were first connected to the memory. These memories become connected to emotions, which are processed in other parts of the brain: the amygdala for fear, the nucleus accumbens for pleasure - those same parts that the anatomists had named for their shapes. And these emotional brain centers are linked by nerve pathways to the sensory parts of the brain and to the frontal lobe and hippocampus - the coordinating centers of thought and memory. The same sensory input can trigger a negative emotion or a positive one, depending on the memories associated with it."
This is where stress comes in - much like memory mediates how we interpret and respond to various experiences, a complex set of biological and psychological factors determine how we respond to stress. Some types of stress can be stimulating and invigorating, mobilizing us into action and creative potency; others can be draining and incapacitating, leaving us frustrated and hopeless. This dichotomy of good vs. bad stress, Sternberg notes, is determined by the biology undergirding our feelings - by the dose and duration of the stress hormones secreted by the body in response to the stressful stimulus. She explains the neurobiological machinery behind this response:
" As soon as the stressful event occurs, it triggers the release of the cascade of hypothalamic, pituitary, and adrenal hormones - the brain’s stress response. It also triggers the adrenal glands to release epinephrine, or adrenaline, and the sympathetic nerves to squirt out the adrenaline-like chemical norepinephrine all over the body: nerves that wire the heart, and gut, and skin. So, the heart is driven to beat faster, the fine hairs of your skin stand up, you sweat, you may feel nausea or the urge to defecate. But your attention is focused, your vision becomes crystal clear, a surge of power helps you run - these same chemicals released from nerves make blood flow to your muscles, preparing you to sprint.
All this occurs quickly. If you were to measure the stress hormones in your blood or saliva, they would already be increased within three minutes of the event. In experimental psychology tests, playing a fast-paced video game will make salivary cortisol increase and norepinephrine spill over into venous blood almost as soon as the virtual battle begins. But if you prolong the stress, by being unable to control it or by making it too potent or long-lived, and these hormones and chemicals still continue to pump out from nerves and glands, then the same molecules that mobilized you for the short haul now debilitate you."
These effects of stress exist on a bell curve - that is, some is good, but too much becomes bad: As the nervous system secretes more and more stress hormones, performance increases, but up to a point; after that tipping point, performance begins to suffer as the hormones continue to flow. What makes stress “bad” - that is, what makes it render us more pervious to disease - is the disparity between the nervous system and immune system’s respective pace. Sternberg explains:
"The nervous system and the hormonal stress response react to a stimulus in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes. The immune system takes parts of hours or days. It takes much longer than two minutes for immune cells to mobilize and respond to an invader, so it is unlikely that a single, even powerful, short-lived stress on the order of moments could have much of an effect on immune responses. However, when the stress turns chronic, immune defenses begin to be impaired. As the stressful stimulus hammers on, stress hormones and chemicals continue to pump out. Immune cells floating in this milieu in blood, or passing through the spleen, or growing up in thymic nurseries never have a chance to recover from the unabated rush of cortisol. Since cortisol shuts down immune cells’ responses, shifting them to a muted form, less able to react to foreign triggers, in the context of continued stress we are less able to defend and fight when faced with new invaders. And so, if you are exposed to, say, a flu or common cold virus when you are chronically stressed out, your immune system is less able to react and you become more susceptible to that infection."
Extended exposure to stress, especially to a variety of stressors at the same time - any combination from the vast existential menu of life-events like moving, divorce, a demanding job, the loss of a loved one, and even ongoing childcare - adds up a state of extreme exhaustion that leads to what we call burnout.
Sternberg writes: "Members of certain professions are more prone to burnout than others - nurses and teachers, for example, are among those at highest risk. These professionals are faced daily with caregiving situations in their work lives, often with inadequate pay, inadequate help in their jobs, and with too many patients or students in their charge. Some studies are beginning to show that burnt-out patients may have not only psychological burnout, but also physiological burnout: a flattened cortisol response and inability to respond to any stress with even a slight burst of cortisol. In other words, chronic unrelenting stress can change the stress response itself. And it can change other hormone systems in the body as well.
One of the most profound such changes affects the reproductive system - extended periods of stress can shut down the secretion of reproductive hormones in both men and women, resulting in lower fertility. But the effects are especially perilous for women - recurring and extended episodes of depression result in permanent changes in bone structure, increasing the risk of osteoporosis. In other words, we register stress literally in our bones."
But stress isn’t a direct causal function of the circumstances we’re in - what either amplifies or ameliorates our experience of stress is, once again, memory. Sternberg writes: "Our perception of stress, and therefore our response to it, is an ever-changing thing that depends a great deal on the circumstances and settings in which we find ourselves. It depends on previous experience and knowledge, as well as on the actual event that has occurred. And it depends on memory, too."
The most acute manifestation of how memory modulates stress is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. For striking evidence of how memory encodes past experience into triggers, which then catalyze present experience, Sternberg points to research by psychologist Rachel Yehuda, who found both Holocaust survivors and their first-degree relatives - that is, children and siblings - exhibited a similar hormonal stress response.
This, Sternberg points out, could be a combination of nature and nurture - the survivors, as young parents for whom the trauma was still fresh, may well have subconsciously taught their children a common style of stress-responsiveness; but it’s also possible that these automatic hormonal stress responses permanently changed the parents’ biology and were transmitted via DNA to their children. Once again, memory encodes stress into our very bodies. Sternberg considers the broader implications:
"Stress need not be on the order of war, rape, or the Holocaust to trigger at least some elements of PTSD. Common stresses that we all experience can trigger the emotional memory of a stressful circumstance - and all its accompanying physiological responses. Prolonged stress - such as divorce, a hostile workplace, the end of a relationship, or the death of a loved one - can all trigger elements of PTSD."
Among the major stressors - which include life-events expected to be on the list, such as divorce and the death of a loved one - is also one somewhat unexpected situation, at least to those who haven’t undergone it: moving. Sternberg considers the commonalities between something as devastating as death and something as mundane as moving:
"One is certainly loss - the loss of someone or something familiar. Another is novelty - finding oneself in a new and unfamiliar place because of the loss. Together these amount to change: moving away from something one knows and toward something one doesn’t. An unfamiliar environment is a universal stressor to nearly all species, no matter how developed or undeveloped."
In the remainder of the thoroughly illuminating "The Balance Within," Sternberg goes on to explore the role of interpersonal relationships in both contributing to stress and shielding us from it, how the immune system changes our moods, and what we can do to harness these neurobiological insights in alleviating our experience of the stressors with which every human life is strewn."
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Full screen highly recommended.
“Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
By Melanie Curtin
“Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. So here’s a science-backed one: make a playlist of the 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one’s health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.
Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.
According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- “Weightless”- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.
Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created “Weightless”, Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or influenza.
In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you’ve got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.
Of the top track, Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, “‘Weightless’ was so effective, many women became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous.” So don’t drive while listening to these, but do take advantage of them:
10. “We Can Fly,” by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar)
9. “Canzonetta Sull’aria,” by Mozart
8. “Someone Like You,” by Adele
7. “Pure Shores,” by All Saints
6. “Please Don’t Go,” by Barcelona
5. “Strawberry Swing,” by Coldplay
4. “Watermark,” by Enya
3. “Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix),” by DJ Shah
2. “Electra,” by Airstream
1. “Weightless,” by Marconi Union
I made a public playlist of all of them on Spotify that runs about 50 minutes (it’s also downloadable).”
"The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Stress Today"
"The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Stress Today"
by John Wilder
"I’ve noticed recently that everyone I come into contact with, even retired folks, is in a state of stress. They act like they’re just one more event away from exploding like a blue-haired GloboLeftist who can’t get gender affirmation care for the unborn baby that she’s getting ready to abort and don’t get her started about Cheeto® Hitler. Even your correspondent, me, has occasionally had a foggy head and the vague sense I’m exactly one email away from my brain displaying 404.
In 2025, stress isn’t just a feeling - it’s a weapon. Between 24/7 news cycles on CNN® screaming doom to sell you toothpaste (even though we know that nothing ever happens), social media algorithms feeding outrage to increase the amount of time spent on their “platforms”, and a world that expects everyone to hustle like a gerbil on meth, stress seems like it’s planned. It might be.
The system loves stressed-out people. Big Pharma® has got a pill for every flavor of freakout - anxiety, insomnia, and that “I’m just not myself” vibe. They make bank on misery, raking in billions with no real incentive to solve the actual underlying issue: A clear-headed patient isn’t good for business. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy - just a system that profits when we’re down.
Don’t get me wrong: meds have their place for some folks, but slapping a prescription on stress is like putting a Band-Aid™ on a Kennedy. Stress is a bully, and I’ve never beaten a bully by giving in. Sometimes I need an overly elaborate scheme involving marbles and a parade float.
Why Stress Wins (and Why It Doesn’t Have To): Stress isn’t just a bad day -it’s a parasite that eats what modern chaos does to people. It’s the ding of a work email at midnight, the headline about the next apocalypse, or the coworker who passive-aggressively “just needs one more thing.” Stress multiplies the events, making a minor blip in a day into spittle-inducing ragebait. But there good news: stress only wins if I let it. I can’t erase it - life’s messy, but I get to choose how to fight. These following strategies are my weapons. They’re simple, mostly free, and don’t come with a side effect of “may cause existential dread” like the relationship I had with my ex-wife.
Get Outside: Touch Grass: Getting time where I am physically away from anything but reality is nice. I can go to my backyard, nearby Mirkwood Forest, or even just sitting in my hot tub with a stogie staring at the night sky. Something about trees, fresh air, and dirt reorients us. We have spent most of history outside, and I think that is why camping is popular – it’s simplification of life and removal from the everyday experience.
Action: Go out and hit the hot tub with a Macanudo®. Or, walk outside for 20 minutes daily, no phone. Bonus points if I spot a meteor or a squirrel riding a rottweiler.
Meditation and Prayer: Meditation and prayer sounds like it’s for hippies in hemp pants and hemp shirts using hemp toilet paper and smoking hemp (they’d pray to a bong if it had Wi-Fi), but, for me, it’s just calming down and tuning out the buzz of thoughts that I’ve got going in the background. Often as I’m going to sleep, I relax, focus on my breath, and pray – often the Lord’s Prayer. Or I count backwards from 500. Results? Five minutes of quiet breathing before bed, and I felt like I’d hacked my own head. No candles, no chanting, no sweaty Asian country with cheap heroin. Nope. Just me telling my worries to shut up.
Action: Five minutes of focused breathing tonight. Unless I fall asleep first.
Laugh It Off: Laughter is universal in its ability to erase stress. For me, writing this blog and prepping these memes and jokes often makes me laugh out loud. It’s fun.
Action: Find something funny. Laugh. Daily. Many people think watching an actress pretending to be an old lady falling down is funny. My weakness is that because I spend so much time on humor is that for me to find it funny it has to be a real old lady falling.
Move Your Body: Stress loves inactivity. Doing anything physical is a good start. Lifting weights. Cleaning the living room. Hitting the elliptical trainer. If it gets my blood moving faster than just sitting there on the couch, it works. No gym membership needed.
Action: Do 15 minutes of anything. Make it fun, not a chore.
Write It Down: Why do I write? Well, for one reason is to eliminate stress. I rarely ever feel stress when I write. It’s an activity that, for me, gets my mind focused and flowing so that I can put the right words down on paper the screen. YMMV, but if you try, remember: nobody’s grading your grammar. Burn the page if you want; it’s your call.
Action: Write for five minutes. About whatever.
That’s it. That’s what I do. Most people think I’m fairly chill, and find it odd that I don’t panic about things. Frankly, for me there aren’t that many things that do cause me to panic because I buy cigars in bulk and generally have a six-month supply on hand. I mean, what else is there to stress out about? It’s not like I have blue hair."
"When They Can't Afford Walmart"
"When They Can't Afford Walmart"
by Jeff Thomas
"Until the 1970's, most goods consumed by the US were actually made there. Americans were proud of this fact - and rightfully so. Although many items were imported from other countries, the bulk of goods were produced in the US. Hondas and Volkswagens were still referred to as "foreign cars."
Then (to my best recollection), whenever I visited the US in the 80's I noticed that many goods that had traditionally been American-made were beginning to be show labels that read, "Made in Taiwan", "Made in Korea", and, increasingly, "Made in China."Not all Americans seemed completely comfortable with this, but I didn't notice a major revolt against it either. After all, the prices were low.
Then, in the 90's, the doors were thrown open completely. It seemed that every type of article was being made in Asia, and "Made in USA"was becoming a thing of the past. Americans appeared to be somewhat concerned, but the mighty Walmart changed everything.
It seemed that everything that Americans needed could be found in Walmart. Nearly all of it came from China, and it was all incredibly inexpensive. At that point, it looked as though America collectively tossed aside the stars and stripes and drove down to Walmart to fill up the shopping cart. Any remnant of a belief in "Buy American"was dispensed with.
“Coming to a Country Near You: Hyperinflation”: America is riding a runaway train away from productivity and toward dependency on other countries for the great majority of its products. In the meantime, it is rapidly inflating its currency. Yet very few Americans seem to understand the significance of this. One can almost picture the advertisements: "Coming to a country near you: Hyperinflation". Yet, Americans that I talk to firmly state that there is no chance of hyperinflation occurring because... (are you ready for it?)... "They could never let that happen. It would ruin the country."
Yes, it would ruin the country - they've got that right. However, hyperinflation is all but unavoidable at this point. And when it does occur, those $15 dress shirts at Walmart are going to rise to $30, then $60, then...? Bed linen that sells for $50 will double to $100, then redouble to $200.
Where Will It Stop? Quite honestly, I haven't a clue where it will stop and I don't think I'm alone. The US is in for a wild ride in the near-term to medium-term future, and no one truly knows just how wild a ride it will be. The Fed's policy to inflate dramatically is a major factor, but not the only one. China is also inflating, particularly with regard to wages. This will be felt in the cost of their export goods. The train is clearly speeding up, not slowing down.
One thing is certain: the chain stores that you see in every mall across the country that are now selling dress shirts starting at $50 will have long closed by the time dress shirts are $50 at Walmart. Along the way, wages in the US may decline, may stay the same or may increase slightly, but it is unlikely in the extreme that they will keep pace with hyperinflation. That will mean that Americans will increasingly leave Walmart with fewer items in their carts, then, no items in their carts, and possibly may stop going altogether, as the price of gasoline will also be on the rise.
We can predict that hyperinflation in the US is quite likely, but we cannot predict its degree. Surely, it is possible that Americans may reach the point that Walmart will become the only affordable place to shop. But at least the country may still function on these terms. The real danger would be whether hyperinflation would become so extreme that Americans cannot afford Walmart. Is this Chicken Little talking? No, I'm afraid not.
Tornado on the Horizon: The great majority of people in any country have difficulty understanding the nature of hyperinflation, since very few have experienced it. They somehow imagine money as coming from a tap that the government may turn on or shut off. It is not. Hyperinflation, once created, takes on a life of its own and is by no means controllable. Like a tornado, it can't be stopped once it exists; you simply have to wait until it dies a natural death.
Based on the likely timeline of the above, we can say that a tornado is already on the horizon and is therefore a very real threat. Americans should now be bringing in the lawn furniture and closing the window shutters. It is not yet time to get the family into the storm cellar, but that eventuality is likely very soon.
As this article lays bare, when Americans can no longer afford Walmart, it’s not just a sign of rising prices—it’s the bell tolling the decline of a once-mighty economic engine. The warning signs are clear: runaway inflation, crumbling confidence in the dollar, and a government growing more desperate by the day. If you're still waiting for “official confirmation” that something is wrong, you may be too late by the time it arrives. Any American (and, for that matter, anyone presently living in the First World who is reading the warning signs) would be well-advised to sort out a safe place to weather the storm. Once the storm is on the doorstep, it will be too late to prepare."
Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up At Sam's Club"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/20/25
"Stocking Up At Sam's Club"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Different Russia, 6/20/25
"Shopping in Russia 2025:
Food Haul with Prices in Local Supermarket"
Comments here:
"Iran: 'Ready For Years Of War'; Israel: 'They Penetrated'"
Full screen recommended.
Mahmood OH, AM6/20/25
"Iran: 'Ready For Years Of War';
Israel: 'They Penetrated'"
Comments here:
o
Dialogue Works, AM6/20/25
"Dmitry Orlov: U.S. About to Attack Iran,
Military Clash Imminent?"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Anxiety Attack"
"Anxiety Attack"
by Jim Kunstler
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but
to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius
"You must have noticed by now how this Fourth Turning bidness disorders the collective mind. The churning zeitgeist is hard on the nerves, while something strange is birthed by mankind, the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. Everybody’s got a story, and most of them are pretty spooky - A-I Globalist hell... de-pop and neo-slavery... chemtrail death... lizard people...caliphate on-the-march across Western Civ... World War Three... escape to Mars... Mercy!
The last thing you might imagine is a tranquil evening in the town square among happy and prosperous neighbors, the dogs frisking and the children chasing each other as lights begin to twinkle against the lovely violet sky. Rather, you have to wonder just when is that hard rain a’gonna fall? When will some obdurate enemy try to bust a cap in your country’s ass? And at the center of this psychic maelstrom, the provocative visage of Mr. Trump.
So, let’s stipulate that it’s natural to be alarmed by events. But must you lose your mind? Many did during the Covid set-up, and they have not recovered. Most particularly the political Left. The Covid operation was supposed to rid the world of DJ Trump for good, and it flopped. What it accomplished politically for four years was to demonstrate that the Left cannot be trusted to run our national affairs. That, and the cumulative failures of lawfare, have made the Left crazier than ever - while the Democratic Party goes broke and bleeds out support-wise.
Meanwhile, the political Right struggles to hold things together, especially the morale of the people. The great national megaphones - CNN, The New York Times, et al. - are no help at all. They only multiply the mental disorder. And they will do everything possible to undermine the efforts of MAGA to reform a system that foundered under corruption and delusion. Where there is not gridlock these days, chaos breaks out...violence of action and opinion.
The focus of all this angst for the moment is Israel. Suspicion runs deep that Israel “owns” America, bends us to its will, treats us like a mere lackey in its quest to dominate the world. It does this, they say, through AIPAC, its chief lobbyist, stuffing money into every pocket and every campaign treasure-chest in DC. In reality, political payoff-wise, AIPAC, at $3.3-million (according to OpenSecrets.org) doesn’t hold a candle to the National Association of Realtors at $63.5-million, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, at $30-million, and the US Chamber of Commerce, at $29.6-million.
Of course, the AIPAC suspicion tends to redound upon plain-old, age-old hatin’ on the Jews. (Full disclosure, yours truly is one.) It’s true enough, for such a low percentage of the US population, Jews seem to run an awful lot of things here: Wall Street firms, Ivy League universities, medical research, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the news media. How to account for that? Well... it is said that in the shtetls of old Europe, the richest fathers married off their daughters to the smartest young men in the village. Hence, their offspring sailed into Ellis Island with a certain advantage. It could be as simple as that. What else might it be? Luciferian magic, some seem to think.
So now, obviously, Israel is engaged in trying to beat the crap out of Iran in order to persuade them to discontinue that country’s quest for deliverable nukes. Every other means of persuasion has failed, you understand, while Iran has never ceased to advertise its wish to “wipe Israel off the map” - a leitmotif not subject to disambiguation. Strange to relate, this has utterly inflamed the political Left against Israel and the Jews. Strange especially because until the day-before-yesterday the political Left in America was dominated by Jewish orgs, Jewish money, and Jewish individuals.
As we speak, Jewish Democratic Party lawyers run the Lawfare endeavor: Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Benjamin Wittes, Michael Bromwich, Brooke Goldstein (Exec Director of The Lawfare Project org). Marc Elias has served as the Left’s chief election law finagler through three national elections, while Norm Eisen coached Special Counsel Jack Smith, New York AG Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in mounting their cases against Donald Trump.
Now, ironically-to-the-max, The Lawfare project is battling against the wild outbreak of antisemitism on Ivy League campuses (surprise, surprise) - Harvard, in particular, where the antisemitic frolics are presided over by the university’s Jewish president, Alan Garber. So, now it’s Jew-on-Jew, which is just another angle on the political Left eating itself alive. In case you’re wondering, I consider the Jewish lawfare ninjas a disgrace to my ethnic group, for the simple reason that their years’ long exploits against Mr. Trump have been altogether garishly dishonest. The lawfare gang has done much more damage to our country than AIPAC ever has.
And also now, at this inflection point in the Fourth Turning, Mr. Trump stands by in Israel’s campaign to put Iran’s nuke project out-of-business. This dilemma has inflamed both ends of the political spectrum. Looks like Mr. Trump is very reluctant to commit the US to an act of war. He is apparently unconvinced that our bunker-buster MOABs can successfully penetrate Iran’s nuclear Fordo mountain stronghold. For the moment, he is playing for time, probably hoping that Israel alone can “finish the job” (de-nuke Iran) somehow without US intervention. There is even some reasonable hope that Iran’s mullah theocracy can be tossed out, at best by the Iranian’s themselves.
Israel is much-resented for beating up on its enemies. It left Gaza for dead after the horrific Oct 7, 2023, rape, murder, and hostage attack. The American Left has labeled Israel “Hitler 2.0” for that. The American Left is insane of course. The news media is working the story hard that Israel is now hated by everybody in the world, even Ol’ Tucker Carlson. The Jewish lawfare ninjas are just layin’ low on this one, which seems a bit churlish for such otherwise combative punks. Only Alan Dershowitz dares speak up for Israel, and he’s not associated with the Left anymore. It remains for Mr. Trump to keep a clear head about this while everybody else runs around with his and her hair on fire.
I will make a bold prediction: Iran will be successfully de-nuked. The world will be better for it. Eventually, world opinion about Israel will shift. The world will be grateful that Israel dared to take on this problem. Eventually, too, the lawfare ninjas will find themselves in court - but, this time, sitting at the defendant’s table on a seditious conspiracy rap. That will toast my bagel."
A Replying Comment: No, Jim, now the whole world sees very clearly exactly what a psychopathically deranged, inbred, genocidal abomination Zionism truly is, they will be and are grateful to Iran for finally crushing the life from this "cancer on humanity", as it's been called. And these creatures call Palestinians "human animals", and everyone else is Amalek to be killed by command of their God? 19,000 CHILDREN slaughtered in Gaza, countless other well documented examples! "Court", you say? Yes, there must be a Nuremberg type court for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for the surviving monsters, who should rightly receive the same penalty the Nazis did after conviction. And it should all be broadcast live for all the world to see... And that's MY bold prediction...
- CP, and I don't give a damn who doesn't like it...
You want the truth? Here you go, Jim, explain this away:
"Red Alert! Trump May Nuke Iran?! Psy-op? U.S. Will Enter War In 24 Hours - Seymour Hersch"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 6/19/25
"Red Alert! Trump May Nuke Iran?! Psy-op?
U.S. Will Enter War In 24 Hours - Seymour Hersch"
Comments here:
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Gerald Celente, "Iran's War Raging; Oil Prices Spike; Crash Coming"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/19/25
"Iran's War Raging; Oil Prices Spike; Crash Coming"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Trump Pulls Back; Chinese Warships Arrive; Iran: “No Ceasefire”
Full screen recommended.
Mahmood OD, 6/19/25
"Trump Pulls Back; Chinese Warships Arrive;
Iran: “No Ceasefire”
Comments here:
"Oil Price Apocalypse and Global Reset When War Starts? w/Doomberg"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 6/19/25
"Oil Price Apocalypse and Global Reset
When War Starts? w/Doomberg"
Comments here:
"People Can't Afford Food To Buy Groceries But They Have Nice Jewelry"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/19/25
"People Can't Afford Food To Buy Groceries
But They Have Nice Jewelry"
Comments here:
"Iran Is Leading The Battle For Civilization Against Savagery"
George Galloway, 6/19/25
"Iran Is Leading The Battle
For Civilization Against Savagery"
"'Netanyahu is one of the great killers in human history.' As Lowkey
details the perfidy, treachery and collaboration of Middle East leaders with Israel."
Comments here:
"A Very Special Musical Interlude"
Look at the posts below...Every day we're hopelessly saddened and discouraged at just how truly bad it really is, and nothing we can do about it. Of necessity we need to be aware of these things, but it's not and never will be enjoyable. Then, as now, you need a short break away from it all, and this very special musical interlude is precisely that. Relax, enjoy...
Now and then, very rarely, you stumble upon something simply extraordinary, something that's just so astonishingly, magically beautiful and well done it's unbelievable. This is one of those times... Savor these wonderful images with sound on...
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging of Tuesday Afternoon"
The Elves sing of the beauty of Tuesday Afternoon.
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging Of Nights In White Satin"
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging Of Forever Autumn"
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging Of Your Wildest Dreams"
o
Dark Legend YouTube Channel
Enjoy the many wonderful videos here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
"Question..."
“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like – people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore – to control your life? How long?”
- Andy Stanley
“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we’d had the chance to talk before this,” he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. “There’s a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office – ‘There is no grief like the grief that does not speak’ – and it’s true. I’ve found that keeping pain inside doesn’t give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you’re strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn’t heal emotional wounds, and you don’t want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That’s how people self-destruct.”
- Laura Wiess
"Are People Really Stupid?"
“All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about
as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo.”
- Morris Berman
"Are People Really Stupid?"
by Fred Russell
"On the face of things, judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds, what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers.
The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren't, who or what has held them back?
Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.
It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain.
The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of experts and analysts who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a credo of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.
Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.
Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today's man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing."
Apologies to armadillos for this comparison.
o
"Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?''
- Thomas Sowell
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"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell
○
"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." - Will Durant
○
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
- Thomas Sowell
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