Waltham Cross, Hertford, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, April 25, 2024
"In These Downbeat Times..."
"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each others throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."
- Cornel West
The Poet: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
"Ulysses"
"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
○
Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"
"The Champ"
"The Champ"
by CP
"Ding, ding, ding, you hear the bell for the start of the fight, hear the crowd, noisy, excited to see this rematch between you and Life. You're here, and still the Champ, right? Fought this guy so many times before, always beat him, too, though you took many a beating yourself in the process, each fight a little tougher, taking a little more out of you each time. You meet in the center of the ring... damn, has this guy grown somehow? He looks bigger, more muscled, and has a real confident look in his eye. So what? You're the Champ, still standing, right? Let'sget it on!
Ding, ding, ding, you meet him in the center of the ring, toe to toe, jabbing, bobbing and weaving, feeling each other out. He seems faster than you remember, while your own punches are a hair slower, not quite able to connect solidly, while his land solidly, crisply, heavily. He lands a tremendous body shot to your side, knocking the air right out of you, and you clinch him desperately, sucking in as much air as you can while he hammers away at you, your forearms blocking most, but not all, of those heavy, heavy punches.
Ding, ding, ding, the bell ends the round and you sit on your stool, hearing the trainers tell you how to fight this guy, "Don't clinch with him, he's too strong, he'll bust you up!" "Dance, man, side to side, bob and weave, don't give him anything to hit! Jab and dance away, jab, jab, jab..." words you've heard so many times before. You think of previous bouts with this guy, the loss of a job when you had a family to support, the bitter divorce, the deaths of loved ones, and every time he came wanting to knock your head off, but your will power, training and instincts always kept you standing at the end, still the Champ, right? But this time, something's not right, something's different somehow.
Yeah, time's gone by, not so young or strong as you once were, not as fast, don't recover as fast, but haven't been taken out yet, right? And everybody knows the rules, the only way he wins is to knock you out, you just gotta hang on, take his best shots and give him all you got until that bell rings for the end of the fight, and if you're still there, still standing, you win. Still the Champ, right? Round after round after round...
Ding, ding, ding, last round, you're feeling so tired, legs almost gone, no snap to the punches, but he looks fresh, strong, and bores in with a mean intent, landing hammer blows, knocking you back towards the corner where he wants you, you try dancing sideways, he cuts off the ring, no escape that way, and keeps coming in. A thunderous right cross lands smack on your chin, everything turns black for a second, legs about to go as the instincts kick in and you throw your body back out of the way, sucking in as much air as you can, shaking your head to clear the blurriness, but you're in the corner now, where he wants you, and here he comes with a vengeance, fast, strong, wanting the knockout, but you're still standing, still the Champ, right? Right?
Ding, ding, ding..."
"The West That Was," Part 3
"America in the 1880s"
Full screen recommended.
"The West That Was," Part 3
by Paul Rosenberg
19th Century America: "If we wish to grasp American life in the 19th century, it’s probably best to start by understanding that when America was young, it had no myth. Once we really understand that, the rest falls into place fairly easily. Here’s how Alexis de Tocqueville (in National Character of Americans) described it in the 1830s: "Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him."
We all know that national leaders promote myths about their glorious nation: one or more “uniquenesses” that give the people of their nation a fast, easy and noble identity. And assuredly American myths have been promoted all through our lifetimes. But in its early years, America had no such myth. America was a rebellious upstart; a collection of violent and uncivilized farmers who made so much trouble for the British that they eventually pulled out. Some Americans saw themselves as heroic, but educated and powerful people worldwide considered them semi-barbaric.
And so, Americans couldn’t claim glorious ancestors or much anything else to gain fast and cheap self-esteem; they’d have to earn it… they’d have to show the rest of the world that self-governing peasants could out-produce nations guided by enlightened aristocrats. And so the minds of Americans were focused on actual production, education and progress instead of national myths.
This lack of a myth – this focus on reality and legitimate production – combined with room for expansion, an influx of self-motivated immigrants and other factors to forge a broadly shared belief in self-generated progress.
As always there were difficulties and ugliness. America just barely made it into the 19th century intact. Between the writing of the constitution and Jefferson’s presidency things were quite uncertain and a rapacious group of speculators, legislators and business people nearly captured the entire operation; certainly they damaged it. But, limping its way through, American society began to solidify by the late 1820s and moved forward from there.
Laying aside the problem of slavery (and we should remember that slavery was upheld and enforced by all three branches of the US government, then unraveled by law-breaking Christians), we find a time of freedom and immense progress. Here are some of the factors that made this era special: A lack of central banks.
The Second Bank of The United States ended in 1836 and any concerns for bank regulation fell to the various states. Under the “free banking” laws of 1837, anyone who filled out the paperwork and made a deposit with their state was given a banking charter. More than half the states had such laws. In the 1860s several more attempts at centralization were made, and a “national bank” system was created, but this was still not a central bank. In the end gold and silver were the reserve currencies of the day and goods tended to be priced accordingly. The national government tried various methods of regaining monopoly power over banking, but never really got it until 1914, meaning that this era was mainly free of central banking.
Room to expand.
During this era there was almost always new and fertile land available. If you didn’t like the rulership being imposed upon you, you could simply move west, and so many people did. There were hundreds of Utopian communities created. There’s far more to this story than can be recounted here, but it involved people getting away from expectations and getting very busy with experiments in living.
Full screen recommended.
"Here's What It Was Really Like
To Pioneer On The Oregon Trail"
"Trailblazing is a word we use these days to describe people who have laid the path for future generations. But between 1811 and 1840, fur traders and trappers physically and literally laid the path of the famous Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail was only passable by foot and by horseback, but by 1836 the first wagon train was organized from Independence, Missouri, and reached as far as Willamette Valley in Oregon. The trail covered the states of Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. But these trails were no hike up a scenic route; it was a trail into the wild unknown for many of these pioneers. Here’s what it was really like the pioneer on the Oregon Trail."
Comments here:
Railroads. Railroads were built more of less everywhere during this era, greatly empowering commerce and creating innumerable new communities along their routes. Along with them came telegraph stations and much more. America life spread out and blossomed, all of it driven by willful individuals, not by the tops of hierarchies.
Self-education. Perhaps because the enlightened types of Europe looked down upon them, or perhaps because conditions supported it, Americans, even on the distant frontier, were eager readers… eager self-educators. For example, Blackstone’s commentaries on the common law, throughout this era, were outsold only by the Bible. And de Tocqueville, in "Democracy in America", notes this: "There is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin."
Added to this was the almost universal habit of Church on Sundays. One crucial aspect of this was that it exposed the vast majority of the populace to serious thoughts for at least one hour every week. And if you read the sermons of the era you’ll find most are rather surprising in the strength of their intellectual content. On top of that, all members of the community sat with one another as peers at church. There were exceptions, of course (some of the Puritans of New England, for example), but in the main this held, and served as a glue for the communities.
Talent unchained.
Talent, in 19th century America, had no regulatory hoops to jump through. If, for example, you were a bright young man with an interest in medicine, you did not have to spend ten years in various schools before you could treat patients; rather, you had to convince the existing medical doctors that you were competent. (This was usually done with some sort of apprenticeship, and the model held for lawyers and engineers as well.)
An anti-slavery hero we covered in an issue of FMP Classic was such a bright young man. His formal education had ended by the time he was twelve, and yet he was a respected surgeon when he was still 23 years old. Certainly he was an unusual talent, but still he did this, illustrating our point: talent was not unnaturally restrained throughout this era.
We could also discuss Thomas Edison, the great inventor of the age, whose education ended at the fifth grade, or Abraham Lincoln, who became a highly sought-after lawyer, having been self-educated in a rural cabin. This was a time in which your abilities were not restrained by bureaucrats “keeping people safe.”
Last Words: 19th century America was an exceptionally free and productive time. Consequently, the standard of living rocketed upward through it. To whatever extent possible, I’d like to reclaim many characteristics of this era. I’ll leave you with a few more passages from Alexis de Tocqueville’s, "Democracy in America," based upon his extensive travels in 1831:
The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.
Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
In America, the means available to the authorities to uncover crime and to arrest criminals are small in number… However, I doubt whether crime evades punishment less often in any other country…Everyone feels involved in providing evidence of the offense and in apprehending the offender… I saw inhabitants of a county where a major crime had been perpetrated spontaneously form committees with the aim of arresting the guilty man and handing him over to the courts. In Europe, the criminal is a luckless fellow, fighting to save his life from the authorities; the population, to a degree, watches as he struggles. In America, he is an enemy of the human race and has everyone entirely against him."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Foreclosure Frenzy - Unfinished Projects Surge!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 4/25/24
"Foreclosure Frenzy - Unfinished Projects Surge!"
"We just heard about a building that is 93 stories tall in the Bronx.
The only problem is it’s not going to be completed.
Now it’s got a foreclosure date to it. Who is next?"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Different Kind Of Dumb"
"Different Kind Of Dumb"
The US has just spent $95 billion it didn’t have for benefits it will
never get. A conventional cost-benefit analysis reveals huge,
real costs and unlikely or imponderable benefits.
by Bill Bonner
Dublin, Ireland - "Yesterday, the question - are China’s deciders as dumb as US deciders? - was left open. It seems almost axiomatic that the answer is ‘yes.’ But it might be a different kind of dumb.
We all are human...all too human, as Nietzsche put it. Fear, greed, jealousy, hate, the lust for power, conniving, generosity, patriotism - the basic elements are always there. But power structures - such as the Post-WWII world order - change. So, today... we put aside right or wrong, good or bad, axis, schmaxis...evil, schmevil... and look at what kind of change might be coming.
In America’s latest ‘foreign aid’ bill, we find many of the ‘negative’ features of the human character. Larceny, Corruption, Delusion, Stupidity, Hubris - it’s all there. The nature of its dumbness is routine; the level of it is perhaps extraordinary.
Russian Repo: As for the larceny, the measure included a Repo section that allowed the feds to steal property that is owned by Russians. It is as if, in response to the US invasion of Iraq, France had seized Americans’ bank accounts in Paris.
The Corruption follows soon enough. The effect of the measure is really to raise the bid for US-made weapons. The money goes from the US to the deciders in Israel, Taiwan and the Ukraine. They skim off some for themselves. The Taiwanese take a little. The Ukrainians take a lot. The rest goes back to the US firepower industry, whence some of it makes its way to the “think tanks” that lobby... and politicians who vote... surprise!... for more war.
As for the canny Israelites... the US in WWII spent 43% of GDP on defense. Luxury consumer items almost disappeared from the shelves. Americans tightened up their belts to win the war. And now, “Israel’s very survival is at stake,” says Mike Johnson. But for all the talk of an ‘existential battle,’ the Israelis don’t seem especially concerned. They spend only 5.3% of GDP on their military, relying on Trump, Biden, Johnson et al. to provide the money they need.
What’s in it for the US taxpayer? We don’t know. But if the Palestinians had the kind of political power in the US that the Israelis have, we’d be sending artillery and planes to them, rather than to their enemies. The US government has been bought.
Democracy Delusion: Then, there is the Delusion... that Ukraine is a model democracy and that by sending it more money the Ukraine will win the war and the world will be a better place. Even the Ukrainians don’t believe it. In WWII Americans lined up at recruiting offices, eager to ‘do their part.’ Not so in the Ukraine. The New York Times: "In Ukraine’s West, Draft Dodgers Run, and Swim, to Avoid the War."
Stupidity. We don’t know the future any better than Johnson, Graham, Frum, Biden, Clinton or Trump. But anyone with any historical, military, or cultural perspective knows that there’s always more to the story. Zelensky has banned eleven opposition parties, seized control of TV news coverage, cancelled elections, prohibited speaking Russian and persecuted Orthodox Christians.
What kind of democracy is that? Is Putin really planning to ‘roll over Europe?’ Where is the evidence? More to the point, is there any reason for Americans to give a damn or a dollar who wins the battle for the Russian speaking provinces of Ukraine?
The US has just spent $95 billion it didn’t have for benefits it will never get. A conventional cost-benefit analysis reveals huge, real costs and unlikely or imponderable benefits. So why do it? More security? Not likely. More peace? Not at all. More prosperity? Just the opposite. All it will get for sure is more debt - about $1,000 per household.
Higher rates, lower stocks: The extra borrowing will exert upward pressure on interest rates. Money will then leave the stock market to take advantage of the higher rates on bonds. Stocks will go down in value. Consumer prices will go up (pushed up by larger deficits)... Americans will be poorer…and the Primary Trend will run its course.
But wait... there’s more. Hubris. Why beef up US military power so as to “counter” Chinese influence? Why ban TikTok or subsidize the US chip industry? Why make China an enemy? Why seek “primacy in Asia?”
Is it because working with China in a peaceful, mutually beneficial way would not benefit the corrupt political system...nor the firepower industry...nor its lobbyists and think tanks...nor the politicians who take its money and vote its way...nor would it support the Primary Trend? A win-win relationship with China would not increase consumer prices...nor would it boost US debt...nor would it contribute to higher interest rates and lower asset prices. Nor would it give jackass warmongers anything to go on TV and blab about.
And tomorrow we’ll take a peek at the “New World Order.” We’ll see that the Chinese, though human, may be a different kind of dumb…and America’s strange policies may actually help them achieve the glory they aim for."
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Sales At Kroger This Week!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 4/25/24
"Massive Sales At Kroger This Week!
.99¢ Items & Great Digital Coupons! "
Comments here:
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
"Perhaps..."
"Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy.
But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants
can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future.
Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"Everything You Need To Know About EMPs From A NASA Expert"
"Everything You Need To Know
About EMPs From A NASA Expert"
by Daisy Luther
"EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulse) are a trope that is often used in prepper fiction. We often think of an EMP attack as the worst-case, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario that is just around the corner. There’s little doubt that it would change everything, but what’s the truth?
Here’s what an expert has to say about EMPs: Nobody knows this better than Dr. Arthur T. Bradley. Dr Bradley is a NASA engineer and the leading expert on EMPs in the preparedness community. He’s the author of Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness and the must-have Disaster Preparedness for EMPs and Solar Storms. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him before myself, and you couldn’t ask for a nicer, more down-to-earth person. He really knows what he’s talking about and he shares information without hyperbole. He is the person I trust the most for information in this genre. In this compelling interview, Brian Duff interviews Dr. Bradley to get the real answers. If you want to separate fact from fiction, watch this video."
Full screen recommended.
o
"A Time of Unimaginable Sorrow is Upon Us"
By Ozark Grandpa
"It was a nice cool sunny morning with some blue birds soaking up the sun, all in a row on the high wire. It took some time to figure out what happened. There were a few low rumbles, they seemed to be coming from north of here. We live on a farm out in the wooded hills of southern Missouri, and north would be up towards St Louis. Soon as the booming sounds started the power went off. At first, I didn’t pay much attention, but with all the military stirrings going on in the world these days, you just don’t know what to expect.
I went inside the house, but with the power off there’s no internet, so no way to find out what’s going on. At least until the power comes back on, or until I get the generator started up. More distant thunderous booms that echo now less like thunder and more like tremendous explosions – and I’m starting to get worried. My kids are at work and the grandkids are in school. I swear I‘m seeing sparks and smoke coming from under the hood of my car, but it’s not running. Now the power line where those bluebirds were singing looks like it’s getting really hot and smoke is coming from the bucket transformer on the poles. Wow! The transformer just blew up sending a shower of sparks and molten metal flying all around the pole! I can hear blasts all over the countryside from more pole transformers exploding. All the fences are sparking and smoking. The woods around the power lines and transformers are starting to go up in extremely violent flames. And the cars are now on fire – all of them! Even the old broken-down ones out in people’s pastures. Our emergency generators are smoking – I’ve got to get them away from the houses before they burn up.
Now I’ve got an idea of what’s happening, because I’ve heard of what an EMP event could do to electrical circuits. Electromagnetic Pulse. That’s what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes. The only other thing I can think of that would do this is a coronal mass ejection from a solar flare. It happened back in 1859 and it was named the Carrington Event. Fortunately, the world did not have much electrical infrastructure back then, just telegraphs, and the induced currents caused the wires to catch fire – sort of like what’s happening to the power lines out here right now. I don’t think it’s a solar event either, because the warmongers in Washington have been beating the nuclear drums for a while, and I’ve been afraid the Russians were going to get spooked and do a first strike. I guess this is it.
A big problem for those of us who might survive a while because we live in areas that aren’t targets is that we lose all sources of information. We don’t have any way of knowing what’s happening. Don’t know if it’s a first strike or a retaliatory strike. Does Washington DC even exist anymore, or is it just a huge radioactive smoking crater? Are those beautiful, magnificient buildings of the Kremlin still standing?
How many of our big cities are destroyed? I remember seeing pictures of the devastation that was Nagasaki and Hiroshima when that monster Truman murdered all those Japanese civilians, and thinking that those bombs were tiny compared to what the psychopaths have in their arsenals today – the Russians have bombs that could literally flatten New York City and/or Houston. I cannot, nor can anyone else, begin to fathom the destruction of a 10 or 20 megaton thermonuclear weapon could wreak on a major city.
Lights go off and then nothing. No TV; no internet. No football – the treasury department that writes all the government checks is gone. Fear-crazed citizens make runs on WalMarts and grocery stores and take everything they can. No one tries to stop them; the store employees are in a panic to get home. Problem is, with no operable vehicles, the only things people can take are what they can carry by hand. Everyone has to walk, even the police are stranded out on the highways. All troopers, city cops, and sheriff deputies are trying desperately to get home to their loved ones. No cops on duty anymore. No traffic moving anymore. Just lots of people running, screaming, hoping they can just get home, and that there still is a home.
Fires are blazing everywhere from the power lines and transformers exploding. All electrical substations in the country are smoldering and blazing chaos. Forest fires are rampant and out of control all over the nation and there are no operable fire trucks. No firefighting planes or helicopters are available to fight the fires. Houses hundreds of miles away from the many ground zeros are burning both from the unchecked wildfires, and from EMP induced electrical shorts in home wiring. Almost every building in every town is on fire with no way to put them out. And these towns are far away from the targeted places where the bombs actually hit.
This is truly a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, the like of which has never been witnessed in all of human history. There will never be electricity in this country again. Let that sink in. Freezers will thaw out and food will ruin. Untold thousands of people will perish, starting with those vaporized, then those being burned up in their homes, and there are no fire departments available to help anyone. No hospitals; doctors and nurses are gone, understandably abandoning useless smoldering medical facilities. No industry, no UPS deliveries, no more dog food for the pups. If your house didn’t burn to the ground, at least you may (for a while) have a (dark) shelter from the elements.
Huge blasts of radioactive winds blow hundreds of miles from the explosions, of which there have been many. The first wave was intended to take out the military establishment. No way of knowing, but there’s no reason to believe that anything remains of the Pentagon, DC or Langley, Norfolk, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, or any of the coastal cities where there are refineries. All cities with military infrastructure of any kind will be destroyed. The joke that has been for years a missile defense system has been exposed. The sick joke that a nuclear war could be “winnable” has also been exposed. The numbers of people succumbing to radiation sickness is beyond belief. There will be no schools, no stores, no food, and no government services; no disaster relief will be forthcoming. All banks will have ceased to function, so even if there is any money left, it won’t be worth anything. The bankers never were.
If you take medications to stay alive, you’d best have a good supply, because there won’t be any more. All livestock will either be dead from radiation, burned to a crisp in the fires, or promptly slaughtered by starving survivors, and it doesn’t matter to whom they belonged. Same with property. People will no longer obey private property signs, they will go anywhere they think there might be resources, food, water, at the risk of their lives, which aren’t worth much right now anyway. There will be no law!
Every military ship on and under the ocean, with the likely exception of a few submarines, will be sunk. All of the nuclear-powered ships will go to the bottom with reactors likely damaged, spewing radioactive contamination. Like dozens, maybe hundreds, of Fukushimas. Even the reactors that aren’t damaged will undergo meltdowns with no controls. The bible says that something will kill all of the fishes in the oceans, maybe this is how that happens.
The USSR detonated a bomb of around 50-megaton yield back in 1961. It was called the Tsar Bomba. The weapon had a 100-megaton capacity, but for safety they modified the yield. Awe inspiring is just too mild of a description of what that looked like. Since the bomb was so powerful, they calculated that the plane that dropped it had only a 50 percent chance of surviving – that is even after the plane released the weapon several thousand feet up in the air with a parachute to slow it down while the plane flew away from the scene at full speed. It did almost destroy the plane – they said the blast wave overtook the plane some 45 miles from the explosion and it lost over a kilometer of altitude before the pilot, Andrey Durnovtsev, could regain control and keep it from crashing. That thing made a mushroom cloud 37, yes 37 miles, (60 km) high! An uninhabited village, Severny, 34 miles (55 km) from ground zero was obliterated, and buildings 100 miles away were damaged! The blast would have caused third degree burns 62 miles (100 km) from the explosion. I would expect if they still have these in their arsenal, they would use one on Cheyenne Mountain. It would probably take out Denver and Amarillo, TX and certainly everything in between. Instantly vaporized. What are our “leaders” thinking?
It sounds crazy, but if this happens, I want to be at one of the ground zeros. As bad as being vaporized sounds, it would be infinitely better than surviving into the nightmarish existence that would ensue. There will be marauding gangs of survivors, undoubtedly armed, in various stages of hunger, disease, emaciation, and injury. It will probably be a situation where anyone you encounter will be apt to kill you. For one thing, they won’t know whether you are out to kill them too, or maybe you have something they want/need to survive. A can of tuna or a bowl of beans might cost your life.
The landscape will be nightmarish. Imagine a few days or weeks after the event. There will be burned out stumps on land that was beautiful forest, now riddled with stagnant pools of black muddy radioactive slime, full of human and animal bones, charred flesh, and entrails. Few buildings will exist intact, and many will perish fighting over them. There will be no light at night. Light would attract unwanted guests. No music. No one will have any idea what’s going on. There may be a few survivors in places like subway tunnels, abandoned train cars, or in remote wilderness areas, but such people will have resorted to the basest of behavior, including cannibalism, in short order. Imagine! Human beings who once inhabited a civilized nation and lived decent lives will have to worry about being killed and eaten by other human beings! Zombie apocalypse, just with regular people, not zombies, although with burns and wounds, hair falling out and all out of sorts with radiation poisoning, they probably will look the part.
I have heard people talking like they plan to survive and stay healthy by hunting and foraging. Well, if a nuclear winter follows a nuclear apocalypse, foraging is going to be slim pickings. And the deer won’t last long if they manage to survive the bombs, radiation, and fires, there’ll probably only be a few very unhealthy specimens left, but if a gunshot rings out, I’m pretty sure it will attract whatever starving people hear it, so there might be more to deal with than just dressing a deer.
Bedraggled survivors will wander in shock around former cities in hopes of disaster relief which will never come. Desperate people will offer anything – gold, jewelry, ammunition, their own bodies, for sustenance. Helpless parents will watch in horror as their children starve, hoping against hope that they will awaken from this nightmare, but when this all comes down, it’ll be too late for them.
And we still won’t know what happened. Who decided that a nuclear war would be a good idea? Who “won” the war? Did any of our leaders survive to sign a surrender, and to whom? Or did Russia or China surrender? Will there be hordes of soldiers from some faraway land invading our country after the radiation dies down?
And what of the wealthy folk who built the magnificent bunkers filled with the necessities of life in which to wait out the nuclear winter? Do they actually believe they will emerge into a second garden of Eden complete with succulent fruit trees and minstrels singing their praises? First of all, the bible speaks of a great earthquake, such as has not occurred since people have been on earth, so I think a big part of those individuals will be entombed in those lavish bunkers. So maybe a few do survive, and after some months, maybe a few years tucked away, they stumble blindly onto the surface, a hardly recognizable landscape littered with human skulls, burned out cars and buildings, and destroyed terrain. When they went into the holes, they were wealthy, but after what has transpired, of the few commoners left, no one will be interested in their gold – and those old bank accounts? Well the digital age has completely and utterly vanished, and all those millions or billions they had on their ledgers is now squat.
Even by this time, there will undoubtedly still be a few scroungy survivors, but instead of the fawning proles these rich folks were used to in the old world, those survivors will undoubtedly have a taste for some well-fed and plump upper crust brisket, so thanks for preserving some. It won’t help their situation any when they discover that some of the survivors actually know they caused, or at least played a part in causing the disaster. The scenario described does not take into account the likelihood that hapless survivors will undoubtedly spend their time searching for air vents to the bunkers in which to pour gasoline or whatever else they can find to upset living conditions in said refuges down below. Any who survive this carnage will be on a mission and will not easily be placated!
Who knows what the final outcome will be. How many millions, or hundreds of millions of people will be counted among the slain? When this calamity happens, it will obviously involve the deaths of millions. This destruction, I believe is prophesied as the destruction of the modern Babylon in Revelation 18, and most people I’ve heard seem to think (as I do) that the place named as Babylon is the United States, and it is utterly destroyed in the space of one hour, by fire! Completely devastated to the point that (verse 22) “the music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again,” and “no worker of any trade will ever be found in you again,” this decadent place will cease to be! According to scripture, it’s not a bad thing that this evil place is destroyed. “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgement she imposed on you.” Time will tell, but I’m afraid we don’t have much."
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! 90,000 NATO Troops, Nuclear Drill, 4 Horsemen!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/24/24
"Alert! 90,000 NATO Troops, Nuclear Drill, 4 Horsemen!"
Comments here:
Scott Ritter, "Evil Incarnate"
George Galloway MP, 4/24/24
Scott Ritter, "Evil Incarnate"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 4/24/24
"Huge Escalation Is About To Happen
In Ukraine and Middle East"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Yanni, “Standing in Motion"
Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “Standing in Motion"
Live At The Acropolis 1993
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.
The galaxy's protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872's spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”
"When That Day Comes..."
"If you had one last breath - what would you say? If you had one hour to use your limbs before you would lose the use of them forever - would you sit there on the couch? If you knew that you wouldn't see tomorrow who would you make amends with? If you knew you had only an hour left on this earth - what would be so pressing that you just had to do it, say it, or see it? Well there is something that I can guarantee - that one day you will have one day, one hour and one breath left. Just make sure that before that day that you have said, done and experienced everything that you dream of doing now. Do it now - that is what today is for. So pick up the phone and call an old friend that you have fallen out of touch with. Get out and run a mile and use your body and sweat. Seek out someone in your life to say you're sorry to. Seek someone In your life that you need to thank. Seek someone in your life that you need to express your feelings of love to. Then when that day comes you will be ok with it all."
- John A. Passaro
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
- Stephen King, "Shawshank Redemption"
Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"
"Killing Our Dreams"
by Paulo Coelho
"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."
"The Immortal Hymn of Mankind"
"The Immortal Hymn of Mankind"
by Paul Rosenberg
"If you could go back in time a thousand years, you’d find people who were eerily similar to your present companions. The same is true for people who will live a thousand years from now. Some of them will be nearly identical to the people you now love, and you would care deeply about those people, the same as you do their present-day counterparts.
Please understand this: The men, women and children we would love in the future can advance only in the same way we have, by the benefaction of their predecessors.
Can you imagine how long it took for ignorant men and women to learn metallurgy? Or crop rotation? Or a hundred other things we can barely imagine being without? Our lives are advanced only because they created new ways of living and passed them down to us. Hundreds of generations of people just like us lived through dark times, fighting toward whatever bits of light they could find, opposed by others nearly the entire way, to bring us where we are now.
Someday our generation will also be gone, and we will have played – whether we’ve understood it or not – the crucial role of transmitting civilization to following generations. What do we want them to be like? How do we want them to live?
Numberless men and women have struggled toward the future and spent all they had to bring us here. We owe them something. It may be that they no longer care, but their gifts to us will cease to exist unless we pass them along. We make them matter, and they deserve to matter.
We stand now at the threshold of the stars, but we’ve been immobilized by self-serving structures designed to control every human and reap from their every action. We must get past them if we are to continue forward. Foolishness and fear bid us to forget the future, to chase status instead of goodness, consumption rather than production, and stasis rather than expansion. A thousand self-serving voices call us aside, grasping at our minds and emotions. We must turn away from them all.
We owe this to the people of the past.
We owe it to the people of the future.
We owe it to ourselves.
What happens next is up to you. It’s not up to leaders or bosses. It’s up to you. The consequences of your failures are inescapable, and the consequences of your good deeds are inescapable. Whether or not you acknowledge them, our descendants will live or die by them. What you are and what you do matter a very great deal. Engage your will. Act. Awake."
Anthony Hopkins, "Fastest, Most Powerful Prayer In The World"
Anthony Hopkins,
"Fastest, Most Powerful Prayer In The World"
Great scene from the movie "360".
Comments here:
Anthony Hopkins,
"What's The Meaning Of Life?"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "Walmarts Self Checkouts Backfire, Stop Being A Walmart Slave"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/24/24
"Walmarts Self Checkouts Backfire, Stop Being A Walmart Slave;
Mortgage Demand Crushed, Now What?"
Comments here:
"A Well-packaged Web Of Lies..."
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
– Dresden James
Scott Ritter, "Russia has Demilitarized NATO and Putin is Exposing the Truth"
Scott Ritter, 4/24/24
"Russia has Demilitarized NATO
and Putin is Exposing the Truth"
"Former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter explains how Russia has become a major player in the emerging multipolar world through its victorious stand in Ukraine, and what this all means for NATO's fledging global hegemony with Washington at its head. Hint: the truth will shock you!"
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "Judge Andrew Napolitano: Killing The Constitution and Marching Off to War"
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 4/24/24
"Judge Andrew Napolitano:
Killing The Constitution and Marching Off to War"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, "Phil Giraldi: Israel Has Biden Trapped"
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 4/24/24
"Phil Giraldi: Israel Has Biden Trapped"
Comments here:
"How It Really Is"
Read a book? That'll be the day!
"Nationwide, on average, 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2023.
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2023.
54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level."
"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
"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
"Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
- Thomas Edison
"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
“Think of how stupid the average person is,
and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
- George Carlin
"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 the comparison! lol
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)