Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Hahahahaha! Love it!
4.14 a gallon diesel her in Klamath falls. One of the “ I did this, Biden stickers” was on the pump. I smiled.
We’re headed to war boys. Imagine American boys dying fighting Russia. Do not take your eyes off of China.
Diesel is $2.81 in Oklahoma City. Regular gas is $2.69.
CarpeDonktum back on the YouTube platform? I wonder how long that will last.
If memory serves, I believe Hunter Biden is an oil and gas man in Ukraine. Can’t let that cash cow get away. So, if we have to deploy the military to protect that princeling’s ill-gotten financial windfall, well, so be it. I wonder if any of that war materiel Brandon left behind in Afghanistan will be used against our soldiers.
FJB
John Kerry’s family, Biden’s family, Romney’s family and Pelosi’s family all have financial interests in Ukraine—mainly serving as members of the boards of various gas companies. Any war with Russia in the Ukraine will be to maintain and protect these interests. Every other reason given for this war is a lie and a smoke screen. American blood will be shed on foreign soil to insure that the fortunes of these multi-millionaire parasites remain healthy and in good standing.
Take it from Smedley Butler, the most decorated US Marine at the time of his death (1940).
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
Plus ce change plus c’est la meme chose. Truly there is nothing new under the sun.
Yes, Mike, I saw an article yesterday detailing the financial interests of the vermin you cited. Naturally, I couldn’t locate it this morning. If I stumble across it, I’ll attach it to my post above. I’m not naive, so I fully comprehend that politics has always been a corrupt pursuit. This level of corruption, however, is something that nearly defies credulity. And let me affirm your declaration regarding potential shed blood in Ukraine: It will be the noble blood of patriots, shed to protect the putrid financial interests of the dazzlingly corrupt oligarchy this government has become..
At the Constitutional Convention (1787) both the Federalists and the anti-Federalists made their case.
“The Anti-Federalists were a group of Americans who objected to the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and opposed final ratification of the U.S. Constitution as approved by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Anti-Federalists generally preferred a government as formed in 1781 by the Articles of Confederation, which had granted the predominance of power to the state governments.”
Patrick Henry was the most prominent anti-Federalist. Every single fear of the anti-Federalists have come to pass. The US government is, as you wrote, a “dazzlingly corrupt oligarchy”. The oligarchs who run this nation are as difficult to remove as are barnacles from the hulls of wooden ships. They will not, under any conditions, give up their power willingly.
Not the article I saw yesterday, but it will suffice.
https://tinyurl.com/2p8shhrv
Of course the MFM “fact-checkers” are diligently attempting to de-bunk any reportage concerning the cozy relationships.
Fortunately, there are still those who’ve kept their integrity
https://tinyurl.com/53kzut6u
At this point compiling a dossier on those American politicians not in on the Ukraine grift would be easier. The rot runs straight through every aspect of US governance. More and more of our foreign and domestic policies are corrupted by it. If not Ukrainian money, then Chinese money. Our ruling class is bought and paid for by hostile foreign interests. It works to implement the dictates of the enemies of America.
Any relationship between the America delineated by her Constitution and the real America vanished long ago. There is no law; all traditions have been banned; all courts corrupted; all moral codes tossed aside; all perversions allowed and promoted. All those who still support whatever shreds remain of traditional America are labeled “domestic terrorists” and “enemies of the State”.
The United States of America is going to prove the truth of Mao’s axiom, that “all power flows from the barrel of a gun”.
No one her did, but I have to say to the country, in general: if you are among the “80 million” who “voted” for Biden, you are evil.
Remember that fear we had during the Cold War about stumbling into WWIII ? Brandon done just did.
Let’s talk about barroom fights. When they begin, are you in the camp of those who won’t fight to help your buddies? Staying out of a conflict in Ukraine is a past tense thing, my friends. Trouble has come to your door.
What’s this news item this morning? A NATO command has taken control of an American carrier group for the first time since the Cold War? I guess this is in the Med. Does that make you angry? Because it makes my blood boil.
Operational assessment. This is a military analysis, not a political one. Russia seems to have ringed the Ukr., with some troops in the North (Belarus), a thin sliver of forces in Moldova (far West border of the Ukr.), possibly an amphibious attack force going into the Black Sea, forces in the Crimea and also Georgia. There is no doubt Ru has tremendous strength in numbers in the air, and naval forces already in the Black Sea.
The Uk., which is not a NATO country, has a war-footing military that is actually horny for war with Russia. The time is: Winter. Do you suppose Putin has Finland 1939-40 on his mind? Much more is different now from then, but what is similar is the fact that Winter sucks for the attacker, and tactically speaking, the Ukes could employ stay-behind Ranger-organized forces to hamper, and maybe devastate, the Ru. trains (“trains is military for supply lines and organizations).
Ru. has the following weaknesses. They are evil. The offensive operation is always fraught with trouble, and militarily far weaker than the defensive operation. In Napoleonic days, and esp. in WWII, lightning combined arms attacks transformed warfare to make what used to be long campaigns of aggression, quick and decisive battles that wrought dramatic decisive results. The Rooskies have never shown any talent whatsoever in lightning war. WWII was a long, slow grind from Moscow and Leningrad/Stalingrad to Berlin. It took: years. Russians may mass armor (their only correct move) but they don’t coordinate any other arm that well with the tanks. The whole magic to blitzkrieg is that it involves flanking (envelopment) and relies directly on combined arms (artillery, infantry, tanks, supply, tactical air). look at the shit show that was Syria. You see the Russian and Russian trained tankers go into urban areas and do crazy shit like: stopping. That is 2 absolutely nutty tactical moves: going into a city with tanks, and stopping. You never, ever, never, fucking stop your tank in the assault. the Roo suck at supply on the tactical level, and possibly the operational level, and they super suck at tank tactics.
Back to terrain: Western Ukraine is mountainous and forested (think of a Dracula movie for terrain), the Dnieper River bisects the entire country North to South (rivers are still military barriers), and the eastern part of the country that borders Russia is good tank country. The Black Sea is to the South of the Uke., but it is not that easy for the Russians to use, since it is bottled in by the Med., and the Turks happen to have a policy that says if you try military operations in the BS, they will fuck you up. On paper, at least, the Turks will support NATO, but in reality they seem to go both ways with Russia.
Plan. Allow the Russian armor in as far as the river. Yes, they will take Kiev. Yes, they will throw combat bridges over the river, but then on the West side they will stop. Real combat is possible there, and Russia won’t have much game there. Mechanical wear will deadline a huge percentage of the Russian tanks – they will attrit themselves along the way. Broke down tanks are juicy targets for small raiding groups of infantry. By the time Russia closes with the Crimea, this will place their tanks into a salient, and it is there that the uncommitted Ukrainian armor can cut them off.
Anyway, I’ve written this analysis here before. In order to win a war, you force the enemy to make a peace with your conditions. The Ukrainians are not buying – they look like they want to make war. Specific military moves to win wars include: take the enemies’ land, take his capitol, or destroy his army. Russia will be able to take Kiev, but he won’t actually be able to eliminate Ukrainians who will want to make his life hell from mountainous and forested zones in the west. The roads that go into Ukraine from Russia run 2 ways. Some Ukrainian armor may sally into Russia when they are busy with the offense.
The air and naval arms. They don’t decide wars. I know that comes as a shock to you air forcers, but there it is.
Nukes. You can’t nuke all of Ukraine’s army. They are mobile. Will NATO or Biden stumble into getting a nuke for breakfast, in Amsterdam, DC, or London? Yes, it’s a possibility. But, that goes both ways, too. Nixon played the North Vietnamese bu acting crazy; we now have a bona-fida crazy president. It’s an asset (once the war begins and the nuke threshold looms).
The Polish, who border the Ukraine, are dim on Russian military aggression. Very dim on it, The Poles would fight Russia on their own, given the green light to do so. They are pit bulls.
OK, back out to the thousand mile view. The best way to prevent a nuclear war is to prevent it: deterrence. Deterrence means a credible threat of violence. Don’t be a quitter or a pussy. Man up. Avoiding US involvement in Europe is a bad move, and anyway it’s a non-move. You cannot avoid it.
Who wrote “Welcome to my nightmare”? Was it Alice Cooper?
My next essay may be how a nuclear war actually goes. Carl Sagan was totally wrong about it.
Casey, off topic, I know, but I went to my doctor yesterday. Here’s my writeup.
I read it, John. You have stonnage for telling the doc anything about his own field. I suspect that he flushed the whole conversation, and probably listed you on some type of excremental list that doctors keep.
However, I can tell you planned it out very carefully, and you have my respect. Since we had the exchange about going to the doc, their narrative has further unraveled. The numbers, the reliability of the CDC and the “vax,” the whole set of recriminations against the un-vaxxed. All of it.
I’m extremely happy that your tests came back in good order and with the good news.
My immediate family were entirely passed over by the angel of coof. We live wayyy out in the country is why. Some extended family and friends, and some online contacts, did catch it. One whom I only friended online died, and, sadly, one actual close friend from NYC died (he had multiple co-morbidities).
I remain unconvinced that there ever was an epidemic, except perhaps of stupidity. Oh! A self-proclaimed liberal on the TV said she was so over the Covid thing, and that in a number of years, historians will describe this time as having been one in which we suffered from an epic moral crime.
Covid: an Historic and Epic Moral Crime.
I’m unconvinced there was a virus at all.
I just see lies, lies, lies, in all their variations.
There is no proof for sane people to believe any of it.
This has been a test of the american broadcast system, and it has shown that at least half of the US population is deserving enough to be killed off.
Well, a nuke war may bring the badly needed global culling.
Halo of Flies
Listen to what this German doctor, living in Canada, has to say about what these shots are doing. About 11 minutes in length. https://generaldispatch.whatfinger.com/prof-dr-michael-palmer-phd-mrna-injections-cause-injury-comparable-to-radiation-damage/
Damn, you are dark. I want you at my back when the balloon goes up.
I want to add that GEN Jack Keane (4 stars, but not above being a deep State guy, however I usually listen to him with close interest, on Fox News) said a few insightful things. He mentions that, of course, Winter sucks as a time to start a war. This year’s Ukrainian Winter has been mild, but at this point in time the ground is frozen enough to support tank operations. This window of opportunity ends about mid-March, when it becomes muddy. He predicts that the Beijing Olympics will deter Putin from attacking and fucking up his allies’ big event, which coordinates with the frozen ground window. OTOH, perhaps that is the surprise he needs; I’ve wondered how he would introduce surprise, since it is critical and he is a master of Surprise. So, the think tanks of the West think he won’t invade due to the Olympics. Perhaps China is secretly planning their own scuttling of the Olympics based on Covid. Who knows? Anyway, I’m not convinced that Putin won’t go, because he just got the green light from Biden to do so. This is the time to maximize the terror of a sudden strike.
Keane went on to say that he’d be doing all of the sanctioning and the troop deployments (to other NATO nations on the shoulders of the war) already. You can tell he’s convinced that Biden is sitting still and not doing the right thing (to prevent a war). He’s frustrated.