Afternoon folks!

Happy almost New Year's Eve!

I've got some more music for you to end the year in style with. First up is Chicago blues mandolin player Yank Rachell playing some classic blues. Next is the recently departed New Orleans blues guitarist, Walter "Wolfman" Washington. Then there's the left-coast chromatic harmonica wizard, William Clarke followed by some rock and roll by Ten Years After. There's a Van Morrison live double-album after that and we finish up with some serious fingerpicking by Merle Travis and Chet Atkins.

You guys have a great one and I'll see you next year. Heh.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Off to a new year with old and new challenges. It appears there will not be a shortage of challenges, it will be up to each of us to notice the contentment of the moment or task well done.

Happy Friday everyone. Post any photos, memes, or music you like.

Another new year is a few days away and I haven't even made a New Years resolution (that will be broken before the end of January) yet. As each new year gets here faster and faster it seems like we're moving at warp speed. And while the last few years have been pretty bleak and the future isn't looking all that rosy I'm still holding out hope that smarter heads will prevail and put us on a path to a brighter future. Best wishes in the new year to everyone here at C99. May your resolutions last beyond January.

A little bit of slow shutter speed while panning the camera to convey motion.

This is an opinion piece. I have no proof other than my lying eyes. And my intuitive gut. I'll throw this out there as speculative fodder for the un-indoctrinated and open mind.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

I've been thinking for a while now that both sides of any given narrative are controlled.

Full Spectrum Dominance - Are we there yet?

Sure does seem like it to me. Please consider this:

Suppose you are a propagandist. Would it not be optimum to control both sides of a narrative? Both sides of an issue, pro and con. That would be total control, full spectrum dominance if you will. Could it be possible that our realities are so controlled that the idea of oppositional perception is but a facade? In today's world who knows what is real, right? With all the gaslighting and lying is it any wonder that folks are confused? Is that not the tenet of Full Spectrum Dominance?

I think that if you look you can see it in many issues nowadays, it may be subtle as is all good propaganda. The yin and yang may be manipulated into a soup of disinformation and obfuscation. Think about how you form your opinions, what you read, what you see, what you think about. If one could control that input then one could formulate your reality.

Source

Examples:

Elon Musk: Something just hasn't sit well with me about this Elon Musk and Twitter deal. It all seems contrived. I certainly don't consider him a hero as some have made him out to be. Could there be more to his Twitter acquisition than just his self proclaimed altruistic motivation. I'll put a theory out there and let you be the judge.

BlackRock Logo To Be Added To Ukrainian Flag

Kyiv has announced the addition of a fifth corporate logo to the Ukrainian flag following news that BlackRock will be playing a crucial role in the reconstruction of the nation. The world's largest investment management firm will join Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and McDonald's upon the now-omnipresent blue and yellow flag.

Some Inspiration:
One of the towns close to where I live...

I wrote a diary titled 'Riley and Brenner's astonishing piece in NLR" which got into an assessment of the current situation which hasn't received publicity. Rather, each political faction operates on a different level of delusion, and very few people believe in a reality-based radicalism which would actually change the situation if it could attain some level of critical mass.