From John Prine's song Angel from Montgomery
We're all caught in the ebb and flow of time as the years come and go. The month of January is named for the Roman God Janus who looks forward toward the future and back at the past. His image often appeared on doorways, arches, and gates. This time of year is a good opportunity to look at what has happened, and think about what will come.

A true story from Christmas eve 1914
Christmas in the Trenches - written and performed by John McCutcheon

Lyrics below the fold

The Dark is Rising...

...but only for a few more days. The celestial clock is about to chime. Thursday is our winter solstice, the longest night of the year. Afterward day length will slowly grow until June 20th and the summer solstice. I loved the series "The Dark is Rising" filled with Welsh mythology, but it is fiction. The dark ages today are real as we experience the slow death of US empire. I thought it might be timely to look at some of the steps that have led to creation and now dissolution of US empire. I'll be interested in your thoughts as well...

Common Sense and Plain Talk

Seems common sense isn't common, nor is plain talk. No, censorship and suppression are par for the course today. We don't have free speech, we have acceptable and allowed speech, wrapped in lies and propaganda. No wonder most people are so unaware of US malevolence.

Seeing Through the Narratives

Perhaps the pandemic brought some awareness of the lies promoted to control us. Anyone paying attention now sees the virus was engineered, deaths were exaggerated to manufacture fear, lockdowns were unnecessary and harmful, adverse reactions to the vax were not allowed to be made public as were simple preventative measures, ivermectin was an effective treatment, and many more lies. As this community is well aware, there are many more lies being pushed on variety of topics. Let's dive into some of those schemes below the fold.

Giving Thanks?

In our chaotic world it can be difficult to be thankful about the state of things. However, we can be grateful for the truce in Gaza and the hostage exchange. Too bad this isn't a permanent ceasefire, but merely a delay in the genocide perpetrated upon the Palestinians. One aspect is that this aggression has gone so far as to shock people awake to US and Israel's inhumanity. That story and more below the fold.

Why War?

This week I heard an array of reasons for Israel's Gaza genocide. Pepe, in the first clip below, thinks it was engineered by Israel, and Biden was forewarned when Bibi was in DC in late September. He sees the IMEC project versus the BRI as one key to the conflict. If that is true, it answers Paul Craig Robert's question in the second clip, how did we get all the military equipment and forces to the region so quickly. Both Ray and Scott think the opposite, that Israel was caught by surprise. Jimmy thinks it may be about oil. Bin Laden's letter to America explains his motivation for 9/11...

Jihad against the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion, and killing us means a high status with our Lord. Thanks to God, we have been waging jihad for 30 years, against the Russians and then against you. Not a single one of our men has committed suicide, whereas every 30 days 30 of your men commit suicide. Continue the war if you will. Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us.

The Waste of War

Wars are largely created to enrich the elite at the expense of everyone else. The cost can be measured in lives, money, environmental destruction, social and mental health, and much more, as the oligarchs count their profits. Yesterday used to be Armistice Day, the end of the war to end all wars, but now we honor war and warriors, not peace.

This year we celebrate the 105th anniversary of the signing of the World War I armistice that ceased hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. With this instrument, nations still recovering from the dreadful nightmare of WWI, one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, collectively embraced peace as a universal principle and called for an end to all wars. Armistice Day was initially designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated."

(17 min)

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Observed in the United Kingdom every year on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day—also called Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night—commemorates a failed assassination attempt from more than 400 years ago. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group of radical English Catholics tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up Parliament's House of Lords. The plot went awry and all of the conspirators were executed. Soon after, Britons began to celebrate Fawkes' day by burning effigies, lighting bonfires and setting off fireworks—a tradition that has continued to this day.
3.5 min clip of speech from the movie "V for Vendetta"

You can see the entire movie here.
If you're a Prime member there is a better copy available there.

On the Road to Armageddon?

Armageddon, the ancient city known as Megiddo, was inhabited between roughly 7000 B.C. and 300 B.C. Numerous battles were fought near Megiddo during that time, and the Book of Revelation, which refers to the site as Armageddon, prophesied that a final battle at the end of time would take place there. The name Armageddon comes from the Hebrew word "Har Megiddo," which means the "mountain of Megiddo," according to Cline. "By the Middle Ages, multiple nationalities, languages, and centuries had added an 'n' and dropped the 'h', transforming Har Megiddo to Harmageddon and thence to Armageddon."
Are we approaching the so called "end times"? Let's explore the idea below the fold...