Ideas For The End Of The World

In no particular order.  

• 1.  Throw the party to end all parties.      

• If it's really the end, then why not enjoy it while you still can?

•  2.  Have yourself a great meal, with all the trimmings. 

• Make mine a Porterhouse steak, with A-1 sauce, mashed potatoes (don't forget the butter!), and all the Coca-Cola I care to drink. 


•  3.  Go visit your parents.  

•  4.  Take a road trip.  

• Alternatively, make it a trip by train; but go somewhere, and do something.  

•  5.  Enjoy some time to yourself. 

• Everybody needs a little "me time".  Why not take that time now?

•  6.  Apologize and make peace with those who you know to have wronged.  

• When I get to St. Peter, I'd rather not have any big strikes on my record.

•  7.  Tell those you love exactly how you feel about them.  

• It's so important to let the people you love know that you love them.  Do it now, because you might not be here tomorrow.  Lives can end "in a New York minute" (1). 

The Drumbeats of War?

In recent days, I've become quite concerned over the potential for conflict, and an all-encompassing war.  I don't usually worry about such things, figuring that I probably couldn't prevent them anyway.  Yet the current geo-political situation has, of late, been giving me pause.  

Just in case you missed it, here's a quick summary of what's been going on.  

• The European country Ukraine has publicly stated that it wishes to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is a defensive alliance comprised of the United States, Canada, and many European nations (see Note 1) (1).   

• Neighboring country Russia sees potential NATO expansion as a violation of terms agreed to in 1990, when the alliance (allegedly) agreed not to expand "an inch to the east" of its then-boundaries.  They have demanded that Ukraine  its aspirations of joining the group (2).    

• NATO has responded that it has an "open-door policy", and that they cannot rule out Ukraine possibly joining the alliance at some future date.   

• In addition to expansion concerns, Russia has alleged that NATO has committed several violations of the "Minsk Protocol", a treaty originally agreed to in 2014 (3).  

• In December of 2021, Russia began to move ground forces to its border with Ukraine, giving as pretext that they were conducting military "exercises".  

• Presently, there are approximately one hundred fifty thousand Russian troops stationed in the border area (4).  

• American and NATO leaders believe that, based on the above pretenses, these Russian forces are preparing to invade Ukraine.

As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this past Friday, it indeed does seem that the world is in "a moment of peril" (5).    

In the thirty-something years since the Cold War ended, we have never been so close to world war as we are right now.  

And it doesn't take much of a spark in a powder keg to set off a huge explosion.  History has repeatedly proven this to be true.  For example:

• The 1914 assassination of Austrian-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand touched off World War I.  

• Austria-Hungary blamed the killing on forces loyal to Serbia, and declared war.  Serbia was allied with the Central Powers (Russia, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire); when Russia came to Serbia's defense, the regional conflict quickly became a clash between world powers (6).  

• Adolf Hitler used anger over German losses from World War I as a pretext for his initial "putsch" (see Note 2).  Through encouraging a general climate of outrage, he was able to overthrow the sitting German government.  This resulted in the Nazi Party's rise to power, and ultimately, World War II (7).  

Also:

• During the Cold War, we came close to the outbreak of World War III several times.  The most notable of these occasions took place in 1962, when the United States demanded that the Soviet Union remove multiple nuclear missile bases that nation had installed in Cuba (just ninety miles away from the tip of Florida) (see: Cuban Missile Crisis) (8).  

It has occurred to me that perhaps I am getting worried over nothing.  There's a distinct possibility that all this talk of war could simply be a "wag the dog" scenario; that is, a hastily-planned scheme designed to distract the public from other more domestic problems (not to be confused with a "false flag operation") (see Note 3).  

However, it certainly appears to me like Russia is getting ready to do something.  So here's how things might shake out.  

My opinion is that if an invasion happens, it probably won't occur until sometime after the Winter Olympics.  Russian president Vladimir Putin knows that military action during the Games would likely outrage other main powers, and provide a valid reason for a counter-attack.  

That being said, if Russia does indeed cross into Ukraine, the United States will have no choice but to become militarily involved (honoring an alliance we have with that country).  

After that, the dominos will fall quite quickly; enter the United Kingdom, France, and Germany (among many others), stage right.  

All of this alarms me to no end.  When you consider that Russian forces may already be on the move (a bombing of a school in Ukraine is being regarded as a possible Russian attack), and then add this to the formula...

...well, let's just say that I may or may not be looking at locations of nearby fallout shelters (9, 10).  

This is big, people.  This is BIG, and it is (seemingly enough) REAL.  Pray for peace, and for cooler heads to prevail (if you are religiously inclined).  

Note 1: See the "Warsaw Pact", a Soviet-backed counter-organization to NATO that operated during the Cold War era (11).  

Note 2: "Putsch", noun.  Definition: A secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government (12).  

Note 3: "False flag", noun.  Definition: A hostile or harmful action (such as an attack) that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it (13).

    Used in a sentence: The Vietnam War's "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" may have been a "false flag" (14).  

A Few Words In French

To my French-Canadian trucker friends, and those of like mind.  

À mes amis camionneurs franco-canadiens, et à ceux qui sont dans le même état d'esprit.

"Cette lutte peut être morale, ou elle peut être physique, et elle peut être à la fois morale et physique, mais elle doit être une lutte.  Le pouvoir ne concède rien sans une demande.  Ca n'a jamais été fait et ca ne le sera jamais.  Découvrez ce à quoi les gens se soumettront tranquillement et vous aurez découvert la mesure exacte de l'injustice et du tort qui leur sera imposé, et ceux-ci continueront jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient combattus par des mots ou des coups, ou par les deux.  Les limites des tyrans sont prescrites par l'endurance de ceux qu'ils oppriment." 

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.  Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.  The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." (1)

-- Frederick Douglass, 1857

Stand strong! HOLD THE LINE!!

Missing You (A Valentine's Day Lament)

"Every time I think of you, I always catch my breath" -- John Waite, "Missing You" (1)

Here we go again; the valentine's day blues have hit me, and pretty hard at that.  

I've written at length about how my heart has been broken by a certain female.  It isn't totally necessary to rehash that story; I'll simply say that right now, I'm feeling the hurt and the pain that goes along with it.  

Perhaps I'm locked into bit of a vicious cycle.  I know I have to let this girl go.  Nevertheless, as the saying goes, "the devil is in the details".  

You see, every time I think I'm finally and completely over her, something happens that gets me to miss her again.  Maybe it's being alone on a cold and snowy winter's night.  Perhaps it's hearing my friends talk about their families, and how lucky they are to be with their partners.  Or maybe it's seeing or hearing from someone who looks like her.  

Whatever it is, it triggers those old feelings again.  That's something that I've never been able to shake.  

And not knowing why is the worst part.  

I've always wanted to ask her why she rejected me; not out of some great desire to fix the issue, but out of a need for closure.  Even so, I've kept my mouth shut, feeling that it's probably none of my business anyway.  It just so happens that today, that "need to know" has manifested itself more than it ever has before.  I guess that could be a valentine's day thing, or possibly have to do with the time of the season.  

Regardless of what the reason behind my needing to know why might be, this is a question that torments my very soul.  Be that as it may, perhaps someday I will have the closure that I've sought for so long.  

Until then....

...I'll pull through, because I have to.  

Happy Valentine's Day to all.  

"Follow The Money": PolitiFact

As a brand new feature of this blog, I'm beginning to look into the financial sources, and the possible biases, of certain notable organizations.  I'll call this periodic inclusion "Follow the Money".  

Let's start with "PolitiFact", a web site with the goal of "sort(ing) out the truth in American politics" (1). 

In my accumulated research on the matter, I have found many instances where the site has distributed false information regarding political statements.  The associated reviews are misleading, seemingly intentionally so.  Clearly, this goes against the published mission statement of the organization. 

So who or what is behind PolitiFact, at least financially speaking? The company is owned and operated by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which is "a non-profit school for journalists" based in St. Petersburg, Florida (1, 2).  

Looking through available financial records, it appears that the Institute has a rather interesting list of major donors.  These partners include:

• "Meta"/Facebook.

• TikTok (a social networking platform that is owned by Chinese firm "ByteDance Ltd.").

• Microsoft.

• AmeriHealth Caritas (a health insurance and health care company).

• Google/Alphabet, Inc. (through various investments by Google News). 

Examining this, the information concerning TikTok/ByteDance is of particular interest.  

Via Wikipedia:

"On 14 August 2020, (President Donald) Trump issued an executive order mandating that ByteDance divest from all U.S. operations of TikTok within 90 days.  

On 28 August 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology announced that any sale of ByteDance's technology to foreign firms (was) a matter of 'national security' and would require prior approval" (3).  

That said, given the obvious implication that ByteDance is at least funded by the Communist Party of China, one wonders what influence the Party has over the operations of the Institute (as well as PolitiFact itself).  

Here's some other noteworthy details about the Poynter Institute.  

• In addition to their ownership of PolitiFact, the Institute also operates:

• The Tampa Bay Times/Times Publishing Company.
• The "International Fact-Checking Network".
• Florida magazines "Bay" and "Florida Trend".
• Florida Spanish-language newspaper "Centro" (2).

• PolitiFact "won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2009" (4).  

• In 2006, Tampa Bay Times/Times Publishing Company CEO Paul Tash was made a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board (5).  This stands out as a potential conflict of interest.  

• Tash's "party affiliation is with the Democratic Party".  

• "The Poynter Institute received seven thousand thirty-seven thousand four hundred dollars from the (US government's) Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 pandemic" (2).  Is it possible that this money could've been a reward for publishing opinions favorable to the government?

The Bottom Line:

The journalism school that runs PolitiFact gets major funding from organizations known to be openly hostile to free speech.  One of these may itself be bankrolled (or otherwise controlled) by the Communist Party of China.  

Given the implication of major Chinese interest, it is reasonable to ask about the site's true purpose.  Thus, a serious question arises; is PolitiFact a legitimate source of news and "fact-checking", or is it merely a propaganda device and mouthpiece? 

If it is the latter, perhaps this issue should be investigated on a more official level, and by someone possessing more power than myself.