Category: Uncategorized

I Merge with Chagall

Professor Freund at Union always spoke of Chagall’s paintings as DIMENSION ON DIMENSION.  These days, I wonder more about DEMENTIA ON DEMENTIA.  Still, I never thought I’d manage to merge with a Chagall painting myself.  But then, that’s why I keep shooting.

YOU NEVER KNOW.

The Ides in View

March, though barely
Roaring yet,
Growls amid the cold
As headlights shielded
From the wind,
Point their frozen beams.
Where has joy
Retreated to
Beyond this networked sham,
These digitized
Encomiums
To what we've known, first-hand.

I note the lanky,
Loping girl,
Her trailing, open coat;
The hint of faux
Impertinence;
Her glancing, wary look.
She's in the wind as
Much as me, she's
Breached this veering poem.
March, though barely,
Roaring yet,
Growls amid the cold.

JAD, 2022

Every poem begins as a promise.

Verging

Spring, in its rain-or-
Shine fashion,
Has tangoed glum winter
Offstage
While here in Manhattan,
That first brighter day
Surpassed for the wintered,
Rebirth.
But spring in Ukraine,
By Putin's decree --
To Kiev and Kharkiv --
Has ushered in death.

JAD, 2022
March IV

Foggy now with
Sudden squalls --
Or is it shifting mist? --
Manhattan seems a
Ship at sea,
A North Atlantic tub.
Streaky March, its
Calculus,
Its mix of warmth and wind
Has galvanized the
Optimists
While giving doubters pause.
The streets are ripe
With appetite;
The microbes lie in wait.
Another surge could
Savage us
Or threaten just the stressed.
Holy March,
Unholy March --
Past winter's slow decay,
Past cyberwar and
Genocide,
Past hypersonic death --
Spring us towards some
Renaissance,
Some warmer, safer
Place.

JAD, 2022
Too Early

Pale March light on
Limbless trunks,
Bare of leaves
And life.

JAD, 2022

Through consciousness of art, the art of consciousness

The Lord’s Dare

Our fathered, who not begotten,
Hollowed be thy claims;

Thy kill-shot come,
Thy don’ts be done
On earth as it is on field turf.

Give us this dearth – our daily debt –
And forbear us our bogus equities 

As we forbear those who equitize falsely;

And lead us not into be-woke-ness
But delink us from Elon or worse;

For thine is the digit,
The android, the apple
Now and for cyber,

Amen.

JAD, 2022

Once Upon a Time

Times, racing, 
Steering his fate,
Roaring down corridors
Threats;
Wringing the whimsy
From Donegal tweed
And winging it,
Herringboned, home --
He peddled a message
So chokingly dense
He mistook his
Compulsions for mind.

Likely to listen,
To reckon, to parse,
He gathered about him
A team,
Investing their efforts
With solemn respect,
The better to market 
His grace.
Yet, the more they agreed with
His mission,
The more he regretted
His truth.

JAD, 2022

The Trouble with Going Green

Or as I like to frame it — the ANTHEM vs. the REALITY.

This piece from Irina Slav at OilPrice.com takes a close, hard look at this.

Why Renewables Can’t Solve Europe’s Energy Crisis

Her opening three bullets:

  • Europe has been aggressively pursuing a clean energy future and the end of fossil fuels, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the shortcomings of renewables.
  • The soaring prices of key metals and the length of time it takes to implement renewable energy projects have meant Europe is turning to fossil fuels to solve its energy crisis.
  • The EU is planning to replace Russian gas with LNG imports, coal, and even fuel oil, with a relatively small amount of the gas to be replaced by wind and solar. 

It’s a brave new world all right.  Just not the one the GREEN DEAL FAITHFUL anticipated.

Shellenberger Exposes Liberal Wishful Thinking

He’s challenging incumbent California governor, Gavin Newsom, on what I DEEM TO BE the SANITY PLATFORM.

In other words, he GETS energy, drugs, homelessness and the REALITY of climate change — as in what can and can’t be done about it.

Zero LEFT/RIGHT BS.

Here’s a sample:

I REPEAT . . .

HE GETS IT.

German Inflation Spiking

Scary concept, right?

GERMAN INFLATION.

Immediately conjures up WEIMAR.

And this:

How can Germany’s economy survive without Russian FOSSIL CARBON?

Russia’s ‘Unfriendly’ List

Surprise!  Surprise!

It’s composed of the US, the Anglosphere, the Greater West, Japan and South Korea.

China and a few others are lined up with Russia, but which way will the Middle East, Africa and Latin America turn?

And how long can Continental Europe hold out without Russian energy?

Don’t look now — BUT THE WAR FOR THE NEXT CENTURY HAS BEGUN.

And, yes, UKRAINE is it’s SARAJEVO.

Crypto vs. Academe

I hear BITCOIN aficionados are facing stiff resistance in their efforts to scale the ivied towers of ACADEME.

I’m neither a fan of BITCOIN nor of ACADEME in its current WOKE/DEBT-SLAVE iteration.  So, happily, I don’t have A DOG IN THIS FIGHT.

That leaves me — and many of you as well, I presume — with the LUXURY of judging this one on the MERITS, insofar as they can be ESTABLISHED.

But, frankly, IF I RULED THE WORLD, I’d find for this one just the RIGHT DEBATE PANEL and TURN THEM LOOSE ON ONE ANOTHER with a STARTER’S PISTOL.

WE CAN’T FACE TOMORROW IF WE WON’T FACE OFF.

World’s Deepest Pockets . . .

. . . by Category

What struck me most is that other than Musk who leads the parade, the rest of the top ten in GREEN ENERGY are CHINESE.

Yes, China pollutes more than any other country . . . but at the same time, its entrepreneurial class sees in that both the problem and FUTURE OPPORTUNITY.

China is looking to transform THIS CENTURY.

‘A Paradigm Shift Western Media Hasn’t Grasped Yet’

From Ronan Manly at Bullionstar.com:

Russian Ruble Relaunched, Linked to Gold and Commodities

For the uninitiated regarding Russia’s long-running move in this direction, this is an EXTREMELY USEFUL READ.

But I’ll HIGHLIGHT here merely the final paragraph:

“The Bank of Russia’s move to link the ruble to gold and link commodity payments to the ruble is a paradigm shift that the western media has not really yet grasped. As the dominos fall, these events could reverberate in different ways. Increased demand for physical gold. Blowups in the paper gold markets. A revalued gold price. A shift away from the US dollar. Increased bilateral trade in commodities among non-Western countries in currencies other than the US dollar.”

THINK OF THIS AS ANALAGOUS TO THE GERMAN ATTACK ON FRANCE IN THE SPRING OF 1940 WHEN EVERYDAY LIFE SEEMED UNCHANGEABLE.

THE FRENCH — WHO KNEW THAT THE GERMANS WOULD ATTACK — ALSO REMAINED IN DENIAL.

IS IT THE US THAT’S NOW IN DENIAL?

The Eurasian Challenge Is Real

Pepe Escobar is a mouthpiece for both China and Russia, and his material often one notch — if that — above propagandistic.  Yet, at times, his pieces reveal the West’s weaknesses.  This is one of those pieces.

Meet the New, Resource-Based Global Currency

Will it play out EXACTLY this way?  Who knows?  BUT IT COULD.  Which is why you read WHAT THE OTHER SIDE PUBLISHES.  They’re SIGNALING THEIR NEXT SET OF MOVES.  Head fakes included.

Some points worth considering:

SANCTIONS VS. RUSSIAN GAS

  • “While the Atlanticist ruling classes have gone totally berserk but still remain focused on fighting to the last European to extract any remaining, palpable EU wealth, Russia is playing it cool. Moscow has been quite lenient in fact, brandishing the specter of no gas in Spring rather than Winter.”

RUSSIA’S DEMAND TO BE PAID IN RUBLES FOR ALL EXPORTS

  • “The sudden switch from dollars/euros to rubles was hardcore, Olympic-level geoeconomic judo. Putin enticed the collective West to unleash its demented hysteria sanction attack – and turned it against the opponent with a single, swift move.”

THE GOLD-BACKED RUBLE

  • “Not to mention the master coup by the Russian Central Bank, pegging 1 gram of gold to 5,000 rubles – which is already around $60, and climbing.

    “Coupled with No Rubles No Gas, what we have here is energy de facto pegged to gold.”

MULTIPOLARITY VS. DOLLAR HEGEMONY

  • “The Holy Grail in the evolving discussions about a multipolar world, since the BRICS summits in the 2000s featuring Putin, Hu Jintao and Lula, has always been how to bypass dollar hegemony.”
  • “The Russian Central Bank, unlike the Fed, does not practice QE and won’t export toxic inflation to the rest of the planet.”

THE BATTLE LINES

  • “It’s NATOstan vs. Eurasia redux. Cold War 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and even 5.0. It doesn’t matter. All the previous Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations see which way the geopolitical and geo-economic winds are blowing: the time to assert their real sovereignty is at hand as the “rules-based international order” bites the dust.”

THE NEXT WORLD ORDER?

  • “As per Russia’s FM, Sergei Lavrov, ‘A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape. It’s an objective process. It’s unstoppable . . . 
  • “‘No one on this Earth should be seen as a minor player. Everyone is equal and sovereign.’”

AGAIN, NO ONE SHOULD SWALLOW THIS WHOLE.  ON THE CONTRARY, IT REQUIRES CAREFUL CHEWING OVER.  I’D GO SO FAR AS TO SUGGEST CONSCIOUS MASTICATION.

BECAUSE THAT’S HOW YOU LOCATE WHATEVER CRACKS THERE ARE IN THESE ARGUMENTS.  AND IF THERE ARE CRACKS, LET’S JUST HOPE THAT OUR GEOPOLITICAL CLASS IS ASTUTE ENOUGH TO SEE THEM AND COURAGEOUS ENOUGH TO CREDIT AND ACKNOWLEDGE THEM.

THE ARROGANCE OF POWER CAN BE BLINDING.

OR HAVE WE TOTALLY WRITTEN OFF VIETNAM?