Until a Creature slithers into the water near the touch circle place. This is no fish. It has long arms, somewhat like an octopus, but only four of them, and they are arranged oddly around its body. Its two longer, lower arms have fins at the end of them.

You eye the Creature warily. It is smaller than you by half, and it has an odd smell. It does not smell like threat, but you can’t rule that out. You’ve taken nasty bites from seals before, once or twice.

The Creature hangs in the water, and you move around it slowly. Then the touch circle drops into the water. You are hungry–the circle has not dropped for some time–but the Creature is near it. Hunger and caution fight until you slowly edge forward and, quick as you can, touch the circle lightly.

A fish drops. One fish.

You are still hungry, of course, and the Creature hasn’t moved from its spot. And so when the touch circle drops again, you do not swim quite as quickly. The Creature watches you through its odd eyes, but otherwise offers no threat.

Soon enough you accept that the Creature will share your tank. It comes and goes, and eventually you make the connection that the touch circle only drops when the Creature is in the tank. You look forward to its arrival. You think of it as the Food Creature, since meals appear when it does. It is almost companionable.

And then, one time when the touch circle drops, the Food Creature reaches out an arm and touches you.

You flinch away in alarm, but it does not follow you. It just waits, patiently, by the touch circle. Again, when you swim in, it runs one oddly shaped fin down your side, and then waits.

The touch is not at all unpleasant. Each time you touch the circle, the Creature touches you. Eventually, greatly daring, you touch it back, running your nose quickly across its body. Its skin has an odd texture, like yet unlike a ray’s, but it smells like nothing you’ve known before.

Over time, the touch circle rises, so that each time it drops a little higher on the side of the tank. Eventually, you need to break the surface to touch it. The Food Creature often touches your dorsal fin. You are used to its touch by now; it’s a friendly Creature and this does not bother you. But one day, after it touches you, there’s a pressure on the fin, a pinch. You try to roll away, but the pinch remains. Your fin is heavier, as though something is holding onto it, and a weight rests on your back. But the touch circle gives you food, and the friendly Food Creature is there, and you try to ignore it.

Except that after you eat, the pinch is still on your fin. You try to dive to the lower, more comfortable part of the tank. But the deeper you dive, the tighter it pinches. You swim along the side of the tank, trying to dislodge the pinch, without luck. You swim higher, and the pinch eases. You discover that if you swim with your fin above the surface, your fin is comfortable. But you are not.

Long ago, before the Creature and the tanks, you swam in unenclosed water that was teeming with fish and plants and tasted like life. And you swam deep, close to the fish you fed on and away from those that would hurt you. And though you are the only one in this tank (apart from the intermittent Creature), your instinct remains. While you rise occasionally, everything in you tells you to swim deep.

And so now, swimming not only high but right at the surface, you feel your nerves fray. Surface is fear, but deep is pain. Eventually, exhausted, you give in and stay at the surface, drifting.

When the touch circle drops again, you move listlessly toward it. You almost don’t care when a veritable feast drops. Again, you feel touch on your dorsal fin, but this time the pinch disappears. It takes a moment to realize, but then you dive deeply, comfortably. You swim around the tank, celebrating both your freedom and your full belly.

“How is the project proceeding?”

“As planned and on schedule.” She keeps all her answers short and to the point. She knows he doesn’t really care about the training–or the creatures involved.

He looks into one of the tanks, to the animal circling within. “Lemon sharks,” he says with some disgust.

She bites her tongue. No good can come of rehashing this. Great whites need enormous tanks, makos and tiger sharks rarely survive in captivity, and reef sharks are timid. Social, trainable lemon sharks are the best option.

She hates when he visits the lab.

You’ve developed mixed feelings about the Food Creature.

Though your meals have become more delectable, the pinch always appears on your fin when it’s around. However, the Creature has started to play games with you, using the touch circle to direct you. It even uses sound signals to tell you which way to swim. You catch on fast to this rudimentary communication, and you enjoy the distraction.

In time, you learn to ignore the pinch and become comfortable swimming at the surface.

One day, the Food Creature spends extra time with you, without the pinch, playing and rubbing you, and you enjoy the session immensely.

It is some time before your next meal, and this time it’s not fish. A different Creature drops into the water. This one is colored darkly and hangs in the tank, not moving. But most importantly, this one smells like food.

You’re reluctant to taste a Creature, but the combination of the smell and your hunger soon become overwhelming. You cautiously seize a limb.

It’s delicious.

Before you can help it, you’re tearing into the Creature, satiating yourself.

Thereafter, your friendly Food Creature does not join you in the tank. You see it sometimes, when you breach, and it continues to play games with sound signals. You wear the pinch at all times; it has become part of your existence. And when you’re fed, it’s always a delicious smelling Creature.

You make the connection. Light-colored Food Creature is for games. Dark-colored Tasty Creature is for food.

A small part of you wonders what Food Creature would taste like.

“Are they ready to deploy?”

“Target training is complete.”

“Yes, but will they attack when they need to?”

“Associative conditioning has worked well so far. Of course, live divers aren’t going to be scented like our training decoys. And this all depends on them swimming close to the surface.”

“I don’t want excuses. I want guaranteed attacks.”

And what evil geniuses want, evil geniuses get, she thinks. Even when it’s needlessly complicated and more about the optics than anything. Of course it’s not guaranteed, she wants to tell him.

You’re the one that wanted sharks with laser beams.

There are noises above your tank–loud noises, lots of noises. Screeching noises and rumbling noises that sound like rocks rolling back and forth across the ground.

An opening appears in your tank, a passageway. The water coming from it smells…alive.

You have not eaten in several days, and the smells are too strong to ignore.

Sound signals direct you to the passage, but you would have gone anyway. When you emerge, you are distracted by the myriad sights and smells. This is open water, like where you used to swim, bursting with fish and plants and life. It is glorious! You must explore!

Then the pinch tightens and forces you to rise. There are shadows on the surface, floating vessels that you want to avoid, but between the pinch and the sound signals you cannot.

You rise next to one of these vessels. There is a flash that seems to come from your own dorsal fin, then a brightness, painfully hot and loud, that scares you back underwater. The water tastes like nothing you’ve ever experienced as debris rains down around you.

Creatures appear in the water. Dark Creatures–Tasty Creatures. Despite the chaos around you, your hunger takes over. This Creature is moving, alive, but you easily catch it and eagerly take a bite…

Which you spit out immediately. This tastes nothing like the Tasty Creatures you normally feed on. But there are more. Perhaps this one is bad. You try another.

Still awful. But the chaos in the water is combining with your hunger and a new, salty taste to drive you into a frenzy. You try to eat the Creature anyway, ignoring the taste, tearing out big bites.

The pinch tightens. Sound signals echo off every surface now, along with percussive thumps that disorient your sensitive system. The murky water is filled with debris.

You don’t know what to do. You swim in every direction, thrashing, hungry and confused and upset. You wheel back toward your tank. The water is dull there, but at least you were safe and fed.

But then there is a noise, like a thousand rockslides, like an underwater volcano, and a rush of heat and bubbles and pressure pounds into you and blows you backward.

Suddenly all is quiet. The water is still filled with debris, but there are no more sound signals. No more chaotic shadows. No more Creatures. The pinch on your fin disappears, and an object falls away from you and drifts slowly downward, disappearing into the deep.

You dive experimentally, and nothing stops you. You reach a comfortable depth, and your nerves relax. An anxiety that’s been present so long you’d forgotten it was there…releases.

You continue swimming away.

Away from your tank and the Creatures. Away toward water that you vaguely remember, clean and teeming with life.

You stretch yourself and pick up speed, swimming swift and straight for the first time in a long time.

Away.

Free.

Russia’s Medvedev: Time to Declare “Rebus sic stantibus” on Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War

Standard Hal. But worth a read. Things ARE going on and moving forward. Not to the timetable of the West, but to a beat of a distant drum. -MM

Hal Turner World June 21, 2026

Sometimes in life, it is not so important WHAT is said as it is WHO said it.  Today is such a day.

Russia’s Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said something yesterday that should send shivers up your spine.  Medvedev publicly wrote:

Given the massive terrorist attacks of the enemy on our cities, the intensity of which is increasing and will obviously continue to increase, it’s time to openly declare that there are no more rules regarding neo-Nazi Kiev and there can’t be any. The only thing that should remain beyond our acceptable limits is the deliberate destruction of civilians. I emphasize: deliberate, that is, intentionally. Everything else is quite acceptable, no matter how disgusting the scumbag from Bankovaya Street and his pathetic European sidekicks may be.

By the way, this also applies to the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War. They are no longer needed. Wars have changed too much over the past hundred years. Back then, it was unacceptable to steal or kill even the leaders of enemy countries. Moreover, the throwing of bombs from air balloons has been replaced by missiles and drones. So the invocation of the rebus sic stantibus clause is quite appropriate here.

What the Heck is “rebus sic stantibus?”

Rebus sic stantibus (Latin for “things thus standing”) is a legal doctrine allowing parties to void or renegotiate a contract or treaty if there has been a fundamental, unforeseen change in circumstances. It serves as an exception to the rule that agreements must be strictly honored.

Core Legal Principles

• The Rule vs. The Exception: It contrasts directly with pacta sunt servanda—the foundational legal principle that promises must be kept.
• The Threshold: It cannot be invoked simply because a deal became less profitable. The change must be completely unforeseeable, render performance radically burdensome, or destroy the fundamental basis of the agreement.

Where It Applies

• International Law: Often used to terminate or suspend state treaties. It is recognized under customary international law and codified in Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
• Civil Contract Law: Many civil law jurisdictions (and increasingly common law doctrines of frustration/hardship) allow courts to alter or terminate private contracts if extraordinary events (like pandemics or wars) cause extreme and unanticipated financial hardship.

How It Works

When successfully invoked, it does not just automatically cancel an agreement. Depending on the jurisdiction or treaty, it can result in:

1.    1) Complete termination of the contract or treaty.
2.     2) Judicial modification of the terms (such as adjusting timelines, prices, or scope) to fit the new reality.

HAL TURNER ANALYSIS

The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council just dusted off an arcane phrase in Latin, from  Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to publicly say no more rules of war for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Stop for a moment and truly absorb what that means: Unlimited Warfare.

Unlimited.

This isn’t some nobody from a tiny, insignificant country saying this.  It’s a former President of Russia and now the CURRENT Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council.

He is arguing the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War are, in his words “no longer needed” because, he says “Wars have changed too much over the past hundred years.”

He mentions that nowadays, aircraft with missiles and bombs do what the convention long ago outlawed: Dropping explosives from hot air balloons.  He also explicitly mentions “. . . Killing enemy leaders.” a concept of war brought to all of us by Israel intentionally bombing Palestinian leaders like Ismail Heniyah (Bombed in a Tehran Hotel by Israel) and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, whose personal home was hit with upwards of eight, 2,000 pound, air-dropped, bombs.

Thanks to the Israelis, the word threw out a long prohibited act of war – killing the leaders of a country!

It seems to me that what’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander.   If it is OK for Israel – and arguably the United States — to kill the leaders of other countries, then we Americans had better get used to the idea that other countries might just decide to kill OUR leaders.

While it wouldn’t bother me a bit to see some present Democrats (and a few RINOs) get whacked by some foreign government, it certainly would offend our sensibilities here in the USA.  In fact, we’d likely go to declared war over it.

But nuances aside, it is we in the US, through our maniacal proxy Israel, that has brought this to the world.

Worse, the US and our vassals in Europe, have so viciously supplied Ukraine, that for all intents and purposes, Russia is already at war with Europe and the US.   If Medvedev’s argument is followed to its logical conclusion, Russia can simply declare that we are already at war with them, and use that as the basis to attack European manufacturing facilities supplying Ukraine with weapons, and European/US Military bases being used as logistics hubs to supply Ukraine to attack Russia.

I don’t know what kind of morons think a war with Russia is worth fighting, but apparently we here in the United States (and for certain, in Europe) have quite a number of psychotic ego maniacs  who think exactly that.   These same psychopaths seem to think a nuclear war in winnable.

In any event, the fact that a guy like Medvedev utilized the Latin phrase, codified in Treaty law, to justify abrogating or withdrawing from the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War shows how serious things have gotten.

The blame for all this falls squarely on the shoulders of very specific people.  So should accountability if their efforts cause a nuclear war. But it won’t.  There’s never accountability.

A Formula You Need to Know

It is said that “al the world’s a stage.”   That “politics is theater.”   Think about that: Theater.

The clap when the curtain rises. The clap when it falls.

Everything in between, you pay to sit in the dark.

If POLITICS = THEATRE, then the POLITICIANS are the ACTORS.

You, therefore are the AUDIENCE. And the Audience has one function, split across two moments: applause at the open, applause at the close.

Between those two claps you are silent. Not heard. Not seen. And what is not heard and not seen does not matter. If this is true, that means you do not matter to the theatre or the politicians because you are only useful for the clap or the vote. Beyond that, you’re useless.

My math…

You matter at beat zero and the final beat. You pay at every beat between them with your time and enthusiasm.

Ticket. Parking. Popcorn.

Two claps of value. A full show of cost.

My reading of what we are seeing…

They do not need your voice. They need your applause to begin, and your applause to feel earned at the end. The silence in the middle is not a flaw in the performance. It is the design.

This is signal that the voting class was never written as a character. It was written as a constant. Needed at the open, needed at the close, billed for the entire run.

You were sold a seat and told it was a stake.

Don’t expect your opinion on stopping overseas wars and inflation to matter. This is reality and reality is brutal.

Bookmark this to digest it over and over until you know. If you know, you know.