Avery was not sure she had ever seen such a building in her life. The style of architecture she was only familiar with in pictures; a large old looking gothic building with dozens of windows. Some of them, broken and shattered. From the outside it appeared the corner of the windows were scorched as if a fire had blown out the windows. She looked to Vesna on her left and Fitz to her right.

“This church wasn’t here yesterday, was it?” Fitz asked. The town of Ginsval didn’t have much, especially not a giant cathedral.

“Buildings tend to not be in the middle of grassy fields,” Vesna responded.

It belonged in a large city; the capital. Surrounded by equally sized buildings. Not the field of a small village in the southernmost part of the country. She looked at her surroundings with the minimal light that the moon provided, the cool summer breeze passing between them.

“Well, who wanna go in first?” She looked between them and took a step backwards. Fitz looked at her, running a hand through his tuft of white hair, looked back at Vesna who reciprocated the same look and nodded towards her.

Great.

“You’re the one that insisted we come here in the first place.” Fitz snaked his arm behind her and pulled her forward. “Lead the way, oh brave one,” he said.

“You’re the one that can start a fire with the snap of his finger,” she remarked. He shrugged.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Everybody got they device?” The three of them held out their Radiphones. They could snap communication throughout the entire country of Rhea. Together they ascended the large steps to the enormous red door with her leading at the front.

She looked up at the top of the door frame, the outline of a carved rose with its thorny stem with an open book behind it. Taking a deep breath regretting having ever suggested venturing to the area she leaned onto the door.

The door unfolded with a loud creak, as if it hadn’t been opened in years. The building wasn’t just desolate, but looked to be entirely abandoned, cobs of webs gathered in the corners, like nobody had walked the hallowed halls in years. Fitz grabbed her by her wrist and in turn she latched onto Vesna. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears and wondered if they could feel it as well. The overthinking of her childhood imagination that told her that there was a monster in the corner.

Even at 17, she couldn’t psyche herself out of not believing there was anything in the dark ready to jump out.

“You had to be curious!” Fitz whispered, with the combination of fear and irritation in equal measure his tone. They took every step lightly.

“We sure this a church?” Vesna asked. “Don’t really feel anythin’ holy.”

She wasn’t sure this was a church. “There’d be more crosses wouldn’t there?

“Good point.”

She looked at her surroundings with the minimal light that the moon provided, scorch marks covered the walls, broken chairs and desks littered the halls. Vesnas breath hitched. “What was that?”

“That ain’t funny Ves,” she said.

“It ain’t a joke, shut up and listen,” she whispered. When they stopped, the sound of loud banging could be heard. The sound of something repeatedly being dropped on the floor.

She peaked her head around the corner, the moonlight shone through the shattered windows providing her light. Walking on her toes, she could feel the irony of strolling through what looked like a school hallway when she herself had just graduated this time last year.

“Why are we gettin’ closer to it?” Fitz tugged on her arm. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him in response.

“Why are you here?”

Neither of them bothered waiting to confirm whose voice it was, her breath hitched before breaking out into a sprint with the others following not far behind. With no idea where she was running to. She didn’t even know where she was running through. The only thing she could think of as she ran was that if they survived this she swore she was going to give them both a piece of her mind.

She slowed her pace, more aware that she could only hear the sound of her own footsteps as she ran through the halls. Dread filled her. What?

Her radiphone buzzed, scrambling it from her pocket she brought the device to her ear. Fitz’s voice rang through, “Where are you?” His drawl was more pronounced than it had been all night.

“You were right behind me!” she frantically whispered.

“I didn’t see any of you,” Vesna claimed.

“Are we in a maze?” Fitz questioned. “We gon die in a maze.”

She looked around and stopped at the sign above the frame of the door. “A library!”

“What?”

“Actually it doesn’t matter!” she whispered aggressively. She heard  him suck his teeth on the other end.

“Bullshit,” he said. “You-”

“Enough you two!”

“I didn’t do anything! Are you gonna argue with me or are you gonna meet up with me?” All she did was step outside the house for fresh air, how was she supposed to know that a giant building would appear and they would get lost in it.

He sighed in defeat. “Where’re you?”

She shut her eyes and breathed for a moment. Luckily Vesnaa answered for her, “How we supposed to know?”

“Well that attitude ain’t helpin’ us. But what do you mean ‘library’?” His breathless voice was static over the small phone. “This ain’t a library.”

“The hell there ain’t!” She whispered. “If I know one thing, I know what a library look like. It’s just a giant building with millions of rows of books.” She stared at the sign ‘Rose Order Library’, before her an expansive hall; a sea of rows of books filled to the brim.

The Rose Order. Rose Order….the name had felt familiar to her. From a history class.

“But that’s imposs–” By the tone of his voice she could tell his eyes landed on something similar.

“Seeing is believin’ beloved.” She hid in the nearest room–a closet within the room. She grabbed a pair of scissors, holding her mouth with her hands, near suffocating herself. The adrenaline that pumped through her veins was beginning to wear off.

The door to the room opened. One. Two. Three. Four steps, she could see the shadow of the figure of a stop.

The door flew open and on instinct she held the scissor in a reverse grip and–was stopped. The girl’s hand caught her wrist. “Calm– woah! Calm down,” she said. Her eyes widened, the girl had brown skin and matching eyes, with loose shoulder length black curls. She stood a head taller than Avery herself, wearing a torn gray shirt, black pants with a brown jacket and black boots strapped with a silver chain to match the six piercings on her left ear. She smiled lazily, “I’m Thea. Athea. But mostly Thea.”

She placed her hands in her pockets and looked around at the room and let out a whistle. The girl had an air of confidence about her, the kind of confidence that only came about when someone knew not many people could or would confront them.

“Well.” She looked up at the ceiling. A painted pattern of vines and flowers weaved together and met at a garden. “What’s it like discovering an ancient library that went missing centuries ago?”

“‘Scuse me’?”

“It seems like you, Avery, just rediscovered the ancient Library of the Rose Order.” She sounded like she didn’t really care about the building all that much. Picking out a book from the shelf, the girl coughed as the dust suffocated her.

Avery blinked. “Rediscovered?” She could hear her own drawl go up as the echo reverberated through the room.

“You got that right,” she smiled. “It’s been missing for centuries, for you guys” she repeated as she stepped out into the halls. “Fitz should be here soon, he’s busy trying to uh, find his way out of this ‘maze’. And Vesna should be here soon too.”

She stared at the curly haired girl in disbelief. “Cen-” She heaved. “Centuries?”

“It was here one day–centuries ago now, like six or eight. Then one day.” Thea waved her hands over her head. “Gone overnight.”

“Do they have drugs here?” Avery asked. “Are you on drugs?”

“We used to contrary to popular belief and I wish.” Avery heard a crackling and a hum, sparks of blue electricity ran up Thea’s body, the pieces of metal; the chain on her boots, bracelet, and piercings sparked. She placed her hand on a pole that stuck out from the wall.

The lights flickered for a couple moments, as if slowly relearning to turn on.

Wherever the fire had been had not spread entirely to this part of the building. A couple of corners of the vast room were darker than others as well as an entire wall was blacked out. Piles of ash sitting in place as if it hadn’t been touched. Some lights were not turned on solely by the fact that they were broken.

 She remembered Fitz igniting a match with his fingers before tossing it into a campfire. Espers. Just different elements, same concept.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Thea–

“What are you?”

“I’m the Keeper of the Library. Something like…a guardian.” Her face, heavy from dejection.

“You’ve been here for centuries.”

“For you. I’m not immortal.” She began walking through the rows of shelves. “I only woke up when the building arrived here.”

She strolled over to a shelf and leaned down, picking up a book from its space. “‘The History of Esperers of Rhea’.” Thea turned to the first page. “‘Let it be known that Rhea as a country has an incredibly complex relationship with their Esper population, compared to the surrounding territories blah blah blah’.” She shut the book and shoved it back into its spot.

She didn’t sound very thrilled about her job.

“‘Esper Theory’, ‘The Temples of The Delca Empire’, ‘Ancient Rhea Mythology’.” She picked up the book from its sport. “This thing might be just as ancient as the ancient mythology in the book at this point.” She flipped through the volume. “Just like they said,” she muttered and slammed the book shut.

“This …library was lost to history?” 

“The hell is going on?” a male voice. Avery snapped her attention to Fitz with fair skin, white hair and red irises. Vesna followed behind him her facial expression mirroring his.

“How’d y’all find-”

“I showed them. Think of it like giving them a mental map,” Thea said. “I’m completely.” She paused. “In control of this place. Just like they said.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Vesna asked.

Fitz’s head tilted upwards, staring at the intricate art on the ceiling. Unlike the room she had just been in, with the light she could see at the center of the ceiling was a massive book with a rose at its center surrounded by celestial bodies, painted with the delicate strokes of a thousand brushes.

The scorch marks of fire in the bottom left corner of the ceiling, where a wall caught fire and raced upwards to burn away such a beauty. In original condition it might’ve been compared to the art in the Vatican.

Vesna looked at him and gave him a worried look. “Is this real?” She gestured to the room around her. “This is…” She didn’t finish her sentence as she opened a random book.

Avery followed Vesna down the row of books, the shelf between them nearly reaching the ceiling. Ladders on each side for anybody who wanted to climb to a higher book.

“What’s…the Order of the Rose?” She asked. Thea looked at them silently and continued to browse through a section of history books. Avery looked at the sign above another section: Fiction.

So many authors, concepts, ideas and characters, forgotten by the sands of centuries gone by. Stories that were shelved and forgotten to collect dust. Mere relics of a bygone era. Centuries of ideas thought to be lost to ashes…before her eyes to be unearthed.

“They’re like magical Historians,” she said. She picked up a tome from the shelf and wiped it clean. “Their job is to honor–was…to honor History–”

“‘Preserve, protect and entrust’,” Fitz finished. Vesna gave him a strange look. “My grandfather once told me that. Talked on and on about the Rose Order and about my fire.”

Thea looked at him, impressed. And then turned her attention to the center of the ceiling with a melancholy smile, like she was recalling a memory.  “Many of them are–were Espers, much like your friend Fitz and I, except a lot more loyal to knowledge. They..used their collective power the day the building was burning to create a fail-safe. That I would be protected and with it the Library itself in another time.”

“You not loyal?” Vesna asked, closing a book. Fitz passed her another one.

“I’m learning to be.” Thea shrugged. “But I’m just an apprentice.”

Avery noticed how she didn’t change the tense. “‘Knowledge is power’,” she quoted. She herself couldn’t name who said such a well known saying but she knew the powerful implications behind it.

“Power over the elements and some other things, yeah. Later, King Ezekiel, the arrogant prick–”

“Every little Esper’s favorite historical figure to learn about.” Avery recalled listening to Fitz’s grandfather ramble about history. And King Ezekiel was often brought up.

“A historical figure already? Historical tyrant is more accurate.”

Fitz snorted. “Yeah, right. Gramps said he was worried about loyalties. The Order was loyal to knowledge, academics, ‘stead of the monarchy. Afraid they wouldn’t be loyal to him when he ascended the throne. Wanted to burn the buildin’ to ashes.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “There’re theories, but nobody really knows. For certain anyway.”

Thea slammed a book shut, the sound echoing through the chambers and picked up another, not bothering to put it back in its slot.

“He started a war not long afterwards, against our kind,” she said. “That’s why he was afraid The Order wouldn’t be in his pocket. Not that it mattered in the long run, he’s still remembered as one of the worst rulers that ever sat on the throne.”

“Mass knowledge is too much power,” Fitz said, as if reciting the words of another.

“He sent somebody to come all the way down over here…to burn down a building?” The town of Ginsval was in the southernmost region of Rhea towards the east and that seat of the monarch, Larinati was in the central part of the nation.

Fitz’s fingers drummed on the dust covered wood of the shelf. “Allegedly if the Rose Order knew the King’s plans they would have revolted. Or a large portion of them would have. Enough to make the difference.”

“Oh. Makes sense,” Vesna squatted on the ground.

“Right, such ‘A long and complicated history with Espers’ or whatever,” Thea commented. “Not much complication.”

“So what does this mean?” Avery asked. “I found a lost library but for some reason it’s in the wrong location.” She looked at the three people in her company; two Espers with different degrees of knowledge and Vesna, a simple girl but still a friend who was just as lost as she was. “What now?”

What would it mean for their modern day?

“Who knows?”

“Ain’t got a clue.”

“How should I know?”

She groaned. Great.

Fitz paused and thought. “Somebody could…restart the Order.” Vesna smacked him lightly on the back of the head. “That was unnecessary,”

“Quit talkin’ like that.” She nodded at Thea who still had an air of sadness to her. “Some people are still processin’’.”

“This is good though ain’t it? Why not…”

Bring the Order back. She couldn’t say the words.

Thea’s jaw clenched. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no point in the Rose Order anymore. Whatever King now is going to want to burn it down himself. Or use anything in here and then burn it down. Mark. My. Words.”

“Queen,” Vesna corrected.

“Oh, they allow those now?”

“Wait, wait, why would she do that? It’s a miracle this place even survived mostly intact?” She asked.

Why would anybody do that? She thought of the greater community of Professors, Teachers, Historians, Archaeologists; any preserver of knowledge and ancient text. What would they do with themselves if given the opportunity to walk the halls of The Rose Orders Library.

And then she thought of people and remembered that they were multifaceted.

The things that had been left behind, the relics of history were not evil; they were objects, ideas on a page. It was the people who were evil, carrying banners of representation with no goodness in their intention.

“That Queen, how long has she sat?”

“Less than three years,” Fitz mumbled.

“The Noble Houses don’t really like her,” Vesna said.

Their desire to have knowledge only to harm others. Justification for subjugation, found through leaders who often distort truths and facts, manipulating them into their own twisted lines of logic for their selfish desires: money, power, conquest.

Thea crossed her arms over her chest, leaned against the shelf and gave them a smile dripped in sarcasm. “What do you think it means?”

Vesna inhaled. Fitz brought his hands to his face and rubbed his forehead bringing his hands downward and shook his head at his dreaded epiphany. “Accomplishing what your ancestors could not.”

“She would want to burn this place to ashes.” Ice filled her veins.

“Yes, as we imagined… Nothing behind this stupid pile of sand.”

“Yeah, let’s head to the rock.”

By the time we arrived, it was almost 11 AM, and we managed to shelter from the sun behind the shadow cast by the rock.

“Look at this, Leo! It looks like a crank!”

“Hm… That’s not a crank.” Moving closer to examine it, he continued:

“It’s a miniature sundial. Notice the markings around it, they’re symmetrical…”

“Wow, what are the chances this is related to the Library?”

“There are lots of these sundials out there, stop trying to find connections in everything. And please don’t touch it. You could break it. Later, the local authorities will see and say you vandalized some random historical site. I don’t want trouble, Tom, let’s just go home.”

“Okay. Let’s wait for the sun to go down a bit, and we’ll head back to the tent. I can’t believe we found nothing.”

As soon as I said that, I felt a sudden tremor. The ground beneath the rock began to open, revealing the entrance to a monumental staircase. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everything seemed meticulously well-preserved, almost as if a supernatural force was keeping everything in perfect condition.

“I can’t believe it.” Leo said.

“Neither can I, but look at the sundial! It’s noon now, maybe this door only opens when the sun is directly above us! Let’s go, quickly!”

We rushed in, and I hadn’t seen a trace of a smile on his face in a long time. It seemed a spark had ignited. For a brief moment, he looked like my childhood brother.

The passage led us to an underground chamber of unimaginable proportions. I could hear echoes of sounds I couldn’t even understand where they were coming from. Illuminated by the same magical glow as the stairs, I slipped on one of the stone pieces forming the floor, so polished and well-maintained they were. Shelves upon shelves of ancient scrolls, books, and artifacts filled the space, relics from another time.

In the center of the chamber stood a solitary figure, a man with flowing hair and a robe that didn’t seem from such a distant era.

“Welcome, travelers,” said the man, his voice echoing through the chamber. “I am Klygor, the Guardian of the Library.”

I stepped closer, Leo behind me. “Is this truly the lost Library of Alexandria?”

Klygor nodded. “Indeed, it is. Preserved in secrecy for centuries, hidden from the ravages of time and man. Only those worthy of gathering all the clues and enduring ten days in the desert sun can enter, and once inside, they may stay for only a month, learning all the library has to offer. But beware, you can take nothing with you except what you carry in your minds.”

We couldn’t waste any time.

“Leo! I found out that Socrates never actually existed. Plato invented this character, but the ideas were almost all his!”

“Interesting. I’m discovering many things too…”

Each day that passed, I got fewer answers from him

“Let’s sleep, man. We’ll continue studying more tomorrow.”

“Feel free… I’ll sleep later.”

Everyday, I slept and woke up with him already reading and searching for new things. But it seemed the more he read, the more his soul faded. Like a drug addict, the more you use or smoke something, the greater the amount needed for the same effect.

He was searching for something that wasn’t there.

“Leo, what are you looking for? Talk to me.”

“I… I want to learn more. The only thing I know how to do is learn.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone tells me I don´t know how to be a good teacher. Maybe they are right.”

” Yes, you do like learning new things, but you always loved teaching!”

“No, Tom. I don’t know how to teach and never did. I was just very good at grasping things at first glance.”

We had reached our last day.

“Hey, Klygor. Where are you!?” I shouted.

“I am here, traveler Tom. At the foot of the Staircase, awaiting your departure… Time is running out.”

“Leo, it’s time. Let’s go, we’ve seen everything we needed, we have material to tell people for ages!”

“Wait, Tom. I’m just finishing this piece of parchment. It seems interesting…”

“No, man!! We don’t have any more time, let’s go!”

“I have nothing to do out there, Tom. It’s the second time I’ve been fired, schools always say I lack the necessary teaching skills.”

“What are you talking about? Every week while we still lived with our mother, we received letters from students thanking you, saying you changed their lives. I never received anything like that!”

“You were never fired.”

Silence. I had no response to that.

“You taught me everything I know about the art of teaching. If you don’t know, I don’t know either.”

“None of that matters… That’s not how the world works, and you know it. Sometimes, I feel I should have just kept quiet and accepted teaching the way the principals wanted.”

“Leo… what’s worth more, a student transformed for life or a happy principal?”

“Huh? tell me, now. You always – ”

“Gentlemen, I must interrupt. If you don’t leave within moments, one will have to stay and become the new guardian of the Library. That’s what happened to me almost 90 years ago. I was so focused on some revelations completely different from our History, that I didn’t notice the suns rising and setting. When I realized it, the former librarian had already left, sealing here forever. You’re the first I’ve seen in all this time. I’m doing you the favor of letting you decide; I don’t want to leave here with negative energies from having tricked someone.”

“Give us five minutes!”

“I’m not the one controlling the magic of this place. I’m waiting at the top of the stairs until the final moment.”

“Leo, it’s now, let’s go!”

“I’m not going, and you know it…”

“Please, I don’t know how to teach without your advices!”

“Tom, I found a spark of happiness here. Knowing that at least learning is something I’ve always been able to do and no one could take that away from me… ”

I heard the sands starting to assemble. I ran up as fast as I could, and at the last moment, I turned to see him one last time.

In the distance, I could see, with the same sad face, he opened another book.

Even worse, I was sandwiched between two obese sisters. They had booked a window and an aisle seat, assuming that no one would buy a middle seat. But the flight was full. I was 6′2″ and fit, so not exactly tiny myself. They were overheating, sweating and overlapping a lot into my space. I could have handled the touching, but the heat was overwhelming. I talked to the flight attendant ,there were no empty seats anywhere, but I already knew that. So I talked to the sisters, they were embarrassed, but also feeling discriminated against. They had to pay extra for seat belt extensions, so the airline knew that they were large, and had still sold a seat to a man to sit between them.

We worked out a deal, they would take the window and middle seats, we would lift all the arm rests, so that they could use a little of my aisle seat. I could lean into the aisle, so I could cool off, and I could get out and walk around easily when I was overwhelmed.

I survived, it was only a three hour flight.

Have you ever found something in your home that was hidden by the previous owners?

No, but I found something in my car that was hidden by the previous owner. Pot, and a lot of it

I must explain how it happened. Many years ago I started a new job in rural Iowa and had no transportation. A friend said his nephew could get me a used car, and I would pay him with my first two paychecks. Apparently his nephew was owed some money by someone, so he would take the car as payment of the debt, then sell me the car. I was aware his nephew was working full time, but was occasionally making money as a middleman distributing pot.

The car ran fine, and I paid him off within a few weeks. It helped me get back on my feet, and I was grateful for his help.

After a few months, I returned to Texas. My dad noticed one of my tail lights was out, and wanted to replace it for me. When he took off the plastic covering , we found a lot of dried weeds mixed with dry mud. It looked like it was there for a long time. We thought it had just accumulated over many years since it was an older car. We also found the same stuff within the other tail light. We replaced the bulb and thoroughly cleaned both sides with some strong chemical spray cleaners. I thought there wasn’t anything unusual.

About a year later, when I was returning to the Midwest, I got pulled over by a state trooper. Being a Hispanic coming out of South Texas, I was profiled and pulled over quite often. However, this time, one of their dogs went nuts sniffing that back fender area. They called in extra troopers and took the back part of my car apart. The trooper told me this was their best dog, and he was never wrong when he reacted that way. He was certain I had drugs hidden in the car. After an hour of an extremely thorough search, they found nothing. They reluctantly apologized (it wasn’t sincere), and let me go.

I didn’t realize until years later that the stuff my dad and I cleaned out of the back end was pot. It looked like it had been there for about ten years. I believe my friends nephew had no knowledge it was there.

Anyway, it just made me believe why they said it was their best dog, and he was NEVER wrong. After many years of being mixed with dried mud, and thoroughly removed, the dog still detected the pot. Furthermore, we cleaned the area thoroughly with strong chemical cleaners.

I’ve always wondered if I would have been arrested if I hadn’t removed the old dried mud mixed with pot. It looked like it had been there for longer than I owned the car. But I was still transporting a lot of it across state lines. I’ll never know.

These Women Reveal Why Men Are Walking Away From EVERYTHING

Asparagus Pizza

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds asparagus
• 8 large mushrooms
• 1/3 cup chopped shallots
• 2 garlic cloves chopped
• 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons cold water

Instructions

1. Mix butter flour and salt until the flour resembles peas, add water and mix until you have a rollable dough.
2. Place on floured surface and roll out to 1/8 inch thick and in a circle.
3. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F and place either a pizza stone or cookie sheet upside down in oven.
4. Place dough on a board that you can slide it off from into the oven and have a little cornmeal under the dough to help make it slide better. Turn the edges of the dough in about 1/4 inch and crimp at intervals to make a nice ruffly edge to your pizza, it will get crusty.
5. Cover the dough with the cheese and set aside.
6. Trim the asparagus and blanch it for 3 minutes in boiling water in a shallow pan.
7. Remove from pan and quickly dip in cold water to stop cooking process. Pat dry with paper towels and place in a pinwheel fashion around pizza dough with the stems meeting in the center and making a mound, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and slide into the oven on hot surface of pizza stone or cookie sheet and bake for about 25 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
8. Remove from oven and cut into serving size pieces.
9. While pizza is baking slice mushrooms and place a small amount of olive oil in skillet and add shallots and garlic cook for about 3 or 4 minutes and add mushrooms. Cook for about 5 minutes.
10. Add just about 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and stir; remove from heat. Spoon a little on each slice of pizza and serve.

On Poking Dragons

Fred Reed

May 31, 2024

I wonder how many Americans quite understand what the US is facing in its aggressive confrontation with China. Washington clearly prepares the public for another unnecessary war. Given America’s routine defeat in war and catastrophic miscalculations in fighting small powers, picking a fight with what, increasingly, is again becoming the Middle Kingdom seems less than bright. Yet within the Beltway there is the usual smug complacency, the unshakable arrogance that appears to think the China is just a big Norway or Guatemala that needs to be put in its place.

A quick glance at China:

China easily leads the world in civil engineering, building roads, bridges, ports, rail lines, long-distance high-voltage transmission lines, and digital infrastructure. People returning from China, including yours truly, discribe it as being like coming back from a more-advanced planet.

“Washington seems to suffer a recto cranial inversion, imagining a superiority it only barely has but probably, all things considered, doesn’t.”

Everyone talks about the high-speed trains, with good reason: 180 miles per hour, quiet, comfortable, huge windows, with very short stops at villages between major cities, giving rural populations the speed of air travel without the nuisance. By contrast, American rail looks like something out of 1955.

The importance of civil engineering is more than symbolic. Infrastructure facilitates commerce. China is of course the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. By contrast, America simply ignores infrastructure, spending instead on the military and long since having largely abandoned manufacturing.

China leads the world in ship-building, with South Korea being another major player in this game. America has almost no ship-building except for military, and this has been criticized by the Government Accounting Office for primitivism and slowness. Ship-building obviously is important for commerce, and also for military purposes–China now having the world’s largest navy.

China leads the world in Five G, in patents, technology, manufacturing capacity, installed base. This is not always well understood. Five G allows the transmission of large amounts of data with short response times–high throughput, low latency, as we say. Huawei now has what it calls Five. Five G, an improved version. Five G is important for controlling factories, smart cities, and so on. Beijing takes it seriously, China now having around 3.6 million installed base stations versus something like 100,000 pseudo-Five G base stations in the US.

China finds its brightest students by rigorous testing, and then sends them at government expense to its excellent universities. The US deliberately enstupidates its schools at all levels to make minorities look smarter than they are. How is this going to work?

China dominates the planet in electric vehicles. Its lead over the US is so great as to be insuperable in technology, batteries, price, and productive capacity. If you follow tech news, you see things like a Chinese EV battery that charges in ten minutes. As many have pointed out, BYD’s sub-ten thousand dollar car will find an almost unlimited market in the Global South. No other country is even close. Biden’s high tariffs on Chinese EVs will serve only to allow American companies to continue selling wildly over-priced vehicles to Americans who will have no choice.

China, Russia, and perhaps Iran have developed hypersonic missiles, of which America doesn’t have any. This is interesting. Americans have always assumed technological superiority over Russia and China. Judging by the poor performance of Western weaponry in the Ukraine, this seems questionable.

In other fields, America maintains a lead, or at least an important part lead, though usually not by competing but by strong-arming, sanctions, and tariffs. The greatest of these is semiconductors. The situation is curious. The Chinese have the brains, engineers, and savvy to design and make high-end chips, but Washington has a stranglehold on the equipment needed to manufacture them. However, China has a recent history of horrifying Washington by doing things it wasn’t supposed to be able to do, such as make chips in seven and five nanometer nodes and stay neck-and-neck with the US in supercomputers. But it has not been able to make the advanced lithography tools needed at the forefront of the chip business. If it does, it will be Katie bar the door, but it hasn’t.

China leads the world in production of steel and aluminium. America can’t compete, so it imposes tariffs.

It leads the world in solar panels, leads in technology, production capacity, and price. America can’t compete, so it imposes tariffs.

China remains behind America, but not by much, in aspects of its space program. However, it has an extensive and robust launch capacity, a successful space station in some ways more advanced than the International Space Station, and moves rapidly toward reusable launch vehicles. Years back now, it sent a successful fully automated moon-sample return mission to our satellite, and, later, a combination Mars orbiter, lander, and rover, all functioning perfectly on the first try. NASA and Space X maintain a lead, but it isn’t a growth stock.

There are other fields in which America holds a lead. Jet engines, for example. My point is that Washington seems to suffer a recto cranial inversion, imagining a superiority it only barely has but probably, all things considered, doesn’t. China has four times the US population, the Han by agreement among psychometrists have a five or six point advantage in mean I.Q, and an intelligent government focused on increasing its commercial superiority.

It is all the fashion in America to decry authoritarianism, but this allows Beijing to take decisions and then carry them out, over decades if need be. It also allows a noticeable system approach. In America, individual states or corporations undertake projects like high-speed rail or Five G. China tends to do things on a whole-country basis. The difference in results is clear.

Washington, which subsidizes its own industries, complains that Beijing does the same–but the Chinese system works.

What China doesn’t have is a sprawling, over-extended, low-grade, incomprehensibly costly military draining funds desperately needed to bring America up to modern standards domestically. China is not an appendage of its military. It seems to have figured out that wars cost money and, if there is one thing the Chinese really really like, it’s money.

Sez I, a little more realism in the Yankee Capital might be a good idea, a bit less huff and puff, more spending on America and less on a blood-sucking arms industry. But what do I know?

San Francisco BANNED CARS

This is progressive American.

When People Get Extremely Desperate And Extremely Hungry, They Will Literally Eat Just About Anything

May 27, 2024 by Michael

If your family was on the verge of starving to death, to what extremes would you be willing to go in order to get food?  Some of the things that I am going to share with you in this article may make you cringe.  But you need to understand what people are willing to do when they get extremely desperate and extremely hungry, because the global food crisis that has already begun is going to greatly intensify in the years ahead.  Hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry every single night, and children are literally dropping dead from starvation on the other side of the globe right now.  Unfortunately, most people in the western world don’t even realize that this is going on because the corporate media rarely reports on it.  War, pestilence, natural disasters, bizarre weather patterns and historic crop failures are creating a “perfect storm” for global food production.  It is being projected that later this year things will get really bad in some of the poorest areas of the planet, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

When people get hungry enough, they will literally eat just about anything.

On Monday, I was stunned to learn that a team of archaeologists has discovered that settlers at Jamestown in the 17th Century actually resorted to eating dogs in a desperate attempt to survive…

The first English settlers to arrive in North America ate dogs to survive an extreme period of starvation, according to a gruesome new study.

Researchers at the University of Iowa discovered the remains of 16 indigenous dogs at an archaeological site in Jamestown, Virginia, that strongly suggest the 17th Century settlers ate at least six canines.

Their remains showed hallmark signs that the colonists had skinned the animals, dismembered their limbs and removed the flesh from their bones between 1609 and 1617 AD, the team said.

For many of you, this level of savagery may be difficult to grasp.

Sadly, it appears that what the archaeologists found is backed up by written testimony from one of the original settlers of the colony…

By the spring of 1610, only about 60 of the original colonists were still alive and George Percy – one of the original settlers – authored an account of what occurred in the wake of the starvation period.

‘Now all of us at James Town, beginning to feel that sharp prick of hunger which no man truly describe but he which has tasted the bitterness thereof.

‘… Then having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats, and mice,’ Percy wrote in excerpts of his account called ‘Starving Time,’ archived by the National Humanities Center.

What would you do if you were in their shoes?

This is one of the reasons why I am encouraging my readers to store up food while they still can.

I never want any of you to be in a position where you are faced with such choices.

A global food crisis is already here.  More than a billion people in Africa already do not have enough food to eat on a regular basis, and 30 percent of the children on the entire continent suffer from stunted growth.

In East Africa, some of those that are starving “are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells”…

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) says that in Darfur, Sudan there are reports of children dying of malnutrition.

“The situation is dire. People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells. If assistance doesn’t reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict-affected areas in Sudan,” said Michael Dunford, WFP East Africa director.

In other areas of Sudan, people on the brink of starvation are literally eating dirt…

There is so little food in some areas of Sudan that people are taking extreme measures to survive.

In the Al Lait refugee camp, they are eating dirt.

Yes, you read that correctly.

So I don’t want anyone out there trying to tell me that the global food crisis isn’t serious.

One 41-year-old man in Sudan says that his wife and children are so hungry that they have been rolling dirt into a ball and swallowing it with water…

Akok, 41, reached Al Lait in December, but has no work and can’t feed the family. At times, they go two or three days without eating. When that happens, Akok said, he watches helplessly as his wife and children dig holes in the ground with a stick, slide their hands in and grab some soil. Then they roll the soil into a ball, put it in their mouths and swallow it with water.

“I keep telling them not to do it, but it’s hunger,” he said. “There is nothing I can do.”

What would you do if you and your family were in a similar position?

In West Africa and Central Africa, it is being projected that approximately 55 million hungry people “will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months”…

Soaring prices have helped fuel a food crisis in West and Central Africa, where nearly 55 million people will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months, U.N. humanitarian agencies warned Friday.

The number facing hunger during the June-August lean season has quadrupled over the last five years, they said, noting that economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.

In areas south of there, widespread crop failures caused by drought have created a tremendous nightmare…

Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi each declared national disasters as crops failed in a region where 70 percent of smallholder farmers rely on rainfed agriculture for their livelihood. Food prices have risen up to 82 percent in some drought-affected areas, while water scarcity has also impacted livestock and destroyed farmland. According to a United Nations report, more than 18 million people are now in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, with food insecurity levels set to increase dramatically during the regular lean season that typically starts in October. This year, the lean season could begin as early as July as provisions are depleted.

North Africa is doing fine for now, but most of the rest of the continent is in enormous trouble.

The good news is that we aren’t facing widespread starvation here in the western world.

But 42 million Americans are on food stamps, and 1 out of every 7 children is living in poverty.

So our problems are growing too.

Unfortunately, the long-term trends that are driving the global food crisis are only going to intensify in the years ahead, and eventually there will be very serious food shortages here in the United States.

What will you do when that day finally arrives?

We have already reached a point where fast food is considered to be a “luxury” and the prices of many popular food items have more than doubled.

Our world is simply not producing enough food for everyone, and global supplies of food are going to get tighter and tighter during the very difficult days that are in front of us.

Now let’s look at the Wild Wild West of Vietnam

Video is heavy on the girls, and nightlife. But it’s short enough. It give you a glimpse at what the Global South is all about.

New Arms Race! Biden Signs “New Guidance” for Using U.S. Nuclear Weapons

Hal Turner Nation June 07, 2024 

President Joseph Biden has signed “new guidelines” on the conditions for the US use of nuclear weapons.

This was announced by Special Assistant to the US President, Senior Director for Arms Control at the National Security Council, Pranay Vaddi.

“The updated guidance takes into account the realities of the new nuclear era. They emphasize the need to address the growth and diversity of China’s nuclear arsenal, as well as the need to contain Russia, China, and North Korea, simultaneously,” he said.

Notice they did this after 5:00 PM on a Friday. I am endeavoring to obtain the actual new guidance text.

UPDATE 7:28 PM EDT —

A new Arms Race is now kicking off.  US is making changes to its nuclear weapons strategy with an emphasis on competition, US sees the need to increase its nuclear arsenal.

HAL TURNER REMARKS:

Remember when the corrupt media and communist democrats were saying Trump was going to start WWIII because he was talking tough with China, Iran, and North Korea? Where are they all now that Biden is actually actively trying to start WWIII?

French President is At It Again; Now French “Mirage 2000-5” Fighter Jets for Ukraine

Hal Turner World June 07, 2024 

As if he hasn’t already caused enough pain, suffering, and death in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron is at it again.  He will announce that French Mirage 2000-5 Fighter Jets will be given to Ukraine to fight Russia.

He will also announce those jets can be used to strike targets inside territorial Russia, and that Ukrainian Pilots will be trained to fly them, in France.

Looks as though Macron is not going to stop until Russia hits Paris with a nuclear bomb.

Hal Turner Snap Analysis

If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be laughable that Macron is doing this.  His army just got thrown out of Africa by the local tribesmen, and now Macron thinks he can fight Russia?

The guy seems to me to be insane.

We should start referring to him as “Maniacal Macron.”

China Is Practicing For An Apocalyptic War Against Taiwan, And The Western World Is Still Not Taking The Threat Seriously

May 23, 2024 by Michael

China has just launched enormous military exercises codenamed “Joint Sword-2024A” which are designed to simulate what a war against Taiwan would look like.  Chinese fighter jets are conducting mock airstrikes against “high-value military targets”, and Chinese warships are practicing for a future economic blockade.  Most Americans don’t seem to realize this, but once China goes to war with Taiwan, we will instantly be in a state of war with China.  The flow of consumer products from China will completely stop, we will no longer have access to the advanced computer chips from Taiwan that we are so dependent upon, and the economy will crash.  All of our lives will be turned completely upside down the moment that war with China begins, and that day may be a lot closer than most people think.

On Thursday, the Chinese “encircled Taiwan with naval vessels and military aircraft” as Joint Sword-2024A kicked off…

China on Thursday encircled Taiwan with naval vessels and military aircraft in war games, as it vowed the blood of “independence forces” on the self-ruled island would flow.

The two days of drills are part of an escalating campaign of intimidation by China that has seen it carry out a series of large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in recent years.

Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te was inaugurated earlier this week, and the Chinese government is not a fan of him at all.

And it is definitely not a coincidence that these military exercises are taking place shortly after he took office.

These are the biggest military exercises that we have seen in the region so far, and CNN is reporting that “dozens of Chinese fighter jets carrying live ammunition” are involved…

As part of the drills, dozens of Chinese fighter jets carrying live ammunition conducted mock strikes against “high-value military targets” of the “enemy” alongside destroyers, frigates and missile speedboats, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV.

The exercises, which started early on Thursday and will encircle Taiwan, pose the first real test for newly elected Lai Ching-te as he attempts to manage relations with the island’s powerful authoritarian neighbor.

The good news is that these military exercises will only last for 48 hours.

But the Chinese are clearly preparing for the day when war will erupt.

Relations between the Chinese government and Taiwan have reached a breaking point, and I don’t believe that there is any way that they will be repaired.

When discussing the currently military exercises, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin issued quite an ominous warning to those that are pushing for Taiwanese independence…

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin then delivered a warning that included language more commonly used by China’s propaganda outlets.

“Taiwan independence forces will be left with their heads broken and blood flowing after colliding against the great… trend of China achieving complete unification,” Wang told reporters.

It is very unusual for a Chinese official to make such an inflammatory remark.

Usually the Chinese are much more restrained.

Once the exercises commenced, the Taiwanese military went on alert, and potential Chinese military targets were actively being tracked…

Taiwan’s defence ministry condemned the drills, saying that it had dispatched forces to areas around the island, that its air defences and land-based missile forces were tracking targets, and that it was confident it could protect its territory.

“The launch of military exercises on this occasion not only does not contribute to the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait, it also highlights (China’s) militaristic mentality,” the ministry said.

Taiwan’s presidential office expressed regret that China was threatening the island’s democratic freedoms and regional peace and stability with its “unilateral military provocations”, but said people could rest assured Taiwan could ensure its security.

When the time finally comes, I think that the first action that China will take against Taiwan will be an economic blockade.

That will suffocate the Taiwanese economy, and it will also cut the main island off from the outlying islands that it controls.

Subsequently, I think that it is likely that the Chinese will attempt to occupy some of the smaller islands before moving to occupy Taiwan itself.

Interestingly, the military exercises that China is currently conducting are simulating action against some of those outlying islands…

Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said that although the drills would only last two days, the scope is large relative to previous exercises, as they included Taiwan’s outlying islands.

This is designed to demonstrate China’s ability to control the seas and prevent the involvement of foreign forces, he added.

“The political signals here are greater than the military ones,” he added.

There has been a lot of concern about what it would mean if China gained control over the chipmaking facilities in Taiwan, because the entire globe is heavily dependent on the advanced chips that Taiwan produces…

Two of the world’s most important chip companies can flip a “kill switch” remotely on their most advanced chipmaking machines should China invade Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Netherlands’ ASML — Europe’s top tech company by market value — supplies advanced machines to chipmaking companies. They include Taiwan’s TSMC, which produces, by some estimates, 90% of the world’s most advanced processor chips.

Okay, so they can flip a “kill switch” which will prevent China from getting those chips.

But once China controls Taiwan, we will lose access to those chips too.

And without those chips, the entire global economy crashes.

So we should be attempting to avoid such a scenario if at all possible.

Unfortunately, Joe Biden and his all-star team of warmongers are making a total mess of things.

We just keep getting closer and closer to a war with China, and the Biden administration just continues to make the Chinese angrier and angrier.

Of course a war with China is a key piece of the apocalyptic puzzle that I have been warning about for a long time.

The Chinese know that such a war is coming, and they are actively practicing for it.

Here in the United States, most people just assume that everything will work out just fine somehow.

Sadly, by the time most Americans finally realize how serious the threat is we will already be at war and there will be no turning back.

America is the New Rome

This is REALLY an amazing video. Very good. I strongly suggest you all watch it. Remember, 1776 was 248 years ago. If the predictions are correct, the collapse will occur in two years. 2026.