<![CDATA[Crann na beatha Blog]]>

<![CDATA[Crann na beatha Blog]]> https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/ EN Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:37:00 +0200 Incomedia WebSite X5 Pro <![CDATA[Back to normal, sort of]]> imblog Our adult children and grandchildren are safely back at their homes now, but it was a bit of a chaotic week with them staying with us. One of my grandsons is only a precocious two and half years old and on the cusp of talking. For now though, whenever he wants something or doesn't like something, it comes out as loud scream.

On the flip side, he laughs and plays with abandon, like any other toddler. All of which brought smiles to his grandparents. His older brother on the other hand, struggles to gain the attention of his parents and that caused some tension as well. I'm sure this is not unique to my family and I only bring it up to show that we are just as normal as any other family.

While this was going on, I had to deal with my homeowners insurance adjuster, and later in the week, a roofing contractor. It seems that my old roof is on it's last legs. The last big windstorm we had a couple of weeks ago blew off some of the old shingles at the peak of my roof, so now I have no choice but to finance a new roof. I wanted to wait a couple more years but it seems nature isn't going to cooperate with my budget, (sigh).

So that is going to set me back about $30,000 that I don't have right now after paying off my wife's car loan last fall. My insurance company tells me that they will cover about half of that, but I don't know what that means. How much is still in limbo until next week. They're thinking about it still, so my young adjuster tells me.

The joys of owning a slightly older house I guess. My house is about twenty four years old now and was built with cheap materials so I inherited that mess when I bought it. It's coming back to haunt me now. First, it was the frozen, then broken water pipe two winters ago, that cost me several thousand dollars after the pittance my then insurance gave me, and now, it's a roof.

On top of that, my cloths washer is still giving me grief. I discovered a water leak I will need to locate and repair later today, once I'm finished washing our clothes. It isn't leaking too much, so I have a cloth under the front to catch what I can until I can get in there to locate and fix the leak. I'm hoping it's just a hose clamp that needs adjusting and not another failed part.

On a more global scale, I read an article by a blog writer from England this morning telling us that the global economy is just starting to show the shortages. That once the last ships transiting out of the gulf that left before February 27th reach their ports and unload, that will be it for a while. A lot of smaller countries heavily dependent on fossil fuels for everything, will be begging for other suppliers to help keep their economies from crashing without oil imports from the gulf states.

Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea in the east, to Europe, to parts of Africa, are all going to get hit hard in the next few weeks. Some are already rationing their fuel usages to their citizens, which is causing protests and riots already and this is just the beginning.

I'm sure everyone is well aware of how the price of petrol at their local stations has gone up significantly around the world in the last month. It's only going to get worse as countries will be forced into rationing what they have until alternate sources can be found. Economies will slow down dramatically as industries start running out of fuel, both diesel and natural gas. Natural gas especially. Aviation gas will run out before gasoline, diesel and LNG does, and this will ground a lot of planes world wide, for all but the most essential cargoes.

Can you imagine what will happen to the global economy once all of these planes get grounded due to a lack of fuel? It's already starting to happen with passenger jets in the far east and Europe and we're just getting started.

What's going to happen to local commerce in countries without enough diesel to fuel the trucks and tractors? Ireland is in the news this week over protesters around the Dublin area blocking major roadways with trucks and tractors over the price if fuel. More will come.

Some people are advising us to purchase jerry cans and stock up on fuel for our cars but that's just asking for trouble. I don't want flammable gas in my garage. I have enough paints and cleaning solvents on the shelves. Five gallon jerry cans full of gasoline would be just asking for a house fire. Our scare with that was watching another house in our neighbourhood catch fire last week and nearly burn to the ground. It's a stark reminder.

If things get that bad where I live, I'll go get some bicycles or walk before I risk a major fire that would cost me my house. That and give the insurance company an excuse not to cover it because I had a large amount of flammable gas stored in non-fireproof storage containers.

I do think that things are going to get much, much worse for everyone before the supply chains get sorted out once again. I'm asking myself if there is anymore I can do to help us weather this storm. I have been thinking about storing more non-perishable food stocks and I have added in a few items but not enough to last several months worth.At best, maybe a week or two at most.

Prices are going up across the board for nearly everything and I'm watching carefully. If I start seeing significant price jumps, I will start hoarding food stocks ahead of the impending shortages I know will come if the fuel tap doesn't get turned back on soon. So far, as of this weekend, we're not there yet.

And into all of this mix, we in the United States have a very dysfunctional government now, run by a demented idiot. It's become obvious to everyone around the world. The world leaders from Europe are trying to be polite but they're actually starting to come right out and mention it now. Especially France's Macron. They're all scrambling to move away from Trump and become more self-reliant but, as a lot of experts are telling the media, it's too late now. The damage has been done. All they can do is pick up their broken toys (metaphorically speaking) and go home without the United States, leaving Trump standing on the playground screaming in a temper tantrum fuelled rage expressed on his social media platform for all to see.

NATO is pretty much finished without the U.S. and they now know it. Europe will hang on to the last vestiges of it for now but it's gone for all intents and purposes. As the United States becomes more isolated from the rest of the world, these countries that were so dependent on the U.S. led global order and economy are going to have to figure out a way to live without the United States.

A lot of them are starting to look to China now and China is welcoming them with open arms. The welcome sign is out for anyone who wants to sign onto China's belt and road initiatives. After what the U.S. and Israel have done to the middle east lately, China's human rights issues are nothing compared to the genocide in Gaza, and soon, the West Bank. They will be overlooked in expediency as the more desperate countries come looking for relief.

I believe Japan, the Philippines, southeast Asia and South Korea will be some of the first to come to China hat in hand. Right behind them, will be some of the gulf states. Trump has burned so many diplomatic bridges now, few trust the U.S. for much of anything, other than for breaking deals.

I'm mentally preparing for the economic shock that's coming within the next few weeks. One that will likely last throughout the rest of this year. It will have a dramatic effect on the by elections in November but, with the U.S. democrat party still very unpopular in the country, I hesitate to make any predictions. If the democrats figure out their messaging to the voters within the next few weeks, they may have a good chance at a majority after November. But if they keep floundering around like they are now, that victory may be narrow and the citizens will still be without a functioning government with Trump in charge. Time is running out.

One last thing before I go get my lunch. I recently learned that a lot of social media platforms deliberately stifle posts with active links to other websites like this one. I received an email from a company telling me about this last week, so I tried an experiment. Instead of creating a post with a link in it, I posted a clip from my last video podcast and lough and behold, people could actually see it in their Facebook feeds.

So from now on, I won't be making any posts with links to this website anymore on American social media platforms, as they're apparently being blocked. What I will do is post more podcast clips and text based posts with a background showing the website address on it. That will have to do in this age of media censorship until I can figure out a work around.

I don't think my new Australian social media platform Upscrolled, is doing this as I haven't noticed any issues there but Facebook and Bluesky, absolutely. I'm not on X/Twitter or Telegraph or any of the other popular platforms so that's that.

Okay, time to get a sandwich. That's all I have on my mind this week. If I have any updates, I'll post again. Otherwise, I'll be back next week with another edition. Sláinte

]]> Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:37:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?back-to-normal,-sort-of https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000187 <![CDATA[A week of personal chaos]]> imblog My chaotic week started last weekend, when, after the third load of clothes finished in the washer, I received an error code telling me I had a problem with the door. The first thing I noticed, was that I couldn't open the door. It was locked and no matter what I tried to do at the panel, it was not going to open.

So I did what any other retired technician would do. I disassembled the washing machine to the point where I could reach down inside and push the manual unlock button and open the door. That turned out to be quite a chore in itself but I got the door open and pulled the wet clothes out to dry.

Then I had to figure out whether I had a electronic door switch failure or a main computer board. In the process of looking into that, I remembered that I had a three year extended warranty on that machine, along with my clothes dryer. Then it was time to contact the warranty company on a Saturday afternoon. That's when the nightmare started.

If any of you readers have ever had to deal with an extended warranty company to get them to come out and repair something, you probably know what I'm going to say here. It took me three different people before I finally reached someone who could start a claim and a repair ticket. Then they told me, via email, that they would be sending me some parts. At that time, since I had already told them to just send me a door switch, I would be receiving a small package the following week. Oh no, they sent me everything but the kitchen sink for the technician to make the simple repair. There was no door switch.

So I emailed them and asked them once again to send me a door switch, which they replied that they would get one right out. Then I got another email telling me that my appointment for Wednesday to do the repairs was being pushed out to Friday because of the parts issue.

I got mad and went on Amazon, ordered a door switch and had them send it overnight. It arrived Wednesday afternoon. Since Wednesday's are my podcast days, I put off the repair until Thursday.

Thursday dawned and, after breakfast and my morning chores, I got to work to replace the door switch. Which, for someone like me, should have been fairly easy. I've replaced many switches like this on front load clothes washers in the past. But noooooo, it wasn't so easy. By the time I got the door open again, and replace the switch, I was up to my elbows in secondary problems. Which made the job take much longer than it should have.

Once I finally got the machine back together and turned back on, I started testing things. That's when the error codes started to show on the panel. I tried everything, and decided that enough was enough. We washed the now overloaded dirty laundry that had been piling up for nearly two weeks by now, and I worked around the error codes to get three loads of clothes washed.

Today the warranty technician showed up and I told him my background, and the codes I had been receiving. He checked things out, and sure enough, at the end of a short test cycle, the door fault code showed up. Since he was able to get the door open using the control panel, we determined that the door switch was good. The washer just needed a new main control board. Which he replaced, as that was one of the parts the warranty company sent out ahead of time. So, all is good with that one. But that wasn't the only house repair issue I had to deal with this last week.

Last weekend, while helping my wife outside with her flower gardens, I noticed some pieces of asphalt roof shingle laying on the sidewalk to the front door. When I looked up at the roof, I noticed several loose shingles laying up there, and since we had just had a severe thunderstorm the previous week, it was obvious that the high winds had tore off some shingles. I have an old roof that has needed changing for a while now but that job would cost me out of pocket, in the neighbourhood of ten to twenty thousand dollars if I had to pay for it.

I learned my lesson the previous year with the frozen water pipe, and I immediately called my homeowners insurance company to see what my options were. Another episode of being handed off to multiple people until I finally landed with someone who would fill out the claim. Now I have to wait until next week for an estimator to come and talk to me about whether have enough shingle damage to warrant a new roof.

Meanwhile, I had daylight showing through two spots on the crown ridge of my roof that had to be patched. So, last Monday, we went to the local Lowes store and purchased a bundle of shingles to make the temporary repairs because there was a weather front coming later in the week. Then I set up my big ladder, grabbed my tool belt, and climbed up on my very steep roof with a handful of asphalt shingles to patch the holes in my roof.

Once I got up there, it was very obvious where the shingles had tore off in the big wind. It's a good thing I knew what to do, so I made the patches and nailed them in. Then I noticed that the varmint cages around the bottom of my solar panels had also come loose, so I stopped to repair those as well. By the time I was finished with all of that, I was very tired and dirty. I really appreciate all of those young men who repair roofs everyday and probably aren't making a whole lot of hourly salaries because they're immigrants. I know I couldn't do it.

I have no idea whether my home owners insurance adjuster will authorise a new roof next week so I guess it's a good idea that I have extra shingles in the garage now. I may need them before we have another weather event that will damage more of my roof again. I just dread the thought of climbing up on my steep roof again. At my age, if I fall off, it could be fatal.

It's very much spring here in central Virginia. The flowers are blooming, the trees are blooming and leafing out, yet up north in Maine and the Canadian maritime's, they're cleaning up from another late season snow and ice storm. Another sign of climate change. I just wrapped up a three part series in my podcasts about climate change. Go check them out, if you get the chance.

In some good news, we have family arriving this evening to stay with us for a few days. We're looking forward to spoiling the grandchildren and having some fun. I still have some things to manage next week but for the weekend at least, we can relax some with the kids, both the adults and the wee ones.

On another front, I'm negotiating with a small publishing company to maybe publish and distribute my book, Fugitives in a New United States to retailers I haven't dealt with yet. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I can finally work with someone who isn't trying to rip me off all the time. That's the downside of self-publishing a book and putting an email address on the back cover in the author's info. You have to deal with all of the scammers who email you out of the blue about wanting to offer their marketing services. I have dealt with quite a few in the last couple of years and it gets pretty annoying at times.

I just told another one a couple of days ago to fuck off for pestering me about himself and his private book club all getting together to read my book and post Amazon reviews for me for the entry level price of $300. This new publisher I'm talking to told me that this is a new scam and I should steer clear,which I now have. Good riddance but I'm sure there will be more.

I have sold a few ebook versions of my book and one hard cover but I don't have much feedback. I'm thinking about another Facebook ad sometime in the near future. As I'm a little short on cash after last year, I'm a little reluctant to start something just yet. I have some other expenses coming up that are a little more important. Like purchasing and installing a tow bar kit for my new Ford Maverick pickup truck so we can tow it behind the RV this year. That will set me back a few thousand dollars.

It seems there is always something on the horizon that we have to pay for. Now, with the price of gas over four dollars a gallon here in the U.S., taking that gas guzzling RV on a vacation this year is weighing on my mind. We want to go but should we with the price of gas so high and climbing? The jury is still out on that one. May we'll just stick to long weekends nearby this year until the economy sorts itself out, one way or another. I wanted to go to either upper Michigan or to New England this year but now, I'm having second thoughts. We might just stick to the beaches of Virginia or North Carolina this year. If the price of the standard of living keeps going up, we may not go anywhere.

The world has become extremely turned inside out with Trump's craziness of late. Now, we're all paying close attention to this weekend to see if Trump sends the troops ashore in Iran. Hegseth fired his Army general chief of staff this week, and the deployed troops are now on station, so, is he going to go or not? Will we be witnessing in the news media this weekend, the deaths of hundreds of America soldiers and marines?

I've got to go as our kids are due any minute now and once the grands land on my shores, I won't have much more time to write here for a few days. I'm looking forward to it but they are a wonderful handful. Enjoy life as you can because you never know when life is going to throw you a curve. Sláinte

]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:13:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?a-week-of-personal-chaos https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000186 <![CDATA[Another week of Chaos in the United States]]> imblog In my podcasts, I am continuing my series on climate change, with what might be the last episode in the series next week. I have posted podcasts on climate change for the last two weeks but maybe I'll find something else after next week. I'm not sure yet, so stay tuned.

As far as the rest of what's going on around us, here in the U.S., Trump is continuing to push the envelope towards authoritarianism every week. Thom Hartmann wrote an excellent article today paralleling Hitler's SS troops with ICE. He tells it like it is and I'm afraid that by the time the American people figure out what's going on, it'll be too late. I would link the article but its paywalled, so it's of no use to the general public. Suffice to say, he's spot on.

ICE has now been deployed to a handful of major airports around the country as of last Monday, and from all accounts, they're not helping the TSA with anything, as they were supposedly sent there to do. Instead, they're milling about intimidating people, and walking up and down the concourses staring at people, or coking and joking with their cell phones, as they're mostly bored. There was one arrest at the San Francisco airport this week that went viral. According to reports, TSA notified a roving ICE patrol about a woman and her child from Ecuador. There are conflicting reports on whether she was a legal immigrant or not but it was pretty ugly. We all know where she and her child went, don't we? One of the hell-hole concentration camps to await deportation or resolution of her immigrant status. What about the little girl? According to one report I read, they put her in social services. Maybe they put her in the local kids concentration camp also.

What's worse, the feckless American media is not reporting on these arrests anymore. Only the ones that go viral on social media. There has been a lot of criticism about this from the independent media but they don't care. They will follow the party line to keep their corporate coffers going. Heil Trump.

Then there is the war or not war in Iran. We have lots of Marines and a quick reaction force from the 82nd Airborne on their way. But there are no where near the amount of soldiers needed to take on a million man army, such as the one in Iran. So, what's the plan, as so many are asking? No one seems to know, including the Führer. He's been all over the map with his waffling this week, and more and more congress people are starting to publicly ask if he is mentally sound.

As a retired soldier myself, I wonder what those young soldiers, sailors and marines are thinking as they get ready for something. What, they don't know. They're not stupid though. They know the odds of dying on the beaches of Iran, or worse, being dropped by parachute to somewhere in the middle of no man's land Iran to set up a secure perimeter to grab the enriched uranium. They'll be slaughtered and they know it.

But hey, idiots like Trump and Lindsey Graham don't care about them. It's all about getting someone to pay attention to them and not whether the families of all of those soldiers and marines are going to be welcoming their loved ones home in flag draped coffins. Some of which will be empty because the bodies will be unrecoverable.

Trump gave everyone a reprieve yesterday, extending the deadline out another ten days. How gracious of him. Some people who don't care about the Trump Gestapo, are wondering whether this is another sleight of hand like the last two instances. Is the Führer just waiting for the troops to arrive and while he's telling everyone they're working on a deal, he'll attempt to secure a beachhead with the marines once they arrive on station? I repeat, they'll be slaughtered on what ever beach they attempt to land on. Let's hope the Führer TACO's again and they all just return home as if they were out on a foreign training exercise.

I just watched a video from my favourite Austrian, Lilly, and once again, she reports about the economic situation in Austria and Germany, plus a little bit about Europe in general, from an ordinary person's perspective. She reports today that the price of fuel for cars in Austria is the about the equivalent around ten dollars per imperial gallon. For her, it's €2.18 a litre there.

Lena Petrova and Sean Foo, two financial analysts with YouTube channels, have been pointing out how bad the economy is starting to get in the U.S., while the Führer keeps telling everyone how good it is. It's good in his house as he's making a massive fortune out of all of this. For the rest of us, the price of gasoline is up about a dollar a gallon around the country. In some places it's more, and some, a little less. No matter what it is in your area of the country, it's bad. The price of food has gone up significantly lately, and I am predicting here, that we're just starting to see the tip of the iceberg.

By the end of this year, things will be beyond what a whole lot of ordinary households can afford. The price of gas won't be going down anytime soon, even of they bring the troops home next week, which will keep the prices of everything up as well. Especially food, as it has to be shipped by diesel trucks to the grocery stores. So does everything else for that matter. I well remember the huge recession of 2008 and how that effected the vast majority of Americans.

We're starting to prepare our vegetable gardens for planting this week. I think they will become very important to our winter food stocks next winter. They're predicting a record breaking summer this year, so you know what that means. More wildfires and less agriculture, which means less food for the people of the world. More arid lands that can't grow food anymore and less water for everything as the lakes and rivers evaporate.

I've been talking a lot about that over the last couple of weeks in my podcasts. Next week, I plan to talk about what the future will look like in a lot more places around the world within the next few years. I'm going to show some pictures of what a dystopian landscape devoid of life looks like, using a couple of my own personal pictures taken during my travels in the middle east and the U.S. through the years. This will be what parts of the south west United States might look like by 2050. Parts of central Africa already do. The loss of farmland will be huge and a lot of people around the world will likely die of starvation, and disease by then. Sudan and Kenya are just the beginnings.

I'm not going to rehash my podcast from this week here. If you're interested in more about this topic, go to my podcast page and have a listen. If you're more of a reader than a listener, there's a link on the podcast page to my Substack page where the transcript narrative can be read.

No matter what anyone thinks, the world is in transition. Between climate change, and more authoritarian megalomaniac's trying to take over the world, we're all in big trouble no matter how you slice it. I'll keep talking and writing about it for as long as I can. I'm not too worried about the censors anymore. The Führer has too much on his plate to come after little people like me right now. And I think he'll be gone by the time he might have things under a iron grip. I don't mean gone from office, but gone, as in dead. Once he's dead, the MAGA movement will wither away without him. Most of his low income cult followers will find someone else to fawn over. Maybe another one of those charlatan American protestant preachers. Will Trump die in office? We can only hope but I don't think we'll get that lucky. We'll be lucky if we'll actually still have free and fair elections in the U.S. still by 2028. Trump seems to think he will be president for life. Which may not be that long, given the way he looks these days. But, who of us wants him in office after his four years is up? Let's hope we still have a choice by then.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of looking over my shoulder every time I go out with my wife anymore. Worried that the ICE gestapo will try to grab her and whisk her away to one of those privately owned concentration camps. The cost of the standard of living is starting to concern me as well now. Not just the gas, but the overall prices that the retailers are being forced to charge. For people like me on a fixed income, I'm seeing how much this is all cutting into my monthly budget now and I know it's only going to get worse this summer.

We were talking about where we wanted to go on vacation this year for a couple of weeks, but we might not be able to go too far this year. I guess it's a good thing we went on our cross country tour last year. We certainly couldn't afford it this year. I suspect a lot of other people in the U.S. are having the same conversations at kitchen tables after the kids are asleep right now. With tourism already down from the Führer's tariffs last year, this will only make things for the tourism industry even more catastrophic this year. We can add that to all of the other things Trump has done to bring the U.S. to wrack and ruin.

I think it's all downhill from here. The downhill slide started as soon as the Führer took office last year, and the slope has become so steep, we're all just sliding down the muddy slope on our asses and hoping we don't hit too many rocks on the way down. We know on some level (some of us more than others) that when we hit bottom the crash will probably bring the U.S. economy to it's knees. I'm trying to prepare for that now.

I have a list of home repairs I need and want to finish, along with a couple of nice to haves before the prices become too prohibitive this year. We're planning on what vegetables to plant that will keep good through next winter. I'm beefing up my IT network closet and office computer systems in case of more brownouts like we had last month. Once my list is finished, I'll sit back and let the economy crash around me. I hope, with my early preparations, that we'll be able to ride out the storm okay.

Okay, that's enough for one week. I've written out my thoughts once again for people to read. I will update my social media accounts with invitation posts and see if anyone is interested in reading the things I'm thinking about out loud. If nothing else, I feel better for airing them here. Sláinte

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:42:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?another-week-of-chaos-in-the-united-states https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000185 <![CDATA[The passing of an Era]]> imblog One of the things foremost on my mind is, as the title of today's blog entry says, is the passing of another era.

Younger folks might not remember him but Chuck Norris was a prominent figure in my younger days, starting with the Bruce Lee films of the 1970's. Back in the mid-70's, Bruce Lee was all the rage as Kung Foo movies were taking the world by storm. Especially in Asia, where I was running around a lot back then. Chuck Norris got his start after winning all of those world karate championships back then and he went on to do more in Hollywood for many years to come. I only talk about him as he passed away yesterday, March 20th at age 86. I don't know whether he was in ill health or not as the news just mentioned that he passed away quietly.

Then, last night, as I was watching one of my most favourite TV shows of all time, I caught the ending where one of the main characters tells another, that the agency is being shut down. The long running show is called NCIS, which first aired on September 23rd, 2003. I've watched it every season since. When the characters talk about the agency being shut down, that usually means that the show itself is likely in its last season after nearly 23 years.

Which brings me to why I want to talk about the end of an era. Not only just with movie stars passing of old age, and TV shows leaving due to old age and a lack of interest anymore, but an era of Americanism.

For decades, maybe since the 1950's, the United States has led the world in world class movies, the stars in them, and the themes. From westerns and epic war movies and TV shows in the 1960's and '70's, to other blockbusters through the years that the whole world watched, to world changing technologies and so much more, the United States stood out as the leader of the pack and maintained that until Donald Trump came along in 2016 and started the steep decline, and now, ten years later, it's in utter ruin.

The United States is a hollow shell of what it once was and it's not coming back to put that mantle of greatness back on, ever. The rest of the world won't let it now. We, as the collective humanity on this planet, are moving rapidly into a multi-polar world and there's no turning back anymore.

The United States is fighting this change with everything is has at its disposal, which is quite a bit, but that's not going to change the inevitable. Donald trump is only enhancing the demise of the once great United States into a second tier nation on the world's stage. By the time the dust finally clears from all of the bombings and wars, the U.S. will be bankrupt and looking for handouts with hat in hand, wearing shabby clothes. Whatever government is left, will be severely humbled, or lashing out with fury at the circumstances they now find themselves in once the economy crashes beyond the point of no return.

Living here in the U.S., I'm already seeing the signs of this collapse. Large pockets of impoverished peoples everywhere, small rural towns becoming ghost towns, large groups of homeless peoples migrating across different sections of the country looking for food and shelter and so on. There's a lot of unrest taking shape against the current government and a lot of authoritarianism creeping in from the executive branch of a once democratic republic.

I've been to lot's of other countries around the world where the governments were authoritarian, and impoverished and it wasn't pretty. A lot of countries were living under martial law, and the high ranking officials and military were living the high life, while everyone else is barely surviving.

I'm old enough to remember the Philippines under Fernando Marcos and his wife Imelda with her massive shoe fetish. Up until 1977, the country had been under martial law, and there were armed guerrilla militia factions running around everywhere. I know because I was in and out of that country from 1974 to 1978 and saw some of these militias running around. As American military, we weren't supposed to see any of that but if you're someone like me, I didn't shy away from watching that and paying attention to what my eyes were telling me.

There were other countries like that, that I had occasion to visit during my deployment travels during those years and they all had one thing in common. The vast majority of the common people were dirt poor with little to hope for.

The United States is close to that now. There is a pervasive sense of hopelessness across a wide swath of the country. Even more so with the news media blaring about voter suppression and election stealing. There is also a large swath of people who are standing up to all of the obvious authoritarian takeover, making their views known with large protests and voices in the independent news.

In those other countries that already had authoritarian governments, the opposition had devolved into armed militias fighting against the governments and the losers were all of the common poor who were caught in between the warring factions. All they wanted was a normal life, instead, they got militia wars and a lot of them dead. This happened in the Philippines, then south America in the 1980's, Africa (still going on), and the middle east (still going on).

The United States hasn't devolved into having armed militias carrying out a guerrilla war in the back country of the U.S., yet. But if things keep going the way they are, it's a likely scenario, given how ordinary Americans feel about their so called freedoms and the fact that Americans have the largest number of personally owned firearms of any country in the world.

This current war against Iran will end up breaking the United States economically. There's no longer any doubt in my mind. Donald Trump has no idea how to run a country, just like he had no idea how to run his many corporations during his younger years. The opposition party has no idea how to address the basic cost of living concerns for the vast majority of the citizens, so this is a lose, lose situation for the country as a whole.

I don't think the MAGA party will completely take over the government as there is too much opposition to it now. Trump is impatient and let the cat out of the bag too soon. If he had been a lot more circumspect about what he, and his coterie of authoritarian wannabe's intended to do, they probably could have gotten away with it. But not any more.

Even the stupidest MAGA politicians are starting to wake up and see what's happening. They're starting to say no and push back a little bit now, which will lead to more push back soon, which will lead to chaos, which will lead to eventual bankruptcy, while they're all fighting over who is in charge of the government.

This is how governments topple, and the people fall even further into poverty. I've seen this too many times in my lifetime in other countries to not know how this ends up.

I'm done preaching about it in my weekly podcasts. I'm all done talking to deaf ears. It all sounds the same day after day. Not just me, but all of the news media around the world are all talking about the same things over and over, day after day. How the wars are doing, and the words they use, depending on which side their supporting, to try and convince the masses that their viewpoint is the right one and the only one we should be listening to. I'm so tired.

I've taken to talking about climate change lately because that is more of an existential threat to humanity as a whole, than how one stupid national leader is doing their best to take over their part of the planet for themselves.

I've largely given up on the United States now. I will do my best to make sure that I and my lovely wife survive what's coming as best as I can, and prepare for the worst. I already know what the worst will look like because I've seen this before. The bad part is when I think about my kids.

They, like most middle class Americans, have no idea what's coming and don't want to know, for the most part. All they care about is keeping their jobs in the private sectors and maintaining their middle class lifestyles. They want what all people want, a stable economy to support that lifestyle in perpetuity. Which means passing on that lifestyle to their children and so on.

I'm not trying to be cynical and I already know that if I try to talk to them about what's coming, they'll dismiss me as maybe getting a little senile in my old age and forget anything I told them five minutes after I finish. Nearly every household in the United States has this same problem. The middle class just want to be left alone to live their comfortable lives with nothing disturbing that. The poor just want the opportunity to move up into the middle class comfort level. There was a time when that was possible but that era has passed.

Now, the middle economic class strata is shrinking dramatically in this century and there is no turning back the clock anymore. Trump is seeing to that. People are getting mad. When enough people get mad, they gather up in large numbers and revolt against the king. It's happened many times before in world history and it's looking like the world is going to see another large country fall like the others have in past history.

Like the ageing movie stars passing and long running TV shows, all things come to their end eventually. The United States is coming up on it's 250th anniversary this year but I think it maybe the last great celebration this country will have. The empire is failing rapidly under Trump's stewardship and there's no going back. It's too late. There's only one direction in front of us now,and that's down the mountain. The only question left to ask, is how fast and how hard will be the landing when the government lands at the bottom of that mountain.

If I had to answer that question based on what I've seen in my worldly travels, I would say the landing will be very hard. Most Americans won't accept their new status as a people of a lessor country. They will get angry and lash out at everyone around them, rather than accept their new status as an impoverished country. The only ones who will understand and try to pick up the pieces of their lives, are the immigrants who came to America to escape from all of that in the first place, and those of us, although born here, have seen what I've seen around the world.

I'm already preparing for the end. I'm stocking up on non-perishable foods, growing a few vegetables in our backyard gardens to put in a freezer, and hardening my computer systems to protect them from more power outages and brownouts. I'm also maintaining and prepping my RV in case we need to bug out in a hurry.

We are at the end of the era of American exceptionalism. When being an American meant something to the rest of the world. Now, we're being shunned in other countries, looked on with disdain, and treated as pariahs in a lot of European countries that used to welcome us with open arms. Americans are no longer the brothers and cousins of the Europeans and other peoples around the world. Asia is also shying away from us now. We're no longer welcome outside of our borders.

That's only going to hasten the demise of the United States. Once countries drastically slow down trading with the U.S.,and further isolate themselves politically, the U.S. economy will come to a crashing halt. Americans will no longer be welcome in global politics and economic discourse. Americans are already looked on with distrust and the Trump government is only making this worse as the days go on. It's only a matter of time now. As I said, there's no going back anymore.

I have it on my to do list to have a talk with my children sometime this year. I want to prepare them for my eventual death within the next twenty years or so and to also talk to them about what's coming for them and their children in the years ahead. I don't think they'll listen but I have to try. Maybe in the end, that's all we can hope for, that at least one of them will actually listen and make an attempt to protect their families when it all collapses.

I will post a note on my social media accounts to let folks know where they can read these thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, someone will read this someday and make the attempt to take care of their families ahead of the chaos that's coming. Sláinte

]]> Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:59:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?the-passing-of-an-era https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000184 <![CDATA[Visability]]> imblog This blog article was partly inspired by an online acquaintance who lives in England and writes for Medium.com on a regular basis.

Once upon a time, writers were able to write for online publications and actually make some decent money. Then the corporations got involved and choked off the cash flows to increase shareholder profits. The technologies have become better with regard to a form of online censorship we call shadow banning.

These tech companies have increasingly learned to adjust their platforms algorithms to push written articles with certain SEO and key words in them to the back of the search engines, effectively making them invisible to people searching for certain subjects to read about.

I've been dealing with this for a couple of years now but it has never concerned me as I never intended to make any money off of my online articles. I only made a little over $10 last year in gross earnings for my podcast articles in Medium.com and zero dollars from my Substack platform.

I only had one donation from a friend in this website all of last year. I think he felt obligated to support me a little bit due to all of our online collaborations together last year and the year before. If you're reading this, thank you for your support. I won't name names as that would be rude.

Back to my friend in England. He recently wrote an open letter to the Medium.com managers about the loss of income he has had since the site went corporate, and the loss of several good writers. All of whom had depended on incomes generated by writing good articles for this publication.

Those days are gone now. Especially if you write anything with the words Palestine, Hamas, Hezbollah, and now, Iran, in the articles. As my friend said, he went looking for an old article intending to reference it for a new piece, and it had disappeared. Gone, vanished, poof, no more.

I haven't looked at my que in Medium lately and now, I'm a little afraid of what I won't find.

I wrote and recorded a podcast last week all about the war in Gaza and the Palestinians. Now I'm wondering if it's still in my listings. I should go look. Not that I really care but I'm curious now.

This is the new world we find ourselves in. Increasingly online and at the mercy of the platform owners and moderators. I'm all about moderating hate speech and extreme violent rhetoric. That only encourages some people to act these things out in real life. There's enough of that caused by our rogue governments.

What we don't need, is the censorship of speech, that has no violent rhetoric in it, that falls under normal conditions in the U.S. considered free speech under the first amendment.

Unfortunately, in the United States and Europe, political writers are being actively censored using software coding to restrict or choke off altogether, written speech about the war in Gaza, the West Bank or any criticism of Israel. Even short form videos such as the ones uploaded to Tik Tok or Instagram are being targeted for restrictions due to content that the Israelis and their vassals deem anti-Semitic.

Free speech is becoming something from the past. It's largely coming under attack anymore by these wealthy tech tycoons and politicians who want to find favour with the Israelis and Trump's government.

This speech restriction in the U.S. and Europe ramped up hard right after October 7th, 2023 when Hamas and some Palestinian militias broke through and attacked a bunch of Israelis at a nearby music festival. A lot of people died that day on both sides and even more have died since. More than 75,000 Palestinians by a loose count and no one truly knows the number of IDF soldiers killed in the ongoing war so far. Israel is censoring everything coming out of there these days.

Not that there wasn't some free speech restrictions starting up before that, but it really took off after October 7th.

I usually get at least a few acknowledgements that people have read or listened to the podcast embedded in each post once a week, but my podcast and written portion from last week have received nothing so far, as if the mere mention of Palestine and the war automatically triggered the censorship algorithms.

I don't have to worry about that here. The Americans and Israelis can point fingers at my articles and podcasts about Israel and Palestine all day long but they can't choke them off and make them invisible to readers, like they're doing to the U.S. based platforms.

I feel bad for my friends who used to be able to depend on the extra income generated by their writings on these online platforms. I don't know how they're managing with the loss. As I mentioned, since I never made more than the price of a fancy cup of coffee at a Starbucks with my writings, I'm not missing anything.

Here on Crann na beatha, I don't have to worry about any censorship, as long as I, or anyone else, doesn't write about fomenting a violent rebellion or try to incite violence somewhere.

Which brings me to my last point. I have the ability to post other peoples blog articles here, should someone be interested. The problem I have, is that this blog platform is pretty much invisible. Despite all of my attempts to draw attention to it, I am only able to draw in one of my dearest friends to read these posts, and even that is pretty sporadic. I want to do more.

I want to offer other writers to contribute here. It's an idea I came up with just today. The trouble is, there's no financial incentive. I'm just a comfortable pensioner with no money to pay for someone's articles, should they want to post something. I most certainly don't have any financial sponsors. I'm not even sure I would want one unless they really like my Irish flavour. So what to do?

I think this will remain an idea for now until I talk to some friends. Who knows, maybe some readers may find some other voices here someday in the future. I just have to figure out how to make it worth their while.

In other news, it snowed here in central Virginia today. The results of another polar vortex forecast last week. We're all experiencing weird weather these days due to climate warming so we should start getting used to weird weather from now on. With everything I'm seeing around me here, I'm pretty sure we're going to have a very hot summer ahead.

With everything else going on, the solar panels on my roof may come in very handy to help pay for the extra electricity I may need to keep us from having heat stroke this year. I feel sorry for all of the people who won't have that advantage.

This war in Iran has the real potential to bring down the world's economies if it isn't stopped very soon. I won't talk about it here very much, other than to say that this is going to have a huge affect on regular people just trying to keep a roof over their heads and a decent amount of food on their tables. The amount of food insecure people in the U.S. is in the tens of millions now, according to something I read today. Imagine this getting much worse as this conflict carries on?

That's all that's on my mind this week as we continue to watch the world come apart due to a very weak U.S. president who gets led around by his nose by anyone who looks like they're a tough guy.

Stay safe everyone. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:29:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?visability https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000183 <![CDATA[Spring is here but few are celebrating]]> imblog I've been watching all of the news from the middle east since last weekend, as everyone across the world is now doing. I'm not going to talk much about all of this other than as it directly effects us here in the U.S. And it is starting to. Gas prices are starting to rise and the longer this goes on, the higher the gas and diesel prices are going to go up.

It's not like the U.S. consumers haven't experienced this before in the past but, with Trump as unpopular as he is right now, this big hike in the cost of living once again, will likely cause a lot of turmoil across the country.

Then there is the concern about war crimes being committed in Iran by the Americans. There is mounting evidence that when the Iranian school in southern Iran was bombed and all of those children were killed, it was a double tap. In other words, they bombed the school, then bombed it again when the emergency services arrived to help. Which is a war crime. Of course, the news media is saying that they're still investigating this but there's enough satellite evidence to make the case. Not that I think the U.S. government or the pilots will ever be held accountable but still, this is where we are.

As I mentioned in the intro here, Spring has arrived, sort of. The outside temps are averaging about 25 C the last couple of days and will likely remain through the weekend. But, according to the weather forecasters, another polar vortex is being predicted for next week. Which will drop the temps back down to near 0 C once again. So don't get too comfortable yet. We're not out of the woods as far as the old crone of winter is concerned. She's trying to hang on for a little longer.

My wife is outside as I write this, doing all kinds of spring cleaning to take advantage of the warm weather while she has it. She is also browbeating me into helping her do spring cleaning inside the house too. I have my own list of chores she wants me to complete for her today. She's a bit miffed with me because she thinks that listening to the news for a couple of hours a day and writing blog articles instead of helping her outside is wasteful.

She's like most people, they trust the government to take care of things beyond their own households so they can concentrate on the little things like spring cleaning.

What none of them understand, and most don't want to, is what happens when the economy crashes and we have blinders on before it all comes tumbling down around us. I'm old enough to remember previous American recession/depressions from the oil embargoes of the mid 1970's, to the not depression in 2009-2010. Things got pretty bad for the average consumer then.

What's coming will be a lot worse as the U.S. government because it is so far in debt, as far as their ability to pay that their debts goes compared to the money it brings in, will break them once that gap gets to the point of no return, and, according to some leading independent economists, we're there. This new war/not war with Iran will probably be the last straw. Once the bills for all of the war materials and military operational expenses come due soon, there won't be any more money to pay those bills. Or the Trump government will take more money away from its citizens well being to pay those bills.

Either way, it spells doom for this iteration of the federal government. What I am seeing is the lead up to a physical fight between the federal government and American citizens ahead of the elections next November. More protests in the streets, and federal troops sent to quell the protests. People are going to get hurt on both sides.

I've seen this movie before. From the protests in the U.S. past, to mass protests in other countries, it rarely bodes well for the governments. So far, the U.S. has managed in all of these years to hang on to their democracy but right now, that's hanging on by a thread. I'm not saying anything new here because the United States has been close before but this time it's different. The U.S. now has an ineffectual government that doesn't want to listen to anyone, much less its citizens. In other countries where I've seen this personally, those governments ended up turning into something much worse before the shooting was all finished. I could offer examples but there are so many from the last fifty years that the list would be so long.

I'm not sure where all of this is heading. I'm a little scared, only because I've seen this before and I know where this is heading even if the Americans manage to save their democratic government institutions once again. We now live in one of the most surveilled countries in the world since 9/11 and it's getting worse under this current government. Not that I think a new president will back off in the future. I think only paranoid countries like Israel, North Korea, Russia and China are in this category.

I've also come to the conclusion that immigrating to another, supposedly, safer country may not be the answer as no country is inherently safe just because their tourist brochures say so. Besides, my wife is a Trump supporter in that she listens to the Chinese language news media that tells her that Trump is a good guy and he's doing his best for the country. I can't seem to convince her otherwise.

The only way she would ever leave the U.S., is if the government comes after her to deport her, like they have with so many thousands of others. She knows about this but prefers, like so many other immigrants with a valid green card, to ignore what she hears in the news because she thinks she's safe. I keep telling her that I'm not even safe, much less her, but she dismisses me with a wave of her hand and goes off to do something to distract her from all of the bad news.

And it's exactly this attitude that will be the downfall of the United States as a democracy. This apathy that a large majority of the citizens have about their government. All the citizens want is a stable life, where they don't have to worry about having a place to live, enough food to eat, being able to see a doctor when needed and so on. When that's threatened, they expect their government to handle it without bothering them with the details.

I'm no different. I also want a stable life style without worrying whether whatever I write on a public platform will be flagged by the government for sedition. Whether my government pensions that I sacrificed so much of my life for could be taken away from me, leaving me penniless and homeless.

But this the world we find ourselves in these days here in the United States. There are state governments fighting its own citizens over ideology, such as the state of Kansas deciding to strip away all drivers licenses and birth certificates of those people who identify as Trans, as if that will just make them all leave the state and disappear. Which it will for a lot of them, but they will never all just disappear from the American white Christian world. I'm sorry but you can't just make them all disappear. Not in this interconnected world we live in now here in the 21st century.

And that's the other problem with Americans and some others around the world. They want to live in a bubble from the past when these things like LGBTQ and Trans people were kept out of the public awareness. This while the rest of the world moves on around them. It's this attitude that will be the end of the American colonial empire.

I listen to media hosts in the last few days talking about what would happen if Iran were to be broken up into small fiefdoms run by tribal warlords, like Afghanistan and Syria. Imagine what the United States would look like if the same thing happened there? We're almost there now. We have some states wanting to take better care of their citizens, while other states politicians are doing all they can at the expense of their citizens to remain in power.

I have speculated several times in the last couple of years with my articles what that might look like. I'm not going to rehash that today. As a matter of fact, I need to cut this short right now and get ready to go to the grocery store. I have to make a list and eat my midday dinner before going. I typically like to go on Friday afternoons to avoid most of the crowds. I still run into stupid humans who can't seem to pay attention to what's going on around them, which includes running into people with their carts, but at least on a weekday afternoon, there are a lot fewer of them in the stores.

I want to thank those few readers who may actually find this blog and read my musings here. It's too bad that I can't attract more and have a healthy discourse about the things that we're all thinking about as we try to live a normal life in these trying times. Take care. Sláinte

]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:48:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?spring-is-here-but-few-are-celebrating https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000182 <![CDATA[Changes, changes. Where to go next!]]> imblog I started making some little changes in this week's podcast when I talked about climate change and I segued over to talking about an article I found in Europe about the Nord Stream pipeline.

Then I started thinking about what next. I have been suffering a little bit of a conscience crisis the last few weeks because of my affinity for the poorest people in that part of the world. As many people may remember, I have talked now and again about my adventures in north east Afghanistan in 2002, when I deployed there as an Army reservist to win hearts and minds. As I also said before, we had very mixed results, and then none at all.

I have written a couple of articles about Palestine since October of 2023, but then, like a lot of people, the constant barrage of news feeds showing all of the devastation and brutality became too much for me and I watched but said little in the last couple of years. I decided it's time to revisit Palestine again for a couple of podcast episodes to take me away from all of the toxic politics taking place in the U.S.

I'm tired of always seeing Trump in my headlights everywhere I go. I've decided that I will watch to a degree but talking about him is starting to go on deaf ears. A lot of people around the world are starting to move away from what's going on in the U.S. and finding ways to circumvent the damage he is doing everywhere. They're all finally realising that being too dependent on the Americans was a bad idea. They all have buyers remorse and are now shifting trade and money to China, which has become the worlds manufacturing hub for now.

With that in mind, I want to pivot back to the middle east again. Maybe I can piss a few people off along the way to make me smile. I'm also starting to focus more attention on selling my first dystopian fiction novel, as I work more on finishing the next book in the series.

I am going to my local Barnes & Noble book store next Saturday to learn how to set up and manage a book signing event, which I have one scheduled for July. I will post more details as I learn more. I do have a date but I'll hang on to that until we get closer to go time. This far out, I want to make sure I have a solid date and time before I go around advertising it to everyone.

My wife and I are getting ready to watch the last season of Homeland on Netflix. It has been an eye opener for sure, especially for my wife, after I repeatedly pointed out certain plots that mirrored real life events. I'm curious to see what the story line will be for this season 8 we're getting ready to start watching. It's the last season they offer so it should be interesting.

Who knew back in 2023, when I wrote the story for Fugitives in a New United States, that the story would start to imitate real life in so many ways. In my book, I weave into the story about how the government in the late 2020's, after Trump is gone, told all immigrants to leave the country or be rounded up, regardless of status, and placed in labour camps across the country. My main character is a fugitive on the run as the Homeland Security forces continue to go after people who are either of colour or working in prohibited vocations, such as non-government controlled OBGYN and medical care for unauthorised people.

In the U.S., we now have concentration camps, mass deportations, and a near total ban on immigration for people around the world who are not Caucasian. While not exactly like the dystopian landscape I depict in my book, the parallels are striking. The poverty levels are also starting to mirror my story as well. Some things haven't come to pass, yet, but will they? Did I predict the future of the United States back in 2023 when I wrote this book?

In other news, I recently thought hard about converting my computer operating systems from Windows 11 to a Linux distribution. The question became in the last couple of days, which one, as there are many out there now. Then I thought about it some more after watching a YouTube video this morning. I would also have to convert my network server, currently running Windows 19 server, over to a Samba server system and reconnect everything. That's when I decided to leave well enough alone. As much as I dislike Microsoft and it predatory products, I'm not ready to take down my whole network and rebuild it with Linux systems just yet. We're talking days and maybe weeks worth of intensive IT reconstruction and I don't know of any company that would do that without a lot of soul searching.

I do see into the future a little bit on this. There are more and more news stories coming out about Microsoft. More and more entities are dumping Windows for Linux OS systems, the EU being the most notable lately. Which is what prompted me to look into it. I think I will just stick to my original idea of buying a cheap laptop and installing a Linux system on it for travelling. I won't be able to connect to my Windows server network, but I may be able to connect, via VPN, to my other server, which is operating on a Linux platform.

My current laptop is starting to wear out. The touch pad is barely able to function anymore, and the plastic casing is showing some wear and tear these days. I bought it back in 2020 to use while I travelled across the country during my move to Virginia, and to use on the road when I travelled around the country after that. It still does what I want it to, as far as computing and processing applications, but, with physical parts starting to wear out, and Dell not supporting this model anymore, it may not last much longer. I may be forced to switch it out by next year, if not sooner. But the question remains, should I replace this one with a Linux system? It certainly would keep Microsoft out of my personal business. I'm thinking that I need to do some more research before making the final decision. That and coming up with several hundred dollars for another good quality laptop. Although I hear that Lenovo, now the world's largest computer maker, is offering price reductions for customers who want to run a Linux OS instead of Windows. Basically taking out the expensive Microsoft license fee as Linux systems are open source and free.

I realise that I was geeking out here but as this blog is for me to air out what's on my mind, regardless of what I'm thinking about, maybe someone else can benefit from my thinking out loud. As always, if anyone reading this wants to comment, feel free. If anyone has any ideas about PC operating systems, please drop me a line. I will need to make a decision soon I suspect.

Take care everyone and I'll talk more about the world we find ourselves in again soon. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:10:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?changes,-changes--where-to-go-next- https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000181 <![CDATA[Our Changing World]]> imblog I thought long and hard about what I wanted to write about this week in this blog. One of the things I realised is that this is becoming more like my personal journal or diary these days.

In the days before personal computers, people would write down in journal books their most intimate thoughts, with the TV teenagers going through epic dramas regarding little TV brothers getting a hold of this diary and embarrassing their TV sisters. There were a lot of middle class households with the same drama taking place back then.

Once we all acquired computers, all of that personal journaling moved from handwritten notebooks to digital notebooks, which is what I have here. Not that I'm going to share my most intimate thoughts here but I will share some personal anecdotes and thoughts with visitors.

We live in a changing world and I don't say that with optimism. Things are going from bad to worse everywhere and a lot of people are starting to check out. I have been corresponding online with a young woman in Latvia, who is an aspiring fiction writer. She manages pretty well with her English, despite it not being her native language. I have seen her come a long way since I found her on Substack a couple years ago. But she struggles with self-confidence and lately, the online trolls have gotten to her again so she is checking out for a while in order to get herself together. She has told her fans that she has a husband and four little children to take care of so that may have a little to do with her decision.

Then, one of my favourite financial podcasters from Singapore is also taking a break from the media to take a month long vacation. Checking out a little bit to get his head straight again.

I get it. People need to take vacations. I took a month long trip last year myself. I don't think we'll be doing anything like that again as the trip kind of traumatised my wife with some of the things that happened on the trip to the western part of the United States.

But there is a pattern emerging. People are starting to become overwhelmed with everything that's going on around the world and checking out.

Right now, today in the United States, we have a president who is actively working to subvert the next set of federal elections in the country to make sure that only the people he wants to get elected get to go to congress after next November.

Americans are losing their first amendment freedoms more and more every week. A lot of independent journalists and politicians in the opposing political party are all talking a lot about it in public, but little is actually being done to stop it. Meanwhile, the corruption is moving ahead like a steamroller. The president and his people are ignoring judges and congress to do whatever they want. Sometimes, they listen to a judge or the large enough protest marches, but by and large, they do what they want and flip off the world, daring them to try and stop them.

In the rest of the world, heads are rolling over associations with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Heads of state, and corporate leaders are resigning, and, in the case of England, they're even arresting former monarchy members. In the United State, these sexual predators and morbidly wealthy oligarchs who illegally profited off of the illegally obtained financial information that Epstein was selling to them, will probably all get off with little repercussions other than a stain on their reputations.

That's why I think the United States has reached the tipping point of moral bankruptcy. The citizens are all in an uproar about what the Trump government is doing everywhere around the world. They're protesting in the streets by thousands in some places. But the white house keeps right on grifting money from the federal coffers, and foreign governments, while daring anyone to stop them.

I truly don't think they will be stopped in time to save the country from failure. I don't mean a total collapse, as the economy is too big and too intertwined with the global economy to go completely bankrupt. But, the U.S. is headed for a major recession. The signs are all there. I suspect that by the elections in November, the economy will be near the negative in output unless the tariffs are adjusted way down.

As it is, the poverty levels in the country will increase dramatically over the next several months as the job losses from the tariffs and isolationist foreign policies bite hard into consumers wallets. The 2008 depression/recession will seem like a distant memory, another historical marker on the hallmarks of the United States. This new recession will hit the tech industry real hard, causing mass layoffs, much like all of the real estate jobs from the previous recession.

The rest of us will do our best to hang on as the U.S. goes through another economic reset. The last time, fuel prices went through the roof all across the country. Retail prices went way up because the price to deliver everything went through the roof. It took several years for the country to recover but things were never the same afterwards. It still isn't.

I have said this many times before. When the people of the United States recover from the next major recession, it will fundamentally change the fabric of the country again, only worse this time. The real estate bubble burst gave rise to the MAGA movement. I'm afraid that the U.S. will end up with something worse this time. We're seeing a preview of what might be coming right now in 2026.

There is about a third of the countries citizens who would welcome a fascist style government along the lines of Hungary or Russia. They think they stand to gain from it. Think again. Only the wealthiest oligarchs will gain anything from something like that while the rest move farther into poverty and oppression. Just like Hungary and Russia. Democracy will pass on into history.

Once that happens, the northern and southern borders will be shutdown by Mexico and Canada, open only to political refugees and asylum seekers. Those that can afford to do so, will flee the country, taking their wealth with them, further impoverishing the country. We've been watching that happen in Israel since October of 2023. It will happen to the U.S. once the democratic republic completes its turn into a authoritarian oligarchy.

The latest executive branch attempts to jail journalists for doing their jobs, coercing corporate news media to censor people they object to, and arresting peaceful protesters, is just the beginning, unless the people can find a way to put a stop to it before the next elections in November. If they wait until November to see the results of the elections, it may be too late. Trump may very well have all of the mechanisms in place to intimidate thousands of voters into not voting, purging voter rolls in enough states to affect the outcome of the election results, and other voter suppression methods in order for his loyalists to win.

There is a way to stop most of this but it depends on the active participation of the citizens. Right now, there are nowhere near enough of angry people to stand up to what's happening. All of these bits and pieces in the media, aren't taken as part of a whole war campaign. Trump's corrupted corporate media is doing all it can to persuade the public that these are all separate, unrelated events and everyone should just go about their daily lives as if there's nothing to see.

When you step back and put them all together from across the country, it's obvious what they're trying to do. This is leading up to a government by the wealthy few over the many. As one writer called it this morning, neofeudalism. A new word that has been coined to describe what we're seeing.

The fear of seeing all of these new Gulags being built all across the country to house thousands of people is starting to wake people up. People are starting to realise that once all of the undocumented immigrants and other undesirables are all deported, those empty beds may very well be filled with citizens who dare speak up against the new rulers.

I have a friend up in New Brunswick, Canada, who recently married an American citizen. In her latest article, she described his trip up to Canada from Connecticut where he currently lives when they got married in Canada last fall.

When the young man reached whatever border crossing he used to travel into Canada, he said that Customs and Border Patrol have now set up an additional check point on the exits from the United States in order to grill people about their reasons for leaving the U.S. to go to Canada, and they maybe even doing this in the international airports. He described questions such as why he was going, where he was going, and other aggressively pointed and detailed questions, as if intimating that it may be a crime to leave the United States for any reason now.

I don't know about you but I would have told them I was just going to visit for a bit and anything else they wanted to know was none of their business. My business would be between myself and the Canadian customs agents. Is CBP now stopping people they don't like the looks of from leaving the U.S.? As I jokingly told my friend, I know a couple of places up in Northern Maine that I knew of years ago that I could have just stepped across the border through the woods and walk into Canada.

After all of these years, the Americans may have discovered these places and closed them off, but you never know. They may still be there. I found them by accident when I went out in the backwoods with my snowmobile years ago before Trump's first term.

If I didn't have a foreign born wife to look after, I have thought more than a few times in the last year, that I probably would have sold my house here in Virginia and moved back to Aroostook County, Maine after Trump got reelected in 2024. As close to the border as I could get. I would still write and post online, despite the limited rural internet service, always with the thought of maybe having to bug out across the border in the middle of the night someday one step ahead of Homeland Security.

We find ourselves living in changing times. Things are changing so fast, it's hard to keep up with it all at times. Between climate change, and political change, everything is collapsing around us.

I have another online friend living in northern California, who recently unsubscribed to my Substack page. It hurt me a bit but I respect his decision.Then I asked myself why he he did it. When I read his article today, I realised why. I discovered that I've been inadvertently following lots of other journalists and podcasters by repeating content from the news that everyone else is spouting about for attention over the last couple of weeks. After thinking about it, I decided I needed to make a change.

Starting next week, I'm going to start focusing on climate change and global warming going forward. It's something that people are writing about but its having a hard time getting attention due to Trump and company hogging the media air waves. I'm getting burnt out from talking about Trump and what he's doing to the world at large.

Pretty soon, the world will have a new big thing to talk about as Trump goes to war with Iran. There is little doubt that he won't. You don't send that many planes and ships to a place just to posture and intimidate. So, while the world is focused on the dead and dying from Iran, I will be focused on climate change and global warming and its effects on people around the world. How many people have been paying attention to the extreme weather in Canada and western Europe this winter? If that sounds interesting, tune into next week's, The Village Oak Tree podcast. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:55:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?our-changing-world https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000180 <![CDATA[Chaos, chaos everywhere we look!]]> imblog I don't want to repeat what I talked about in this week's podcast, which was enough all by itself. Suffice to say, with what happened in the house committee yesterday with Pam Bondi was enough to make most people sick to their stomachs.

I normally don't watch that stuff as it's usually boring as hell, but yesterday was quite the show. All of which goes to show the world that the people working for Donald Trump don't care about anyone except Trump. He's the only audience that matters to them. Which is why Ms. Bondi thought she could get away with yelling and insulting sitting members of congress while supposedly there for a hearing on her job performance. What a performance it was. She should try out for a reality TV show after she finishes her current gig.

Of course, she has others in the administration to give her pointers, like former TV Judge Jeanine Pirro. Ms. Bondi most certainly will never get a lawyer job like anything she has now ever again. She'll be lucky if she isn't disbarred after all of this and put on trial.

But that can be said for any of the rest of them. Although most of them don't need to work anymore as they're morbidly wealthy. I would say that they ought to hang onto some of that money as they may need it for legal fees once Trump is finally gone.

One way or another, Trump will be finished in the white house soon. Whether he terms out (I hope the world doesn't have to wait that long), or the democrats retake the congress and impeach his ass once they all get sworn in (my preference), he will be gone, period. We could get lucky and he suffers a heart attack or a stroke and he becomes a drooling zombie. But then Vance will take over and that may prove to be worse, since he's being paid by the wealthy billionaires who want a authoritarian oligarchy or a theocracy, depending on whom you talk to.

Maybe the best solution for all is for the democrats to impeach Trump so much that they shut him off from doing any more stupid stuff until he leaves in January 2029. Basically telling him to shut up and sit down behind the desk but don't touch anything. Like talking to a toddler.

Until something like that happens, everyone around the world is watching and waiting. A lot of used to be allies are no longer sure about that and are moving away from the U.S. in a lot of the important things, like trade, national defence and other things.

Canada is honouring its agreements to buy some F-35's grudgingly, while eyeing a better deal from the Swedes for their Grippen planes, with the promise of assembly factories to go along with it. They are snubbing the U.S. and looking at either German or South Korea to help build some submarines, or maybe both. One on each coast.

The EU, notably France and Germany are getting ready to dump american software products in favour of European software systems, such as France's Visio and Linux operating systems for government computers. They don't trust the Americans anymore. They're worried that Trump may order the U.S. tech firms to code in back door ports or kill switches that could shut down their government computers if he gets mad at them for something.

On top of all that, more NATO countries are deploying troops to Greenland still, ostensibly for war game training in arctic climates, but we know the real reason. To counter Trump until he backs off from trying to muscle Denmark into giving him Greenland. So it looks like there may be a plussed up NATO troop presence in Greenland until Trump and Vance are gone for good. I hope so. It's a shame that this is the new world we live in now.

In Canada, there is an Israeli aligned company going after journalists for reporting on the genocide in Gaza. They're trying to sue regarding articles certain Canadian media is posting about UNRWA, the genocide, the Israeli war crimes and all the rest. I hope they get their asses kicked in Canadian courts. I will post links to these news articles below for people to read for themselves. It's disgusting what these fanatics are doing everywhere to protect Israel's ability to do whatever it pleases anywhere it pleases.

Australia is also having a free speech crisis. I read that Australia does not have a constitution that affords its citizens any civil rights like what the U.S. has. So, the Aussie government is kneeling before Israel and kissing the ring, while brutalising protesters when they peacefully protest against Israel. I read a story about how the Australian police in Sydney broke a 69 year old women protesters back in four places when they beat her with metal batons during a protest march. Ms. Caitlin Johnstone has been writing about this in her substack articles of late.

It seems the Israelis are bound and determined to get back at all of the western countries, including the U.S., that treated the Jews, and the zionists especially, so badly before 1948. In the case of the EU and the U.S., they are using coercion and spying to get their revenge for all of the affronts from centuries ago.

Back a couple of centuries ago, the Russians hated the Jews, in the 20th century, the Americans didn't like the Jews, the Germans certainly didn't like the Jews and the rest tolerated them, barely, until 1948. Then that all changed and the poor Palestinians have suffered ever since. Now, the zionist Jews are hated by nearly everyone around the world but the Israelis don't care because they think they have leverage on the leaders of the western countries. Mossad has been very busy and very bad through the decades to see to all of that. Trump especially. The Russians and the Chinese, not so much. The Russians and Chinese are content to wait all of this chaos out and go pick up the pieces when everything in the west finally breaks for good. Which it's doing spectacularly.

The west as a whole, is on the verge of an economic meltdown and a lot of experts are laying bets on when that might be. The U.S., France, Germany, and the related countries in western Europe are all on borrowed time, economically speaking. They're all heavily in debt and the bill collectors are getting nervous.

Countries like Russia and China are divesting themselves of American and European financial assets, although the EU appears to be going it alone now without Trump's U.S. holding its hand anymore. What EU citizens want to know, especially after a particularly cold winter, is why did their leaders shut off all of the cheap Russian oil and start buying the way more expensive American LNG? That's just one major bone of contention they have with the EU council. There are many more. The coalition is fracturing around the edges more and more now over economics and geopolitics regarding Ukraine. Trump isn't helping them much with all of his mobster tactics.

Inside the United States, the country is being torn apart by Trump and his evil regime. The MAGA republicans just passed the SAVE act that will supposedly require all voters to offer proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote if they pass it. There appears to be some opposition in the senate so there's hope yet.

I told my friend in a Signal chat earlier today, that I won't be giving them the satisfaction of proving that I'm a native born citizen, beyond my Real I.D. drivers license. I refuse to show them my passport or birth certificate to offer proof. They can stick it where the sun doesn't shine. If they refuse to let me vote, so be it. I've already decided that if they do away with my mail in voting option, and I have to vote in person, then tell me I have to produce a passport or a birth certificate to re-register to vote, I'll refuse and give them an earful on my way out the door.

They are estimating that this SAVE act will prevent millions of people from voting, which, apparently, is what Trump and the MAGA republicans want. As one reporter said today, that's probably the intent behind this bill. Lower voter turnouts tend to favour the republicans. You can't get much closer to a one party electorate than that, at least until they pull a Nazi trick and outlaw all other political parties. Which you know they want to do so badly.

These are very sick people running the U.S. government in all three branches. From the obvious near Nazi saluting republican party members to the supreme court with six justices also ready to render heil Trump salutes at every opportunity. The cabinet members are even worse. Bondi might has well have stood up with a military uniform on, clicked her heels when coming to attention and rendered a heil Trump before sitting down before the house committee yesterday.

I truly hope the democrats and the American people will figure out a way to put a stop to all of this or I will be forced to leave the U.S. in the near future, as a refugee fleeing authoritarianism. Much like millions of other people. Can you imagine the humanitarian crisis that would set off across the world? Canada and Mexico would be overwhelmed and probably shut off their borders. Maybe I will create a future podcast on what that might look like sometime in the near future. I've been to impoverished countries with lots of refugees living in U.N. tent cities and it was ugly. I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone or country.

As usual, I will post a note in my social media accounts advertising this blog post. I hope to generate enough readers to engage some feedback someday. In here, I can be as controversial as I want without worrying about the U.S. tech giants censoring my posts. I can use language that would set off their AI censors in a heartbeat without worry. I could imagine just what Google, Meta and the other American social media apps would do with this.

I hope anyone reading this has a good week ahead. Gods know we need all the good we can get these days. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:50:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?chaos,-chaos-everywhere-we-look- https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017F <![CDATA[Imolc or Brigits Day]]> imblog Imolc or in English, Brigits Day, is the seasonal celebration that those of us who follow the old ways of our ancient ancestors celebrate ever year at this time. If the weather is warm enough where you live (not at my house this year), people open up some doors and windows to let out the stale air that comes with being cooped up for the colder months since Samhain.

Those of us who celebrate these ancient holidays also make Brigits crosses out of local rushes, (again, green ones are not available where I live at this time of year) and use old corn husks or reeds to make Brides dolls (usually a children's game). The crosses get hung up above the doorways to bring good luck the the house during the year ahead. The dolls are set on an altar to be blessed by the goddess when she comes round on Brigit's eve. On Brigit's day, they are given to the children. The other custom that goes along with that, is the leaving of a white cloth or ribbon ties to a clothesline, tree limb or something outside just before bedtime so the Goddess, or St. Bridgit if your a Christian, to bless on her travels on the eve.

This cloth, once blessed, it's supposed to help with the healing of injuries and sickness during the year by rubbing it or just laying over a sick person.

This custom is mostly associated with stories of a Catholic nun named Bridgit, who was later sainted, who went around healing the injured and sick when she was alive in Ancient Ireland.

I don't do the cloth bit as I have no love for the Christians and their beliefs but I do make a new Brigit's cross every year and hang it above my prayer altar. If the weather is warm enough, we'll air out the house a little bit and clean in extra places throughout the week.

My wife, being a fairly new Christian by most standards, looks at me side eyed when I celebrate these holidays but she does understand that I am not a Christian and my traditions are not like hers and her friends. I support her when she celebrates her Chinese holidays so all is good with us.

In my podcast this week, I tied parallels between Donald Trump and the Nazi Party from the 1930's and 1940's using historical notes and the current chaos happening around the world because of Trump and his loyalists. I'm not going to repeat that here. If you're interested, check it on on the podcast page in this website and learn for your self. I tried to do a good job of showing people the parallels beyween Hitler and Trump to try and put some facts to the myths floating around the internet sphere.

Next week, I'm going to start talking about the Palestinians and Gaza, since I've been inundated with news articles lately, plus some more of Trump's antics that will likely have more bad repurcussions for the American people in the near future.

I'm also going to go over to my local Barnes & Noble book store at the local mall soon and ask about setting up a book signing there for my first novel. I'm sure they will probably charge me a fee of some sort for using their store space to do this but it's worth a try. I can afford a little something but I won't do it if they try to charge me a few hundred dollars. That's the trouble with all of this book marketing. Everyone has their hand out and they don't do cheap. Oh well. This is the world we live in these days. And they keep talking about affordability.

I am selling some books though. One here, one there but sales nonetheless. Most of the sales are coming through Ingram Spark, and I only make less that two dollars a book by the time they take out all of their printing expenses. Amazon is pretty much a bust. I haven't seen a dime from them ever. I get the occasional email that they're sending me my royalty money but nothing ever shows up. Probably eaten up with their printing expenses. I'm thinking about taking down my ebook version from Amazon so that my Draft2Digital/Books.org platform will distribute my ebook version here in the U.S. and in the U.K. to indie book stores. I'm still thinking about it. I think I will see what, if any, sales I have on Amazon and make my decision from that. If I've never had any sales on Amazon, that may be my decision maker.

I've heard stories about selling books on Amazon. They want you to spend a bunch of money to promote your books, but they don't help unless you have a gazillion reviews. In other words, they rig the algorythms against you until you meet this minimum review threshold they have set up. I think Barnes & Noble may be doing something similar but I haven't heard, and the only thing I know, is that I'm not selling any books on their print on demand platform.

Maybe if I can afford a local book signing, I can get a boost there. You never know. Meanwhile, I need to work on more advertising. I made a new commercial for my podcast this week, using visuals, to promote this website. I have noticed that a few more people are visiting me here to check things out so that's a good thing. The only person who chats with me though, is my staunch supporter and dear friend Mitch. As much as I like him, I wish more people would reach out and chat with me on occasion through this website. I am using social media post to let people know I'm here so we'll see. I'll keep trying.

Maybe my paganism is offputting to some and I'm sorry if that's the case but I'm not changing my spots for anyone. The old saying about "Take me as I am or not at all" applies here. I'm okay with having civil discussions about it but I won't change for anyone. I'm not going to hide who I am either, just to keep the peace.

Enough about that. It's a bit of a sore spot for me as I have had people in the past get all over me for my spiritual beliefs. I was even banned from a Catholic church once years ago.

Maybe I will write a story about that someday and post it on my Medium.com page. People there seem to like that kind of thing.

I think I'll finish this by saying how much I'm tired of snow and ice already. I moved away from all of that ten years ago now, and I never thought I would be out chopping ice out of my driveway again here in central Virginia. It really sucks. These more frequent polar vortexes every winter are wearing me out. Up until yesterday, the early morning outside temps have been at -8C for a couple of weeks now. It's now gotten up to just below freezing and up near 6C during the daylight hours. Which is good as the ice is finally starting to melt off the streets in my subdivision. The rubbish company is back to picking up the bins again. Now if only the post would start delivering the mail. I don't want to have to go back to the local postal office to pick up my mail again. I went once last Monday and it was a unorganized disaster. I only went because I was a little desperate and needed some important mail pieces they were holding.

I know this as I had signed up months ago to receive emails showing my mail for the day from them, so I knew what they had for me. I was hoping that was going to be a one time thing so we'll see. Maybe I'll find a way to let them know that most of the streets are clear enough to start delivering again without setting foot in there again while this delivery delay is still going on. To date, most of the mail they're holding is junk mail so I'm in no hurry to pick that up. I hope they figure it out and get back to doing their jobs soon.

That's what's on my mind this week. I hope my musings here relate with readers who may discover this blog someday. I try to keep it real and honest. Thank you for checking in. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:31:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?imolc-or-brigits-day https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017E <![CDATA[Are Changes in the wind for the U.S. and Canada?]]> imblog I've been saying this ever since the Trump speech at Davos, Switzerland in the third week of January. He is senile and mentally handicapped, whether its early stage Alzheimer's or just plain dementia is irrelevant. He just needs to go.

But, as I laid out in my recent podcasts, it's not so easy to just call him in a room and tell him, "You're Fired." There's the whole impeachment thing and the 25th amendment to the U.S. constitution to go through. As I said in my podcast, no one in Trump's cabinet ministry will sign on on the 25th amendment, nor would the majority of the republican congress, yet. He has to do a lot more obvious damage to the fabric of the country in order to even bring the subject up with any seriousness.

Setting aside Trump's obvious senility for now, there have been a lot of other things that are causing an uproar across the country. By now, nearly everyone in the world knows about the murder of the Veterans Administration ICU nurse who was shot in the back multiple times and killed last Saturday. Just because of a bunch of clowns professing to be ICE and CBP agents thought it would be a good idea to shove a couple of women protesters to the ground and pepper spray them. Mr. Alex Pretty came to their rescue and was killed for his chivalrous efforts.

Now the whole country is in a uproar about it and rightly so. The ICE/CBP commander was transferred, and the two agents put on desk duty pending an investigation. Along with all of that, politicians on both sides of the spectrum had their say for the media, which only made things worse when everybody from the senile president on down through his executive branch rank and file were quick to smear Mr. Pretty, while the videos spoke volumes refuting their claims of domestic terrorism.

Which leads me to this morning's news cycles. The rather infamous, thuggish looking Tom Holman, the so called, "Border Czar," gave a speech in Minneapolis, Minnesota this morning and the lies he told would make a prostitute blush. I was disgusted after listening to him try to convince the world that he was in charge of the good guys and that the people of Minneapolis were wrong for protesting the Gestapo tactics of the U.S. brown shirts of Nazi fame.

Then there was the FBI raid of the election offices in Fulton County, Georgia yesterday, with a warrant to investigate the presidential election of 2020. Which Trump has had a hard on for ever since. He can't get over the fact that he lost that election over five years ago now. He is constantly ranting about it, even in front of the international audience at Davos.

Most of the analysts in the news media today are all talking about how this is a distracting lead up to Trump and his people cheating in the next two national elections, the first one later this year in November. A lot of analysts and knowledgeable independent news podcasters are becoming very worried that Trump and company will find a way to prevent millions of registered voters from voting by November. This could be a real problem if he gets away with it.

If that's not enough to keep you up at night, there's been the weather since last weekend. Here in central Virginia, we had a couple of inches of snow, then the frozen rain came down on top of that mess. Everything here where I live is covered in several inches of ice now. The worst part, is that Virginia being a southern state, sort of, they don't have much in the way of municipal snow plows. There are a few and they did a good job of taking care of the main roads and streets but all of the side streets in the residential neighbourhoods, we're left to our own. My wife and I chopped and shovelled the ice out of our driveway but the streets will be covered with ice for several more days it looks like. And iced it is. In some spots on the streets, where the ice has melted some and refroze at night, making some parts of the streets look like an ice rink. To add to the mix, no one has snow tires here. I doubt you could even buy them this far south in the U.S.

Nearly everyone in my small senior citizens subdivision has stayed in. A couple of my neighbours hired some kids to clean out their driveways, while we, and one of my other neighbours, cleaned our own out. None of which does a thing for the streets we have to drive on just to get out to a main street to get necessities. We noticed when I took my wife to an appointment today, that some neighbourhoods had hired private snow removal companies to clean their streets. I asked myself why didn't our local senior citizens HOA pay to have our streets cleared. I would think that senior citizens would need this more than the younger folks for safety reasons. But what do I know, I just live here.

Across the country, the power has been out for days and it's been bitterly cold at night since last week. Some of the poorer southern states have been suffering pretty badly with these failing infrastructures and now we're seeing the results of high utility prices and a lack of upkeep to keep the electricity going to businesses and homes in a lot of these states.

And where is the federal government that we all give money to? AWOL as Trump is focused on starting another war with Iran, dealing with the Canadians and Europe. One good thing about all of this, is that the Greenland fiasco has gone back in the box for now. Although I think it is still jumping around in that box a little bit as I heard in the news that the U.S. embassy in Denmark took down some flags commemorating Denmark's soldiers who gave their lives in the middle east wars to support the Americans. Needless to say, that didn't go over well.

Then there is Canada. In the latest news, Trump and company apparently are fomenting a secession of a bunch of aggrieved Albertan's who want to become a separate country within the interior of North America. They think they have the support of the U.S. government as there have been Trump officials seen up there doing some cloak and dagger things. Has Trump decided to try and divide Canada up by using its own people against one another? Maybe he thinks that by starting a mini civil war between the Albertan separatists and the rest of Canada, he can use that as leverage in the upcoming CUSMA negotiations later this year. As If PM Carney doesn't have enough on his plate running around the world trying to gin up lucrative trade deals for Canada that exclude the U.S, he has Trump loyalists stirring up trouble out in his back field.

These poor back woods Canadian MAGA people have no idea what they're doing. Especially if they think Trump will come to their rescue of they hold this referendum and it passes. He will not. He will drop them like a hot potato and leave them high and dry with nothing, or he will make them an offer they can't refuse. He makes them a part of the U.S., like Guam and the Marshall Islands, protectorates that he can exploit for its resources and leave the citizens to fend for themselves with little to no money.

I hope their sake, that Ottawa and the provincial governors can talk them out of it and they all come to an equatable agreement. I also hope they can find a way to politely give Trump's government the middle finger and tell them to bugger off. The drama with Trump seems to never end.

Here at my house, we're discussing dental procedures that our dental insurance probably doesn't cover, to the tune of a couple thousand dollars later this year, fears of ICE breaking down my door to arrest my foreign born wife and step-daughter, and other kitchen table discussions I would have never thought I'd be having before a year ago.

I'm sure that a lot of other Americans are having similar after supper discussions at their tables as well. The price of medical care is skyrocketing in the U.S. now, not that it was ever cheap. Groceries continue to go up in price, along with more shortages on the shelves and in the coolers. I'm waiting for the middle east to blow up again soon and gas prices to rise once more. More misery to add to the already harder to afford economy in the U.S.

If anyone reads this and wants to commiserate with me about what's on their minds, feel free to reach out. I will enclose a news article from The Guardian I found about the idiots in Alberta, Canada in case you haven't heard about this yet. Sláinte

]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:59:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?are-changes-in-the-wind-for-the-u-s--and-canada- https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017D <![CDATA[The Mad King]]> imblog In my podcast this week, I laid out the case for what looks like an obvious case of dementia or Alzheimer disease with the American president. And I'm not the only one. I read several news and news blog articles saying the same thing. Trump's rambling speech at Davos, that I caught snippets of since Tuesday, made it pretty obvious that the U.S. president has some serious mental health issues. And they crucified Genocide Joe Biden for his obvious decline. Where's the outrage now?

The issue of Greenland is far from settled though. Trump came up at the last minute, after he did another TACO by deciding not to invade militarily or imposing tariffs on countries in the EU, with a "framework" of a deal that he didn't offer too many details about. Which, if his history is any guide, there is nothing there. It's all smoke and mirrors, for now. But the Danes, Greenlanders, and the EU are still looking to see if Trump will hit them with something else soon. They have all decided to stand up to him but he could still do some serious economic damage.

Then there are the serious rumours coming out today about Trump planning a regime change in Cuba before the end of this year.

It's becoming too much. All of us around the world are getting very tired of hearing about what Donald Trump is doing to someone, somewhere, next. We need it all to stop. It's time to fire this man and his crew and try to put things back together in some semblance of a democratic republic.

Unfortunately, no one wants to grow a set of cojones and start the ball rolling. The Republicans are just sitting around collecting a paycheck and the democrats are too chicken to stand up and fight.

The U.S. has a fractured judicial system now, cracked right down political ideological lines. Some judges are standing up for the rule of law, only to be overridden by Trump loyalists higher up in the chain of command. Forget about the Supreme Court.

To add more misery to the burning dumpster fire called the United States, Trump is crashing the economy real bad. The crew of clowns in his cabinet are dancing around the bonfire with bottles of liqueur drinking and spitting on the flames every chance they get.

Lutnic and Bessent were absolutely disgusting in Davos, so much so that the EU central bank president, Christine Lagarde, walked out of the dinner they were all attending. The EU and Canada are making more and more moves to step away from Trump's United States. Canada's PM just made some huge tentative trade deals with China, the EU, and Qatar. He's headed for India within the next week or two to make more. He wants Canada to stop being so dependant on U.S. trade from now on, which I applaud. His speech at Davos last Monday was a rousing rallying cry for all of the middle economy countries who have been bullied by Trump.

Even though I live in the U.S., I am cheering everyone else on. I hope all of these countries around the world that Trump keeps disparaging, give him the middle finger and move their trade away from Trump's United States. Once the money stops coming in, and the feds can no longer sell any more bonds and T bills, maybe the now broke politicians will wake up and do something to get rid of the mad king

Of course, the rest of us will be in some serious financial distress by the time this happens. I've been talking some about the uptick in civil unrest, and I don't mean about all of the ICE raids taking place across the country, but the class war between the haves, and the have-nots. That class war is starting to heat up even more lately with everything Trump is doing, both at home and abroad.

Affordability is on most people's minds these days, including myself. I see the price of food jumping up everywhere and the empty shelves and bins in my local grocer. I know all of you have seen it too. At least those of you who actually visit a supermarket on a regular basis.

One of the biggest things I'm watching for, with all of these economic and financial YouTube podcasts I watch, is the rapidly increasing national debts of most of the countries in the world. It seems the whole developed world is living on credit and a lot of them are having a hard time just paying the interest accruing on the principles when the bills come due. I know the U.S. is like that right now. Add to that, all of the latest economic stress from a demented president, and you have a recipe for a global recession. The global trade network is so integrated between countries, that decoupling from an economic powerhouse like the U.S. is going to cause a lot of financial pain during the transition. Not just for the Americans but for nearly everyone who exports to the U.S. as well.

And that is what I'm most afraid of. Like most senior citizens around the developed world, I live on my pensions that I paid into and earned in my younger working days, and those pensions are dependent on a financially solvent government. If the United States becomes insolvent to the point where they can no longer afford to pay out those pensions and social security benefit money, me and millions of other people are all going to be on the street, homeless and marching on Washington D.C. to take back our government.

It could get very ugly as I'm sure Trump would recall his private militia, called ICE, to provide personal security for him when the people come for him. It won't be like when Nixon and Kissinger were asking themselves whether the protesters would leap the barriers around the white house to come get them. With Trump, he wouldn't hesitate to have his militia start shooting people if they came after him. And this group of derelicts his DHS has hired wouldn't hesitate one bit. That's part of how they got hired for ICE in the first place. By their willingness to carry out violence against other people, immigrants or citizens.

Right now, we're a ways away from something like that. Maybe by a few months anyway. If Trump crashes the economy, as he has nearly done twice now in just a year, the gloves will come off. The American people will come for him and his enablers. And ICE will get rolled over by sheer numbers.

There will be shootings, you can take that to the bank. We have already seen ICE's eagerness to meet out violence and extrajudicial killings lately so, killing a few protesters for their dear leader won't make many of them pause. Some of them would probably relish the permission to shoot fellow Americans just for the thrill.

Despite that, if American citizens were to take up arms against Trump's personal militia, the battles wouldn't last long. Most of these new hires have little to no combat experience and little training or discipline. They're just overpaid street thugs hired to forcibly go after anyone with dark skin, citizens or not. They're not asking and they don't care. They're told who to go after, with little oversight, and they feel emboldened because they always show up in large tactical squads for their raids against unarmed civilians. In some latest leaked news by a government whistle blower, ICE has been told they can forcibly enter private property without a warrant, which explains a few things. I can't imagine why they didn't want everyone to know about that.

These thugs wouldn't stand a chance against any trained, experienced combat veterans. Even if the resistance veterans were all senior citizens like me.

As I've said before, the people in the U.S. are nearly there. They're on the edge of armed resistance against these street thugs terrorising and killing peaceful people, non-citizens and citizens alike. For a lot of them, the only thing holding them back are their local governments calling for peaceful protests. With the terrorism taking place in Minnesota right now, that may not last much longer. The rallying cry will be justice for Renee Good.

If Trump sends in federal troops to more democrat led cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, that may be the spark that sets off the dry tinder, as I mentioned last week. Will we be witness to Americans shooting Americans soon? Or will cooler heads prevail and the military be ordered to stand down against Trump's orders? You tell me.

It's hard to tell right now. I know some people, one a close relative, who would watch with glee as federal troops fired on peaceful protesters. This close relative would call the protesters leftists, communists and liberal democrats who deserved to be shot for daring to protest against Trump. But then, he's never served in the military or ever fired a gun in combat, much less while the enemy is shooting back. He's another arm chair soldier who would probably run away as fast as possible if anyone took a shot at him and came close to hitting him. Imagine someone like this times about thirty five percent of the U.S. population? That's about how many arm chair soldiers there are in the U.S. The majority of them cowards hiding behind their computers and social media accounts.

I find that it's these people who keep pushing the envelope the most with social media because they can hide behind their keyboards. They don't have too worry to much about anyone taking an actual shot at them in anger. They feel very safe hiding behind their house walls and PC monitors while real soldiers like me fight their battles for them. There are a handful of white supremacists in the country, some with military experience, who would stand on the side of the ICE troops but they are few and far between. The majority of the civilians standing with Trump and his federal militias are cowards who wouldn't fight unless cornered. I have first hand experience of what it's like to be in combat with enemy soldiers taking shots at you. I don't recommend that for anyone.

I truly hope we don't see street fights in the U.S. between local resistance fighters and government troops someday soon. A lot of people will die on both sides and that will be the real tragedy. I can see Trump yelling and screaming for his troops to kill anyone who dares to stand in the way of his troops carrying out his orders. Much like he asked Mark Esper during his first term if the national guard troops in Washington could be ordered to just shoot the protesters in the legs.

I said on last weeks podcast that I'm not advocating for armed resistance, yet. In this blog post this week, I am advocating for armed resistance and here's how it should go. Much like the first battles between the colonists and the British Red Coats at Lexington and Concord in April, 1775, there will need to be enough resistance fighters to overwhelm the ICE squads terrorising people in these neighbourhoods. By showing up with enough guns and people to surround these so called agents, they can be given a choice, either surrender or die.

Of course, Trump will invoke the insurrection clause and send in some federal troops. This same tactic can be used with them also, if they were to be sent out in the streets. Disarm them and escort them back to where they're bivouacked. From the looks of a lot of these federalised troops, it wouldn't take much. First of all, most of them don't have the heart for this kind of deployment, so they wouldn't put up much resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. Their NCO's would also be the same way. There might be some hot heads who might fight though and that's the chance any armed resistance would have to be willing to take. Would we see some pitched battles in urban and suburban neighbourhoods? Plan on it and hope not.

Someone has to find a way to make these ICE terrorists stand down soon. I am all about the local governments using judicial means to accomplish this but we can see how this is not helping anyone right now. Something more in your face needs to be happening until the governments get things worked out. How many more people have to be permanently disabled and killed before a way is found to force these terrorists off the streets?

No one want so start a battle where civilians will be caught in the crossfire. Killing women and children will only make things worse, as we've seen with the Renee Good murder. We're now talking about war zone refugees. On the other hand, maybe evacuating people out of areas where ICE is targeting people and moving them somewhere with armed resistance protecting them. Sure it will disrupt the local economies and everything but isn't ICE already doing that?

But hey, I'm just spit balling some ideas. Whatever the plan, someone needs to step up soon before too many more people end up dead from gunshots on the streets and choke holds in detention centres. I wonder what would happen if roles were reversed and it were white immigrants who were being targeted by dark skinned ICE agents? How many arm chair soldiers would we have then?

In other local news, is everyone ready for the major winter storm that's hitting central and eastern North America this weekend? I went out to pick up some extra flashlights and batteries today as part of my preparations in case the lights go out. I would have gone to the grocers but most of the stores were full of panic buyers so we stayed away. The Home Depot was bad enough. I may venture out to get some extra milk and a couple of things in the morning before people wake up. My wife warned me that the store shelves and coolers will likely be largely empty. I guess I'll find out. I did notice that the tariffs are in full swing as the flashlights and batteries are now more expensive than I remember. The flashlights were imported from Thailand. The batteries? I didn't look. It doesn't matter though, I need them so what are we to do? And Trump says the economy is doing great. Prices are lower than before he took office a year ago. It's obvious that he hasn't set foot in a retail store in years, if ever.

Take care everyone. I will be back next week with more about what I and many others are thinking about and I'm daring to say out loud in my blog. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:44:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?the-mad-king https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017C <![CDATA[Should I Stay or Should I Go?]]> imblog A few evenings ago, my wife and I were sitting around our little kitchen table after supper and we started discussing, out of nowhere, the current state of affairs regarding all of the ICE militarism happening in the mid-west.

This is unusual because my usually very quiet wife was very vocal about what should we do if the government were to throw us out of the country. During our conversation, she asked me where we could go if we had to leave the United States, and I had to sit a minute and think about it.

My wife grew up in China during the Chinese cultural revolution. During the 1960's, it was the aftermath of the great famine in the late 1950's that killed millions of Chinese people. The succeeding decades weren't much better for the vast majority of the average Chinese citizens as China tried to gain a footing in the world. She grew up with a very repressive government and a society that was strung together on old world customs and a corrupt government that did it's best to keep a tight control on everyone. Poverty was the norm for everyone.

Because of all of that, when she managed to come to the U.S. and claim asylum in 2010, she was granted a green card, which cost her $1000 of hard earned money. Because of the lack of information about the U.S. while living in China, she always thought the U.S. was the absolute best place in the world to live. Until the other night.

Now, she is seeing some parallels to the China she grew up in.

So, back to my quiet moment about where we could go if we had to leave the U.S. in a hurry. She mentioned Portugal as a place that was supposed to be welcoming to Americans. I had to tell her that this was no longer the case. The same for Spain, France, and most of the rest of Europe. Americans have been leaving the U.S. in droves since Trump's first term to go to Europe and Latin America, and because of their often lofty, clueless behaviour, they are not so welcome anymore.

Portugal, Spain, France, England, Ireland, Germany, and most of the rest of Europe and Latin America are starting to put the breaks on American immigration to their countries. They have raised the visa requirements and fees, raised the standards for applying for residency and citizenship, and so on in the last couple of years because these more affluent Americans who have gone over to these countries with their better than everyone else attitudes and satchels full of cash, which drove up house rentals and home prices to the point that local native born citizens can no longer afford to buy or rent decent homes or apartments anymore.

After thinking about my wife's question for a minute, I thought of Italy. Now, neither one of us is Italian, nor do I have any Italian relatives or ancestors. I had thought of Canada before, even though I am one generation too far to apply for Canadian citizenship. But we both realised that Canada is having its own problems with over immigration and housing issues, plus some economic problems due to Trump's tariff war, so we vetoed Canada. My wife hates the cold weather anyway.

With most of Europe off limits for us because we don't have a lot of money, I told my wife about Italy. Italy is a EU country that is relatively simple to live in, a decent standard of living, and not so popular with most Americans. Especially in the north. As a matter of fact, Italy in recent years, has been advertising for people to come live in some of these out of the way villages far from Rome and the Mediterranean coast. Up near the northern mountain regions.

The drawback would be, one, neither one of us know much about Italy, second, we don't speak the language nor do we know any local customs. I have been to Italy a couple of times in the 1980's and I found it to be a friendly place full of nice and not so nice people. Much like anywhere else in the world, other than the U.S. Obviously, some things have changed, such as the government, but then, so has the U.S. At least Italy, despite their very right wing prime minister, is a lot more stable to live in than the United States right now.

In order for us to live there, we would have to sacrifice a lot of things. I wouldn't have my nice, somewhat large suburban house to live in anymore and I would probably lose my social security pension if I gave up my U.S. citizenship. Could we live in Italy until we died of old age as U.S. expats? Maybe. Two years ago, I would have said yes with no hesitation. Now, with a certain MAGA congressman putting forth a bill to eliminate dual citizenship for any non-native born citizens, and a proposal to stop retired Americans from living long term outside of the U.S. for other than work, I am not so confident any more.

As it stands, until they change the law, we could live as expats in certain allied countries, such as NATO countries and I can still keep receiving my government pensions. I personally have known retired military veterans who left the U.S. to live in Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Germany and other countries like them comfortably. I always thought I had that option also until now.

My concern stems from the current economic situation of the United States. Under Trump, who seems to want to find different, offbeat ways to move money from one federal pot to one he wants to use, I'm concerned that he might decide within the next couple of years to make it illegal for veterans to retire to another country and still keep our pensions and disability benefits.

Trump is slowly choking off the economy of the United States with his tariffs and other foreign policies. The U.S. stock market tanked again yesterday and that's making famous economists take notice. Global corporations like Amazon and Walmart are starting to expand their logistics operations into places like Canada now to get around Trump's tariffs. The jobless rate is steadily rising with all of the recent layoffs in the last few months and analysts are predicting that this will continue to rise this year.

As I noted in my podcast this week, other countries are starting to diversify their trading partners and beginning to exclude the United States where they can. If Russia starts providing naval escorts for their oil tankers to prevent Trump from hijacking more of their ships, other countries will follow suit and America's sea ports will become ghost towns. Without shipping traffic, imports of goods to the U.S. will come to a near halt. A lot of people will get very hungry and angry. People are already angry over the affordability crisis and this will only make things a lot worse.

Then there is the health care issue. Italy, and Europe as a whole, have a better health care system than the U.S. It's better in some countries than others, but overall, it's still a lot better than here in the U.S. If we moved to Italy, I would lose access to the Veterans Administration hospitals and doctors. I would lose my other health care insurance, such as Tricare and Medicare. But, if I'm living in a country with a national heath care program or even just regular medical services, the cost, even out of pocket, would be substantially less than that of anything offered in the U.S.

If I can keep my pensions, I probably can afford to live comfortably in Italy. The prices of everyday living are substantially less than the U.S as well. There would be things that I would have to learn to live without because they wouldn't be available in a small Italian village but, considering the poverty I have lived with in the U.S. in my younger days, I think we would manage just fine.

If your reading this, just know that I'm thinking out loud here. I hope I don't have to sell my house and possessions in order to start over in a place like Italy. The sheer mountain of logistics alone is prohibitive. Not to mention the income tax sanctions that the U.S. government puts on expats.

I've been studying this for a few years now. Mostly by reading news stories and blog articles from Medium writers over the last three years. I always kept this to myself since I knew what a fervent American my wife always wanted to be, until now. Our lengthy conversation the other night got my attention and I won't soon forget it. Now, in my spare time, which is scant, I will be passively researching northern Italy just in case I need a safe haven someday soon. Maybe I can talk my wife into reconnecting to her distant cousin who lives over there somewhere and is married to an Italian, if I remember right. I remember seeing pictures of their place in the Italian countryside a few years ago. It wasn't fancy or in any way suburban like what we're used to here in the U.S. but still..... Maybe a relative connection to help us with immigration? It's worth thinking about.

In other thoughts, I'm still waiting for the hammer to fall regarding our health insurance coverage. As a military retiree, I get access to subsidised health care through the DOD. Which means, at least for now, my monthly premiums have always been a lot less than any civilian provider. The downside, has always been to find a health care provider that will accept this government backed health insurance because they pay the provider so little compared to the civilian insurance providers. Because of this. providers are becoming scarcer these days.

Case in point. My wife needed some dental work recently beyond the normal six month cleaning and maintenance visits. We found out, after lots of phone calls to providers in my area, that there were no providers that could offer the surgery she needed within the insurance network anywhere near me. We had to find someone willing to do the work first. Then we had to request special permission from the insurance company in order to make the appointment so they could be paid, minus a co-pay of course.

All has gone smoothly, so far. But after a follow on visit this week for the dentist specialist to monitor the aftermath of the surgery, I wonder if I'm now going to get a bill because the insurance will refuse to pay for the office visit? The same dentist wants to see her in a month for the same thing. They're nice about it but, will these checkup visits be covered?

I'm talking about this because I'm sure that there are a lot of other people who've experienced this same thing in this crazy health care system we have here in the United States. It seems we the patients are always having to argue with the health insurance companies about health insurance provider bills that they make excuses not to pay.

I used to know a Canadian woman who needed to see a dentist years ago. She asked me to driver her across the border once to a dentist she knew in a Canadian border town and she paid for the visit out of pocket. It cost her fifty dollars Canadian at the time, which was back in 2011. That's with no insurance.

Imagine what a dentist office visit in the U.S. costs now with no insurance? There was a young lady in the dentist office I took my wife to the other day who was working on setting up a payment instalment plan to pay for her dental care. That's what health care in the U.S. is like. We either pay the insurance companies vast sums of money every month or we pay the health care providers even more after a visit if we can't afford the insurance. It's a no win situation in the U.S. And the worst part? For all of this money we have to pay out, we don't get any better health care or faster service for all of that money. With RFK Jr in charge now, we're probably receiving worse care overall in the U.S. than other developed countries.

In a previous podcast, I mentioned that countries like Canada and regions like the EU are actively recruiting U.S. doctors and nurses who are tired of all the B.S. and looking for something better. A lot of them have accepted positions outside if the U.S. in the last couple of years. As I said, the brain drain is on here in the U.S. and it will be getting worse over the next few years.

Italy is starting to look like a really nice quiet place to retire now. I hear that the Mediterranean diet and fresh air help people live a lot longer. Plus the lack of stress that might come from living in a low cost of living country with half way decent health care. I could live in a place where walking or bicycling to the local village for groceries or a doctors visit is more the norm than having to drive for miles to do the same here in the U.S.

That's what's going on in my world this week. Depending on what happens in the U.S. over the next few days, I may or may not write again before this time next week. If Trump starts world war three I'll definitely let you know. I've included this weeks video podcast below for anyone interested. Be safe. Arrivederci amici miei

https://youtu.be/Ww37hWlqEyQ]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:16:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?should-i-stay-or-should-i-go- https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017B <![CDATA[We the People need to Start Fighting Back!]]> imblog I hadn't planned on writing anything new until after next week's podcast but, it's cold and rainy out today and I don't have a lot else going on, other than doing laundry.

I read another essay from Chris Armitage this morning and it made me think about everything that's going on in general stemming from the lawless U.S. government.

Trump now wants 1.5 trillion dollars to fund the U.S. military industrial complex next year, and given what he's doing with the current budget, that can't be good for anyone else around the world. He wants some kind of Trump mega battleship now, he also wants a so called "Golden Dome" continental missile defence system, and I'm sure there's more.

Denmark is now vowing to fight any American soldiers who show up in Greenland to take over the country. Not that Denmark could effectively take on the U.S. military in a stand up fight, but they would probably be able to convince other NATO countries to stand with them. So, we have a stand off. Is Trump so foolish as to pick a shooting fight with Europe over Greenland, which would surely cost a lot of lives on both sides?

I think congress would definitely have something to say about that. Well, maybe not people like Lindsay Graham or Tom Cotton, but there would be enough others, from both parties, that would stand up and say no. Not to mention the American people.

Then there is the ever increasing problem with Trump's new private domestic militia, called ICE. The people in the U.S. are nearing the point of violent protests against these ICE agents running rampant across the country with little oversight, and now, a declared immunity from prosecution for anything, I mean anything, done while carrying out their duties? To include manslaughter against American citizens apparently.

This whole business in Minnesota will come to a head once the federal government officially exonerates this ICE agent from prosecution in the death of this young woman from Minneapolis. The state government is barely able to keep a lid on things as it is right now. Especially when the FBI has told the state of Minnesota that they're not allowed to investigate this murder. So, we have the feds telling the state to stand down, and Trump's DOJ telling the country that this ICE agent was defending himself from a domestic terrorist, which all of the current public videos are refuting.

Obviously, the state law enforcement will have to run a parallel investigation on their own and prosecute accordingly within the confines of Minnesota state law. Do I think the feds will let this man stand trial? Not on your life.

I saw on TikTok that people are already doxing this agent by pointing out his house in Minnesota. I wonder what the feds are going to do about that? Are we all going to be labelled domestic terrorists for sharing videos of ICE agents houses on social media now? That's one way to fight back though.

Chris Armitage, who's article from today I will link at the bottom of this post, writes that the states are going to have to step up and do more to defend their states rights with regard to what the federal government, by law, is allowed to get away with when it comes to committing crimes against the people in their states. Manslaughter being one of them.

The bigger existential question for the American republic, is where do the states draw the line with regard to states rights versus federal jurisdiction over states. Trump seems to think he's omnipotent and can do whatever he wants, to anyone he wants around the world and no one can stop him. According to his recent interview with the New York Times, the only thing restraining him is himself. He wants to play god to the rest of the world. Or at least to everyone in the western hemisphere of the planet.

As Chris Armitage tells us, there is only one thing the American people can do is impeach him at this point since he has taken over all of the other federal government institutions. Especially the supreme court. I don't see that happening because only the congress can impeach a president and this congress is useless with regard to standing up to this wannabe mobster. They will never get enough votes in the house of representatives to even consider a vote, much less allow articles to be published.

As for ICE, there is only one way to deal with them also. Take them out. Start with taking out the soldiers kidnapping people off the streets, in schools, in churches, immigration offices and so on. If enough people with guns were to surround a squad of ICE soldiers and remove them from the place they're kidnapping people, and do this enough times around the country to put a serious dent in their manpower, they will step back. Removal can be either stuffing them in the backs of vans or by force, if the ICE agents try to use guns to defend themselves. Which is likely until enough of them get taken out.

Of course, Trump and company will try to invoke the Insurrection clause and declare Martial Law, but that only works if the people allow it to happen. If things escalate to this point, the states will step in and defy Trump's government. Not all of them but enough to force a stand-off between the states and the feds.

Trump's abusive government would come to a halt. The downside is that the economy will crash hard, much like the Covid shutdown days of early 2020. There will be clashes between federal forces and state forces. Trump will want to federalise the state national guards and use them to try and force states to comply to his wishes.

And that is where things would get sticky. Would the state national guard commanders follow Trump's orders or their state governors? There has been some speculation about that in the independent news feeds. Would the United States descend into chaos as states exercise their sovereign rights over the feds demands?

I realise that I'm imagining a total breakdown of government under Trump if he keeps pushing, but this isn't so far fetched anymore by we're witnessing in Minnesota. Illinois would back Minnesota, along with several other states in the region. I can imagine the west coast states reaching out to help with logistics, if Minnesota and Illinois take on the federal government over its abuses against the people in their states.

Before all of that happens, congress has to step in and tell Trump to stop the nonsense. But I don't see that happening until Minnesota stands up for itself, with Illinois backing them, along with maybe a handful of other states in the mid-west. They are pushing back a little bit recently but they're woefully short of doing their jobs.

Which is going to be part of next week's podcast. I plan to use my own state's politicians as examples of how they're not doing what we elected them to do. In so many ways, they are as much of the problem with the federal government as Trump and his executive branch are. Which I plan to point out as best as I can.

I don't imagine many people will read this because this blog isn't well known. I'm trying to change that this year, with some help from my friends. They aren't many as I'm not much of a social media influencer but I'm trying to do better. We'll see how well I do in the coming months ahead.

For anyone else who may stumble across this website when randomly scrolling the search engines for political reading content, share this with anyone you may think would be interested in my political discourse. The more people we engage with who want to put a stop to Trump and his oligarch donors, the better. Otherwise, the ending of the American republic will happen without a shot and most people won't know its gone until it's too late. We will lose so many things, such as free speech and other civil rights. We're almost there now.

A lot of pundits are starting to compare Trump and his government to the oligarchies in Russian, Hungary, and other places around the world. We're so very close to that right now and the only way to stop the madness, is to stand up and say no. And be prepared to accept the consequences, like Ms. Renee Goode and so many others in the last year. That's the downside of war. People get hurt and die. Just like in the first American revolution. A lot of people died back then in order to throw off the yoke of English tyranny. We're nearly there once again. More people may have to die before we throw off Trump's yoke once and for all.

How many of you are willing to stand up and fight for your rights as granted by the U.S. constitution? I know I am and I know how to use a gun.

]]> Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:18:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?we-the-people-need-to-start-fighting-back- https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/00000017A <![CDATA[Cry Havok, Let Loose the Dogs of War]]> imblog In my podcast for this week that posted yesterday, I railed against the brazen attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of it's president and his wife. Who, by the way, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, should be considered a non-combatant.

I also talked about how little Trump cares whether the U.S. is a member of NATO. Remember during his first term when he threatened to leave NATO if they didn't start paying their fair share? I heard today that congress actually does care about this so there might be some push back from congress finally. Maybe Trump has finally crossed a line regarding Greenland that even the MAGA congress people say is too far. Maybe some of these republicans will finally grow a set of cojones and stand up to the capo de capo for a change. Are the cracks are starting to get wider? We can only hope.

But as we know by now, or should anyway, Trump doesn't care about the law, domestic or international. He does what he wants, or in this case, he has his military do it for him. Whether it's the ICE brigades on domestic soil, or the active duty military in international territories.

I read that about seven to eight U.S. soldiers were wounded in this attack, and approximately eighty plus Venezuelans and Cubans were killed and wounded. I ask anyone reading this, how many people saw this in their news feeds? I bet very few. I had to dig for it a little myself. According to the one article I found, two Americans ended up staying in hospital as their wounds were significant and the others were treated and released. They got off very lucky.

Meanwhile, the world is in shock, which I'm sure Trump probably had an orgasm over. It sounded like he was with his Truth Social posts. But then, at his age and purported health condition, I have my doubts that he can even get it up anymore. I hope he has an STD from all of his misadventures with his late best pal Epstein.

That's mean, I know, but I'm mad. I'm mad about the American people letting Trump and his people get away with all of this. We have the power to take down a president. We've done it a couple of times already in our history. First there was Andrew Johnson back in the mid-19th century, then tricky Dick Nixon in 1974. We can do it again, if we had the will to do it. But we don't anymore.

Most of us are so broke, we don't have the energy anymore to rise up en-mass to demand that Trump be impeached by the House of Representatives, and convicted by the Senate. We don't have a congress of the people anymore. What the United States has, is an oligarchy along the same lines as Russia. The Russian Duma does whatever Putin wants, for the most part. His ministers have all been bought, or are part of the oligarchy running the country.

Does this sound a bit familiar? In the case of the U.S., it's more like a mafia family with the associates and made men working for the Capo de Capo.

This particular mafia don has pretty much subverted the federal government now, and only an uprising of major proportions might stop this, but not without a lot of bloodshed.

I reposted a couple of today's articles from my feeds on my Substack page today telling anyone who dares to read them, that the people in the U.S. may need to repeat history to take back the country from these gangsters. I explicitly told readers that the people should rise up against the ICE brigades much like our colonial predecessors did at places like Lexington and Concord, when they stood up to the British Red Coats.

These ICE agents apparently have minimal training and discipline as witnessed by the horrific murder of an innocent young woman in Minneapolis yesterday. The worst part, is the denial and lies told to the public that she was a domestic terrorist. From what I could get from the video, she cussed out the aggressive ICE agent, who told her to move her car. And as she was trying to straighten out her car in order to pull out from where she was blocking the street while filming the ICE raid, the agent pulled out his pistol and shot her in the face at near point blank range through her windshield. He was in no physical danger as he was on the side of the car as she was leaving.

On the back side of this, that ICE agent has probably already been quietly evacuated from Minnesota, just like that agent was from Chicago a few months ago. He was eventually found in Maine, and we were told it was a routine PCS (permanent change of station) transfer. I expect the same for this agent in Minneapolis. Some intrepid wannabe detective will eventually find him someday and out him, only for DHS to give him immunity from prosecution.

This is the United States we live in now. Where federal immigration enforcement agents can shoot people with impunity and, so far, no one is able to hold any of them accountable for their actions. The FBI is useless now and we can be relatively sure they won't arrest anyone. The state law enforcement offices will investigate as best as they can, but any physical evidence will be secured by the FBI and Minnesota will be left with nothing but the videos. Governor Walz can yell all he wants and they can even issue arrest warrants based on state laws but DHS will thumb their noses at Minnesota and dare them to do anything about it. Chris Armitage has written about this several time already. The states need to find a way to hold these officers accountable when they break the law in their states. Until that starts to happen, they will continue their deadly rampage across the country. We can expect more deaths going forward. So far, the body count is two dead, with several wounded. All were charged with threatening or endangering a federal officer in the performance of their lawful duties. All lies but it's their story and their sticking to it. I read today that Trump explicitly told Pamela Jo Bondi and Kristi Noem that no ICE agents were ever to be prosecuted for any reported crimes while performing their duties. There you go. What more do you need to see that Trump's mafia enforcers are out of control.

By all of the economic indicators out there right now, the U.S. is entering a recession. Unemployment is ticking up, inflation is going up, wages are stagnating, layoffs are ramping up and people are getting increasingly desperate. Trump doesn't seem to be too concerned about it though. Obviously, he won't be personally affected by any economic downturns, and we all know how little he really cares for the average citizen in the U.S. or any other country for that matter.

We the people can't afford to wait until next November when the democrats will sweep the congress in the mid-term elections. Trump will destroy the country before then. Some of us have been warning anyone who'll listen about how the MAGA republicans are trying very hard to subvert the elections in their favour. We've been reading and listening to news stories about how Trump is determined that MAGA will win the next spate of elections, one way or another. He keeps telling everyone how much he hates to lose elections, so this may be no different in his demented mind.

In my personal space, I am working on saving money to install a solar panel battery back up system in case Dominion Energy suffers a power outage. I had thought of this a couple of years ago but the price tag was very prohibitive and the batteries were reported to be crap.

But now, the battery technology is supposed to be better, and the price tag is also better. They're now offering battery backup storage systems to keep just the essentials going, using rooftop solar panels to keep the batteries charged. In theory, I can install a small system to keep my refrigerator and freezer going during a prolonged outage, and maybe even run an electric heater during cold weather. I don't need to power the whole house during a prolonged outage. I just need to keep the food from spoiling and keep us from freezing to death in the winter. I can use candles and oil lamps for light and shut off the rest of the house until they get the power back online.

I will admit that in the five years I've lived here in central Virginia, I can only remember one or two outages that lasted no more than a couple of hours. That's pretty good, compared to when we lived in central Texas. I hope it stays that way. But after the two brownouts we suffered back in December, I don't want to take any chances, if I can afford the battery kit.

My wife has expressed a desire to go vacationing to an island this year. At first, I thought she meant some tropical island somewhere until she clarified. She wants to spend about five days on some island on the eastern U.S. seaboard near some summer tourist town. Since I plan to install a tow bar kit on my new little truck, I thought, okay, that's doable. We can tow my truck behind the RV and play tourist. I still plan to get out on weekends to take pictures to sell in my website, so maybe I can do both. Not that I think I will sell many pictures but it doesn't hurt to try.

So yes, this is a plug for the online store in this website. Come in and take a look around. You never know, I might have a book or a digital photo that strikes your fancy. The good part, is that you can buy direct from me without issues from anywhere in the world, using most common currencies. With the Google Translator on the home page, language issues shouldn't be a problem.

I'm becoming more and more concerned about the direction the U.S. is going these days. If the U.S. becomes a pariah rogue state that most of the world shuns out of fear, all of us, other than the morbidly wealthy, will suffer greatly. I've been to poorer countries in my military days and I never thought I would be thinking my own country would suffer that fate. It's beginning to look like we will if we don't find a way to get rid of Trump and his government flunkies. We need to to this sooner than later.

Next week's podcast will be about how feckless a large majority of our elected politicians are, from district representatives to state senators, who are failing all of us while they run around in expensive suits, expensive cars, live in expensive houses, sometimes more than one, and ignore the people that voted for them, unless you're a wealthy donor. I'm far from being a wealthy donor and I'm tired of contacting my state politicians to voice my concerns and receiving nothing in return but form emails weeks later telling me now great a job they're doing for their constituents. I plan to call them out on this next week. They all happen to be democrats. Won't that make my younger brother happy. He hates democrats with a passion. If he could line them all up against a wall in front of a firing squad, he would grin from ear to ear as he gives the order to fire.

That's it for this week. I'm sure Trump and company will give us all a lot more to talk about in the week ahead. Sláinte

]]> Thu, 08 Jan 2026 21:18:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?cry-havok,-let-loose-the-dogs-of-war https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000179 <![CDATA[New Years Day in the Roman Calendar]]> imblog First, the weather. It's cold and where I am on the U.S. east coast, they're predicting some minor snow fall for this Saturday coming. A minor hiccup for me as I will never forget the deep snows and extreme cold of Northern Maine this time of year. As it stands this season, Aroostook County, Maine has a few feet of snow on the ground as of today and the temps stay mostly in the subzero Fahrenheit range most days now. Out west, they're dealing with huge snowstorms and bitter cold from North Texas all the way up into Canada. The Pacific north west, to include British Columbia, has been experiencing flooding rains, causing evacuations in some places due to these Pacific Ocean rain bands coming in off the ocean.

This year, North America is experiencing a La Nina weather pattern from the Pacific Ocean. Which typically brings bitter cold and lots of snow in the winter months. The climate scientists are predicting an El Nino pattern next winter, which will bring in a warmer winter, which could cause more droughts and wildfires in 2027. But I'm getting ahead of things as we need to survive 2026 first.

And that is where we find ourselves in this so called, New Years Day 2026. Wondering with trepidation about the coming year. 2025 was a very tumultuous year and 2026 promises to be worse.

I watched the news as usual this morning and I have found some new independent news sources regarding the coming economic upheaval predicted this year. These noted experts are telling us the same thing. The United States is in dire straights as Trump continues his retribution themed presidency. The economy is fading, global corporations are starting to move their major operations to other countries, and the draconian deportations continue unabated.

What I am expecting, is for this to continue and get worse. With immigrant labour all but disappearing out of fear of ICE and the CBP, farm workers are leaving or hiding from the authorities, so produce, fruits and nuts are not being picked anymore. China stopped buying U.S. soybeans so the big corporate and independent farmers had to leave a lot of 2025's harvest unharvested, losing billions in dollars overall. This will ripple through the economy by next spring as these same farmers will be deciding whether to plant soybeans again or be forced to plant something else that may have a market value.

I watched one interview with a major Virginia farmer and he's more worried about paying January's house mortgage payment than spring planting. That's how bad it's gotten in the U.S. Farmers are more worried about being able to pay their basic monthly bills this winter than what they're going to plant next spring.

The rest of the country is in the same boat. There have been massive layoffs across all sectors of the labour market in 2025, and more are expected in early 2026.

My wife and I had another discussion yesterday about her possibly going back to work for a couple of years to earn her social security credits she needs before age 65. I had to tell her that the job market is especially bad right now and it would be even harder for her as an immigrant in the current political landscape. The only work she might be able to find, would be at a Chinese restaurant, which they're also having troubles keeping the doors open these days due the ICE raids.

I make enough money from my pensions, that she doesn't need to work but she won't gain her credits if she remains hiding at home. I have to wonder how many other immigrant families across the country are having similar conversations?

The uncertainty of 2026 is palpable everywhere. It's very quiet in my suburban neighbourhood today. Very few are out and about. The cold wind may have some to do with it but I have to think, people are worried about their immediate futures and trying to take the day and think about what lies ahead for all of us.

What I have taken away from 2025, is that no one is safe anymore. Whether it's from Homeland Security or from the economy, the end of 2025 left nearly everyone with a sense of dread and fear of the unknown as we head into 2026. The vast majority of Americans are now asking themselves, are they safe from losing their jobs, or will they have enough money with the rising costs of living to survive another month or even a week at a time?

Even a lot of politicians are becoming insecure about their jobs as voters typically vote with their wallets during election cycles. And the United States will be having a national vote next November. Not for president but for the control of the Congress.

The MAGA republicans are expected to try and subvert the election system to their favour with voting restrictions, gerrymandered state voting districts and purging voting records in states to prevent one political party from winning any congressional seats. They started this last year and a lot of us expect them to expand their efforts across the country. The president, a noted voting fraud conspiracy theorist, is expected to do whatever he can, legal or not, to keep his politicians in power. I fully expect this to get crazy by the end of next summer out of desperation.

Americans are fed up. They're scared and when they vote out of fear, they usually vote in huge numbers for the other political party. It's happened time and time again and the pollsters are predicting the next election cycle to be like that once more. The difference this year, is that the MAGA cult knows this and they're already at work to try and subvert the vote.

Between now and November, we'll probably be witness to Trump starting a limited war on South America, the end of the war in Ukraine, with the Ukrainians giving up their territory in the east to the Russians and the EU foaming at the mouth in rage as Russia consolidates its new client state, the Donbass region.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem will be ongoing, with more push back from Lebanon and Hamas. The settlers will continue to try and take over Gaza and the West Bank, and ethnically cleanse all of Palestine for themselves.

On top of all of that, we will probably see the EU collapse to a large degree as the western European countries continue to spat over supporting Ukraine, which is just a proxy war against Russia for them. With Trump backing off, and their fear of the Russians, they stand a good chance of bankrupting their economies as they attempt to build up their military's with no money.

I expect to see more large protests all over Europe and the U.S. in 2026 over affordability. That is usually what brings down governments. Especially in Europe.

I am expecting a recession in the U.S. and the cost of living to go through the roof by summertime. Along with that, will be a lot of angry people yelling at their local district representatives and senators about the economy.

For myself, I am planning for more weekend trips around the eastern part of the U.S. to take more photos as soon as the weather warms up. I wrote another chapter in my latest book, The Camps, last week, with more to come. I have made a promise to myself to quit procrastinating and to get busy writing this story. I've put it off long enough. I guess I was worried about the expense of self-publishing another book after what I went through with my first one.

I did learn some valuable lessons that I will apply to this one, once I'm finished that will help. But, no matter what it costs, I owe it to myself to finish the story for the sake of my characters and potential readers. That in itself is motivation to get cracking and write the story.

I'm very worried about what's going to happen to the United States in 2026. I don't have anything real positive to convey to anyone this year. All I can offer is for everyone to think about life closer to home. Take care of your family and neighbours, if you have any. I don't think things will get so bad that we have to retreat into our immediate family and close neighbour relationships totally but it may become pretty close to that for some places in the U.S. Take care of yourselves, your families and neighbours this year as they may return the favour should you need it in the months ahead. And a lot of you will need it, mark my words.

We're talking about expanding our vegetable garden this year, maybe some of you should consider doing the same. We can't depend on the farmers and government to be there for us anymore so we'll have to step up and try to fill the gaps as best as we can, with community gardens and personal kitchen gardens in our backyards to sustain us as supply chains may go down.

The end of U.S. world dominance is coming to an end, so, It's time we step in and take care of ourselves. Our lives may depend on that very soon.

Jump over to the podcast page to listen to this week's podcast about Super Flu and Covid, plus a bunch of other things and I'll talk to you again next week.

]]> Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:33:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?new-years-day-in-the-roman-calendar https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000178 <![CDATA[A Reflection in Christmas Morning]]> imblog I've never hidden this from people. I am not, nor have I been in many, many years, a practitioner of Christian traditions. I stopped pretending after my last wife left me in 2009. My current wife is an immigrant from a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas or any of the other seasonal traditions Americans and Europeans take for granted.

With that said, our seasonal holiday traditions are a bit different than everyone else's. But that's part of what used to make America so great. That melting pot of people from all over the world where immigrants could come and enjoy a certain measure of freedoms that weren't granted to them in the countries they came from, bringing their cultural traditions with them.

We even advertised that decades ago. Some of you may even remember that old ad slogan, which is written on a plaque inside the statue of liberty in New York harbour. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free"

It appears that we no longer want people to remember that anymore. It didn't start with Trump, but he's amplified this message beyond the pale in the last eleven plus months. The tired, poor and huddled masses are no longer welcome in the melting pot of the United States.

Which is why I'm constantly on alert as we try to live our normal lives these days. Every day I worry that ICE is going to show up at my door or surround our car with their large SUV's when we're out shopping and try to arrest my immigrant wife for deportation.

My wife is still relatively new to American Christian customs and as such, she has adapted to something that respects my non-Christian seasonal traditions and her wanting to blend in via her new Christian friends through her local Chinese Baptist church.

As I write this message this Christmas morning, we're sitting here on the sofa discussing the circumstances around one of our friends who had a recent medical emergency. We received a call late last night regarding a friend who is in hospital and the circumstances they find themselves in with the current regime.

One of our elderly friends went to hospital three weeks ago and is in a bad way. She is a very elderly Chinese woman and she has two adult children still living in China. The son supposedly has a visa but as I was telling my wife this morning, with this current regime, that visa may be worthless now.

So the question asked of me this morning, if the adult children made it past the customs and border patrol at the airport without being detained, where would they stay long enough to visit their very ill mother?

I was interrupted before answering that question. We went out on this Christmas morning to take a friend over to the hospital in downtown Richmond, VA to see this terminally ill friend. And that is exactly what it is. Our friend is dying. We found out that she had a massive stroke that paralysed half her body and she isn't expected to live much longer. She's been in hospital for the last three weeks and we're just finding out about it.

The cruel part is this patriarchal society we live in where the law says the husband, as long as the doctors deem him sound of mind, make life and death decisions regarding their wives. And in the case of our friend, her husband took her off life support and told the doctors to let her die. Which may rob her children in China the opportunity to say their last goodbye's.

My wife and our other friend, the one we took to the hospital to visit our friend this morning, are very distraught over this. They don't understand how Americans can be so cruel to one another. My wife asked me about this man's decision not to save his wife of many, many years on the way home, and that's when I explained about these patriarchal laws dating back to the Puritans here in the U.S.

Between all of the massive, and aggressive, immigration enforcement happening around the country, with the blatant racial profiling, the fear of being caught up just because they aren't native born Americans with white skin, and learning about the impending death of a dear friend, our Christmas is pretty sad this year.

I asked my wife if we shouldn't invite our friends over for Christmas dinner and she said they're getting ready to fly to China next week so they don't have time.

To give you all a little background, our friends are a mixed couple in their mid seventies. He is from England and she is from China. They're both naturalised citizens of the U.S. but they too are worried about the U.S. immigration enforcement happening all around us. My wife told me a while back that they were thinking of moving back to China at one point.

With the news about one of our friends dying, and the news of the other leaving for China next week for a month, our Christmas is not as happy as we would like it to be.

I've had much worse holiday seasons in the past, like being deployed overseas to war zones and other things, but my wife has never had to go through any of this before. When she immigrated to the U.S. in 2010 with her daughter, the United States was a much better place to live. And it has been pleasant for her for the most part until this year. Up until Trump came to power, the United States was that welcoming country that took in the oppressed and the poor, as long as they tried to immigrate lawfully. She accepted those that wanted to live a life without the cruelties of authoritarian governments, if they could make it to her shores.

That's all changed now. Seeing an ICE raid next door last week, and this news about patriarchal laws allowing her friend to die without her children being present is making her rethink what she has always thought of America. She still thinks the U.S. is better than Communist China but now, she's thinking that maybe there isn't so much difference anymore. The U.S. just has a different type of government corruption. The results are much the same for the people who aren't morbidly wealthy in either country. They remain poor and oppressed, no matter which side of the Pacific Ocean they live on.

As I reflect on this Christmas season of 2025 after all of this, I ask myself once again today. Something I've been asking myself off and on for the last few weeks. What do I think 2026 is going to look like?

I think, based on everything I read or watch in the news from around the world, that the western world, especially the U.S., is headed for an economic crash of epic proportions. Along the lines of what happened in 2008. All of the signs are there.

If the U.S. gets sanctioned because of their war crimes over Venezuela, such as high seas piracy of oil and ships, and committing extra-judicial murder of civilians in international waters in the Caribbean and off the east Pacific coast of the Americas, or worse yet, they get boxed out of trade deals because of this aggressive war like action and the tariff wars, the standard of living for ordinary Americans will skyrocket and there will be shortages. Such as gasoline and food.

Trump keeps telling the world that the U.S. has plenty of its own oil and it doesn't need to import any. That's a lie. Yes, the U.S. does have a lot of oil reserves but the oil patches in the country aren't the kind to make a lot of gasoline with, along with other products.

How many people reading this are old enough to remember the oil embargoes of the late 1970's under Jimmy Carter? Or the oil price spikes back in 2008 through 2010? If Trump were to learn anything from U.S. history, the quickest way to end a presidency is to make the price of gas spike up to $5.00 a gallon or more. Trump's popularity is already at historical lows. What would happen if the price of gas goes up more that two dollars a gallon from where it is today?

Affordability is foremost on everyone's mind these days and this would be the last nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy. We would enter a major recession, way beyond the one we're in right now.

That's what I foresee in America's 2026 future. Food prices spiking more than they are now, with shortages because the agriculture industry is tanking hard due to the tariffs. Trump wants to renegotiate the current free trade deal he signed during his first presidency because he thinks that the U.S. is being taken advantage of, especially by Canada. That contract is coming up for renewal soon.

If Trump continues to highjack oil tankers and steal the ships and oil, other countries will stop sailing their oil tankers near America's shores out of fear of being boarded and taken. This will put the economies of neighbouring countries in Latin America into a tailspin as their oil imports will cease.

By all accounts, the U.S. economy is already on the ropes and it's only going to get worse under the current policies. If Trump does decide to put boots on the ground in Latin America in 2026, then all bets are off. Investors will leave the U.S. stock markets and trade will dwindle massively.

Unless someone can curb Trump's avarice, the U.S. is headed for a fall in 2026. By next Christmas season, we all may be wishing for a scene like the image I picked out for today's message. I'm afraid it will look more like a scene out of some dystopian future of mass poverty and long food lines by the end of 2026.

Despite all of this doom and gloom, I want to wish anyone reading this a prosperous New Year anyway. All we can do is take care of one another as things fall down around us. Give everyone in your family a hug this Christmas as they come to dinner, if that's a thing. If not, give your significant other a hug and toast to happier times. That's what I'm doing today. Giving my newly Christian wife a hug and telling her that things will be okay.

]]> Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:00:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?a-reflection-in-christmas-morning https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000177 <![CDATA[Christmas Message]]> imblog As I mentioned in the intro, I've been very busy working on setting up this newly remodelled website to make the new store compliant with the tax laws in both the U.S. and Europe. I didn't realise just how complicated sales tax laws can be at times.

It's taken several days to get the necessary things ready in order to set up the Value Added Tax or VAT in the EU going, plus setting up the payment platforms with the U.S. individual state taxes.

But, it's finally done, sort of. I submitted the VAT registration to Ireland today so all I can do is wait until after the holidays to see if they will accept it.

In other news, I had a long conversation with my youngest son about adding his poetry books to the online store here and he was enthusiastic about it, so that will be coming soon. He needs to give me the stuff I need to set it up and as soon as I have it, I'll add it to the store. He has two short poetry books out and he's working on another so that should be good for the future.

As for everything else in the world, I'm hoping things will settle down a wee bit for the holidays but as Trump and company keep going after oil tankers in the Caribbean and stealing the oil, I don't think the poor sailors are going to get much of a holiday this year. I feel bad as I've been there. For these poor folks, they're so close to home down in the Gulf of Mexico, yet to far to be home with their families.

I'm posting this week's podcast tomorrow rather than on Christmas Eve this year out of respect for the majority Christians who may listen to it normally. My seasonal holiday was last Sunday when I welcomed the return of the sun at the Winter Solstice. I myself don't celebrate Christian holidays but I respect those who do.

We don't have any family to go visit or coming to visit us this year so I'm trying to do my best to keep up some semblance of holiday spirit despite all that's going on everywhere. It's a bit depressing at times though.

I've been trying to be on my behaviour by watching romantic Christmas movies with my wife and I'm going to be making holiday cookies, and a small Christmas feast for ourselves on Christmas day.

We are rather ambivalent about giving each other gifts for Christmas because of our different religious backgrounds. Some years we'll give each other something special, and some years we don't. This year, we decided to spend money on Amazon gift cards for the grandchildren instead of ourselves this year. We have spent a lot of money on ourselves already this year so we figured it was time to spend a little bit on the rest of the immediate family.

We don't set up a Christmas tree either unless the grandkids come to visit. Our holiday decorations this year consist of one Frosty the Snowman lite up figure on the front porch and a evergreen garland with decorations and lights for the fireplace mantel. A very low key season for us.

The biggest joy my wife gets from this time of year are the Christmas lights that people set up around the area. She asked me to take her out to see some until I explained that the particular house she asked me to take her to, was nearly an hour drive away. She decided it wasn't worth the drive after all. I offered to take her to see some closer to home but she declined. Oh well.

I hope everyone who reads this has a very merry Christmas, or as we say in Irish, Nollaig Shona Dhuit.

Give a listen to this week's podcast that will be out, hopefully, by tomorrow afternoon. Once again, I've found some interesting news articles to talk about as we close out the Roman calendar year. 2025 was a wild year and 2026 is shaping up to be even more chaotic. Something I'll save up for next week. Sláinte

]]> Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:20:00 GMT https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/?christmas-message https://crann-na-beatha.com/blog/rss/000000176 <![CDATA[My First Blog post in the new Celtic Year]]> imblog As I said in the intro, I just completed a major overhaul of this website and I've expanded it massively to include a gallery of all of my old photos from around the world taken in my younger military days. I also expanded the eCommerce online store to add in digital photos for sale (along with my book(s).

In addition to all of that, I changed the backgrounds, logos and everything. I'm still tweaking little things here and there, based on visitor inputs, and my two beta tester friends, who I hope will give me a review soon.

I rewrote the intros on the Home Page to read a little better, rewrote the Author Bio, which is now located in a drop down tab on the last menu tab at the top of each page.

I moved the podcast and donations pages under that tab as well.

I used digital photos from my vast collection of photos taken during our around the U.S. vacation tour last spring on nearly every page to give visitors a breathtaking view of some of the famous national parks around the country.

As for the future? It's my intent to update the galleries and digital photos in the online store every few months as I get out and take more photos.

The galleries that are full of old digitised 35 mm photos will be replaced at some point as well, as soon as I feel like people are tired of looking at those old photos. Come chat with me in the contact page to let me know what you think. I would like to start up a little online community with all of this.

In addition to all of that, I am slowly working myself into a new vocation, which is landscape photography. For as long as I can remember, I've toyed with this hobby in between all of my other life things, such as work and taking care of my family. Now, since I'm moving farther into actual retirement as I pass the 70 year milestone in my life, I plan to pursue this hobby a lot more.

We're planning to travel around the country more as we can afford every year, before we can't anymore. I still have a few good years left so I plan to make the most of it and I'll show people everywhere what they may be missing.

Given that the United States, according to some journalists, is entering a recession now, I want to do as much as I can until things get so bad that I can't anymore. By bad, I mean the economy.

There is no more doubt anymore, we're all heading for bad times ahead. I'm not just talking about the U.S., but Europe as well. Especially western Europe.

Between Trump and the MAGA cult in the U.S. and the EU council bound and determined to start a war with Russia out of an imagined fear, the global economy is heading for a major reset.

The U.S. is quickly heading for near insolvency, or as close to that as they can get, without actually declaring bankruptcy to the world at large. European leaders are using all of their money to buy arms and add more troops to their rosters because they're imagining Russia pouring across Europe much like Hitler did in WWII. While they're taking taxpayer money to do that, the social services money is being sacrificed on the military altar.

I have been hearing stories on social media from Europe about how bad it's getting for the regular people there, with regard to health care and groceries and it isn't pretty. For some, it's becoming existential.

Britain's state run health care is falling apart dramatically now, along with several other European countries, like Austria and Germany. France is also on the verge of financial collapse due to its national debt. Portugal is experiencing nationwide labour strikes over government economic policies right now but you rarely hear anything in the U.S. press about that. Italy is also having some unrest in the streets now.

Then there's Ireland. They're going through some serious growing pains over their stupid immigration policies, just because they (as in Fine Gael and Fionna Fail) wanted to kiss the EU's ass and make nice. The EU has this open border policy between member states that allow people to travel across the EU with no passport or papers. The North of Ireland, being a part of the UK commonwealth, had no choice but to accept all of the spillover coming from an overcrowded Britain regarding refugees from the global south. Then these refugees, looking for something better than the poorer north, stepped across the soft border into the Republic and now, the Irish are protesting in the larger cities citing overcrowding and higher crime rates.

Ireland is just one example of the greater struggle to handle the influx of refugees and asylum seekers that have been flooding Europe for decades now. Something they caused with their colonising dating back centuries, that's come back to haunt them now. Britain is the largest perpetrator and I think they deserve all of the hell this brings them. Serves them right.

I hope the British monarchy collapses under its economic weight and Britain becomes just another impoverished European country living on the fringes, crying over lost glory.

In the U.S., they have a different problem. Not only do the Americans have a massive economic problem, they also have a serious government problem. This quick turn to authoritarianism. We've been talking about this for the last couple of years so I'm not going to go there today. Trump gets way too much attention as it is so I don't want to contribute to that anymore.

Lot's of people are writing and creating video content about all of this and, as some have noted, that's likely deliberate. As the bad guys have been saying, "Flood the Zone" with so much bullshit, that it distracts the public from what they're really doing while few are looking. It's working. Those who have been and are looking, are too few and we're having a hard time convincing the people to quit looking at the spectacle of Donald Trump and company, and start looking at what they're doing to things like eliminating future free and fair elections.

Trump doesn't want anyone looking at his past paedophile record with the late Jeffery Epstein, or his total lack of financial acumen to keep the U.S. economy humming along. So, he creates all of these media worthy distractions, like a massive shell game street con. Only instead of a few rubes from the streets, he is trying to use sleight of hand to try and fool the whole world into letting him steal anything he can get his hands on. It's worked so far but people are starting to see through the con.

Meanwhile, while all of that is going on, more and more people across western countries are losing their jobs as their employers go belly up. Thom Hartmann is now telling people in his news broadcasts, that he thinks the U.S. is already tipping into a recession. The signs are there. Trump will do everything he can to try and convince the American public that everything is just fine. Nothing to look at here, go back to work. For those who don't have jobs anymore since last January, they have the time now to look beyond the fake smile and see the B.S.

There were two mass shootings this weekend that got everyone's attention. The one at Brown's University in the U.S. will get the usual few days news media attention, then everything will go back to normal. The one in Sydney, Australia at Bondi Beach will be in the news feeds from Europe for some time as they sort all of that out. Simply because mass shootings rarely happen in these countries due to their more stringent gun laws. Australia and New Zealand have only experienced two within the last couple of decades, including this one. Does anyone remember the nut job who shot up the Mosque down under a few years ago?

I haven't read any new stories about this yet today as I write this, other than they think it was racially motivated because they think the target was a Hanukkah celebration on the beach. I'll learn more as the days go by. I'm sure The Guardian will have a few more stories come out about this over the next few days. Although I caught the story on Al Jazeera this morning over breakfast.

The reason I'm talking about this, is that I expect to see more of this in 2026 and beyond, as more and more people become impoverished by their governments. Especially in the U.S.

There is another regional hot war brewing in southeast Asia between Thailand and Cambodia. The Ukraine war is nearly finished between Ukraine and Russia, but it's looking like the western Europeans want to prolong it in order to take Russia down. With the U.S. stepping back, those of us who're looking, are wondering how far these idiots want to go with this? Will they start another global war in Europe, this time with the Russians as adversaries instead of the Germans?

China is also flexing its military muscles a little recently. They decided to hold military exercises off their coast and it made the Japanese nervous. The Philippines is complaining that the Chinese coast guard is assaulting fishermen in disputed territorial waters.

Then we have Trump and company looking to go to war with South America. Most notably Venezuela but also Colombia as well, and maybe others. All the way to Brazil maybe. Trump and Lulu are not friends, although the media is downplaying that, mostly by ignoring it.

The more Trump keeps up his blustery antics trying to intimidate anyone he doesn't like on any given day, most of the rest of the world is starting to move on without him. He is becoming irrelevant anymore, which is having a big effect on the U.S. economy. As Trump is being more and more dismissed as a crackpot around the world, so is the American public. They who used to be the worlds largest consumer market. Now, under Trump, not as much. And this will get worse as Trump and company continue to rape and pillage the American economy and its taxpayers.

That's enough for a Sunday afternoon. I will have more to say on Wednesday in my weekly podcast. They're shorter this year as I made a decision at the beginning of my new year to spend more time working on this website and getting out more to take pictures. It's better for my mental health.

In keeping with that thought, last week, I also quit/retired from my IT gig job company after the last disastrous job they sent me on. After five years, and at my age, it was time. They can screw over someone else a lot younger than me from now on. More on that, and the economy coming up next Wednesday. Until then, Sláinte

PS: I'm going to add last week's podcast at the bottom here just to show you that I haven't been slacking all that much, just not writing here until I finished the remodel of the website.

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