Το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον, το δ’ ελεύθερον το εύψυχον.
– Ευτυχισμένοι είναι οι ελεύθεροι και ελεύθεροι είναι οι γενναίοι. //
// Happy are the free and free are the brave.
Israel says it has struck Iranian nuclear targets to block Tehran from developing atomic weapons.
Middle East analyst Dr Rodger Shanahan says the strikes can’t go unanswered by Iran but the country’s options are limited.
It comes after days of escalating tensions over Iran's efforts to develop nuclear technology.
Featured in this video is lots of crazy driving. Our compilations feature road rage, crazy driving and lots of idiots in cars! This exciting and juicy video features the worst drivers of Napa Valley, Concord, and the Bay Area of California and beyond. See all the driving fails, close calls, aggressive drivers, traffic cheaters and the roadway drama we have to put up with every day.
We feature a ton of incredible driving fails and really stupid people behind the wheel who shouldn't have a license. These bad drivers caught on camera make for a lot of interesting chaos. We have people from all around the country and the world submitting dashcam clips to include in our compilations. Lots of idiots in cars!
US President Donald Trump prepares to sign executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 23, 2025. Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images
Key Points
A U.S. trade court ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority by invoking an emergency law to impose sweeping tariffs on nearly every country.
Economists at Goldman Sachs said the White House likely has a few tools at its disposal to ensure it is only a temporary problem.
Lawyer James Ransdell said the ruling marks the first in many cases still pending — and is the first opinion “to really address the meat of the plaintiffs challenge.”
A federal trade court ruled President Trump didn’t have the authority to impose sweeping tariffs on virtually every nation, voiding the levies that have sparked a global trade war and threatened to upend the world economy.
The decision on Wednesday from the Court of International Trade blocked one of the Trump administration’s most audacious assertions of executive power, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Shortly after the decision was handed down, lawyers for the Trump administration notified the court they will appeal…
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday ruled that the president had overstepped his authority by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose sweeping tariffs on numerous countries.
“In my thirty-three years by his side, I cannot remember ever being ashamed by a single bad action on his part. He was honest, without guile, innocent, infinitely sweet toward others, fierce only toward himself.” ~ Elina Kazantzakis
I have previously expressed my affinity for the thought of the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis (1883 – 1957). I would now like to highlight a few more of his salient ideas. I begin with a disclaimer. Kazantzakis was a voluminous author who wrote a 33,333 line poem, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, six travel books, eight plays, twelve novels, and dozens of essays and letters. No summary does justice to the complexity of his thought. He was a giant of modern Greek literature and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in nine different years. He is best known to the English-speaking world for his novels, Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, as both were adapted to the cinema.
In the prologue to Nikos Kazantzakis’ autobiography, Report to Greco, he writes that there are three kinds of souls: One wants to work; one doesn’t want to work too much, and one finds solace in being overworked. Kazantzakis thought of himself as the third type of soul.
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in 1883 in Heraklion, Greece into a peasant family surrounded by fishermen, farmers, and shepherds. His early life always remained with him,
Both of my parents circulate in my blood, the one fierce, hard, and morose, the other tender, kind, and saintly. I have carried them all my days; neither has died … My lifelong effort is to reconcile them so that the one may give me his strength, the other her tenderness; to make the discord between them, which breaks out incessantly within me, turn to harmony inside their son’s heart.
As a child, he was enrolled in a school run by French Catholics where he found religious history fascinating with its fairy tales of “serpents who talked, floods and rainbows, thefts and murders. Brother killed brother, father wanted to slaughter his only son, God intervened every two minutes and did His share of killing, people crossed the sea without wetting their feet.” Religion would become a lifelong object of his thinking.
After completing his secondary education, he sailed to Athens where he studied law for four years. He recalled the time with sadness: “My heart breaks when I bring to mind those years I spent as a university student in Athens. Though I looked, I saw nothing … this was not my road …” After he returned home he wandered the countryside, alone except for his books and notebooks. He had begun to feel the pull of writing: “Here is my road, here is duty.” He would never look back.
Indignation had overcome me in those early years. I remember that I could not bear the pyrotechnics of human existence: how life ignited for an instant, burst in the air in a myriad of color flares, then all at once vanished. Who ignited it? Who gave it such fascination and beauty, then suddenly, pitilessly, snuffed it out? “No,” I shouted, “I will not accept this, will not subscribe; I shall find some way to keep life from expiring.”
His Philosophy
In his early years Kazantzakis was moved by Nietzsche’s Dionysian (emotional and instinctive) vision of humans shaping themselves into Supermen, and with Bergson’s Apollonian (rational and logical) idea of the elan vital. From Nietzsche, he learned that by sheer force of will, humans can be free as long as they proceed without fear or hope of reward. From Bergson, under whom he studied in Paris, he came to believe that a vital evolutionary life force molds matter, potentially creating higher forms of life. Putting these ideas together, Kazantzakis declared that we find meaning in life by struggling against universal entropy, an idea he connected with God. For Kazantzakis, the word god referred to “the anti-entropic life-force that organizes elemental matter into systems that can manifest ever more subtle and advanced forms of beings and consciousness.”[i]The meaning of our lives is to find our place in the chain that links us with these undreamt of forms of life.
We all ascend together, swept up by a mysterious and invisible urge. Where are we going? No one knows. Don’t ask, mount higher! Perhaps we are going nowhere, perhaps there is no one to pay us the rewarding wages of our lives. So much the better! For thus may we conquer the last, the greatest of all temptations—that of Hope. We fight because that is how we want it … We sing even though we know that no ear exists to hear us; we toil though there is no employer to pay us our wages when night falls. [ii]
In his search for his god—or what I would call his search for meaning—he ends not as a believer, prophet, or saint, he arrives nowhere. Kazantzakis thought of the story of his life as an adventure of mind, spirit, and body—an odyssey or ascent—hence his attraction to Homer. In, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Odysseus gathers his followers, builds a boat, and sails away on a final journey, eventually dying in the Antarctic. According to Kazantzakis, Odysseus doesn’t find what he’s seeking, and he doesn’t save his soul—but it doesn’t matter. Through the search itself, he is ennobled—the meaning of his life is found in the search. In the end, his Odysseus cries out, “My soul, your voyages have been your native land.”[iii]
In the prologue of Report to Greco, Kazantzakis claims that we need to go beyond both hope and despair. Both expectation of paradise and fear of hell prevent us from focusing on what is in front of us, our heart’s true homeland … the search for meaning itself. We ought to be warriors who struggle bravely to create meaning without expecting anything in return. Unafraid of the abyss, we should face it bravely and run toward it. Ultimately we find joy, in the face of tragedy, by taking full responsibility for our lives. Life is a struggle, and if in the end, it judges us we should bravely reply as Kazantzakis did:
General, the battle draws to a close and I make my report. This is where and how I fought. I fell wounded, lost heart, but did not desert. Though my teeth clattered from fear, I bound my forehead tightly with a red handkerchief to hide the blood, and ran to the assault.”[iv]
Surely that is as courageous a sentiment in response to the ordeal of human life as has been offered in world literature. It is a bold rejoinder to the awareness of the inevitable decline of our minds and bodies, as well as to the existential agonies that permeate life. It finds the meaning of life in our actions, our struggles, our battles, our roaming, our wandering, and our journeying. It appeals to nothing other than what we know and experience—and yet finds meaning and contentment there.
Kazantzakis was always controversial and misunderstood, his philosophy too ethereal for most readers. He was accused of atheism in 1939 by the Greek Orthodox Church, although he was never summoned to trial. They tried again in 1953, outraged by his depiction of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ—a book subsequently placed on the Index of forbidden books by the Roman Catholic Church.
In the last decade of his life Kazantzakis was prolific, producing eight books. A psychologist once told him that he possessed energy “quite beyond the normal.” In 1953 he developed leukemia, frantically throwing himself into his work, but wishing he had more time. “I feel like doing what Bergson says— going to the street corner and holding out my hand to start begging from passersby: ‘Alms, brothers! A quarter of an hour from each of you.’ Oh, for a little time, just enough to let me finish my work. Afterwards, let Charon come.” He continued to work and travel, but died in 1957 with his wife at his side.
Just outside the city walls of Heraklion Crete, one can visit Kazantzakis’ gravesite, located there as the Orthodox Church denied his being buried in a Christian cemetery. On the jagged, cracked, unpolished Cretan marble you will find no name to designate who lies there, no dates of birth or death, only an epitaph in Greek carved in the stone. It translates: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
[i] James Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, 11th ed. (Belmont CA.: Wadsworth, 2012), 656 [ii] Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, 656. [iii] Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, 653. [iv] Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (New York: Touchstone, 1975), 23
“The Vaccines were developed not by Moderna and Pfizer. They were developed by NIH.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 2023
Short clip #2 that you can show your Normie Friends. “This was a MILITARY project from the beginning.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 2023
MAY 10, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is fully aware that the DOD and NSA manufactured the shots and Pfizer and Moderna slapped a label on them.
*NIH would appear to be the commandeered *Science arm of the Military United States Whole of Government plan to produce and distribute “the most dangerous vaccine ever made.”
Also RFK, Jr., 2021: the Covid shots were “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
SEE THE REST HERE ALONG WITH THE RELATED VIDEOS OF RFK JR. ADMITTING ALL OF THIS IN…2023. NOW, HOWEVER HE SEEMS TO HAVE…”FORGOTTON” ALL OF THIS…
Germany narrowly averted a national crisis. For the first time in its postwar history, a designated chancellor failed to secure the necessary parliamentary support in the first round of voting. Stock markets quivered; weeks of political uncertainty loomed. Within parliament, suspicion simmered as lawmakers sensed rebels among their own ranks. What should have been a triumphant day for Friedrich Merz appeared to be a calamity.
Merz didn’t want to wait to end the uncertainty, so he demanded that a second vote be held the same day. After all, his schedule was already full for the week with plans to visit the leaders of Poland and France.
To repeat the vote required the approval of two thirds of parliament. This meant Merz’s conservatives had to rely on the votes of the far left—the heirs of East Germany’s Communist regime—with whom they had sworn never to cooperate. The toad had to be swallowed. Yet even then, it remained unclear whether the dissidents merely sought to humiliate Merz or were prepared to plunge Germany into deeper uncertainty by rejecting him again in a second vote.
The hours that followed may have been the most agonizing of Merz’s political career. His lifelong ambition to become chancellor had never been so near, yet so uncertain.
The vote was repeated, the mutiny dissolved, and Friedrich Merz was confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor. His relief must now be mixed with the fear that another political defeat could be around the corner.
Germany’s new chancellor has fought through countless setbacks. The timing of his election, the makeup of his government and the character of the man himself may offer valuable insight into where we stand in Bible prophecy.
EuroIntelligence believes that his time in office is numbered: “There is a material risk that this coalition won’t last to the end. Next year and 2027, there will be five state elections each, a massive concentration of elections to happen in the first half-term of this government, with plenty of opportunities for voters to register their discontent.”
Politico wrote, “Merz Is Weakened From Day 1. Europe Will Pay the Price.” Jana Puglierin, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted: “The whole of Europe looked to Berlin today in the hope that Germany would reassert itself as an anchor of stability and a pro-European powerhouse. That hope has been dashed. With consequences way beyond our borders.”
Europe was looking to Germany for a savior amid great crises. While many hoped for a leader akin to an emperor of old who could give directions to the whole continent, they found a man who may barely be able to hold his own coalition government together.
People rightfully ask, How can a man lead Europe if he can’t rule his own household?
Friedrich Merz will become Germany’s next chancellor on Tuesday. For years, Europe has suffered a leadership vacuum. Growing threats in the world demand stronger leadership, especially from Germany. Many people hope Merz will help fill that vacuum. …
However, based on Bible prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong believed it would take an office greater than that of a German chancellor to provide the leadership Europe is yearning for. End-time prophecy speaks of one overarching strongman who rules over 10 kings governing a European superstate.
If anyone had any doubts before this, it is now clear that Merz won’t be able to provide this overarching leadership. But could he be one of the prophesied 10 kings?
The Rise of 10 Kings
Approximately one third of the Bible is dedicated to prophecy, the vast majority of which has an end-time focus. But even though the Bible is the most-read book in the world, few pay attention to these passages.
As the late Herbert W. Armstrong explained in The Proof of the Bible, Daniel 2 prophesies of four successive world-ruling empires, starting with Babylon and followed by the Persian, Greek and Roman empires.
Rome entered a church-state union with the Roman Catholic Church forming the “Holy Roman Empire.” Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13 and 17 show this empire would be resurrected multiple times, with the final resurrection ruled by 10 kings.
“And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Revelation 17:12-13).
Commenting on this passage, Mr. Armstrong wrote in the October 1962 Plain Truth: “The beast, then, is the leader, or ruler, over all—and 10 other dictator-kings, or lesser rulers over 10 European nations or nation-groups.” In 1951, he wrote: “These 10 lesser dictators over the 10 European nations are to unite with the supreme fuhrer and with the pope to reestablish the Roman Empire—but only for a very short duration.”
These 10 kings will be fed up with democracy and set themselves up as dictators, ignoring democratic norms. But their power will be limited: They will submit to an overarching leader. Merz’s recent struggle and weak coalition may pave the way for this overarching leader to rise. But there are also indications that Merz could be one of these prophesied 10 kings. Mr. Flurry further explained in our April 2025 issue:
We believe there will be one supreme king over 10 kings. (There is a slight possibility that there could be just 10 kings total and that the leadership would come out of Germany.) Given that Revelation 17 is a prophecy of a church-state combine known as the Holy Roman Empire, Mr. Armstrong strongly believed that those leaders would be Catholic.
We may be seeing some indications who the dictator-king, or lesser ruler, over Germany could be. Friedrich Merz is a Roman Catholic who has repeatedly called for a guiding culture in Germany based on Christian, or rather Catholic, values. He is also an outspoken advocate for a European army. Since his party won the election, he has been acting with unusual urgency and zeal to create a militarized Germany—even defying democratic norms doing so. Furthermore, he enjoys the support of [Karl-Theodor zu] Guttenberg, who we believe may be the “one supreme king.”
While there is room for plot twists, and it is far from certain, here is what suggests he could fulfill this role.
The German Catholic news agency reported on Monday that at least 10 members of Germany’s new government are Catholic, including Merz. In addition, the new government includes a Chaldean Catholic, three members belonging to Protestant churches, a nonreligious Jew and six more ministers of undisclosed religion.
His first foreign visits to Poland and France the day after his inauguration also give more proof that he wants to strengthen European defense. In France, Merz stated: “We will intensify cooperation at all levels and develop further formats.” This applies in particular to the area of defense and armaments cooperation. “We must further increase defense spending in all member states,” he added.
Merz’s urgency was again on center stage when he demanded the vote be repeated so he could continue with his travel plans.
We have also seen more proof of the fact Merz is enjoying Guttenberg’s support. On April 28, Katherina Reiche was revealed as the next minister for economic affairs. The same day it was publicly confirmed that Reiche is in a relationship with Guttenberg. Through her and his connection to Merz, Guttenberg will likely have considerable influence on the new German government.
For many years, Mr. Flurry has pointed to Guttenberg as the most likely man to fulfill the role of Europe’s overarching king. We may see a growing connection between one of Europe’s 10 kings and the prophesied overarching emperor. To learn more, read Mr. Flurry’s recent article Europe Needs Someone Greater Than a German Chancellor.”
Where It Will Lead
World events show we are nearing the fulfillment of the Bible’s most fascinating prophecies. But notice the most exciting part of these prophecies: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44).
Whoever fills the highest offices in Europe’s rising superpower, they are a sign that man’s rule over man is about to be replaced by God’s Kingdom.
Το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον, το δ’ ελεύθερον το εύψυχον.
– Ευτυχισμένοι είναι οι ελεύθεροι και ελεύθεροι είναι οι γενναίοι. //
// Happy are the free and free are the brave.
