Author: TomsWrite

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Our Milky Way

Our Milky Way

The Milky Way galaxy travels through space at 600 kilometers per second relative to the cosmic microwave background, pulled along by the immense gravitational forces of massive structures like the Great Attractor. As it makes this high-speed journey, its outer stellar disk does not sit perfectly flat; instead, it undergoes a slow, wave-like vertical oscillation where stars and gas ripple up and down. This warped, vibrating motion across opposite sides of the disk closely resembles a giant butterfly flapping its wings, a cosmic distortion that scientists believe is triggered by ongoing gravitational tugs from nearby satellite galaxies and invisible halos of dark matter.

Click to view the video: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JGG11ygLV/

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Ups and Downs

Ups and Downs

The downs in your life are not mental illnesses or abnormalities to be suppressed with mind-altering psychotropic medications. They are a natural part of the ebb and flow, the yin and yang of life.

If you ever feel that the down is too deep or too long I have written an article containing several ways to address that:  https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=14412

And I have more up my sleeve if you wish to erase all the pain from your life so you can be happier and more creative.

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Trump on Iran: “We’re making a fortune!”

War has always been very profitable for guys like President Trump and his friends.
John Leake
Oct 27

A fascinating character to emerge during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was Albrecht von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (September 1583 – 25 February 1634), a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side as supreme commander of the armies of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. His successful military career made him one of the richest and most influential men at the time of his death by assassination.

Wallenstein built his initial fortune through the Kipper und Wipper financial crisis by participating in the debasement of coinage. He used those profits to buy estates confiscated from defeated Protestant nobles by Emperor Ferdinand II. Wallenstein organized these lands into a vast enterprise that funded a large private mercenary army.

While many criticized Wallenstein’s war profiteering and opportunism, no one accused him of lacking bravery. Early in the war, he personally led a breakthrough with his newly raised regiment of cuirassiers against Count Ernst von Mansfeld’s forces at Theyn in Bohemia.

In this respect, Wallenstein contrasts with most US Presidents. The last to serve in combat was George H.W. Bush, who flew 58 combat missions as a carrier-based torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater, was shot down twice, and earned the Distinguished Service Flying Cross.

For those who are well positioned, war can be extremely profitable. Some observers who were in a position to know—such as Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881–1940), one of the most decorated officers in U.S. Marine Corps history— have concluded that War Is a Racket (as he characterized it in a 1935 pamphlet).

As he saw it, war’s primary purpose is to enrich powerful commercial interests while the enormous costs are borne by ordinary citizens. Butler advocated restricting military force to genuine national defense and removing the financial incentives that encourage war.

I was just reminded of Butler when I read the following essay by Ron Paul titled “Who Is Making Billions from the Iran War?” reproduced on the LewRockwell newsletter.

By Ron Paul, MD
The Ron Paul Institute

October 27, 2026

At a campaign rally over the weekend, President Trump dismissed Americans’ concerns over high oil and gas prices, claiming that it’s a small price to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars “we” are making from these higher prices.

“We’re making a fortune,” he said. “Hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars.”

People are paying a little bit more for gas, he explained, but it doesn’t matter because “we” are making so much money.

The question is, “Who is ‘we’?” We know it is not the American people. They are seeing wage stagnation, inflation, and more pain at the pump. An Economist/YouGov poll earlier this month found that inflation and prices are the top concern among Americans by a wide margin. And in second place were jobs and the economy.

The same poll asked Americans how they rate the state of the US economy and in first place – again by a long shot – was “poor.”

If “we” as in the American people were making hundreds of billions of dollars from the war, you would think these would not be their top two concerns.

But we understand what the President meant by “we.” He meant that part of the “private” sector directly or indirectly in bed with the government war machine. From oil companies to weapons manufacturers and everything in between, war and conflict drive up profits in well-connected corporations at the expense of the rest of us.

That is why we are in a constant state of war. Twenty years in Afghanistan and a similar length in Iraq. Endless bombing in places like Somalia. A twelve-year (and counting) proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Military bases and covert operations across the globe.

And if we find that the largest military budget in the world does not deliver enough actual weapons to win a war? Well, that’s all good too: just double military spending and accuse anyone who objects of not being patriotic!

“Private” companies with enormous political power – many of them revolving doors between government and business – “make so much money” on war, as Trump would say. Whether these wars produce US wins, loses, or stalemates, these corporations in bed with government always win. The money-printing machine makes sure the money cycles into government-favored companies, while campaign contributions are made to the politicians who support the wars.

And if you don’t support the wars? You get the Thomas Massie treatment.

Endless war produces more corporatism, where the private sector does not exist to provide goods to compete in the free market, but to serve political power and strengthen governmental control over the population. Think of it as welfare for the rich at the expense of the poor. The result is tyranny.

This is the very reason our Founders intended to make it as difficult as possible to wage war. As well-educated students of history, they understood how the concentration of war-making power in the hands of one ruler or an oligarchy would impoverish the masses and lead to a moral and financial bankruptcy. They placed war-making power in the “people’s branch” – Congress – hoping that the people would hold their representatives accountable. We have strayed very far from what they intended and if we are to survive, we must reclaim that authority and responsibility.

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An Open Letter to the University of Sydney Regarding the appointment of Jacinda Ardern as Professor of Practice

Dear Professor Scott,

I read with absolute disgust that the University of Sydney has appointed Jacinda Ardern as Professor of Practice, where she will apparently be sharing her wisdom on empathetic leadership, social cohesion and civic trust.

You cannot be serious.

You are quoted as saying:

“Dame Jacinda led New Zealand through events of profound consequence and her leadership demonstrated that empathy and resolve do not compete with one another; each can strengthen the other.”

Appointing Jacinda Ardern to teach social cohesion is rather like appointing Jeffrey Dahmer to teach a course on wellbeing, or Jimmy Savile to run the local daycare centre. The sheer absurdity would almost be funny if the consequences of her leadership weren’t so hideously tragic.

My name is Alia Bland. I am a co-founder of Voices for Freedom, an organisation established in New Zealand in 2020. For years, we stood alongside tens of thousands of ordinary Kiwis whose lives were torn apart by the policies of Ardern’s government.

While the international media fawned over her kindness and compassion, we were dealing with the wreckage.

At the height of the COVID response, we were receiving upwards of 1,000 emails a day. Desperate people reaching out because they had lost their jobs, their incomes, their homes and, in many cases, their will to live.

People nearing retirement were forced to sell family homes they had spent decades paying off. Some are still living in caravans five years later.

Marriages collapsed. Families fractured. Lifelong friendships were destroyed. People who had served their communities for decades were suddenly treated like lepers because they declined a medical procedure.

Some of the people who came to us had spent their entire lives believing New Zealand was a decent, fair-minded country. Watching that belief crumble, and seeing what it did to them, was heartbreaking.

I cannot adequately describe the anguish in those emails. The desperation of parents wondering how they would feed and house their families. The humiliation of hardworking people being marched out of professions they loved. The despair of people who had done everything society asked of them, only to discover that their own government considered them disposable.

And presiding over it all was Jacinda Ardern, smiling for the cameras and telling the world how kind New Zealand was.

Kind? For whom?

Her government deliberately created a two-class society. Ardern herself acknowledged it publicly. New Zealanders were excluded from workplaces, businesses, events and ordinary social life. People were coerced into accepting a medical intervention under threat of losing their livelihoods.

And those who suffered adverse reactions to the COVID vaccines faced another nightmare. We fought for vaccine-injured New Zealanders whose lives had been devastated by serious physical harm, while many struggled to have their injuries acknowledged or receive adequate support.

The government’s public assurances about vaccine safety deserve particular scrutiny. Officials knew about the myocarditis risk, including among young people. We have examined the records. Yet people raising legitimate questions about those risks were routinely dismissed and vilified.

The damage went far beyond lost incomes and broken relationships. An enormous number of New Zealanders lost faith in the very institutions they had trusted their entire lives. Government, health authorities, education, police and the media. That trust has not magically returned because Ardern has moved on to more prestigious surroundings.

While her government was busy marginalising people, we were building a nationwide support network to help them survive.

Voices for Freedom grew to more than 100,000 people on our mailing list, many representing entire families. More than 45,000 people signed up to our local groups across the country, which are still operational today in 2026. We established industry groups to help people fight for their careers, provided support through employment disputes and legal challenges, organised practical assistance and hand-delivered millions of flyers to households throughout New Zealand.

We did this while facing censorship, public vilification and government surveillance. Official records obtained since have confirmed that our activities and communications were being monitored and reported on.

Our volunteers gave everything they could to help people who had been abandoned by the institutions meant to protect them.

And now the University of Sydney wants to hold up the woman responsible for overseeing this period as a shining example of empathy and social cohesion?

It is sickening.

Professor Scott, did anyone at your university bother to speak with the people whose lives were destroyed under Ardern’s leadership before celebrating her appointment?

Have you spoken to the former nurses, teachers and police officers who lost their careers? The families who lost their homes? The people still suffering from vaccine injuries? The parents whose children no longer speak to them?

Or did you simply swallow the carefully cultivated international image of Saint Jacinda, the compassionate leader who saved New Zealand?

I wonder whether you have considered why this internationally celebrated former prime minister now lives in Australia rather than the country she once led. The depth of hostility towards her among many New Zealanders should give you pause.

Because I can assure you, there is another side to that story. And there are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who live with the consequences.

I have no objection to universities studying Ardern’s leadership. In fact, I would encourage it. There is an enormous amount to learn from what happened in New Zealand between 2021 and 2023. Like, what not to do…

But presenting her as someone uniquely qualified to teach empathy, social cohesion and civic trust, without acknowledging the extraordinary human suffering that occurred under her leadership, is an insult to the people who paid the price.

We were there, Professor Scott. We saw what happened. We picked up the pieces. We are still picking them up.

Some of those people will never recover what they lost.

And the woman who presided over it all gets a professorship in empathy.

What an absolute disgrace.

Yours sincerely,

Alia Bland
Co-founder, Voices for Freedom
New Zealand

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How To Change The World

You are either happy with the world as it is or you are not.

If you are perfectly happy with your own life and the society around you then probably perceive no need to change. If so, I encourage you to look a little closer then come back to this article.

I your assessment is that the world could stand some improvement, then read on.

Organisations Beat Individuals
I am writing this 9 days after reading the following:
On October 8, 2026, former Kennedy campaign adviser Tiffany Cianci released the MAHA Movement Scorecard, examining 42 commitments involving food, farming, pesticides, toxic chemicals, regulatory capture, and related health policies. The scorecard’s authors classified 37 commitments as broken and five as partially fulfilled, with none fully met.

Those are the scorecard authors’ assessments of the administration’s record, not independent findings that Kennedy personally controlled every disputed decision.

In an October 14 essay, Elizabeth Kucinich, who helped organize Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign, argued that the administration had abandoned important MAHA priorities involving pesticides, environmental protections, agricultural policy, and corporate influence. She wrote:

“This Administration has stabbed RFK Jr. in the back, and we all know it. It has benefited from his credibility and the constituency he brought while advancing policies that undermine his mission. Supporting him means naming that betrayal and demanding a change of course.”

From: https://www.malone.news/p/follow-the-money-the-political-book

Then 4 days ago Calley Means resigned from HHS over lack of progress. Means said,

“I leave with tremendous respect for President Trump and RFK — two historic figures who are committed to confronting a corrupt DC bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo.”

The article continues: “MAHA advocates such as Vani Hari and Kelly Ryerson, outspoken allies of Kennedy and Means, argued that the administration’s actions favored corporate interests over MAHA voters, calling it a gut punch that the movement has yet to recover from.”

From: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/22/calley-means-top-maha-ally-resigns-from-trump-administration-01132073

These results reinforce my view that despite personal charisma and apparently powerful positions, well intentioned, competent individuals will not hold ground against entrenched orgainisational opposition.

Effective change does not stem from the top without substantial support from below.

No, lasting change is most likely to result from a groundswell of change in the public consciousness, a demand from the masses.

And since the masses are made up of individuals, the best way to effect lasting change is to change the actions of individuals, one at a time.

Similarly, you cannot legislate honesty, ethics, morality or sanity. The 25% of people who are destructive do not follow rules. They cannot. Apart from a lack of self-respect, the thing that makes a criminal a criminal is that he cannot adhere to the law.

So, how do the constructively inclined of us change the world for the better? So that change lasts?

My best answer to that question is that each of us work at becoming the best person we can and help others to do the same.

It’s simple pattern to adopt:
-Keep learning
-Apply what you learn so you grow in awareness, competence, power and influence
-Share and help others do the same
-Replicate – ask them to do the same
-Repeat

Learn – Grow – Share – Replicate – Repeat

As an encouragement to pursue personal growth I share the advice of Jessie Potter, the featured speaker at the seventh annual Woman to Woman conference:
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.”

To help you along the road to higher awareness, competence, productivity and effectiveness I have penned a series of article and posted them on my blog https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/ Search for them under the category “Living Your Best Life”.

If you would like an article on another area not yet covered, drop me a line.

Here’s to you. May you flourish and prosper!

Cheers,

Tom Grimshaw
tom@tomgrimshaw.com
+61 (0)412 966 625

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The West Destroyed Ukraine in Order to Save It

Ukraine Neutrality Proposal

On the 71st Anniversary of Austrian neutrality, reflections on how the Russo-Ukrainian War could have been avoided if NATO had accepted Putin’s Dec. 15, 2021 proposal for Ukrainian neutrality.
John Leake
Oct 26
I started following US, Ukrainian, and Russian affairs while I was living in Vienna in the years 2000–2010. On dreary winter weekends, I sometimes went to Burg Cinema, where the The Third Man, a 1949 film noir masterpiece, still played on the big screen every Sunday. Shot on location in Vienna during the Four Powers Occupation of 1945–1955, the film and its deeply intriguing back story never ceased to fascinate me. As I recounted in my recent book, Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions:
The Four Power occupation began in the spring of 1945 when the Soviet army entered Austria from the east and the American army entered from the west and converged on the capital of Vienna. By then it was already evident that as soon as Nazi Germany was defeated, the wartime alliance of the United States and Soviet Union would give way to a fierce rivalry over the fate of Europe. Austria lay in the middle of this conflict. To prevent each other from gaining the upper hand, the US military (along with those of Britain and France) occupied parts of Austria while the Soviet military occupied others. By 1947, US Department of Defense became convinced that withdrawing Western troops would leave the country open to complete Soviet occupation.
After Stalin died in 1953, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told Austrian Chancellor Julius Raab that he was willing to entertain Austrian independence. In April 1955, Raab travelled to Moscow to discuss the matter. Despite his reputation for icy formality, Molotov quickly warmed up to Raab. Ten years after their armies had engaged in the most brutal warfare in history, the two men became conspicuously amiable over a state dinner of conviviality and frequent toasts, and they ironed out the terms of an Austrian neutrality deal. Raab agreed to pay for the “German assets” and oil fields left by the Soviets. Molotov also promised the release and repatriation of Austrian POWs still languishing in Russia.
The Western powers were amazed by the deal, with British diplomat, Geoffrey Wallinger reporting to London that it “was far too good to be true.” Nevertheless, it proceeded as planned and was signed by the representatives of all Four Occupying Powers on May 15, 1955, and came into force on July 27. By October 25, all occupying soldiers had withdrawn from the country, and the next day, Austria’s parliament enacted a Declaration of Neutrality that Austria would never join a military alliance such as NATO or the Warsaw Pact or allow foreign troops to be based in the country. Russia and the United States have honored Austrian neutrality ever since. Today (October 26, 2026) is the seventy-first anniversary of the Austrian Declaration of Neutrality and Day of National Celebration.
Upon his return from Moscow, Chancellor Raab addressed a crowd assembled outside the chancery. His voice breaking with emotion, he said, “I must thank the Lord God that we have been able to experience this hour for Austria.” And indeed, Austrian neutrality has been a great blessing for the nation and its people, and it enabled Vienna to become one of the most open, laid-back, and cosmopolitan capitals in Europe. I believe a similar neutrality arrangement for Ukraine would have served its people equally well.
This brings me to the timely point of this essay. Shortly after President Biden was sworn into office in January 2021, tensions between the United States and Russia began to ratchet up over various disagreements. In the autumn of 2021, Russian intelligence told President Putin that, in addition to the ongoing training and equipping of the Ukrainian military, CIA and British intelligence (MI6) are essentially controlling Ukrainian intelligence and turning it into a “springboard for operations against Moscow.” President Putin found these reports highly alarming, and on December 15, 2021, he submitted a security proposal to the US government, with Ukrainian neutrality a key provision. The Biden administration rejected it out of hand.
As NATO secretary Jens Stoltenberg later recounted to the EU Parliament:
In the autumn of 2021, Russia actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what they sent us, and that was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
Why wasn’t Stoltenberg at least willing to try an Austrian style neutrality deal for Ukraine? Given that the Russians proposed it, they had a strong motive to abide by it. If they subsequently violated the terms of their own proposal, the West would have a clear cause for war with Russia.
Implied in Stoltenberg’s statement is that, in December 2021, he found the prospect of imminent war with Russia in Ukraine preferable to making a concession to Russia to avert war for an indeterminate period, perhaps for as long as Austria had remained at peace with Russia.
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A Loon On A Lake

A Loon On A Lake

A woman delivering groceries in the rain stopped for a big black and white bird dragging itself across a parking lot, and everyone standing around it was sure both its legs were broken, until a stranger on the phone asked her one question.
“Is the ground wet?”
Deb Lindqvist is 54. She lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
For 26 years she worked at a printing plant on the edge of town. In August 2024, the plant closed. Ninety one people lost their jobs in one afternoon.
Deb sent out applications every morning. Most never got an answer.
So in the evenings she delivered groceries through an app on her phone. Bags in the back seat, a phone clipped to the dashboard, six or seven dollars a trip.
She didn’t tell many people. She said she felt like she’d gone from somebody who knew exactly what she was doing to somebody who didn’t know where she was supposed to be.
On Tuesday, the 29th of October, it rained all evening. Hard, cold rain, the kind that comes before the first snow.
At about 10:40 p.m., she was loading her last order outside a grocery store on the east side of town.
That’s when she saw a group of people standing in a circle in the middle of the parking lot.
In the middle of the circle, on the wet asphalt, was a bird.
It was big. Bigger than a duck. Black head, a sharp grey beak, a white chest and a black back covered in tiny white squares.
It was trying to move. It pushed itself forward on its belly, flapped, and fell flat again.
A teenager was filming it. A man in a store vest said it must have been hit by a car. Somebody else said its legs were broken.
A woman brought a plastic bowl of water and set it down by the bird’s face. It didn’t drink.
Two men tried to nudge it with a shopping cart toward the grass strip by the road. The bird panicked, flapped hard, and slid across the puddles into a parking space.
Deb said it was the most helpless thing she had ever seen.
She called animal control. Closed until morning.
She called the police non emergency line. They gave her the number for a wildlife rehab center.
A volunteer called back ten minutes later. His name was Joel. He’s 47 and he has driven injured birds around central Minnesota for 15 years.
Deb described it. Joel listened.
Then he asked, “Is the ground wet?”
She looked at the parking lot. Rain was still coming down. Every space was shining under the yellow lights.
“Like a lake,” she said.
“That’s a loon,” Joel said. “And I don’t think its legs are broken.”
He explained.
Loons spend almost their whole lives on water. Their legs are set so far back on their bodies that they can’t walk on land. On the ground, all they can do is push themselves along on their bellies.
And they can’t take off from land at all. A loon needs a long run across open water, sometimes hundreds of feet, to get into the air.
At the end of October, loons fly south at night. In heavy rain, from high up, a wet parking lot under streetlights looks exactly like water.
“It came down to land on a lake,” Joel said. “It found out too late it was concrete.”
It wasn’t hurt. It was stranded.
Joel told her exactly what to do. Don’t put it in water. Don’t let anyone grab it. Keep your face away from the beak, because loons stab.
Deb took the beach towel she kept in her trunk. She dropped it over the bird, slid her hands underneath, and lifted it into an empty box from the store.
It was heavier than she expected. About ten pounds. It went completely still in the dark.
She kept the box on her passenger seat with the heater on low and waited 40 minutes for Joel.
The teenager who had been filming asked if he could wait too. He stood under the store awning the whole time.
When Joel arrived, he looked in the box with a flashlight and smiled.
“Young one,” he said. “Born this summer. Probably its first trip south.”
He took the loon to the rehab center overnight. A vet checked it. No broken bones. No lead in its blood. Just a sore chest and a few scraped feathers.
The next afternoon, Joel called Deb and asked if she wanted to come to the release.
She almost said no. She had deliveries.
She went anyway.
They drove to a big lake north of town. Grey water, bare trees, nobody else around.
Joel set the box at the edge of the water and opened it.
The loon sat still for a few seconds. Then it slid out, pushed into the lake, and was suddenly a completely different animal.
It dived. It came up 30 feet away. It shook its head and called, a long, low sound across the water.
Then it turned, ran across the surface with its wings beating, ran and ran, and lifted off.
Deb said she didn’t realize she was crying until Joel handed her a tissue.
“People always think they’re broken,” Joel told her. “They’re not broken. They’re just somewhere they can’t take off from.”
Deb drove home without turning the radio on.
She still delivers groceries. She’s also started volunteering for the rehab center on her nights off, driving birds to the vet and to lakes.
In January, she got a job in the office of a school district. She starts work at seven every morning.
She kept the beach towel in her trunk.
“Just in case it rains,” she says.
Sometimes nothing is wrong with you. You just landed somewhere that only looked like the right place.