Reader’s Links for December 25th, 2025: Merry Christmas to all

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1. hillery Clinton a big fan of Xmas. She declared before Congress: “What difference does it make!?”

2. The Green Hell

   “C’mon, let’s go,” said Charlie as he started off down the driveway. “We’ll be back in under an hour.”
   A moody grey cloud, cut hard against the blue-domed sky, torpedo shaped, passed over the sun just as he spoke.
   Jim trailed behind. He didn’t really want to go in there. He’d rather stay and drink his beer. Charlie was in much better shape, but it probably was a bad idea to let him go alone. Him and his crazy ideas and his ridiculous ways of getting exercise, Jim thought.
   It was mid-September. The leaves had begun changing colours up here. In a few more weeks it would be a full-blown riot. It was a two-hour drive north from home up into the Quebec bush. Sunlight changes around this time of year. It is imperceptible until you catch it. Colours are richer—the sky bluer. Even the air smells better.
   At the end of the long driveway was the narrow sand road they had come in on. Charlie walked straight across it and into the bush on the other side. After going a few more yards he stopped and turned around. Jim caught up, breathing deeply. “Well, the bridge is still there,” Charlie said.
   The two men stood at the top of a forty-foot cliff that dropped into a ravine. At the bottom snaked a stream. In the distance, through the trees, Jim saw the bridge Charlie had built with his sons. They had found a big pine tree in a narrow spot down by the shore, and felled it to drop over the stream, landing on the far bank. With glued wooden dowels they then secured ten-by-twos to the top of the tree to provide better footing, and stretched a heavy rope across the thirty-foot span to help crossers keep their balance. Charlie continued on to the left along the top of the cliff, swinging his machete with little conviction at branches along the path, which was by now well defined this late in the summer from the many times Charlie and his sons had used it. Still, they came across more fallen pines just a few feet ahead. Charlie stopped to look. “It always amazes how the wind here brings these down,” he said looking at the fallen trees.
   It looked like the pines had twisted as they fell over. Now they sat in a mangled heap of wooden shards and fibrous sinew. “Somehow we get these little tornadoes,” continued Charlie. “You can see the path where they went through the forest– very well defined—bringing down the ones in their way and leaving others right beside untouched. It’s like the tornados have a mind of their own.”
   When they arrived at their point of descent Charlie checked to make sure everything was secured. He checked the clasp of the sheath on his belt that held his hunting knife. He made sure his machete was fully in its sheath, too. He checked the shoulder straps on his back pack, and made sure his shoes were properly tied—didn’t need to trip over something as stupid as a loose shoe lace.
   Charlie stepped over the lanyard that was tied to a stump—yet another wind-snapped tree—and began rappelling down to the bridge. The grade was not as bad here. Yes, a rope was still needed to control their descent and to help them get back up on their way back, and it was still a thirty-foot drop, but the angle was manageable. With one hand he held the thick yellow rope, easing his way down. He didn’t have very good knees anymore, but as long as he moved the right way it should be fine, he thought. When he got to the bottom he turned and looked back up to Jim, who was still standing there.
   “C’mon!” Charlie shouted with a wave of his arm.
   Jim called down, “You don’t actually expect me to go down there, do you?”
   “Yes, I do. It’s easy. Just hang on to the rope.”
   Charlie turned back to the bridge. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and placed it in a small crevice in the hill. In case he fell into the stream he did not want it to go with him. He then stepped up onto the stump that was created by their fallen bridge tree. Slowly he placed first one foot, then the other on the ten-by-two. Holding the balance rope he began to shimmy carefully over the bridge. His balance was not what it used to be, but falling from here would be all of a six-foot drop into the stream and a good laugh for Jim. Half way across there was a sudden yank on the balance rope. “No!” he shot back at Jim who had come down and was starting to follow. “Wait till I’m over before you start.” A few more feet and he was on the bare portion of the log that he had not yet got around to covering with a ten-by-two. But this was in the last six feet of the bridge, so with the help of the balance rope and a couple more steps he hopped down onto solid ground. Charlie turned to watch Jim cross.
   Both men were sixty-two years old. They had known each other since grade seven. In recent years since the pandemic their relationship had suffered something of a break. This had begun with an email exchange between Charlie, Jim and two other mutual friends. Charlie was the only one among the four men who had refused the Covid injections, and this boiled up in the exchange much as it had all over the world: separating friends from friends, family from family, and in some cases professionals from their places of employment. To his credit Jim had remained largely silent, reserving judgement. He was retired now from his career as a federal civil servant, most of his time spent at the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission. Charlie watched as Jim made his way carefully along the planks.
   “Just use the rope for balance,” Charlie called. “Don’t rely on it too much.” He pulled hard on it to make it more rigid, giving greater support. Jim had put on some weight in recent years. He attributed this to his thyroid medication. He said he weighed two-hundred fifty-five pounds. As he approached the end of the planks nearer the bare log he became unsteady. A couple of times it looked to Charlie that his friend may take a dive—rattling on the rope right on the edge of losing it—but he hung on. Finally Jim stepped off the bridge, relieved.
   “Remind me again why the fuck we’re doing this?” he asked.
   “I told you. Bow season starts next Saturday. Now that I have this bridge we’re gonna go back there and I’m gonna install these motion sensors and a bush camera.” Charlie pointed up into the forest while bouncing the equipment in his backpack, as if to make sure it was still in there. “Those Frenchmen have had free reign on my property now for twenty-one years with their trespassing and not asking permission to hunt. Now they’ll be in for a little surprise, at least. These motion sirens make quite a bit of noise.”
   “Why not just let them hunt instead of going through all this?”
   “It’s the principle. Private property ownership should count for something,” Charlie answered.
   Charlie took a few steps away from the stream, then hesitated. It had been a while since he was here and he had to find his bearings. They had to get out of the mangroves, first. This was not the correct name for the thickets, he knew, of the particular plant that grew near the stream. Mangroves grew in tropical climates, but whatever these things were they were extremely dense. Impenetrable. Their stalks were up to two inches in diameter, rising out of the ground then arcing over. It was easier to find a route around them, or to avoid them altogether lest you get into the wet, muddy ground from which they grew, and that mucked up your shoes or boots.
   “There it is,” said Charlie, seeing the familiar hole in the wall of vegetation. Even though the day was sunny it could get quite dark under this canopy. It felt later in the day than it was. They went into the hole where the ground dipped down, and then up into the forest. Charlie swung his machete in earnest, now, trying to better define their path, and to make things a little bit less treacherous for Jim. Every minute or so he called out “Hey!” or made some grunting noise to put on notice any bear that may be in the area. It was standard practice. They did not want to surprise a bear with her cubs. Suddenly Charlie stopped and shouted, “Oh shit!”
   “What is it?” Jim said.
   “I just realized I forgot the roll of red tape.”
   “For what?”
   “–To mark our path. But I guess it doesn’t matter. It will be alright. I put some markers on the trees before—there—the first one. See the white string?” Charlie walked up to a piece of string dangling from a branch. “And from here—there—see that string on that trunk? Each one leads to the next.”
   The two men kept on slogging from string to string. The white strings changed to pieces of thin red rope Charlie had tied at some earlier hike for still better visibility. Walking in a straight line in this forest was impossible. The rugged topography conspired with the incredible tangle of fallen trees, standing trees, and smaller vegetation that forced hikers to weave their way through it all. Strangely, it even felt to Charlie that it was harder to hear sound in here, because Jim’s voice was muffled and hard to understand when he spoke. Maybe the bush absorbed sound.
   This was not like a well-groomed forest you see in photographs from some Bavarian forest, or other idyllic European setting, where the space between the trees is clear and flat like in a park. No, this was the northern equivalent of the jungle. Primordial soup. After making their way around a fifty-foot fallen pine Charlie stopped walking and pointed. “There it is,” he said. “My camera.”
   The small motion-triggered camera was strapped to a tree trunk about six-feet from the ground. “—Been here for a year,” Charlie said. He kneeled down and slipped his backpack off his shoulders, untying the lace that held closed the main compartment. He rummaged through the bag and pulled out a pack of fresh batteries. He then pressed a button on the bottom of the camera, which he had unstrapped from the tree, and began to exchange the old, dead batteries with the new. Then he pressed on the side of the camera to release the small memory card lodged in the slot. Digging again into the bag he pulled out another electronic device. “—Card reader,” he announced to Jim. “Let’s take a quick look.”
   After a moment to allow the card reader to boot up Charlie blurted, “Oh boy!”
   “What?” said Jim.
   “Three-hundred-fifty photos since last summer.”
   “Hmm.”
   “I won’t go through them all now, but I’m curious. Most of them are triggered by nothing but changing light. ” A few seconds passed as Charlie scrolled through the photographs. “Wow, a black bear! And he found the camera, see?” Charlie held the reader’s screen up to Jim.
   “Geeze. Looks big.” The bear had discovered the camera and had sniffed at it, triggering a photo showing a third of his huge head, a small black eye caught in the frame.
   “Yeah, big head. There’s his eye,” said Charlie pointing to the screen. “And hey, the date shows this was taken yesterday afternoon. This bad boy may still be in the neighborhood.” Charlie threw the old batteries and the card reader into his sack, and then replaced the memory card. He was strapping the camera to the tree when he noticed Jim facing back toward the cabin, looking at something in the palm of his hand. “What are you doing?”
   “I have this thing,” Jim replied. “It’s a GPS. Maybe it’s a piece of cheap shit but I thought I’d try it out.”
   “Where does it say the cabin is from here?” asked Charlie
   After a moment Jim raised one arm like an axe, not lifting his head from the gizmo in his hand, pointing south. “I’d say that’s about right,” said Charlie as he took a big breath and put his backpack back on. “Ok, I’m done here. It’s not much further.” He turned around to face north. “You can sort of see through the trees there’s a ridge up there,” he pointed upward as his head waved from side to side, trying to see the top of the ridge hidden by the canopy. “We’re trying to get to the little road, or trail that runs along the base of that ridge. If they’re hunting anywhere it’s just up there. The bears and wolves and coyotes chase the deer down into the little valley for the kill. There are a lot of deer around here. It can’t even be another hundred yards I don’t think.”
   Jim and Charlie continued on their northerly line. It seemed to Jim that there were even more fallen pines here than back near the bridge. He wasn’t quite as agile as Charlie. He could lose at least fifty pounds. He followed Charlie’s line as best he could. This was more of a workout than he had thought it would be. In the back of his mind he worried about having a heart attack. Maybe he should take those high blood pressure pills that the doctor gave him, but they made him feel lousy. He worried about this a lot, actually. Out here there wouldn’t be much chance of survival. He breathed heavily as he stepped over trees and around clumps of sharp branches. A branch caught his ball cap and pulled it off his head. “Fuck,” he said under his breath, reaching down and placing his cap back on. This place is like a battlefield, he thought.
   “Oh, there’s another string,” said Charlie. “I guess I forgot I’d marked the trail this far past that camera. “And there’s another.” He pointed, buoyed that the trail was marked this far. “My father told me when he was a boy growing up in Hungary that he’d read a book in school about Canada called ‘The Green Hell’. I guess that was just a few years before he ran away.”
   “The Green Hell,” Jim repeated, to confirm. That it is, he thought. They trudged on for another ten minutes. For Jim it felt longer. He wouldn’t be coming back in here again. –Wasn’t worth it.
   “Ok, I guess I finished up with the red rope markers around here because I’m not seeing any more of them. Anyhow I’m pretty sure we’re almost there.” Charlie was a bit out of breath now, himself. In the distance, back towards the cabin, they heard some all-terrain vehicles passing on the sand road. The cabin really was not far away. It just felt far. Jim caught up then stopped. He took out his GPS to take another reading.
   “It says three-hundred five yards that way,” he said holding out his arm towards the south. “But like I said I don’t know if this thing works.”
   “Ok, well, we’re almost there. I’ll do what I have to do then we’ll go back for beers and supper.”
   Charlie was correct. In another five minutes the forest gave way to a more open area. The massive ridge loomed above. Still, it was camouflaged by the canopy with only a vague dark line discernable against an elusive blue sky. After a moment Charlie could make out the road, or more like an ATV trail, that went off to the east.
   As expected, there was a tree stand set up at the edge of the clearing. The trespassers had built it out of two-by-fours and plywood about ten feet off the ground between two trees. An aluminum six-foot ladder was tied beneath it to enable their climb up. Charlie cut the rope holding the ladder to the setup. They would have a hard time getting up onto it now.
   Using the hunters’ ladder he hung two motion detectors in the vicinity on trees as high up as he could reach. These cheap Chinese things were solar powered and flashed red while sounding a hundred-ten decibel siren if something passed within thirty yards. He then hung another, silent motion detector that sent a signal to its remote receiver that he placed a couple of hundred feet away, in the denser bush. This would trigger an electronic noise in the distance that they would not be able to find the source of. Finally he strapped a motion-activated bush camera on a tree trunk at a strategic location. Here it would take photos of everything going on in the clearing within sixty feet. It had an infrared flash that worked in the dark, too. Charlie had no expectation of recovering any of this equipment. It was sacrificial. He did not underestimate the hunters’ resolve to find and destroy it all out of frustration. It was the residual effect, however, that he was after. They could tear down his private property and no hunting signs all day long, but they could not possibly know if they had found all the cameras, or if the licence plates of their ATVs were photographed, or even if their faces were caught on camera.
   Charlie hated how the world was becoming a surveillance state with advanced, invasive technology, but using basic equipment such as this to protect private property, and personal autonomy, seemed pretty damned fair. If the hunters only came to him before the season began he would gladly grant them permission to hunt. All he would ask for was their names and identification so he knew who was using his land. He was not a hunter, himself, but he was not against it. He simply did not enjoy killing things.
   While Charlie busied himself setting things up Jim stood with his GPS in his palm, his head tilted down as he studied it. “I think I realize my mistake,” he said. “I marked our starting point when I was standing in the driveway at the cabin. So it tells me the direction of the cabin, but not the direction of the bridge. I should have marked it at the bridge.”
   “C’mon. I’m done,” Charlie answered. “We can’t go wrong if we just follow the stream back, right?”
   The two men left the clearing and plunged back into the thicker forest. Charlie led along the ridge that dropped down to the stream. He tried his best to pick the path of least resistance, but this meant detouring around the tangles of fallen pine trees. Even the detours required considerable energy and, worse, they had a disorienting effect because he was always being diverted from the line he wanted to take. It was also a hassle carrying this damned aluminum ladder that he had stolen. He swung his machete, conscious of his friend’s frustration that their walk had become something of an ordeal, and so he did what he could to smooth things out, clearing the annoying twigs and branches. It really was a lost cause, though. There was no easy path through this battle space that Mother Nature had created. Charlie often thought about the Indians who had lived in these woods hundreds of years ago, and how they had adapted to survive in such a hostile environment. They must have had a good understanding of it. Another problem was that the fallen trees conspired with the uneven terrain to throw a person off balance. He almost fell over a couple of times as he set foot on a rotten log that collapsed under his weight, forcing him to catch himself. All of this thrashing and bobbing around the snarled mess made it harder to spot the guide strings. He should have spotted one by now. “Look for the strings,” he shouted back to Jim.
   Charlie realized he was walking a little bit faster, and working a little bit harder to get back to the bridge. In many places he couldn’t even see the stream from the top of the ridge. There was the canopy that formed by the tops of the tall trees, but then a sort of sub-canopy that covered much of the stream. This prevented a clear view both up current and down, so even if he did find a good spot to view the stream he could not see the bridge. It twisted and turned like a serpent. Everything looked the same while nothing looked familiar.
   Doubt began to creep into Charlie’s mind. He recalled the time they had been lost in here before. After that incident, which involved another one of the old ex-friends, they wandered for a few good hours. He vowed never to underestimate the forest after that. He stopped walking and turned around.
   “What’s your GPS say now?” Jim was a good sixty-feet behind.
   Jim stopped to take the machine from his pocket. After a moment his arm went up at an unexpected direction. “Two-hundred forty yards that way.”
   “Doesn’t make sense,” said Charlie. “That means we’ve been going up stream? Impossible!”
   “Like I say I don’t know if this piece of Chinese crap works. –Probably designed to get round eye good and fuckin’ lost.”
   “Naw, it’s probably right. But like you say it’s not showing us where the bridge is.”
   Just then, not far away, they heard another ATV going down the road beyond the stream. “It’s kind of amazing when you think about it,” said Charlie, “that we can be two-hundred forty yards away and still be lost.”
   “I was just thinking that,” said Jim, breathing hard now. “I was thinking about if you’re lost in the desert it’s because there isn’t enough information, but in the jungle there’s too much. It amounts to the same thing.”
   “Yeah, you think you’ve seen that tree or log before except you haven’t. Where are those fuckin’ strings. They have to be around here somewhere.”
   Jim and Charlie continued on trying to make sense of the chaotic forest, slashing and ducking their way around obstacles while trying to keep their balance on the uneven ground. Continuing to search for the bridge was becoming a mistake, Charlie concluded. He threw the hunters’ aluminum ladder to the ground. It was too much to carry and he was getting tired. He stopped again to look down at the stream. Through the trees he saw a short stretch that seemed inviting. “I’m gonna go down and check it out,” he said. We have to get across if we’re gonna get back. Forget about the bridge.”
   The grade was steep on this side, too, and he didn’t have a rope. Slowly he shimmied sideways down the slope. It was slippery, with loose dirt and vegetation. The grade was sharp enough that he had to grab whatever rooted plants he could to slow his descent, and to stop from tumbling uncontrolled. His left knee was not much good anymore and he felt it creaking under his weight. He had to be careful about that. One wrong turn and that knee would put him down. Finally he got to the stream bed where the ground flattened out.
   This didn’t look so bad, he thought. The stream wasn’t much more than twenty-feet wide here. And it did not appear to be more than four feet deep. The water was crystal clear. In fact it was quite a beautiful little setting. Much more beautiful if you weren’t lost in it, though. He tried to see if there were any fish. He had not yet caught a brook trout in here, but they should be here. There was even an old fallen tree that spanned the stream in this spot. Maybe they could use it to walk over, but it had a lot of branches and spikey stubs on it. Charlie took one step towards it then looked down at his foot. The ground was wet and the mud was black. Oh well, he thought, I guess we’re going to get our feet wet. He turned back to look up at Jim who was standing at the top of the ridge.
   “It doesn’t look too bad,” Charlie shouted. “There’s even a log we may be able to walk across. I’m gonna try to clean it up a bit see if we can use it. C’mon down.”
   Charlie took a step forward to the fallen tree and felt his leather shoes sink into the mud. With his next step he swung the machete to clear a branch, then another step and another swing. Just as he had managed to climb up onto the base of the fallen tree, where the ground was better, he heard a shout, or a cry, come from behind.
   “What the–are you alright?” Charlie yelled back to Jim.
   “No!”
   Charlie turned to look back. Suddenly Jim was up to his waist in the black mud. “Jesus!” Charlie shouted. Jim had taken a path only inches nearer the stream than had he.
   “I can’t move!” Jim cried. “It’s quicksand!”
   Charlie rushed back, extending his hand to Jim, and pulled. Instantly they knew there was not going to be a grip strong enough to make it work this way, not with Jim’s weight. Their hands slipped apart. The mud and his bulk and he being in so deep made him an immovable object. Charlie tried to grab him again, but this time by the arm. There was just no way. “I can’t move!” Jim shouted again.
   Charlie turned back to the fallen tree. He would cut a branch to use as a rope. He would pull from firmer ground. He took a step, but suddenly found his right foot was stuck in the black muck about a foot down. He couldn’t believe how strong it was. He pulled and pulled while trying to not lose his shoe. Into his head popped an article he had read long ago about quicksand. –Maybe as long ago as when he was a kid. There is no air down there so the mud acts like a suction cup. He remembers reading that the grip was as great as the weight of a car. You had to turn your body to allow water to flow into the space you made between your body and the sand. My God, he thought, the closest he had ever come to quicksand was watching it on comedy shows as a kid. But this was no joke.
   Finally, he managed to free his foot, only to fine the other one was stuck now, too, but not as badly. With great effort he managed to wrestle himself up onto solid ground, and with a single swing of his machete severed a mangro branch. It surprised him how easily he cut through it. –Must be his adrenaline pumping, he thought. He then began cutting off the smaller twigs to make it into a more usable ‘rope’.
   Jim watched Charlie. It seemed like he was taking forever. What if he was really stuck here? What if he had to spend the night? Should he send Charlie to go get help? What if that big black bear they saw on the camera was still around? Or wolves? There were big timber wolves in here, too. He wouldn’t stand a chance against a bear stuck like this. Jesus, Charlie was taking a long time. Jim felt his strength draining from his body.
   After what seemed like forever to Jim, Charlie turned and extended the limb, being careful not to set foot too far into the mud again. With a single great heave by both men Jim took hold of the branch with both hands while Charlie pulled with all his might. Maybe he really was adrenalized, but it could not have happened without Jim instinctively turning his body as he squirmed and twisted his way out of the quicksand. They pulled and pulled until Jim was back on firmer ground.
   For a minute the two sat, panting. Jim felt his heart pounding. “You catch your breath and rest while I see what I can do with this log,” said Charlie, turning around to take the few steps back to the old fallen tree. He wanted to rest more, too, but he had to find a solution to this problem, and fast.
   “I’m glad I didn’t lose my shoes,” said Jim. “I’d be right fucked trying to walk in here without shoes.”
   Up on the log, it almost seemed to be calcified. Or more like a thirty-foot long piece of driftwood. Thoroughly dried by years of sun and snow and wind, his machete merely bounced off it when he struck. He heaved himself up then began to hack away at the sharp, bare branches extruding from the trunk. It was nasty to straddle, but he did not trust his balance enough to try standing. Only by the sheer velocity of the blade did he manage to break the thickest branches. This left still more sharp, jagged stubs that he was forced to navigate his bottom over. Inch by inch he slid himself along. He would make it, he knew, but saw the mangroves awaiting him on the other side. He hoped the forest was not too far beyond them. And as bad as the forest was, these mangroves near the stream were definitely worse.
   Jim sat and watched Charlie, taking deep breaths, trying to get his heart rate back down. He never should have come in here. He wasn’t in shape for this kind of thing. He wanted to kill Charlie. This forest was diabolical how it confused and trapped you and made you crazy. You came to doubt yourself and everything you saw.
   After a good ten minutes on the log, on the other side, Charlie finally was able to swing one leg over onto the ground. At least it wasn’t quicksand here. But when he turned back to look at where Jim had been sitting, he was gone.
   “Where are you?” Charlie shouted. He scoured the dense bush across the stream. He should be able to see Jim’s bright orange and yellow hunting vest, but could not. “Where are you?” he yelled again. The last thing they needed was to lose each other.
   “–Trying to get through!” Jim’s voice boomed, finally. Charlie was relieved. He shifted his focus thirty feet to the right. He just made out Jim’s vest through the greenery. He had gone a ways back up the ravine, and over, to find a better way across.
   Charlie turned back to the mangroves that separated them from the forest on this side. He walked over, testing the ground. It was ok. There was a six-foot rise up from the stream bed into those thickets. He started swinging his machete. He may as well make himself useful while waiting for Jim. He climbed up the rise and began slashing. He wanted to get an idea of how difficult it would be to get out of this stuff and back into forest proper. After a couple of dozen swings he saw how the mangroves made way to trees. Satisfied, he went back to the stream.
   Standing on the bank he saw that Jim had not moved much. His friend was paralyzed by indecision. He needed an easier way across the stream without going near the quicksand. But where else was the quicksand? It could be anywhere.
   Charlie waited. The forest shouted out equal parts truth and lies in a deafening cacophony, its goal to confound. Some people thought that a forest had cognition, that it possessed some form of collective consciousness. He thought these people were crackpots. Fanatics. Watermelons. Green on the outside—those who religiously believed in the climate-change narrative—and red on the inside—Marxists. Collectivists. This was not at all like Pantheism that operated on a much higher plane.
   Watermelons, Charlie thought, were like the trees that dominated the forest closer to the cabin. Aspen. Aspen often shared the same root system. This made each tree in an Aspen stand a clone of the other. Funny way to look at it, he thought. Aspen were the collectivists of the forest. Suddenly, from across the stream he heard Jim scream.
   “FUCK!”
   “What?”
   “I’m cut.”
   “How?”
   “On a branch!”
   “How bad?”
   “Dunno. Bad enough!”
   Charlie could just make out Jim’s safety vest through the brush, fifty or sixty feet away. He had a sinking feeling. This wasn’t funny anymore. “I’m sorry, Jim. I never meant it to go this way,” he called.
   He saw the anatomy of panic repeating just as it had the last time they had become lost some years before. With every obstacle in their path, every clump of gnarled brush or fallen tree, they had reacted to the problem with a solution that had led them only deeper into trouble, becoming more and more lost. It was like the forest was out to get you. My God, Charlie suddenly thought, he was personifying the forest just like the crackpots did. Maybe this was also a part of panic’s anatomy.
   He looked up to the sky. The sun now was not far from the tops of the trees. Soon it would be dark. It was one thing to be lost in the day, but being lost in here at night would be exponentially more dangerous. At the dawning of panic you walked a little faster. Your actions became increasingly urgent. You had to solve the problem. Meanwhile your energy went down and down and down. The more you tried to stay rational the more you became irrational. You flailed more, felt more lost, and your spirits sunk with the sun.
   Jim reappeared back where he had started, at the other end of the fallen tree Charlie had crossed. His whole left arm was a bloody mess. “You have to try and get across here,” called Charlie. “The sun is going down soon. We can’t be in here at night. Try getting up on the log.”
   Jim made a feeble attempt to haul himself up, but he was too tired. At the same time he knew Charlie was right about the night.There was no way he could get on this thing. There was not enough strength left in his arms to lift his own weight. Instead he advanced forward, slowly, using the log as a way to stop himself from sinking into any quicksand that may be here. It was a smart move. Into the stream he waded, up to his waist, then above his waist to his chest, then across. Charlie extended his hand, hauling Jim up onto solid land.
   Charlie saw the five-inch gash on Jim’s forearm. It looked bad, but hopefully it was not more than a deep scratch. He’d survive.
   “OK,” Charlie began with a big breath, “I did a bit of clearing back there while I was waiting for you, and I don’t think we’re very far. And the forest seems to be just past those mangroves,” he pointed.
   They made their way up the six-foot rise. Charlie swung savagely his machete. Jim was really running out of gas, he knew. This better be the way. They got up into the forest from the stream bed, following the ravine as they had followed it on the other side. “What does your GPS say now?” Charlie said as he stopped and turned. Jim laboured far back. He stopped to take the gizmo from his pocket. His arm went up in the direction they had hoped and expected.
   It was now three hours since they had left the cabin. The two men made their way in a zig-zag, weaving through, trying to stay with the stream on their left side. After a bit, however, Charlie noticed he could no longer see the stream—somehow they had diverged away from it—but he was still confident they were going the right way. He stopped to check back on Jim who was trudging along. He then glanced to his right. “Jesus,” he said under his breath.
   It was the sand road not more than forty feet away. “Hey!” Charlie called to Jim. “The road! It’s right here!”
   Charlie scrambled the short stretch to the road, emerging from the forest as if he had suddenly broken out of clouds, into clear blue sky. He looked ahead and saw the green metal roof of the cabin not far off. “I can see the cottage!” he shouted back to Jim.
   Jim followed, breaking out of the bush and onto the sand road. As he did so a pickup truck happened by. It was driven by a man with his wife in the passenger seat. They both wore hunting vests. Charlie watched her watching Jim as they passed by slowly, her eyes on Jim’s bloody arm. They must wonder what the Hell we were doing, he thought.
   “You know,” said Jim as he walked slowly, his demeanor both exhausted and relieved, “I was never going to talk to you again.”
   “Let’s go drink beer,” said Charlie. “Promises, promises.”

3. We are in ghost week. I regret saying this AI-generated video is too good to ignore. It is about what can happen in the markets during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Thinly traded and manned by juniors, it is prime time for predators exploiting well-defined vulnerabilities.

   https://youtu.be/eGZEmPPcMfY?si=-EtzYvCI-2IxukSm

4. Turkey detains 115 IS suspects ‘planning New Year’s attacks’
   https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn98w93l8plo
   Turkish authorities say they have disrupted planned attacks on Christmas and New Year’s events after detaining more than 100 suspected members of the so-called Islamic State group.
   Mass raids were carried out at 124 addresses across Istanbul, the city’s chief prosecutor said, with firearms, ammunition and “organisational documents” seized.
   Officials said IS supporters had been actively planning attacks across Turkey this week, particularly against non-Muslims.
   Police detained 115 suspects but efforts are ongoing to trace a further 22, an official statement read.
   The prosecutor’s office said the suspects were in contact with IS operatives outside Turkey.
   The announcement comes two days after Turkish intelligence agents carried out a raid against the group on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
   A Turkish national who is alleged to have held a senior role with the IS wing operating in the region was detained and accused of planning attacks against civilians.
   Turkey’s security services regularly target people with suspected links to IS.
   The country shares a 900km (560 mile) border with Syria, where the group continues to operate in parts of the country.
   Syria’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has close ties to the Turkish government, has vowed to work with the US and Europe to root out surviving elements of IS.
   [..]

5. Silver backwardation seems, well, back:

   https://jensendavid.substack.com/p/intensifying-shortage-this-is-what

6. I wish you all a happy Christmas week, may you enjoy happiness and strength, for strength we need to confront the horrors and hard work that lay before us.

   Thank You Vlad for a great website.