Dec 182021
 
 December 18, 2021  Posted by at 9:39 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Vincent van Gogh Road menders at Saint-Remy 1889

 

South Africa Hospitalization Rate Falls 91% in Omicron Wave (BBG)
Pfizer Tests Extra Covid Shot For Kids Under 5 In Setback (AP)
VAERS Deaths Are Underreported By A Factor Of 20 (RG)
Guidance On Covid Vaccines Moves Closer To ‘Misinformation’ Of Skeptics (JTN)
Where Do You Stand? (Jim Kunstler)
They KNOW And LIKE IT (Denninger)
Appeals Court Reinstates Biden Vaccine Mandate For Business (JTN)
Companies, Organizations Are Walking Back Vaccination Requirements (ET)
Boeing Suspends Vaccine Mandate For Employees (JTN)
Top Israel Ministers Agree On Covid Purple Ribbon Outline For Malls (JPost)
Need For Social Restrictions Will Gradually Shrink Over Time – Whitty (BMJ)
China’s Covid-zero Lockdowns Loom Over The Global Supply Chain (Qz)
Kremlin Discusses Potential Putin-Musk Meeting (RT)

 

 

 

 

Vaccine hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Massie

 

 

 

 

A Bloomberg piece without a paywall for me.

South Africa Hospitalization Rate Falls 91% in Omicron Wave (BBG)

South Africa delivered some positive news on the omicron coronavirus variant on Friday, reporting a much lower rate of hospital admissions and signs that the wave of infections may be peaking. Only 1.7% of identified Covid-19 cases were admitted to hospital in the second week of infections in the fourth wave, compared with 19% in the same week of the third delta-driven wave, South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla said at a press conference. Health officials presented evidence that the strain may be milder, and that infections may already be peaking in the country’s most populous province, Gauteng. Still, new cases in that week of the current wave were more than 20,000 a day, compared with 4,400 in the same week of the third wave. That’s further evidence of omicron’s rapid transmissibility, which a number of other countries, such as the U.K., are also now experiencing.

South Africa, which announced the discovery of the variant on Nov. 25, is being watched as a harbinger of what may happen with omicron elsewhere. Scientists have cautioned that other nations may have a different experience to South Africa as the country’s population is young compared with developed nations. Between 70% and 80% of citizens may also have had a prior Covid-19 infection, according to antibody surveys, meaning they could have some level of protection. Currently there are about 7,600 people with Covid-19 in South African hospitals, about 40% of the peak in the second and third waves. Excess deaths, a measure of the number of deaths against a historical average, are just below 2,000 a week, an eighth of their previous peak.

Read more …

“It’s disappointing news for families anxious to vaccinate their tots.”

Pfizer Tests Extra Covid Shot For Kids Under 5 In Setback (AP)

Pfizer said Friday it was changing plans and testing three doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in babies and preschoolers after the usual two shots didn’t appear strong enough for some of the children. Pfizer announced the change after a preliminary analysis found 2- to 4-year-olds didn’t have as strong an immune response as expected to the very low-dose shots the company is testing in the youngest children. It’s disappointing news for families anxious to vaccinate their tots. Pfizer had expected data on how well the vaccines were working in children under 5 by year’s end, and it’s not clear how long the change will delay a final answer.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said if the three-dose study is successful, they plan to apply for emergency authorization sometime in the first half of 2022. A kid-sized version of Pfizer’s vaccine already is available for 5- to 11-year-olds, one that’s a third of the dose given to everyone else 12 and older. For children younger than 5, Pfizer is testing an even smaller dose, just 3 micrograms or a tenth of the adult dose. Researchers analyzed a subset of youngsters in the study a month after their second dose to see if the tots developed levels of virus-fighting antibodies that were similar to teens and young adults who get the regular shots. The very low-dose shots appeared to work in youngsters under age 2, who produced similar antibody levels.

But the immune response in 2- to 4-year-olds was lower than the study required, Pfizer vaccine research chief Kathrin Jansen said Friday in a call with investors. Rather than trying a higher-dose shot for the preschoolers, Pfizer decided to expand the study to evaluate three of the very low-dose shots in all the study participants — from 6 months up to age 5. That third shot will come at least two months after the youngsters’ second dose. No safety concerns have been spotted in the study, the companies said.

Read more …

From October 2021

VAERS Deaths Are Underreported By A Factor Of 20 (RG)

Accurate estimates of COVID vaccine-induced severe adverse event and death rates are critical for risk-benefit ratio analyses of vaccination and boosters against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in different age groups. However, existing surveillance studies are not designed to reliably estimate life-threatening event or vaccine-induced fatality rates (VFR). Here, regional variation in vaccination rates was used to predict all-cause mortality and non-COVID deaths in subsequent time periods using two independent, publicly available datasets from the US and Europe (month-and week-level resolutions, respectively). Vaccination correlated negatively with mortality 6-20 weeks post-injection, while vaccination predicted all-cause mortality 0-5 weeks post-injection in almost all age groups and with an age-related temporal pattern consistent with the US vaccine rollout.


Results from fitted regression slopes (p<0.05 FDR corrected) suggest a US national average VFR of 0.04% and higher VFR with age (VFR=0.004% in ages 0-17 increasing to 0.06% in ages >75 years), and 146K to 187K vaccine-associated US deaths between February and August, 2021. Notably, adult vaccination increased ulterior mortality of unvaccinated young (<18, US; <15, Europe). Comparing our estimate with the CDC-reported VFR (0.002%) suggests VAERS deaths are underreported by a factor of 20, consistent with known VAERS under-ascertainment bias. Comparing our age-stratified VFRs with published age-stratified coronavirus infection fatality rates (IFR) suggests the risks of COVID vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure. We discuss implications for public health policies related to boosters, school and workplace mandates, and the urgent need to identify, develop and disseminate diagnostics and treatments for life-altering vaccine injuries.

Read more …

“Not only do the three vaccines authorized for emergency use require boosters due to waning “protective efficacy,” but they haven’t stopped breakthrough infections..”

Guidance On Covid Vaccines Moves Closer To ‘Misinformation’ Of Skeptics (JTN)

Federal officials and advisors who have consistently boosted COVID-19 vaccines are starting to sound more like skeptics of the vaccines’ efficacy and safety. The face of the Biden administration’s COVID response is now making the same claims about vaccines that got a contrarian journalist booted from Twitter, while the CDC encouraged Americans to avoid a specific vaccine. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci cowrote a “perspective” in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Wednesday that acknowledged COVID vaccines were not living up to expectations. Not only do the three vaccines authorized for emergency use require boosters due to waning “protective efficacy,” but they haven’t stopped breakthrough infections, “allowing subsequent transmission to other people even when the vaccine prevents severe and fatal disease.”

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson wrote of the vaccines in August: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission.” They have a “limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile.” Twitter permanently suspended him the same day for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.” The social media company didn’t respond to Just the News queries seeking its distinction between claims by Berenson and Fauci and whether it would apply an “unsafe” warning to the NEJM essay, as it recently did to a study on increased heart risks in vaccine recipients, or otherwise restrict the publisher’s account. Twitter quietly updated its “COVID-19 misleading information policy” page sometime after Dec. 2, even while claiming through Wednesday that the update was made in November. (It corrected the month on Thursday, several days after Reclaim the Net noted the discrepancy.)

Among the new authority it grants itself, Twitter will punish users who claim vaccines, regardless of their authorization status, are “experimental”; taking them “would be more harmful than getting COVID-19”; and most pertinent to Fauci’s essay, vaccinated people “can spread or shed the virus … to unvaccinated people.”

Read more …

“American doctors have proven to be cowards, cravens, zombies, and fools facilitating Dr. Fauci’s evil campaign — in concert with the rapacious pharmaceutical industry and a government in thrall to sinister forces that seek to destroy the country.”

Where Do You Stand? (Jim Kunstler)

The public health bureaucrat who styles himself as “the Science” is at it again. In his quest to eliminate the control group for his experiment in hazardous mRNA injections, Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated his warning that the nation faces “a crisis of the unvaccinated.” Omicron is upon us, he told a US Chamber of Commerce meet-up this week, and the hospitals will soon be overwhelmed by the unvaxxed. Oh really? In fact, the gravest threat to America’s public health is… Dr. Tony Fauci and his debauchery of medical science. This will surely come as a surprise to readers of The New York Times, who see in the two-year (so far) Covid-19 event a splendid opportunity to hasten the destruction of the US economy and our culture in order to consolidate their own power to coerce and control the population. Clear the offices! Shut down the social spaces! Make ordinary business as difficult as possible! Cancel Christmas! That’ll git’er done!

In fact, Dr. Fauci is likely responsible for a preponderance of the total 802,000 US Covid deaths — putting aside the number of people who actually died from highway accidents, cancer, diabetes, old age, and other causes, but were listed as covid deaths by hospital accounting personnel avid for federal subsidy cash. It was Dr. Fauci who organized the suppression of easily marshaled and inexpensive early treatments for the disease, namely hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, budesonide, azithromycin, monoclonal antibodies, Vitamin D, etc. It was Dr. Fauci who promoted the protocol of sending sick patients home from the ER without any treatment to await the further development of fatal clotting in their lungs. It was Dr. Fauci who designated the drug remdesivir — which he developed years ago for hepatitis-C (it did not work) with a financial stake in the patents — as the primary inpatient treatment for Covid-19.

And then it turned out that remdesivir destroys patients’ kidneys and is ineffective anyway in late treatment of the disease when viral loads wane and spike proteins have already created the fatal capillary clots in the alveoli of the lungs and in other organs. It’s Dr. Fauci who is responsible for the emergency use authorization on the mRNA “vaccines” that may have killed hundreds of thousands more Americans — based on the CDC’s VAERS system and statistical analysis of its inherent under-reporting at only 2.2 percent of all actual events— and you can add multiples more in non-fatal adverse reactions, including permanent disabilities. It’s Dr. Fauci who finagled the inadequate and botched trials of the mRNA vaccines in order to rush them into use.

And now it’s Dr. Fauci who wants to vaxx up all the children in America, despite evidence that the mRNA shots permanently disable children’s innate natural immune systems and can cause lasting heart, blood vessel, brain, and reproductive damage, and also despite the fact that few children are susceptible to serious Covid illness in the first place. [..] American doctors have proven to be cowards, cravens, zombies, and fools facilitating Dr. Fauci’s evil campaign — in concert with the rapacious pharmaceutical industry and a government in thrall to sinister forces that seek to destroy the country. The doctors have disgraced and dishonored themselves. The doctors have probably undermined their own vocations, as well as the entire armature of US health care, which they have allowed to become history’s worst racketeering operation.

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“How carefully would you drive if it was mandated by law that you must have a 6″ spike mounted in the center of the steering wheel pointed at your chest — and seat belts were illegal?”

They KNOW And LIKE IT (Denninger)

Folks, can we cut the bull**** please? Insurance companies are regulated. They are only permitted to make a certain amount of gross margin, typically 10%. Said regulation is enforced; firms are required to file their rates with state regulators along with the previous year’s results and projections for next. This applies to health insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance, all insurance. Therefore there are exactly two ways for an insurance company to grow in size and profits: • Have more-frequent events results in a loss. • Have the same number of events but make them more expensive. That’s it. Efficiency is backwards because if you have overhead of 30% and cut it to 20% you don’t get to keep the other 10% in the company as profit which in any other line of business is yours to pocket. You wind up having to cut rates!

I have some data for health rates for firms in the midsized corporate world. I also have the Obamacare numbers for 2021 in a number of places, since those are published. They’re up. A lot. In some cases and places, by 30%. Do you really think the health insurance and health care providers care if you get a bad reaction from the jabs? No, they like it, provided it doesn’t kill you immediately. See the above for why. That you get ****ed is just business. You think the car insurance companies push all that expensive tech and “improvements” because it results in fewer crashes? Well, has it resulted in fewer crashes? Notice how the media and car companies, along with the insurance firms and their public-facing folks such as the crash-test people, always talk about fatality rates, not crashes.

A fatal car crash means you are no longer a customer. But that collapsible steering column isn’t for you, really — it doesn’t do anything to prevent the crash, it just costs more money if you crash and increases the odds you’ll live. This means (1) you’re still a customer and (2) the car costs more to repair or must be replaced. Obviously if you’re dead you don’t need another car, do you? Nor will you ever buy car insurance again. Oh, you think this is fanciful BS? Uh, nope. How carefully would you drive if it was mandated by law that you must have a 6″ spike mounted in the center of the steering wheel pointed at your chest — and seat belts were illegal?

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“This mandate will make it even harder for small business owners to find and keep employees.”

Appeals Court Reinstates Biden Vaccine Mandate For Business (JTN)

A federal appeals court on Friday night reinstated President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private companies with more than 100 workers, reversing lower court rulings and setting up a likely showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had the authority to Impose the mandate due to take effect Jan. 4. “Given OSHA’s clear and exercised authority to regulate viruses, OSHA necessarily has the authority to regulate infectious diseases that are not unique to the workplace,” the court conckuddd in its majority opinion.

Within an hour of the decision, the small business group Job Creators Network filed an appeal to the high court, saying the appeals judges “irresponsibly upheld an illegal rule.” “This mandate adds an incredible burden on small business owners who are still suffering negative effects of the pandemic,” the group said. “This mandate will make it even harder for small business owners to find and keep employees.” The ruling came after several challenges from GOP-led states and conservative and business groups were consolidated before the Cincinnati-based 6th circuit. The decision was supported by one Democrat-appointed judge and one Republican appointee and opposed by the third judge, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge told The Associated Press she would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court. “The Sixth Circuit’s decision is extremely disappointing for Arkansans because it will force them to get the shot or lose their jobs,” she said. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, tweeted he was confident the mandate would be blocked by the justices. “We will go immediately to the Supreme Court- the highest court in the land- to fight this unconstitutional and illegal mandate,” he said. “The law must be followed and federal abuse of power stopped.”

Read more …

Too many hold-outs.

Companies, Organizations Are Walking Back Vaccination Requirements (ET)

More and more businesses in recent days have walked back previous rules mandating COVID-19 vaccines as a condition for employment in a bid to keep workers. Earlier this week, Amtrak—a quasi-public corporation—became the latest to rescind its vaccine requirement amid concerns about staff shortages and cut service in January. In a memo sent to staff that was obtained by The Epoch Times, Amtrak CEO William Flynn said the company would do away with the mandate that would have given employees until Jan. 4 to get fully vaccinated or go on unpaid leave. About 500 out of more than 17,000 Amtrak workers remain unvaccinated, according to the memo. Still, the sudden loss of that many workers would have caused service disruptions, Flynn suggested, while noting that Amtrak was acting in accordance with recent court orders handed down against President Joe Biden’s sweeping vaccine mandates.

Several hospitals and healthcare systems have similarly rescinded vaccine mandates for employees and cited labor issues that were triggered by the new requirements. In early December, Florida’s AdventHealth announced the end of its vaccine requirement for some 83,000 workers, also citing the several recent court injunctions against federal mandates. “Due to recent decisions by the federal courts to block the [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] vaccine mandate, we are suspending all vaccination requirements of our COVID-19 vaccination policy,” AdventHealth Chief Clinical Officer Neil Finkler said in a letter to staff. The move came after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed to The Epoch Times that the agency suspended enforcement following two court orders several weeks ago.

Tenet Healthcare, HCA Healthcare, and Cleveland Clinic recently announced they are pulling back as well, citing labor concerns. Along with AdventHealth, the three healthcare companies operate a combined 300 hospitals and have more than 500,000 workers. They cited recent court orders that blocked Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from enforcing its mandate on Medicare- and Medicaid-funded medical facilities. The rule was announced by Biden on the same day that he confirmed that he would impose mandates on federal government employees, businesses who have contracts with the federal government, and, most controversially, businesses that have 100 or more workers.

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“Boeing has suspended its vaccine requirement in line with a federal court’s decision prohibiting the enforcement of the federal contractor executive order and a number of state laws.”

Boeing Suspends Vaccine Mandate For Employees (JTN)

Boeing Friday said it has suspended its requirement that U.S.-based employees be fully vaccinated or face losing their jobs. The announcement comes as several attempts by President Joe Biden to require vaccinations for workers in various settings have been blocked by courts in recent weeks. “Boeing is committed to maintaining a safe working environment for our customers, and advancing the health and safety of our global workforce,” a company spokesperson told KOMO News. “As such, we continue to encourage our employees to get vaccinated and get a booster if they have not done so. Meanwhile, after careful review, Boeing has suspended its vaccine requirement in line with a federal court’s decision prohibiting the enforcement of the federal contractor executive order and a number of state laws.”

A U.S. District Court judge in Georgia on Dec. 7 issued a preliminary injunction against Biden’s executive order requiring all companies that contract with the federal government to have a vaccine mandate in place. The order was to have taken effect starting Jan. 4. Earlier orders requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to require vaccinations and one requiring all healthcare workers to be vaccinated have also been blocked by courts. Biden’s executive order requiring all federal workers to be vaccinated is facing 17 lawsuits, but no judges have granted requests to block it. Courts have also ruled that private employers, states, local municipalities and public universities are able to issue vaccine mandates.

In an internal memo to employees obtained by Defense News, Boeing said 92% of its U.S.-based workforce had either provided proof of vaccination or received a medical or religious exemption. “The success of Boeing’s vaccine requirement to date positions the company well to comply with the federal executive order should it be reinstated in the future,” the memo said. Reuters reported last month that some 11,000 Boeing employees, about 9% of its North American workforce, had requested an exemption. It is unclear how many were granted.

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Every plan so far has failed.

Top Israel Ministers Agree On Covid Purple Ribbon Outline For Malls (JPost)

A “strict” Purple Ribbon outline will be applied immediately to all indoor shopping malls, the Prime Minister’s Office said late Friday night. The announcement came after two days of discussion on how to handle shopping malls, and as the number of coronavirus cases spikes across Israel. The decision was made jointly by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, Economy Minister Orna Barbivai and MK Abir Kara. One person for every 15 square meters will be allowed to shop. And increased enforcement of mask wearing will be established. Moreover, the officials agreed, mall hours will be extended in order to accommodate shoppers and immunization complexes will be established in 50 main centers in the malls to encourage people to get the jab. Those who are vaccinated will enjoy special privileges.


Bennett had wanted to require the malls operate under the Green Pass outline, meaning that individuals would have to be fully vaccinated or take a COVID test to enter the facilities. The only exception would have been to access essential products. But fierce opposition by retailers and some members of the government on Thursday pushed the plan to the side. Friday night’s announcement said that if morbidity rates continue to climb then the Green Pass outline will once again be considered for any facility over 100 square meters. The above plan is still not final. It will be discussed at the cabinet meeting on Sunday, drafted as regulations and then voted on by the coronavirus cabinet via telephone poll. Once passed, the outline will begin immediately. Bennett is also reportedly expected to bring a resolution to the meeting that would mean almost the complete closure of the skies. Bennett’s proposal, N12 reported, is expected to include a ban on travel to most countries in the world, including the United States and other countries in Western Europe.

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Just 18 more months to flatten the curve.

Need For Social Restrictions Will Gradually Shrink Over Time – Whitty (BMJ)

The development of polyvalent vaccines and new antivirals should lessen the need for social restrictions from around the middle of 2023, England’s chief medical officer has told MPs. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee on 16 December, Chris Whitty said that although the UK may need intermittent social restrictions against covid-19 over the next 18 months, future medical advances should provide the “heavy lifting” against new variants. He said, “If I project forward, I would anticipate in a number of years, possibly 18 months, possibly slightly less, possibly slightly more, we will have polyvalent vaccines which will cover a much wider range [of variants].

And we will probably have several antivirals . . . and a variety of other countermeasures that mean that the great majority, and probably almost all, of the heavy lifting when we get a new variant—unless it is extremely different—can be met by medical means.” He added, “So I don’t see this as a kind of ‘we’re going to have to do this [social restrictions] repeatedly every few months’ situation. I think the risks will gradually decrease over time; it’s incremental.” However, Whitty said that for now some social restrictions may be necessary to tackle variants such as omicron that show some partial escape from vaccines and could overwhelm the NHS if left unchecked.

He said, “We’ve come from a place where we had absolutely nothing [in terms of medical interventions], so everything had to be done by social distancing and all the disruptive things that went with that right at the beginning. Where we are at the moment is kind of in a transition period. A very large amount of it can be done by [vaccines], and this is why the boosters are so absolutely essential, but we’re not quite in the rather safer haven I expect we will have in a couple of years’ time.”

Read more …

“This is only the beginning—the first quarter of 2022 is going to be a complete wreck.”

China’s Covid-zero Lockdowns Loom Over The Global Supply Chain (Qz)

A new covid-19 lockdown imposed last week (Dec. 7) in the port city of Ningbo, China, is raising the specter of further disruptions to an already battered global supply chain. There are more than 200 cases so far in the most recent cluster in the manufacturing province of Zhejiang, which includes the city of Ningbo. The outbreak is said to be spreading “relatively rapidly,” and has led to the closures of dozens of factories. So far, the lockdowns have restricted trucks going in and out of the port, slowing operations. While there are no reports yet of the port closing, the lockdown, combined with weeks of intensifying covid-zero restrictions, is worrying logistics professionals.

“The rising covid infections may lead to shutdowns at Ningbo and some other ports in China, adding to congestion and cargo backlogs,” a source from a UK-based logistics company said on Dec. 7 to S&P Global Platts, an analytics firm. “This is only the beginning—the first quarter of 2022 is going to be a complete wreck.” China’s pursuit of covid-zero has led to swift, severe measures to control the spread of infection, and policies to contain covid have only intensified since the omicron variant began to spread. On Monday (Dec. 13), Xinhua, the state-run news agency, singled out ports as the entry point for the most recent cluster of infections, and reported that the government will be tightening covid controls at port cities.

China’s policies at port have an outsized impact on the overall functioning of the global supply chain. The country is the world’s largest exporter of goods, as well as the largest importer of commodities. More ships call into the ports of China than any other country. “The global supply chain recovery relies on China,” said Atul Vashistha, CEO of Supply Wisdom, a New York-based risk intelligence company. “That’s an alarming and troubling truth considering China’s centricity to the supply chain. While it may be a sound public health policy, China’s zero-tolerance covid policy makes supply chain matters worse.”

Read more …

”In May, Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade invited the Tesla CEO to discuss the possibility of opening a factory in the country, after he indicated that he was considering such a move.”

Kremlin Discusses Potential Putin-Musk Meeting (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African-born billionaire Elon Musk could have a long-awaited meeting if the world’s richest man steps up and develops business interests in the country, the Kremlin has indicated. Speaking to journalists on Friday, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that the president has always been interested in meeting with foreigners who are keen to invest in Russia, adding that this could include Musk. “Without a doubt, the president is open to discussions with foreign businessmen,” Peskov explained. “There are regular discussions, practically every year, with French entrepreneurs, Germans, those with a large presence in our market. You and I know that Elon Musk isn’t in our market, but we hope that with time, he will become interested in it. And then, a meeting with the president isn’t out of the question.”


In February, Musk tweeted an invitation to Putin to chat with him via the audio-only social media app Clubhouse, writing, “It would be a great honor to talk with you.” The Kremlin replied that Musk’s invitation was “interesting,” and media reported that Putin hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a conversation. However, the meeting has not yet taken place. In May, Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade invited the Tesla CEO to discuss the possibility of opening a factory in the country, after he indicated that he was considering such a move. In addition to heading Tesla, the world’s most valuable automaker, Musk is also the founder of space transportation company SpaceX. In October, Forbes estimated his net worth at $271.3 billion, making him the richest person alive and, according to some measures, the richest in history.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donziger

Maddow, Tucker, Assange

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 18 2021

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 73 total)
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  • #95549

    Vincent van Gogh Road menders at Saint-Remy 1889   • South Africa Hospitalization Rate Falls 91% in Omicron Wave (BBG) • Pfizer Tests Extra Covid
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 18 2021]

    #95550
    ctbarnum
    Participant

    #95551
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Vincent van Gogh Road menders at Saint-Remy 1889

    I’ve been struggling with adjectives for that van Gogh; how about powerfully organic?
    It’s so rich and strong…I love it…

    #95552
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    ctbarnum
    …no needles, just balls…

    If I catch your drift…brilliant!

    #95553
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    ctbarnum – excellent! Thank you!! 🙂

    #95554
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Long Media criticism, feel free to skip. However, since it composes our present world and cage, it is relevant.

    Bill goes down. Amazing: apparently Manchin is worth five (5) Congressmen? He overruled the whole Squad?

    Yup, that’s what’s reported. Probably one man vote is worth five women votes, and not that the Progressives caved to NeoLiberal corporatists under Nancy Pelosi like we’ve seen for 50 years and highlighted with Bernie being actively vote-tampered out of California and Iowa in some kind of fake WWE puppet show. Nope! Really: it’s not at all like when Obama had a supermajority he just COULDN’T pass health care or other simple DNC planks. “Supermajority”, including the USSC, means they didn’t have the votes, you see. If only they had more power, finally something would happen.

    When are we going to stop pretending the floor votes or elections are real? Do we need Princeton to issue an official report that there’s no Democracy? …Oh wait, that was 2014.

    But that’s not new: have you seen the freshman Congressmen asking Newt Gingrich “Mr. Speaker, exactly how big a supermajority do we need before we enact policies we were voted in for?” …In 1994.

    Remember, just needed to get Joe into residency and then push him Left? Yeah, that. “Progressive” like $100B/mo to the banks, a war in Russia, and no health care in a pandemic.

    “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming…”

    “FDR will hold Wall Street to account, uphold the banks and save your accounts, and stay out of the war”

    Oh and Adams is a hermaphrodite and Jefferson is in the pocket of the French. Trust me: I’m a professional politician. Or adult American.

    “The Atlantic: Where the Dumbest people meet.”

    An article the have on Civil War, and how it can never happen again. ‘Cause, experts. From Ireland.

    “[That the U.S.] system of federal governance gives a minority the power to frustrate and repress the majority, that much of its media discourse is toxic, that one half of a two-party system has entered a postdemocratic phase, and that, uniquely among developed states, it tolerates the existence of several hundred private armies equipped with battle-grade weaponry.”

    Yes, but who’s who? You mean MNCs armies like Blackwater, insider, non-taxpaying corporations like GE and $6B CIA-serving Amazon, and the G4S security forces that protect Lightfoot and London Breed? Those guys are all government-adjacent, government-merged. Who’s postdemocratic? One who loses and election and cries RussiaRussiaRussia? Their minority when they frustrated political proceedings of the elected majority? Or is it their tiny NeoLib minority even now frustrating the will of the overwhelming Democratic Base? …And the same on the other side. Only one side is in the wrong. Good thing he’s objective, like any good reporter.

    “It is also true that the American system of government is extraordinarily difficult to change by peaceful means. Most successful democracies have mechanisms that allow them to respond to new conditions and challenges by amending their constitutions and reforming their institutions. But the U.S. Constitution has inertia built into it. What realistic prospect is there of changing the composition of the Senate, even as it becomes more and more unrepresentative of the population?”

    Because: Atlantic, they’ve never heard of “The Constitution” or something called “Amendments”. I guess we’ve never passed any. I mean, not like we’d expect a writer for the Atlantic, the Guardian, NY Daily News to have heard of something so arcane and little mentioned as the “Bill of Rights” and the 1st and 2nd Amendment. They hardly ever come up in European conversations on America and, for example, guns.

    Also, I guess we’ve never either elected the Senate, nor ever changed the way in which they operate, with say, a 17th Amendment. Being 17 times we’ve updated this non-update-able country. I mean, that’s proof right there, American Democracy: it’s just impossible to change!

    Really, he’s right. Because we’ve never held State Senatorial appointments, and certainly not Senatorial popular elections like for Senator Clinton or Biden; we still have the senators James Monroe, Philip Schuyler, and Robert Morris, average age: 264 years old. Kind of like the House of Lords.

    But someday we’ll figure out this “Democracy” thingy and then you’ll be sorry.

    America has still not recovered from the fratricidal slaughter of the 1860s.”

    I know, right? Not a day goes by I don’t shoot a Vermonter or a Virginian. The morgues of Baltimore and Chicago are filled with this conflict of North vs South. And we’re definitely, definitely scared of war. Terrified of starting or spreading them.

    And since we’ve never recovered from the Civil War, we’ve CERTAINLY never written anything in West Point on it. The CIA, who specializes in creating Civil Wars worldwide never thought about it: “in his 1994 book Civil Wars, “there is no useful Theory of Civil War.” It isn’t a staple in military school—Carl von Clausewitz’s bible, On War, has nothing to say”

    Other news from the Smart geniuses, “Texas is a “single-party state.” Because they voted Blue last elections? Austin is Blue while the state is Red? That’s “One-Party”. Unlike Congress, which votes for the same things regardless of who is elected – officially, according to Princeton – they are Two Party. Silly Wabbit.

    “The comforting fiction that the U.S. used to be a glorious and settled democracy prevents any reckoning with the fact that its current crisis is not a terrible departure from the past but rather a product of the unresolved contradictions of its history. The dark fantasy of Armageddon distracts from the more prosaic and obvious necessity to uphold the law and establish political and legal accountability for those who encourage others to defy it.”

    Ah but on this we totally agree. America was never peaceful even before colonization, and always has low-level internal contention and violence. Hey! Something like every other nation on earth where men live. Maybe someday we will uphold the law and arrest the people responsible for this, against all known history, but don’t hold your breath. With deep, accurate, cutting-edge legal knowledge like this, how could we?

    But so long as they know nothing about the subject, they are an “expert” and can issue books and reviews at will. Or, as they said even 100 years ago:

    “An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.” ― Nicholas Butler

    And he should know. President of Columbia U., Nobel Prize winner, P.S. married a Schyuler, Also stole the Pulitzer Prize from Hemingway to award it to nobody.

    And who could forget Butler when he was immortalized in fiction with “The Goose-Step” by Upton Sinclair? Ah, education! We hardly knew ya. There’s your real war: The War on Truth.

    P.S. Did you hear 9 out of 10 experts say there’s no such thing as the “Moon”? These are the guys I want as my doctor.

    Luckily they at “The Atlantic” n pals don’t Doctor…oh wait:

    “America Is Not Ready for Omicron. The new variant poses a far graver threat…” –The Atlantic

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/america-omicron-variant-surge-booster/621027

    Apparently old Ed Yong can’t be bothered to ask a “Doctor”. But they’re African. So not real doctors. We’ve seen Ed before where he writes for “Scienz!” As opposed to “Science” which is based on any supportable facts, however unlikely.

    “some of the absolute worst-case scenarios that were possible when we saw its genome are off the table,”

    So…it’s good then? He says, picking cherry quotes from a friendly biologist: NOT A DOCTOR.

    “The real unknown is what an Omicron cross will do when it follows a Delta hook.”

    Omicron and Delta have already crossed? Do tell. If it has, why is it “unknown”? BECAUSE IT’S A GREAT BIG STEAMING LIE. Ed made it up. In his fevered head. As top representative of The Atlantic, who “makes s—t up” for a living.

    “Omicron negates one previous immunizing event… Someone who considered themselves fully vaccinated in September would be just partially vaccinated now (and the official definition may change imminently)”

    So, Vaccines don’t work and you guys change the definition daily. Got it. That is, you change the definition of “Science”, to “Whatever I feel like today,” when it has actual process.

    “Dylan Morris suggests watching highly boosted places, such as Israel,” …where Omicron hit everyone fully boosted and has the highest hospital rate in the world. …Hmm, I HAVE been watching it, Mr. Yong, that’s where I get my facts from. I think we know.

    Also “ The widespread notion that viruses naturally evolve to become less virulent is mistaken,” O Rly? Amazing how that defies 10,000 years of evidence. Well, he IS quoting the NYTimes, hotbed of known plagiarism, top promoter of “RussiaRussia” and “WMD and ties to Al-qeada” “Yellowcake” “Mushroom clouds” and soon-to-be ex-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. But thankfully no one reads it, so we’re spared.

    He then goes on to stealth-suppose there’s no natural immunity anywhere on earth AS WELL as that vaccines totally, 100% don’t work. I’m sold! Shut up and take my money! If it doesn’t work at all, jab me thrice right now!!!

    “people from rural, low-income, and minority communities will likely experience the greatest delays, [to get a booster]”

    I think he may be misinterpreting why those demographics aren’t vaxxed. It’s actually because of past history with the accuracy of Atlantic writers like Mr. Yong.

    Quoting a virologist for a change, “once we have an Omicron-specific booster, the wave will be past,”

    So…Vaccines don’t work. They’re too slow, can’t create and deliver them in time. As uneducated, barely-literate posters like the Docktor said in March 2020.

    Who’s to blame? “instead of distributing rapid tests en masse, the Biden administration opted to merely make them reimbursable through health insurance.” So…is that the Democratic Supermajority down to the Governors, the CDC, NIH, or Pfizer that we should blame for it, arrest, chop up and spread to the winds? I mean, just point us in the right direction and we’ll get the people responsible for this mess.

    But not to fear: “At an Oslo Christmas party, almost three-quarters of attendees were infected even though all reported a negative test result one to three days before.”

    Tests don’t work anyway, so why worry if you can get one? A load off my mind.

    “The various measures that controlled the spread of other variants—masks, better ventilation, contact tracing, quarantine, and restrictions on gatherings”

    Apparently we have a different definition of “work”. Perhaps he doesn’t know the difference between “Raging deadly worldwide pandemic” and “Working great: All good.”

    Next sentence: “After Delta’s emergence, it became clear that the coronavirus was too transmissible to fully eradicate.” …that he just said we nicely controlled. So we controlled it so much it’s everywhere, un-eradicable? We are in control of it, so we, you PMCs, WANT it? ‘Cause if I were in control, I wouldn’t want it, but that’s just me.

    “Vaccinating the world can curtail those possibilities,” with a vaccine you just said doesn’t work. Against a variant that is entirely undeterred by it, as seen – as you suggested – in Israel. This is your “matter of moral urgency”: spending billions of my money, the money of the poor, transferring it to rich individuals and multinational corporations, with threat of arrest and prison, on a thing you just swore a sacred oath won’t work in the slightest. Very moral indeed. “God’s work.” Depending on your god.

    Individualism couldn’t beat Delta,” And neither could collectivism. Singapore is a top Covid spot, as are Israel, UK, and other collective states. Meanwhile, Florida is the safest state in the Union. Again.

    Sorry you had to read that. Sharing my agony as a fellow brain-owner, I guess.

    But the news goes ever on. It’s like Lamb Chop, the Song that Never Ends. “If all the girls at Columbia Journalism were laid end-to-end … I wouldn’t be surprised.” -Dorothy Parker.

    The point is, this is what’s out there as “The Narrative” and the media, scientific, and people’s consensus. This is the “New Logic,” backing the “New Normal”, defended even to assault and murder.

    “New details paint ‘insane’ picture of how right wing media obtained Biden daughter’s diary” — Rachel Maddow

    Oh so the diary is REAL, Ms. Maddow? That’s great to know. However if so, its contents are very disturbing. Appalling sexual felonies, I believe, by Mr. Biden. So…? What’s your move here? Trash the right wing and have Biden arrested, or what?

    Also on NBC: All Trump, all the time; Trump’s Trump channel. …What? Who?

    Remember we were going to track what’s been recently censored and banned as a perfect outline on the moves and location of Mr. Global, the Invisible Man? Something like that. So NBC clearly believes something’s about to happen with Orange Man. Which is Bad. Of course. They are having New York indict him for — get this — self-promoting and talking up his businesses. Can you believe that? Put this man in prison Right. Now! A businessman being optimistic and selling himself. I never heard the like! And to get loans. Can you imagine if those poor banks got the loans, found out they were all worthless “piles of dog s–t” would collapse the whole financial system, worth only 19c on the dollar? Why they’d come honest immediately! And the new popular President would enforce such needed honesty. Not like Mr. Trump! Well I say good sir!

    But again: Leftists/CNN/Government/CIA all know something is about to happen with Dr. Orange, and we here, the public, the Right, even Congressmen like Rand Paul don’t. What does that mean to you? Maybe CNN/CIA/US Feds are all one unit, one party, one god? It’s a big club and you ain’t in it?

    See, it used to be the Party in the USSR, you knew who they were. They carried cards, held positions, easy stuff. But in a nation of coast-to-coast non-stop liars, we can’t have that. Nike needs to be able to say “I’m a rebel, Dottie, a drifter,” the little guy, the underdog outsider resistance. Totally down wi’t it and they’re black, yo. Trans-racial. Fist power. So they can’t just admit they’re born, life-long, entitled, born-billionaire, 7th son idiot shills who couldn’t win checkers against Hannah Montana. So there’s the same Party Member Politoboro that is more equal than others, but we can’t tell you who they are. …So that you could even avoid getting squashed by them. Which we are all the time. That would be too easy.

    But that leads to the other consequence: that since there’s no List, no one knows who’s ON the list or who’s now OFF the list and about to be arrested, like Madoff (there are so few examples) or murdered and fed to their peers like Bear Sterns. I don’t think THEY know. It’s all a big popularity contest, which is what it comes down to, ultimately: if money doesn’t mean anything, like in Capitalism, then only social connections and popularity have value. They are now your currency, your money. But unlike money, they can appear for no reason and be removed and stolen for no reason. It’s the ultimate insecurity, the infinite sword of Damocles.

    This is the world Democratic Socialists want for everyone, even if they don’t fully realize it: everything for my friends, who are good and right, and nothing for you, you ignorant troll. It’s basically a 13 year-old girl sleepover party as life, complete with crying and suicides.

    Again, Capitalism isn’t much better, but at least it’s least-bad. There you have both, which can offset each other and give you a safe island and counterweight. You can’t get rid of popularity and social opinions, nor should you. They pretend social credit and the respect of your name doesn’t matter, in Capitalism, but it really does. Whole brands like Coke or Elon are based on it and have “intangible” book value of billions. “Intangible” value you can issue stock and get loans against. Just like sports and media stars, lawyers, politicians, contractors, authors, spiritualists, and anyone else you meet.

    Vice versa, your money means nothing and they’ll just jail and execute you, steal your Dacha, and cut you out of the Party photos. ‘Cuz Stalin is a 13-year-old girl.

    You know, like they’re doing right now.

    And the American Experiment goes on.

    #95555
    Germ
    Participant

    ‘Morning All,

    I recently decided to step away from the madness, hence my lack of posting.
    By now, it’s abundantly clear what’s unfolding and little more needs to be added by me.

    Here are just a couple of sickeners:

    Another 20 year old athlete dies suddenly:
    https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/guardians-minor-leaguer-andres-melendez-dies-suddenly-in-miami/

    And now they’re going for the kids:

    “Pfizer tests third vaccine dose in children under five, says two doses are not strong enough
    ” …vaccination experts have recommended the Pfizer vaccine be made available to all children aged five to 11-years-old to help prevent serious illness from COVID-19.”

    https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/coronavirus/pfizer-tests-third-vaccine-dose-in-children-under-five-says-two-doses-are-not-strong-enough/news-story/20dfe62aaad7507badcb75b526ab02fa

    And with that, I wish you all Happy Holidays.
    And remember – “The Vaxxed Are Fucked”

    #95556
    oxymoron
    Participant

    The day before the last day of my eldest sons last day at Primary school (12 yo – so translate to your place’s preferred school term) a child got a runny nose. Oh oh!

    The madness – the testing station (100 foot wide) brought in from the big smoke, the email chatting amongst parents, the agonizing, the shame they displayed to each other as they shared their pos or neg stats. The children not seeing friends, the closing of the entire school so that NONE of the children were allowed to say good bye or sign shirts with black pens, or have water fights…
    So now, I find out my son is Negative after reluctantly submitting to a nose/brain probe invasion and sending his medical info off to a private blood/spit analysis company – (probably owned by mine and your favourite DNA harvesting vampires at Blackcock)

    The new social bond is a thing to behold. The joining in self-induced and government assisted torture is assured and I fear Desmet is correct in assuming the minute they silence us is the minute the atrocities begin. These people are just shy of the self-harming phase.
    If I had white powder and rum I would partake RIGHT NOW. People and their unacknowledged fear can be highly irritating and restrictive I am noticing.

    So many anecdotes and so little time but here in Australia it is absolutely bat-shit crazy. BELIEVE ME

    #95557
    ctbarnum
    Participant

    @V.-Arnold

    Caught it. 🙂


    @upstateNYer

    Thought it made our point rather well. 🙂

    #95558
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    @ctbarnum: Sometimes I feel quite dismayed by humans … then I see something like that tree and realize just how funny, artistic and creative we can be and it makes me feel more optimistic. 🙂

    #95559
    John Day
    Participant

    Hello Oxymoron in “a land down under”. [Glad you were out of “rum and coke”, Mate!]
    I finally got my blog up late last night, so it’s back there, but I opened with what you posted and followed it with everything else in the pantry of COVID-Tyranny for breakfast, lunch ad dinner…

    “Satyagraha” (with construction picture) https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/12/satyagraha.html

    Developing a satyagraha for the medical freedom movement​ Thanks “oxymoron” in Oz.
    ​Gandhi understood that overthrowing empires requires an entire metaphysics
    ​ ​Gandhi developed a philosophy called satyagraha — satya is “truth which equals love”, āgraha means “holding firm”,
    so satyagraha is “holding firm to the truth that is love”.
    Satyagraha has a number of core principles including:
    1. Nonviolence (ahimsa)
    2. Truth — this includes honesty, but goes beyond it to mean living fully in accord with and in devotion to that which is true
    3. Not stealing
    4. Non-attachment
    5. Dignity of manual labor
    6. Control of desires
    7. Fearlessness
    8. Equal respect for all religions
    9. Economic strategies such as boycotts of imported goods (swadeshi)
    https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/developing-a-satyagraha-for-the-medical?

    … skipping all of the COVID stories for convenience …

    ​In a recent UN vote to denounce Nazism, 2 countries voted against, the Ukraine and the USA.​
    NATO countries have been gearing up for a European war in Ukraine, against Russia, which would benefit none of the involved parties.
    Historically, such real-wars serve to enforce social cohesion, which can be expected to evaporate in the upcoming financial/economic crisis, especially in EU countries, but also in the US.
    This is brinksmanship, and Russian national security is directly at stake.
    Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke recently, for the first time of Chinese “allies”. There is not yet a known mutual defense pact between Russia and China. Such a compact would probably include Russian interests regarding Ukrainian demilitarization, and also the Taiwan Straits, though Russia would hardly sign on to a voluntary Chinese invasion of Taiwan (IMHO).
    Russia has presented a list of security demands, not negotiating points.
    Russia has natural gas, and is honoring all contracts, but is not selling into the EU spot market this winter, which is getting cold.
    Approving and opening Nordstream-2 is the answer to that, but what other inducements to reason does Russia have for NATO, especially for the Americans?
    This needs to be taken a lot more seriously than western politicians are taking it.
    Macron of France seems to have an inkling, but not Boris Johnson, who is afraid of looking soft as his popularity drops, and certainly not “Joe Biden”.
    Moon of Alabama has a detailed assessment. Pulling the trigger on this war when the economy crashes would be a really bad idea.
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/ukraine-russia-makes-serious-demands-warns-of-confrontation-.html#more

    #95560
    John Day
    Participant

    This morning, I bring you “Ancient Vitamin-D Protection”, one thing, and another construction photo.
    Maybe David Grimes MD could be offered a guest post about vitamin-D?
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/12/ancient-vitamin-d-protection.html

    Descendants of Plankton,

    David Grimes MD is a vitamin-D expert in England. I have recently been introduced to his work.
    Here, I have excerpted from his blog post of 11/10/21.
    The history of vitamin-D allowing evolution of immune responses was “illuminating”.
    The hypothesis of immune system dysfunction after vaccination being caused by vitamin-D depletion is testable.

    The evolution of the immune response
    ​It is necessary to understand the immune response that has developed during 500 million years of evolution.

    ​ ​Evolution is full of mysteries, but a critical stage of evolution was the appearance of an intracellular protein that became the key to immunity. This protein is what we now call VDR, which stands for Vitamin D Receptor. It was the evolution of VDR 500 million years ago that was probably the initiator of the Cambrian explosion of advanced life-forms. The development of immunity meant that very primitive animal life, for example plankton, could evolve into more complex forms without being at the total mercy of pre-existing bacteria and viruses.
    ​ ​And so it is today. Without immunity we would not survive infancy and we would become extinct. Immunity is vital and we have seen the effects of seriously damaged immunity in the recent AIDS pandemic. We must not forget this. We must respect immunity and the need for its optimisation. We must understand it.

    The evolution of VDR was critical, but VDR would have had no function had it not been for Vitamin D which had evolved a billion years earlier.
    ​ ​Plankton at the surface of the oceans were at risk of physical damage by UV from the Sun. They ultimately developed genetically programmed diurnal vertical migration, meaning that they spend the night at the surface and descend deeper in the water during the day.
    ​ ​But they developed another method of protection from UV, a chemical sunscreen. Starting from the long-chain squalene, otherwise known as shark oil, they became capable of synthesising steroid compounds, a process that is blocked by statin drugs (taken only by humankind in recent years). The important sunscreen steroid became the oil 7-dehydrocholesterol, 7-DHC. This will sound familiar to readers of the Blog. UV converts 7-DHC in the skin into cholecalciferol which we know as vitamin D. Within plankton this physico-chemical process absorbs UV energy and thus protects the plankton from damage.

    ​ ​For a billion years vitamin D had no function and it was merely a waste product of the sunscreen 7-DHC. But by another accident of evolution it became critical because it was able to activate VDR into the major player in the immune process. The Cambrian explosion was initiated.

    Understanding our immunity

    ​ ​We know about T-cells that produce tissue immunity and B-cells that produce humoral antibody immunity, but the important process is the rapid escalation of immunity that is essential in response to infection if an optimal effect and recovery is to be achieved. This will also apply to the pseudo-infection of vaccination. The driving force is to switch on the genes that bring about multiplication of the immune cells and their effects, a genetically controlled amplification that can be 75-fold.
    ​ ​The genes are activated by an intracellular dimer composed of VDR and RXR, Retinoid X Receptor. However the VDR component must first be activated by 1,25(OH)D, otherwise known as calcitriol, the fully active form of vitamin D that is produced within immune cells.
    ​ ​Activation of the genes will switch on or increase the production of defensive proteins including antibodies that act within tissue fluids to control and eliminate infection, the purpose of immunity.
    ​ ​The immune cells are able to increase greatly the synthesis of VDR, but before the gene-activating VDR-RXR dimer can be formed, VDR must be activated, ‘unlocked’, by 1,25(OH)D which cannot be synthesised de novo. It can only be formed by hydroxylation (addition of an -OH group) of 25(OH)D, the number indicting the point on the molecule to which the -OH group becomes attached. 25(OH)D is the form of Vitamin D that has already been hydroxylated in the liver and which circulates in the blood.

    Consumption of Vitamin D and exhaustion of reserves
    ​ ​Too much 1,25(OH)D produced in response to the escalation of immunity could cause subsequent problems of ‘hypervitaminosis D’, with an excess of calcium in the blood and in the urine. But evolution has solved this problem: the 1,25(OH)D molecule can be used only once, after which it is inactivated by conversion into 24,25(OH)D. The process of escalation of immunity requires a large number of single-use 1,25(OH)D molecules to activate a multitude of VDR molecules. Therefore a constant supply of 1,25(OH)D is essential and so there must be in the blood a good reserve of its immediate precursor 25(OH)D, the circulating form of vitamin D that is also known as calcidiol or calcifediol.

    ​ ​A serious infection such as Covid-19 will consume significant amounts of 1,25(OH)D, and so we can expect to see a reduction of the blood level of 25(OH)D as a result of such an infection. As far as I am aware, such research has not been performed during the pandemic, or at least not published, despite how simple it would be.

    ​ ​The magnitude of the inevitable fall in blood level of Vitamin D, 25(OH)D, following vaccination has not been reported. Perhaps it has not been investigated, but if it has been investigated by the pharmaceutical companies, the results will only be published if there is commercial benefit. Obviously, as with Covid-19, a good level of Vitamin D, 25(OH)D, in the blood (greater than 40ng/ml, 100nmol/L) would have sustained the escalation of immunity. But if before the infection or vaccination the blood level had been critically low (less than 20ng/ml, 50nmol/L), then a reduction would have reduced the level to a point that the escalation of the immune process would be halted, with a high risk of significant illness, perhaps critical or fatal.​..

    ​The proposal
    ​ ​My proposal is that the decline of immunity following vaccinations is not because of a ‘poisoning’ of immunity, but because the reservoir of Vitamin D as 25(OH)D within the blood becomes exhausted by the immune responses to successive vaccinations.
    ​ ​The investigation of this would be very simple. Blood would be taken for Vitamin D measurement immediately before vaccination and one month later. The two samples would be analysed together, following the second blood test. Previous Covid-19 would need to be recorded, and of course the dose of any vitamin D supplement taken.
    ​ ​This simple study could be undertaken in any public health vaccination centre. Ethical approval would be needed but I can envisage no conflict with ethics and what is in the best interests of individuals and the population. My view is that it has been unethical to withhold Vitamin D during this pandemic, contrasting with the official narrative that Vitamin D is of no value in the management of Covid-19…

    ​ ​The problems go beyond Covid-19 in that we are now hearing reports of increasing pressures from hospital admissions in greater numbers than are seasonal, and that most are not Covid-19. If admissions due to other conditions are increasing, it is likely that we are faced with impaired immunity due to exhaustion of body stores of Vitamin D in turn resulting from the vaccination programme. This could be corrected very easily and very rapidly.
    ​We are also hearing official reports of excess deaths from cardiovascular disease in recent weeks. Why should this suddenly occur? Could this serious phenomenon be result of the vaccination programme? Is it the direct result of exhaustion of Vitamin D reserves due to the effects of the vaccination process? Could it be stopped by finding and correcting VItamin D deficiency? The challenge is urgent and the problem must not be witheld from the population.

    ​ ​Vitamin D in its metabolic forms has been very successfully ignored by official bodies during the pandemic of Covid-19. Evidence of benefit has been side-lined for the flimsiest of reasons and without any debate. The reason for this has been to protect the vaccine roll-out. The vaccines in use have still not been licensed and are still being used under Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA). This is dependent on there being no alternative prevention or treatment, resulting in the burial not just of Vitamin D but also ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
    http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2021/11/covid-19-vitamin-d-urgent-vaccines-need.html

    ​Now Better Informed​
    ​(pictured yesterday before discovering shoes were too slick on that surface)​

    #95564
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Introduction

    “Anarchist thinkers have long identified the jealousy inherent to the modern state; an exclusive sovereignty claimed against other nation states, secessionists, non-state geopolitical actors, and especially against independent organization by the people themselves. However, under neo-liberalism, the centrality of the state has been eroded and much of its productive capacity and governing power has been ceded to private corporations and supranational bodies. Conceived thusly, the state no longer jealously guards its sovereignty, but hands it over willingly, and even acts as a ‘broker’ for capital (Chowdhury 2020), intervening to shape society to suit market interests. The Covid-19 crisis appears to confirm this ‘unjealous’ ceding of productive capacity, with the UK government handing out £16.5 billion to private corporations to carry out core services and meet essential needs (up to 26th October 2020 (Tussell)). On closer inspection though, the neo-liberal principle of market competition has been absent during the crisis, and the cronyistic embrace between the government and private corporations has (further) blurred the distinction between state and capital. Moreover, the crisis has in fact enflamed the state’s inherent jealousies, as evident in attempts to co-opt and suppress the upwelling of mutual aid initiatives that have autonomously addressed peoples’ needs during the crisis”
    ***
    “The crony Covid state

    “Neo-liberal ideology demands that the state ‘roll back’, offering up production and services to the supposed eciencies of free market competition, and the UK government faithfully privatizes any-and-all of its functions as a priority. This has been augmented in the Covid-19pandemic crisis, with unprecedented sums handed over to private corporations. Indeed, the UK government no longer has the capacity to meet basic social needs, even at a time of crisis– the state has already outsourced itself to the point of incompetence.”

    ’I am the Lord thy God Government’

    A song for the common human

    Hey, can you hear me now
    As I fade away
    And lose my ground?
    Maybe you’d like to know
    What I’d have to say
    If I was still around
    Now I’m made of smoke
    You see through to me
    It’s the strangest joke
    You can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t stop the invisible man
    Why do the lights go down
    Or run to someone new?
    Well, let them learn
    I used to own this town
    Now I’m watchin’ you
    Now it’s my turn
    Now I’m made of mist
    Will you know
    When you’ve been kissed?
    Can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t stop the invisible man
    Now I’m almost free
    Disappearing
    Don’t cry for me
    You can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t touch the invisible man
    Can’t stop the invisible man
    Can’t stop the invisible man
    <end>

    I have no idea what Joe was smoking to mar this excellent song with such a weak chorus.

    #95565
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr.D. Another good post. Got projects?


    @Germ
    : Don’t give up. It’s a long war if we keep “not losing”.


    @Ilargi
    : I’m serious about seeing if David Grimes MD will write a Vitamin-D special
    I’ll email him and ask.

    #95566
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Of all the stupid things I could have thought
    This was the worst
    I started to believe
    That I was born at seventeen
    And all the stupid things
    The letters and the broken verse
    Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer
    They’d always been
    And now I plough through piles
    Of bills, receipts and credit cards
    And tickets and the Daily News
    And sometimes I just . . .
    want to go back to my home town
    Though I know it’ll never be the same
    Back to my home town
    ‘Cause it’s been so long
    And I’m wondering if it’s still there
    We think we’re pretty smart
    Us city slickers get around
    And when the going’s rough
    We kill the pain and relocate
    We’re never married
    Never faithful not to any town
    But we never leave the past behind
    We just accumulate
    So sometimes when the music stops
    I seem to hear a distant sound
    Of waves and seagulls
    Football crowds and church bells
    And I . . .
    want to go back to my home town
    Though I know it’ll never be the same
    Back to my home town
    ‘Cause it’s been so long
    And I’m wondering if it’s still there
    Back to my home town
    Though I know it’ll never be the same
    Back to my home town
    ‘Cause it’s been so long
    And I’m wondering if it’s still there

    Look Homeward, Angels

    #95567
    Germ
    Participant
    #95568
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I agree with DrJDay. Today was a good day for Dr.D posting. DrD inspires me when he gets his game on.

    ***

    A thought concerning media: when they lie as much as they do, they lose sight of what they’re lying about. (insert old Twain quip about tracking one’s lies being like herding cats in a roomful of rocking chairs)

    That’s when they lose power. It’s already happening, and no heir apparent is yet even vaguely visible through the mist of destruction their loss of power will induce once the people realize that the nanny state is broke, is too stupid to be terrified but too terrified to be stupid, and is basically just another dumb blunt instrument with which to beat the dirt. Since we the people are the State (insert DrD quip about constitutional wallpaper being spray-painted over with wokester slogans and proud boy shout-outs), this means that we also are too stupid to be terrified but too terrified to be stupid, and are basically just another dumb blunt instrument with which to beat the dirt.

    ***
    I predict Santa Claus becoming extremely important to the spiritual lives of today’s soon-to-be paupers and invalids.

    Say Your Prayers
    ***

    Which reminds me. WES likes my Xmas blatherings. Here is such a thing (I suppose I must break it into WordPress-friendly parts):

    Solstice
    And now (drum roll, please, Little Drummer Boy), the annual telling of The Story of Christmas:

    SOL FEUD

    Winter solstice. From December 16th through 26th there is a period of eleven days when the length of winter daylight remains the same. These are The Dark Days or, more precisely, Long Dark Nights, and it is during these solar doldrums that winter properly begins. They serve as the four seasons’ Ultima Thule, an astrogeographical boundary informing us that this is as bad as it gets, that even as earth and sky grow colder still, the sun will dig itself out yet. From these Dark Days forth, our weathered souls journey through darkness towards more and warmer light.

    As a ritual passage, solstice has authority, anchoring the year with the heft of a calendrical paperweight. (Water-filled glass globe containing a faux pewter wolf figurine, a sliver of plastic white moon, and snow storms shaken by hand.) As an astronomical event, it has the benefit of ancient history and a precise, simple definition : ‘sun stand still’. Of course, the sun is not notoriously fidgety nor does it ever really stand still. The stillness involved here is the high and low resting points in the sun’s annual trek through the seasons – the summer and winter solstices. These standstills occur on roughly the twenty-firsts of June and December.

    In ancient times, our cultural ancestors made a very big deal of this winter passage. As their sun stood lowest, they celebrated Saturn, supreme deity of their celestial pantheon, a luminary of paramount position in the night sky. Standing highest above the horizon of all His fellow astral deities : Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and even mighty Sol, Saturn maintains the sun’s summer villa in the sky, holding his seat for him though not keeping it warm. Warmth and luxuriance are the sun’s province; faith amid dark times is Saturn’s.

    Two millennia ago, Saturn’s grand fete, Saturnalia, began on December 19th. As the holiday grew more popular, it extended for seven days, climaxing on December 25th which, as any Christian scholar can tell you, is not Christ’s birthday. It is, however, the birthday of Mithras, who was an ancient deity of the early Persians, a sun god mostly derived from the ancient Sumerian god, Marduk. Marduk’s celestial priority was to fight Chaos (the underworld) in a battle for the world, a theomachy which took place during the twelve days of the Sumerian New Year, or Zagmuk, as they called it. One of the quaint rituals of Zagmuk was human sacrifice, usually of a criminal or prisoner who stood in for the Sumerian king, among whose divine obligations was to provide human sacrifice for Marduk. Technically, the king was bodily responsible to provide the sacrifice, but a good king delegates, yes? Merry Zagmuk!

    Specifically, Marduk’s fight was to push the sun up from the underworld’s sinister grasp and thereby return summer to Sumeria. The Sumerian kingdom gave way to Babylon, whose next-door neighbor, Persia, adopted much of Marduk into their state religion, Zoroastrianism, which produced the cult of Mithraism, centered upon their sun god, Mithras…and there you are. Mithraism arose contemporaneously with Christianity and shared a remarkable degree of similarities; in fact, the two religions battled it out heavily until the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

    Mithras was considered by the Persians to be a son of Zrvan Akarana, or Infinite Time. The Romans ultimately renamed Zrvan into Saturnus, or Saturn, and replaced Zagmuk with Sol Invictus, or ‘sun invincible’. Romans were a vain lot and I presume their priests felt they expressed greater dignity intoning ‘Sol Invictus!’ rather than ’Zagmuk!’. I know I would.

    GODZILLIONS

    Roman culture was a kind of Ellis Island of the Gods, immigrating the ancient gods of their neighbors into the modern ken, often corrupting the good name of a perfectly good theos into a “Theo’’. Thus Zeus became Jove, and Zrvan Akarana became Saturn, as theogony gave way to neology.

    There is more here than scholastic word games. The neologisms of divine nomenclature have served the politics of empire handily, from ancient tribal theocracy on through the divine right of kings (a right usually expressed as the power of kings to be right even or especially when they were wrong), to the modern American’s pledge of allegiance to “One nation under God”. This may help to explain how, for example, the old Grecian name, Theodore, meaning ‘gift of God’, became the Teutonic name, Theodoric, meaning ‘ruler of the people’, eventually becoming today’s Theodore as in Roosevelt.

    Anyway, it is quite clear that, originally, December 25th had nothing to do with Christ’s actual birthdate, which is unknown to current history. December 25th as J.C.’s birthdate is strictly a mythopolitical borrowing. For that matter, Saturnalia was not entirely nor originally Saturn’s festival. The earlier Greeks paid tribute during solstice to Cronus, big daddy of all their earthly deities and father, in fact, of Zeus (or Jove or Jupiter or, perhaps, Theodore, Simon, and Alvin, the ancient Monks of Chip). Cross-culturally associated with Saturn, Cronus was falsely identified by mythologians as the father of time. “Falsely identified”, says my copy of the 1947 Encyclopaedia Britannica. A teste paternity suit which, we shall see, was resolved only by the removal of its two key witnesses.

    Associated with agriculture, Cronus was known for swallowing His children and, for some reason, not much worshipped. Go figure. Cronus was represented by the image of an old man carrying a sickle and still seems to hang on in our winter festivities as Father Time (apparently He wasn’t totally successful in contesting that temporal paternity suit). He has become the Grim Reaper, traditional New Year’s master of ceremonies, carrying the sickle which represents not only the hoped-for harvest and ultimate triumph of Death but also the curved sword with which He removed His father’s testicles at the request of His mother, Ge or Gaea (Earth), who was titanically tired of being kept barefoot and pregnant. (Thus resolving the paternity suit; “testicles” is a Latin word meaning “little witnesses”.) EB’47 states that “among Her offspring by Uranus”(Her now-neutered husband) “were the Cyclopes, the Hundred-Handed Ones[the Hecatoncheires] and the Titans, along with five sea-deities by Her other husband, Pontus, the sea-god”… she’d had enough.

    To clarify this trailer park mytholineage: Cronus was the avenging son who sliced the family jewels; Uranus was His daddy; Gaea was Cronus’s overbred mother. Ancient mythology degenerates into a senile genealogy, like an antebellum Mississippi plantationer’s family tree. Modern Christianity has clarified divine lineage for the most part, shuffling the whole mess into poor Mary’s lap with the Immaculate Conception (or, as the Babylonians termed it: ‘Kindasorta Didbutdidn’t’).

    Uranus was dethroned by the very same avenging son who detesticalized Him, and currently lives out of state, about 1,800,000,000 miles from Sol. Having let Himself grow soft, He is now an immense gasbag some 32,00 miles wide, a planetary couch potato whose rotational axis lounges horizontally (as opposed to all the other planets’ ‘upright’ position of a north /south rotational axis).

    Cronus’s daddy Uranus may have been an old hillbilly peckerwood but Cronus was even worse than His old man. Attempting to evade a prophecy stating that one of His offspring would dethrone Him, Cronus ate His offspring at birth. I remind you here that, to Cronus, dethronement was synonymous with visceral demasculation. Of course, if He had only applied His sickle to His own ‘little witnesses’, He could have circumvented the prophecy altogether. Apparently the gods too have difficulty seeing past the ends of their totem poles. Either way, Cronus was more than a little insecure about His masculinity. His wife, Rhea, was His sister before Their marriage. (One begins to see the difficulty of establishing paternity short of eliminating witnesses.) Rhea tricked Him at last by substituting a stone in a blanket in place of Their newborn, Zeus. A palate accustomed to the tender flesh of one’s children would not, of course, be fooled by this. Suffering indigestion, Cronus hurled and spewed mighty chunks. Gods do not merely vomit. They hurl, titanically, upchucking great volcanic cuds of primaeval nausea. In so doing, old Cronus inadvertently disgorged his previously cannibalized children. And you think you have a hard time raising your kids, or explaining why Mom’s third husband is younger than your big sister…

    SATURDAY NIGHTS IN FAT CITY

    Still, all things considered, Saturnalia rightly belongs to Saturn. During solsticial Saturnalia, a temporary Golden Age was enacted. (It is only fair to mention that Cronus’s reign was also considered a Golden Age for mankind – if not for His kids.) Again quoting EB’47 :

    “All business, public and private, was at a standstill; schools were closed, executions and military operations did not take place, slaves were temporarily free, feasting with and even waited on by their masters and saying what they chose. All and sundry were greeted with ‘io Saturnalia’ (i.e. ‘yeah Saturn!’), and presents were freely exchanged, the traditional ones being wax candles and little clay dolls.

    “Concerning those quaint gifts, the antiquaries had a story telling that an old prophecy bade the earliest inhabitants of Latium send ‘fota ’ to Saturn and heads to Pluto” … “that they interpreted this as meaning human sacrifices, but that Hercules advised them to use lights and not human heads” (apparently fota can mean both ‘head’ and ‘light’; the two separated only by a twist of pronunciation). “Gambling with dice, generally forbidden, was allowed, a custom which is exactly paralleled from Nepal. Saturnus himself was untied, presumably to come out and join in the fun.”
    No kidding; I didn’t make any of this up (except for the part about the Chip Monks, and Kindasorta Didbutdidn’t). Strange bit of scholarly lore. Nepal? Beats me. I don’t write encyclopedias; I just read them.

    So Hercules possibly saved innumerable criminals and prisoners from sacrificial beheadings by suggesting a semantic sleight of hand. As shell games go, switching homonyms is subtler than swapping a stone in a blanket for a swaddling babe and, apparently, more effective; Pluto didn’t even burp. The bit about untying Saturnus’ feet alludes to the ropes of wool that were normally kept tied around the feet of Saturnus’ statues (probably to prevent Him from gadding about collecting those unspeakable “fota’s” that presumably were symbolized by little clay dolls). One can see why the term ‘pagan’ has come to have a bad rep, just as modern Christians avoid seeming too… Inquisitive?

    On such Dark Nights, candles would be appropriate, of course, but “little clay dolls”? If candles replaced heads, what would dolls replace? Specifically little clay ones? Baked in ovens? Little terra cotta gingerbread people? The suggestions are grisly but the truth is unknown and I have a point to make before I finish this paragraph. I have a theory regarding gifts of candles and little clay dolls. May I suggest that this marks the start of the tradition of senseless Christmas gifts? You know: “I didn’t know what to get you, so I got this little clay doll…” One can envision false gratitude as the father of all irrational gift-giving, observing how one display of false enthusiasm (“I LOVE it!”) begets more of the same. Eventually, entire industries would be built around the mandatory giving of the unnecessary. Greeting cards, pet rocks, fruitcakes, Tickle-Me Elmoes… no wonder Cronus ate His kids.

    Mythology is a strange thing. Consider the Christmas story. Camels and Zoroastrian priests (the Magi, or Wise Men), Caesarian tax rates, tinselled fir trees, Judean Messianic prophesies, virginal mothers, shepherds, stables, stars and lowing cattle – what all of these have to do with our annual passage through the Dark Days is almost as muddled in my mind as is the relationship between clay dolls and candles, or the family tree of the gods (which seems effectively symbolized in the glitteringly intertwined chaos of the modern day Yule tree).

    You may note that candles get around, from Saturnalia through Channukah’s Feast of Lights (there’s a name to make a headlight-hungry god happy) to Christmas – which is certainly an highly illuminated event. A candle is to ritual pageantry what alcohol is to taverns and revelry : How else ya gonna set the place on fire?

    “Ritual pageantry.” A happy mid-twentieth century American childhood ideally included a series of happy Christmases spiritually jazzed by sacred music, an abundance of shining lights, bright colors, innocent material lust and a week off from school. Many of us portrayed Wise Men or shepherds or Immaculate Virgins in Christmas pageants. To kneel onstage in front of one’s church fellows in celebration of the birth of a divine being, wearing sacred robes of bath and hoods of towel while carrying some enormous stylization of a shepherd’s crook, was one of the stranger yet more comforting events of my young life. Blue stage lights in my eyes, little Johnny Hauwiller giggling about thieving ‘shepherd crooks’, parents and parishioners before us in the darkened church’s pews: imagine Sir Laurence Olivier attempting Hamlet in pajamas. Of course he could pull it off – and so did we when I and several other prepubescent lads pulled back together in mock fright while angels in sheets, tin foil wings and jiggling haloes, appeared from the backstage heavens singing hymns to the baby Jesus. I imagine we looked more like The Three Stooges recoiling from a sudden adversary – perhaps the landlord or a man in a gorilla suit – than we resembled The Three Wise Men shrinking in fearful awe.

    ‘Three’, by the way, is a Biblically unsubstantiated number only guessed from the three Biblically mentioned categories of gifts : gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Three gifts: three guys. Sure. The Magi were high priests of a sect, originating from Persia and beyond, thought to be the precursor of Zoroastrianism /Mithraism. This is the religion from which the mighty Zarathustra spake thusly, long before providing Richard Strauss the inspiration, via Nietsche’s book of the same name, for Thus Spake Zarathustra, Strauss’s symphonic tone poem. This is the music that provided such eerie musical accompaniment to those grisly slo-mo shots, in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, of apemen (or men in gorilla suits) discovering the mighty power of The Club as they triumphantly smashed bones and brothers into bits beside the silent and mysterious monolith. Note that this giant stone was not wrapped in a blanket – nor in wrapping paper.

    The Magi were regarded as the real thing : high-tech voodoo practitioners capable of performing wondrous miracles, hence the word Magi-c. They certainly brought appropriate gifts for newlywed out-of-towners down on their luck and camped with their firstborn in a smelly stable. Gold, frankincense and myrrh: cash, room deodorizer and cologne. Clay dolls and candles wouldn’t have been nearly so thoughtful, yes?

    As a time of ritual giving, the solstices of times past had certain advantages. Being at the end of harvest and before the winter planting, there was both abundance and leisure. When else would an agrarian community have both the materials and time to make, for example, candles and little dolls? It was the one time of the year when the larder was full. The term ‘larder’ derives from ‘lard’, and lard was a precious commodity in ancient, even recent, times past. Fat is one of those instable isotopes of which there is always either too much or too little.

    Lard kept people warm, both through calories and insulation. Equally or even more importantly, lard made candles and oil for lamps. It was so precious a commodity that whale blubber made fortunes for any Ahab able to capitalize a whaling ship, manage it well and land a few fat whales.

    Fat led humanity beyond. The quest for lard led men to Arctic waters and into oversized rowboats to harpoon Leviathan. Imagine, for comparison, taking on a grizzly bear with a Swiss army knife. Oh, I’m sure that Hercules or Sir Laurence Olivier could pull it off, at least against a man in a leviathan suit, but we’re talking about men in wooden boats playing picador/matador to the largest water buffaloes known to man. Lard was, in fact, so scarce that soap and bathing were largely ignored until recent times because of the scarcity of fat for making soap. A great perfume industry toiled to hide our stench from each other. Hence the overnight fortunes for whaler captains if they scored some ambergris, that mysterious substance (essentially whale bile) so vital to the perfumes of previous centuries.

    Solstice time was dark and candles weren’t cheap. They made perfect gifts. Little clay dolls? Some mysteries remain impenetrable. Some of the harsher realities of human existence remain – not unspeakable nor unprintable but – unpalatable? Ask Cronus, or whomever you can find to answer to the name: Father Time.

    One reason that a good or ‘real’ Christmas is so difficult to achieve nowadays is today’s relative absence of scarcity. A famine of abundance grips the land. How to celebrate abundance in a culture whose poorest often have more than did all but antiquity’s wealthiest? Who have little or no concept of how incredibly wealthy they are? Only one hundred and fifty years ago, December was Fat City. Early winter was when there was both a pig to roast and an apple to put in its mouth, along with time on your hands (unless you were a factory worker). Even slaves were able to take it relatively easy, which partially explains the Roman tradition of temporary manumission during solstice. Indulge a slave with time on its hands lest it plan a successful revolution. Keep it drunk and generally sated.

    Anciently, there were numerous Roman festivals besides Saturnalia: Bacchanalia, Lupercalia, Liberalia and more. Other cultures and countries had theirs as well, but Roman culture is about as representative of European culture as it gets. Saturnalia was the biggie, the great survivor from antiquity. A study of Saturnalia will suffice to trace the pagan roots of today’s winter religious festivities of contemporary Christendom.

    LATITUDINAL LONGINGS

    “Trace the pagan roots”: a handy expression, especially as applied to comparisons of Western European cultures to Eastern Eurasian cultures. It sounds like a hairdresser’s term, a way of separating the Teutonic blond from the dark roots of Semitic brunette.

    Tracing the blond roots of my Anglo-Saxon heritage to their roots in the geographical scalp, I find that all of we from the British Isles lived above the 50th parallel, sort of along the globe’s eyebrow ridge below the arctic hairline of the polar cap (which lies at 66 degrees latitude). The Scots, of which I am one, lived above the 55th parallel. Our Norwegian compatriots, such as my wife’s ancestors, lived from the 58th parallel to well above the Arctic Circle. My ancestors’ immigration to America bequeathed to me a distinct solar advantage, that of growing up in Chicago at roughly 42 degrees latitude, where the winter nights aren’t nearly so long as those of my Scotch and Norse kin.

    Pause to do the numbers: according to The Old Farmers Almanac, December 26th is the last of the Dark Days of winter solstice. In Chicago, December 26th’s daylight will last 9 hours. Locations at 55 degrees latitude receive 7 hours & 10 minutes. Those living above 61 degrees shiver by on a sliver of sunlight lasting 5 hours & 28 minutes, while folks above 64 degrees barely adjust their eyes to the light before their 3 hours-&-46-minutes-long sun squint leaves them again in the dark basin of cold.

    My Scottish forebears, located between the 55th and 61st parallels, survived on 5 & 1/2 to 7 hours’ solar nourishment during the Dark Days. These rations of light and warmth were served in a climate known for its dense and unrelenting fogs. Nights lasted 18 hours. My wife’s ancestors above the 58th parallel were geographically insane, victims of a frigid sensory-deprivation chamber known as Norse winter. Their necessary ingredients for a happy (or at least survivable) holiday were logs, lard, lager, lullabies, and liturgies along with lust, lasciviousness, licentiousness, lassitude and languor. Fa-la-la-la-la — la-la-la-la. These days were hellaciously holy long before Santa deposed St. Nicholas, Jesus deposed Mithras, Mithras deposed Ba’al, or Uranus lost His euphemisms.

    Rome, great-grandparent of what we call Western civilization, is located along the 42nd parallel, about the same as Erie, PA (dismal name), Kalamazoo, MI (sounds like a wizard’s sneeze), and my hometown, Chicago, (located at the frostbit extremity of Lake Michigan’s icy Xmas stocking). In ancient and superstitious Rome, Saturnalia took place on days and nights respectively lasting 9 and 15 hours. They, too, felt the black pinch and were quite ready, come mid-December, to drink, dine and dance the nights away.

    Then is when an interesting social inversion would take place, a reversal of roles between master and slave, priest and believer, even men and women. From dressing in drag to mocking the higher orders to drinking one’s fill of the master’s finest, the human model of the world was stood on its head and, rather than objecting to this, it delighted in it, dancing on its hands and clapping its feet. The party goes on to this day.

    My parents experienced what I envision as the finest honeymoon imaginable, spending a week in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, the only officially acknowledged and adequately funded, lauded, and larded, pagan celebration remaining in North America excepting perhaps Halloween. Along with Mardi Gras’ effulgent festivities and fraternal feelings are fisticuffs and fornications. (Fricative alliterations should be not only exshcuszhed but exshpected when sho musch alcohol is releashed at largshe. Likewise slurred sibilance.)

    Mardi Gras, or ‘Fat Tuesday’, makes excess the norm. The bad results of such an orgy are not to be much marvelled at in a culture that worships sex and violence as much as ours. My biological father, having lost marriage, myself and my brother to his own personal bacchanalia of thirty-odd years of alcoholism, maintained that “if you get that many dogs together there’s bound to be a few sons o’ bitches in the bunch”. (According to the family history of Greco-Roman theogony, a few sons o’ bitches are all that survived dinner!) The extraordinary aspect of Fat Tuesday’s controlled riot (and I believe that presidential primaries should begin in Louisiana on Shrove Tuesday!) is its undisputed reign of joyful ebullience which is its raison d’être.

    As Christianity became THE religion of the Western world, its political administrators had little choice but to co-opt these ancient ritual celebrations (Saturnalia and its myriad cohorts) by combining them with Christian themes. In this compromise wherein the Catholic church superimposed key Christian rites and events over older pagan traditions, Saturnalia was a Big Bust. There was no stopping it; the literal forces of dark and light were so dynamically opposed in people’s lives during this time of material wealth and solar scarcity that the best the pope could hope for was to get Christ’s name tagged onto it.

    History claims that almost all Christmas ritual is appropriated from other rites. From stable birth and guiding star to giving gifts and the birth of a deity, it was mostly in place before the birthday story of Jesus was chronologically pegged upon the 25th of December. It was always a struggle to keep the reveling from overtaking the hallowed birthday remembrance of Jesus Christ.

    The Pagan/Christian compromise bent both ways. Hence the overwhelming popularity of Halloween over All Saints Day. By the 7th century, All Saints Day (also known as ‘Allhallows’ and ’Hallowmass’) was firmly in place at November 1st on the Christian calendar as a celebration of all its martyrs and saints. But, through the pugnacious obstinance of the Celtic culture (and its extraordinary, artistic, folk genius), old rites which were associated with the Celtically decreed start of winter (November 1st) took over from All Saints Day and, sneaking in the back door of ‘All Hallows Eve’, replaced it with the Celts’ exotic, magic rituals of winter preparation.

    Specifically, the rituals underlying our modern Halloween were designed as a sort of prophylaxis against all the scary, spooky, spectral evil that the Celtic mind associated with the world’s darkening as the sun sank low in the sky. Woods are the residence of choice for imaginary demons and dark gods all around the world, and most of Europe was a woodsy place until increasing agrarian population and the iron industry devoured the forests for tillable soil and smelters’ charcoal.

    The old All Hallows Eve was sort of a collective whistle in the dark to drown out the banshee’s wail and set up perimeter defenses against incubi, goblins, witches, men in gorilla suits and the like. It is interesting that the prime symbol of Halloween is an illuminated head, Mr. Jack O’ Lantern. Pluto, former landlord of hell, would have been pleased to note this obeisance to his dark domain vis-a-vis’ the old Saturnalian ritual of “offering heads and lights to Pluto”. It is also interesting that Frankenstein, who was born from what is considered to be the first modern science-fiction novel, has become a larger icon of All Hallows Eve than all the saints and demons alike; which suggests that we are perhaps more frightened of our own scientific necromancy than Satanic magic or pagan demons. Ask yourself, would Ol’ Frankie be much scared of the Devil? I mean, he’s already dead or, to be exact, postmaturely alive.

    :

    #95569
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    cntd…

    THE MAN IN THE RED VELVET GORILLA SUIT

    Throughout the Middle Ages and culminating in the early modern eras of Reformation and, later, the Enlightenment, Christmas grew more and more a problem for the church fathers and village constabulary.
    A recent book, The Battle For Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum, details the struggle to either do away with Christmas altogether (as the Puritans tried to do with some success in the mid-17th century, especially in the States), or to at least tame the beast it had become among the rowdy Northwest European / North American crowd.

    Three hundred years ago, Christmas was not the time to let your children out of the house. Revelry tended to get ugly. The old social inversion of Saturnalia was apparently not so effectively administered as it was in ancient times. Most things Latin had a hard time dealing with those unruly northern barbarians, i.e., us. We were Rome’s ultimate downfall, after all. Party-crashing is an old practice of ours.

    The Industrial Revolution really strained things. Longstanding feudal ties were replaced by wage-slave/industrial baron relationships, as demonstrated by the ‘milltown’ or ‘foundrytown’ systems still vestigially in place today in Rustbelt remnants like Flint, MI, or the Appalachian ‘fall-line’ textile towns (and their sister cities in the Philippines and Indonesia). These towns were, in their heydays, a form of industrial feudalism without older agrarian feudalism’s benefits – like having half of winter off. Eventually, modern labor unionism created – for a brief period of history — a very well paid form of wage-serf, so much so that many people now long for the ‘good old days’ of retrospectively romanticized factory tenure. ( A typical milltown employee usually worked for the same guy to whom he paid rent and from whom, often enough, he bought life’s necessities.) Those labor union glory days seem to be gone and even the Japanese look longingly to Southeast Asia for the affluent proletariat false security that was theirs just, seemingly, yesterday.

    Interestingly and, praise Allah, pertinently (where was I?), the strained labor relations of the early Industrial Revolution had much to do with the final transformation of Saturnalia/Christmas from a winterfest of depraved celebration to the quietly joyful and materialistically maddening holiday we know in this century.

    The process was begun in the 1820’s as a deliberate campaign to pull Christmas’s holiday fat out of its own destructive Yuletide fire at a time when, throughout the holidays, gangs of street toughs ruled the mud and cobblestone streets of New England and northwest European cities. Things could get pretty bad. Business suffered. Looting proliferated. Peasants rallied. Christmas was becoming an unruly riot threatening the political status quo.
    As a propaganda to counter this, prominent citizens, especially prosperous merchants, wanted and created a ‘new’ Christmas. Much of this was accomplished through well-placed articles and widely popular works of fiction describing greatly romanticized and often totally imaginary ‘Christmases past’. These books and articles urging a return to the ‘good olde days’ of Olde Chryst’s Mass were widely distributed. Basically, they were describing a past that to a great extent never was, in order to make it a popularly accepted future.

    Such transformations are a big part of what we call popular culture. Mass media was gaining its stride in those days and the right message in the papers and periodicals of the time could create what are now known as fads, promotions, marketing campaigns or, my favorite term, media bubbles. The media bauble of Christmas became so powerful, especially in this century when first Hollywood and then Madison Avenue placed their own Yule logs upon the mediated fire, that it effectively created an embolism in the heart of the aging and ribald Saturnalia. Another pagan god bites the dust. Not that gods ever really die. But standing in Saturn’s place as Golden Age prom king appeared not Jesus, but Santa Claus.

    The story of this transformation of Christmas is fascinating as a revelation of how we shape our holy days and how they in turn shape us, and I will leave its depiction to those excellent books already available. I will, however, say this about that.

    Santa Claus should not be perceived as some subliminally commercialized mutation of Satan, as many fundamentalist Christians theorize. Santa Claus is NOT Satan’s Claws. There is no more relation between the two than there is between Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick and the Man in the Gorilla Suit, (despite their striking superficial similarities, such as fake facial hair and a shared propensity for exaggerated hooting). Satan gets entirely too much airplay in my opinion. “Get thee behind Me, Satan”, said Christ. I take that as Jesus’ divinely polite injunction for the Old Fart to, please, shut up before he makes a total, or even, eternal fool of himself.

    Santa has taken and possibly deserves a lot of heat for stealing the stellar light away from Baby Jesus in the stable and refocusing it on a magical hotrod sleigh. I mean, which shines brighter today, the Star of Bethlehem or Rudolph’s radioactive nose?

    Santa would have looked a touch garish next to the regal Magi, who were not exactly quiet dressers themselves, and “Ho!Ho!Ho!” would have really upset Mary and her sleeping newborn (especially if accompanied by chest beating). Even The Little Drummer Boy kept it down to a gently soporific rumpumpum-pum. I don’t think there was a man in a gorilla suit at the nativity but, had there been, I’m sure he would have kept the hooting down.

    A CHRISTMAS CAROL SUNG IN THREE-PART HARMONY BY GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT, FUTURE AND PAST

    Present
    Still, Santa is the icon that stole Christmas away from the rowdy boys and horny habits of Saturnalian Xmas, with married people in cross-dress committing adultery in the backroom or alley, or, often enough, in the street – if the hooch be stout enough and the snow sufficiently soft – and gave it to the children and their families and, alas, the heavy players on the board of directors at Disney, Wal-Mart, Mattel et al.

    Santa and his creator/followers like Clement Moore (who wrote “The Night Before Christmas”), and Mel Torme (who co-authored “The Christmas Song”), made it clear that Christmas ain’t shit without the wee ones. Excuse my Saxonish; ‘shit’ is an old Saxon peasant term for, well, you know, but I feel just as strongly about children all snug in their beds with sugarplum fairies dancing in their heads as do you. Despite all the peace in our time in this North American land, it is still not such an easy time for kids and most of us are fairly inadequate as parents although our children love us anyway, and if that ain’t the miracle of Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanzaa or Saturnalia or…then my name’s Jimmy Stewart and I’m jumping off that bridge after all, dammit.

    How come every time an angel gets its wings some clown rings MY doorbell singing “Frosty The Snowman” off key? I mean, it’s Christmas after all and I’ve got presents to wrap and kids going psycho under the influence of sugar, chocolate and 3-D commercials for toys that make “Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots” look like hugathons. (“…and may the best robot reclaim its battered inner child from its vanquished opponent in MORTAL COMBAT!!!!! Die sucker…!”)

    It is then, as the children race around the tree on Christmas morn, firing toy phasers which imitate the sights and sounds of real weapons of the future, weapons which will someday paralyze the enemy with migraine mindrays that not only consume the enemy with pain but also fill them with the desire to sacrifice their children, thereby hastening war’s end and returning us to the good old days of Cronus and offerings of severed heads and whatever those little clay dolls stood in for…it is then one realizes that you can take the boy out of the senseless revelry but you can’t take the senseless revelry out of the boy.

    Future
    Did anyone catch that TV special a few years back, Santa Versus The Abominable Snowmen, (or men in Abominable Snowman suits)? Featuring an high tech battle much like the second Star Wars movie wherein gigantic walking war tanks fought in the snow fields of some forlorn, frozen planet, it almost seemed like a bit of Wotan or Marduk returning to do battle with the forces of Chaos (which still run rampant during the Holidaze). “Only xx shopping days till Xmas” sounds a little like a countdown to Armageddon. Come to think of it, if there’s a guy tough enough to battle the demons of solsticial darkness, it would be a guy who lives in the North Pole. A guy who can fire toys down chimneys like so many smartbombs is just the guy to lob one down the hatch of those perennial death stars, Zrvan cum Cronus cum Saturnus.

    Cultural icons are ever changing. If Santa doesn’t watch out he’ll become too naughty and not nice enough and George Lucas will do a leveraged buyout of Santa’s franchise. Instead of Santa, we’ll have a digitally animated Obie Wan Kanobi, (the ‘dead’ spectral version who talks in Luke Skywalker’s head at critical junctures), starring as a new Xmas hero who saves the world from a man in a Grinch Vader suit. Christmas could become the intergalactic special effects extravaganza that Disney, Mattel, and Wal-Mart must surely desire: “Jolly Old Saint Obie Wan, lend your ears this way, Don’t you miss a single word the TV made me say; Suzy wants a droid that talks, or a cloned white horse; Jimmy wants a lightsabre ‘cause he trusts in force…”

    Currently, Christmas as THE prime solsticial festival seems inflated beyond its effective spiritual carrying capacity. Magic, redemption, divinity, destiny – along with material craving – are big, even bigger than ever, but no longer so centered about Christmas (and Christianity?) as they were in, say, 1946 when It’s A Wonderful Life hit the theatres, or 1947, when Miracle on 34th Street was released. If anything, Santa and Christmas seem to be hearkening back towards earlier times. ‘Old Father Christmas’ is resurgent even as Hollywood and Madison Avenue make Santa over into a high-tech superhero. (Superman, too, had his ‘Fortress of Solitude’ near the North Pole.)

    Currently the retrospective focus seems to be on the Victorian era, when ‘modern’ Christmas fully crystallized, with medieval ambiences appearing in the background tapestry, but I suspect Old Man Saturn is primping for a comeback bid. Considering an ancient god to be the kind of guy who has everything and is, therefore, a bear to Xmas shop for, I recommend a visit to the local candles & ceramics shop.

    Even so, it is a time of great beauty, joy and wonder. It has to be. The days grow short as the nights grow long and the frost bears down while the slush slings up. We couldn’t survive these days without our magical ministrations.

    “To face unafraid, the plans that we’ve made, walking in a winter wonderland”…now there’s an incantation to get one through to spring.

    Past
    “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay.” I can hear an ancestor of Andy Griffith singing that to a crowd of one-drink-too-many Yorkshire Christmas revelers, two or three centuries back, as he pours them all a draft of the barkeep’s finest while never letting on to the water in the mix or the blunderbuss under the bar loaded with peppercorns and rocksalt.

    “Remember Christ our Sa-ay-vyor was born on Christmas Day.” He sings badly, so horribly awful that the men break out in laughter. The bad boys at the bar lighten up and before long are singing “Good King Wenceslas” and “Greensleeves” and then, from over in the corner, far from the fire, where the mead’s warmth vies with the door’s draft, a strong if sloppy baritone sings out the words to a strange Noel they’ve never heard before: “Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shi-i-ning, this is the night of our dear Savior’s birth…”

    As the boys nod and relax to the tune, Andy picks it up, loud and awful, like my Uncle Gayle trying to sing “I Pagliacci” or your Aunt Mimi attempting suicide by Streisand karaoke. Everyone takes courage from his tunelessness and joins in.

    Several are soon asleep. The older or simply wiser spread straw for the snorers and droolers, asking neither Sheriff Andy’s nor the taverner’s permission but nodding respectfully to signal the quiescence of the night’s revels. Gathering around the fire, they quietly sing tunes going back a thousand years, venturing a little two-and-three-part-harmony and throwing Andy a diesucker glare when he dares to join in, but allowing him a few sly grins when he just hums along. He’s had himself a few now that trouble seems unlikely.

    The taverner, a wise businessman, leaves a gallon of warm mulled cider as one for the road for those venturing home tonight. He places a donations jar prominently on the firemantle, marked “For Goode Will and Good Olde Wylliaume”, Wylliaume being the taverner’s name. He’s had a hard time keeping his Christmas losses down to a survivable hardship; Christmas revelers expect and demand a taverner to pretty much give the house away during Yuletide. In the spirit of requisite giving, he’s served mostly watered-down swill but he’s a good fellow and wishes them well enough on their journeys homeward. The mulled cider he has left out is spiked with an half gallon of true applejack from, he was told, the orchards of Brittany. Goode shyte, that stuff.

    He shuffles bedward. He’ll have to wake up early to quicken the fire and clean out the slop pails before someone wakes up to the stink and loses the rest of their Christmas cookies. He’ll put sausage and bread out for the lads along with a pint per man’s share of Old Hairdog Ciderjack, reckoned strong and sweet enough to light their way home where they’ll spend Christmas Day in glorious recovery in an era when coffee was a mysterious wonder drug found only in London’s priciest establishments.

    So, as the church bells toll your head apart announcing Christ’s Mass, ask not for whom the bell tolls, oy vey, it tolls for thee. Shyte. Get thine arse up and down to church with thy wife and kids, for aren’t ye a good fellow? Who would give their child a rooty-toot-toot or rummy-tum-tum under those circumstances?

    Dark days. Long nights. These are the times to count your blessings, head by tousled head by tinseled headache. Whether one celebrates the Christchild of Bethlehem or Claus of Toyland, solstice time in America has been made into a National Children’s Holiday, unofficially but in sooth, and however maudlin and platitudinous it may sound – especially with a word like ‘platitudinous’ stuck in your gob like a stone in a blanket – magic is obtained thereby. And magic is a very good thing. Robin Morrison, 1997

    As for Santa, I’ve always wondered what he keeps under that “hippy hat” of His. ALways had a renegade vibe, that Old Fat Man:

    Take the Sleigh Train

    If I stop and think about it
    I’m either stone cold certain
    Or more inclined to doubt it
    But when you jump into the darkness
    Well, I take off my hat
    You’ve changed, they say
    You can know when to play or to hold
    And they think they can show all that glitters is gold
    And they don’t care to go where you go
    ‘Cause they know you’re insane
    When you change to the uptown train
    Well, I knew that you were trouble
    You were a ten time loser
    Or maybe even double
    But you pulled some kind of rabbit
    From your lil’ hippie hat

    You’ve changed, they say
    Take it slow when you’re breaking the mold
    Got to pay what you owe or be out in the cold
    And they don’t care to know what you know
    Or to go through the pain
    To change to the uptown train

    #95570
    Henry
    Participant

    Thank you @ctbarnum! I love your Christmas tree! Merry Christmas

    #95571
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Oh, and a stocking-stuffer for that def-bot of ours:

    “Former Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero has tested positive for Covid-19 – just days after signing for Barcelona.

    He is said to have tested positive in a rapid test carried out at the Argentinian Football Association’s installations in Ezeiza on the outskirts of Buenos Aires soon after his arrival on Tuesday morning from Europe.

    Aguero is now understood to be awaiting the results of a second PCR test.

    The 33-year-old had to quarantine at his home near Manchester with girlfriend Sofia Calzetti after they tested positive for coronavirus in February.

    A second PCR test came back negative, according to Aguero’s father, Leonel del Castillo, who said on radio La Red: “First he was positive and when they tested him again it came back negative.” 2 Jun 2021

    ***

    Breaking: Pep Guardiola Returns ‘Inconclusive’ Covid-19 Test Result – Press Conference Cancelled Due to Situation
    Pep Guardiola has returned an inconclusive Covid-19 test result, ahead of Manchester City’s upcoming Premier League clash with Newcastle this weekend.”

    The scare came on Aguero’s 33rd birthday on Tuesday. DEC 17, 2021

    Point being that ambiguity rules, and whatever point the wannabe hacktivist formerly known as def-bot tried to make was pre-dulled before impact, like today’s pre-shredded jeans and talking points. (I wonder what the official term for a flock of canards is.)
    ***
    SERGIO AGUERO’S CARDIOLOGIST SAYS A VIRUS COULD BE BEHIND THE HEART PROBLEMS WHICH CAUSED EARLY RETIREMENT

    Sergio Aguero’s cardiologist thinks a virus could be behind the heart problems which led to the Argentina striker’s early retirement from football. Aguero announced he was stepping away from the game in an emotional press conference, where he said he’s “proud” of the career he had. The 33-year-old won a host of trophies, including five Premier League titles with Manchester City.

    After Sergio Aguero’s stellar career as a professional footballer was cut short, his cardiologist says a virus could be the reason behind the heart problems which have forced his early retirement.

    But Roberto Peidro, who has treated Aguero since 2004, says it has “nothing to do with Covid or the Covid vaccine”.
    Speaking during radio interviews in Argentina, Peidro has explained how Aguero was left with a “very small scar” following a cardiac ablation procedure.

    But others are more prepared to allow players to make their own minds up—and a lot of players have expressed concern about the heart problems suffered by Christian Eriksen, Sergio Agüero, Piotr Zielinski and the Wigan forward Charlie Wyke recently, asking whether the vaccine could have been a contributing factor. But Wyke was not vaccinated and, while the status of others is unclear, there is no evidence that the vaccine was a factor in any of the cases. 16/12/2021

    In short, no one knows, but since covid is still top draw topic/agenda, we must therefore form opposing teams around the issue. Covid/vaccines may have zip to do with Aguero’s heart problems, but covid, currently being mass conformistically in climax vogue, has to be applied to the subject, with or without adequate vetting or critical analysis by humans or bots, neither of which are as human or robotic as they are assumed to be.
    ***
    This week, in order to qualify for a medically meaningless doctor visit nonetheless bureaucratically necessary to me getting a life-saving procedure done, I had to test covid-free 3 days prior. It came back negative. I wonder what that means. Does it mean maybe no? Or maybe yes? Mongo took shit AND went blind. Fortunately him remember magic light switch. Mongo saved! Switch not only cure blindness but turn on exhaust fan! Io Saturnalia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Can you smell the real me? (Arguably the last studio recording to capture the magic that was, for a few years, the Entwistle/Moon genius rhythm section.)

    And yes, it was more fun being madamski than bosco.

    cdf

    #95572
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    vbn

    With little coronavirus stars!

    #95573
    zerosum
    Participant

    What do we want!

    1. • South Africa Hospitalization Rate Falls 91% in Omicron Wave (BBG)
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-says-hospitalizations-in-omicron-wave-much-lower

    South Africa country’s population is young

    Between 70% and 80% of citizens may also have had a prior Covid-19 infection

    (does having a strong immune system count)
    ( does not being overweight count)
    (does not having high blood pressure count)
    (does not having cholesterol help)
    (does having the flue count)
    ( does taking IVM count)
    ( does taking vD3 count)

    2. CDC lists at least 3 conventional type vaccines (inactivated/killed virus as opposed to RNA/DNA) on its own website that are recognized by the United States government as producing immunity to COVID, yet no conventional vaccine is available in the United States. Why?

    3. Truth
    • Guidance On Covid Vaccines Moves Closer To ‘Misinformation’ Of Skeptics (JTN)
    “Not only do the three vaccines authorized for emergency use require boosters due to waning “protective efficacy,” but they haven’t stopped breakthrough infections..”

    4. flatten the curve, end pandemic,
    —————-
    boscohorowitz
    Thanks for your presentation of knowledge of Mythology
    ———-
    How many serfs/slaves can one elite control?

    #95574
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Everyone wants a puppy for Xmas, right?

    Anya

    #95575
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    It sounds morbid, but the signs are that I won’t live many more years (although I’m scheming otherwise, trust me). My hope is to live long enough to grow mature climax redneck injun braids like Willie Nelson has. If I can make it as long as his sister Bobbi’s hair (seated at piano here), that might be fine but God knows I’ll have to go full-blown crazy to survive this nonsense.

    Full-blown crazy. They either enthrone you or crucify you. No one is smart enough to let me be in charge, so I guess I’ll have to accept crucifixion. Oy vey. Why God wasted life on a loon like me is beyond me, but since It did, I’ll just have to live it up. *sigh* It gets old:
    “What on earth are YOU doing, Robin?!”
    “Being real.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I can’t rightly say, but if you get arrested or killed or wake up with the same woman every morning after 30-some years of marriage, you’re doing it.”

    vbh

    Looks like about five years’ growing. Not exactly small time, but I can do another fiver on this prison planet if I have to.

    #95577
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Lots of food for thought in today’s TAE. I’m talkin’ steak, potatoes, and veggies, complemented with a glass of your favorite red.

    Congratulations on another great year, Raul. TAE attracts some of the best contributors around! You should be proud of what you’ve created here.

    #95578
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Bosco, Thanks for sharing the information.

    “Enjoy your pagan holiday interval!!”
    ~Rothschild in his apocalyptic disclosure

    “In order that all men may be taught to speak truth,
    it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”

    ~Samuel Johnson

    Interestingly, or not, Rothschild quoted Samuel Johnson, too… in complete context…

    “Underground bases do exist, and they are numerous. There is an entire world building under your collective feet….even as we type!
    However, your question “what are they for” is like asking…”what are buildings for”? Well, sir, most everything!
    Laughing out Loud!
    I have previously referenced the works of the GREAT TESLA. Rest assured, every SCRAP of his amazing intellect is being HARVESTED…and for those who have even a VAGUE understanding of his works, the EARTH plays THE CENTRAL ROLE. How could it be otherwise?
    Study TESLA, adopt the dietary regime I have studiously laid out, and you will have taken the first critical step in realigning yourself to the NEW COMING REALITY.
    I do not know how I can make it more clear!
    And for those who are able to make the transition, do not despair for your fallen comrades! They will have had the opportunity and free will to save themselves…and chose not to do so for whatever reason. If you need proof, look no further than this thread for validation.
    As Samuel Johnson once observed:
    …She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals — “I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves.” “I wonder, Madam,” replied the Doctor, “that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

    ^^^ He just defined the Biblical “beast Empire” system mentioned in Revelations… It is an empire of humans acting according to their base animalistic instincts… and no more.

    And it is all around us, for all to see!

    #95579
    zerosum
    Participant

    Early indications suggest Gauteng has reached Covid peak, says health minister


    Early indications suggest Gauteng has reached Covid peak, says health minister

    In the current wave, only 1.7% of Covid cases are being hospitalized, an average of fewer than 350 cases daily over the past two weeks, versus an average of more than 800 in the previous wave, at an average of 19%. He added that the large majority of hospitalized cases in the current wave are ‘fairly mild’.
    Vaccination for the country’s adult population has reached 44%, the minister said. “We believe that it is not that Omicron is less virulent but believe that the coverage of vaccination and natural immunity is adding to the protection, that is why we see mild illness.”

    #95580
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Vitamin D-eception

    It seems that few people have the discernment to see through the Vitamin D-eception that Empire, Inc. has programmed into their mental algorithms.

    Here is the answer up front — low CALCIDIOL (storage D, which is what is measured) fairly strongly correlates to HIGH SYSTEMIC INFLAMMATION!

    In other words, THE GOAL IS TO REDUCE SYSTEMIC INFLAMMATION, AND THE LOW STORAGE D (CALCIDIOL) CONDITION WILL RESOLVE ITSELF!

    The EMPIRE ADMITTED TRUTH is, for those still able to process such when the PROPAGANDA NARRATIVE is so strong, that “vitamin D” actually functions like a HORMONE! It has a storage (calcidiol) and an active (calcitriol) component.

    Now, is it, in any way, scientific to call TWO THINGS BY ONE NAME, AND NOT EVEN THE MOST ACCURATE NAME? Why, oh why, did Empire, Inc. break scientific rationality when this naming convention WAS FINANCED? HMMMMMM?

    THE STANDARD OF CARE IS TO ONLY MEASURE THE STORAGE VERSION OF THE HORMONE-LIKE CHEMICAL. No other hormone is measured this way — they take BOTH the storage and the active levels because both are required TO LEAD TO A REASONABLE CONCLUSION.

    You will not find research that show low storage D correlates tightly with low active D. In fact, an investigative M.D. who looked into this found out that LOW STORAGE D CORRELATED WITH HIGH ACTIVE D!!! Now you know why active D IS NOT MEASURED BY THE M.D.’s that just follow orders! Why is active D high? It is a response to elevated levels of systemic inflammation!

    Now, who here would buy the narrative that your active D is too high, so you need to take more synthetic cholecalciferol to… what, brought down your active D? The FALSE NARRATIVE FALLS APART — SO YOU ARE KEPT IN THE DARK BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FIND THAT WHICH YOU DON’T LOOK FOR.

    I get why the criminals lie to the masses, but I’m flummuxed by the fact the victims appear to embrace the lie with all the irrational subconscious they can muster!

    Does taking more synthetic cholecalciferol reduce systemic inflammation — address the real problem?

    Do share any scientific research that indicates it does — and if it doesn’t exist, well, that’s saying something, isn’t it?

    Well, unfortunately for the D-uped, it actually drives inflammation over the longer term. How? First, hormone D turbocharges the uptake of calcium. Since calcium and magnesium compete for absorption, this reduces available magnesium, which is already deficient in almost all people because it is almost nonexistent in the food supply, and glyphosate chelates what it is there so the body can’t use it. And low magnesium is tied directly to increased inflammation by… well, let’s let the researchers explain the mechanism…

    “Animal studies have shown that magnesium deficiency induces an inflammatory response that results in leukocyte and macrophage activation, release of inflammatory cytokines and acute-phase proteins, and excessive production of free radicals. Animal and in vitro studies indicate that the primary mechanism through which magnesium deficiency has this effect is through increasing cellular Ca2+, which is the signal that results in the priming of cells to give the inflammatory response.”

    Search “Magnesium deficiency and increased inflammation: current perspectives” 2018, Journal of Inflammation Research

    Oh, it is the calcium that becomes even more absorbed by the intake of vitamin D that actually SIGNALS FOR THE INFLAMMATION TO START!

    Big Brother Loves You!

    Not to mention that magnesium is required at every step in the hormone D and calcium metabolism processes… PTH depends on magnesium, calcitonin depends on magnesium, and hormone D depends on magnesium, and taking more cholecalciferol will deplete that magnesium, which then allows calcium to go rogue… and it ends up in the tissues where it doesn’t belong. Magnesium fires the enzyme that builds bones… Iron fires the enzymes that break down bones… So not only will the calcium from your diet go rogue when magnesium is depleted, but the calcium stripped out of your bones will as well — which is a consequence of too much iron and not enough magnesium.

    But Mike, there’s moar!

    Nature puts 10 parts of retinol to every part of natural hormone D. Hormone D “burns” retinol up, and retinol is the basis for retinoic acid, which is required by the ATP7B enzyme to load copper into ceruloplasmin, the body’s taxi which is REQUIRED to deliver copper to the 40 quadrillion mitochondria so that cytochrome c oxidase can activate oxygen to produce both Mg-ATP and clean exhaust, not to mention that copper delivered by ceruloplasmin-bound copper also energizes ALL the antioxidant enzymes, from SOD, to polyphenol oxidase, to glutathione peroxidase, and everything else.

    If the CERULOPLASMIN “copper taxi” has no copper because of a retinoic acid deficiency, well, that first stroke of cytochrome c oxidase produces hydrogen peroxide, and since it can’t complete the process, you mitochondria produces hydrogen peroxide and dirty exhaust… and the anti-oxidant enzymes can’t manage the pollution, and, well, that’s called oxidative stress and it DRIVES INFLAMMATION!

    Oh, and the kicker? The ATP7B enzyme requires more than just retinoic acid to function — it needs magnesium, too!

    So that synthetic D is DEPLETING BOTH NUTRIENTS REQUIRED TO ACTIVATE YOUR CERULOPLASMIN-BOUND COPPER… LEAVING YOU “BLUE BLOOD” DEPLETED.

    Now, do you think people who pride themselves on being “Blue Bloods” want our sorry *sses to have a quality blue blood status? Of course not.

    But that’s NOT the question. The question is, “why do you demand to deplete your own blue blood status through your own choice to be ignorant of the relevant data and logic?”

    This is why they blame us! This is why we are considered “children.” This is why we are considered unevolved. This is why we are considered “unfit” and condemned to not survive by this system.

    “Although the so-called “moral issues” were raised, in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent.”
    ~Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

    #95581
    zerosum
    Participant

    South Africa: Only 1.7% Hospitalised From Omicron

    As we highlighted yesterday, Phaahla said rates of hospitalisations and deaths remain “relatively low,” adding that there was no need to raise the restriction level and telling South Africans to enjoy their Christmas.

    Such good news isn’t apparently welcome to governments in the UK, which continue to impose more draconian measures which have served to all but cancel Christmas, despite the fact that just 15 people have been hospitalised with Omicron and just one person has died.

    In England, Professor Chris Whitty appears to be ignoring data out of South Africa to make doomsday predictions about there being over 4,000 hospitalisations a day from Omicron.

    There is also a continuing obsession with insisting it is “too early” to make judgments on data coming out of South Africa despite such data for weeks confirming that Omicron is mild and isn’t causing hospitals to be overwhelmed.

    #95582
    absolute galore
    Participant

    Re: the Christmas Tree with balls but no needles: The wildly depressing and bleak corner of a room where it stands forlorn is a good metaphor for the position of the unvaxxed these days–Get in the corner. No food or entertainment for you!

    In fact I would say that the situation on the ground in my neck of the woods has never been more ridiculous than it is right now, mid-December of 2021. Last week, my good friend who owns a bar restaurant, one that I have made a point of patronizing even during the period when almost nobody ventured out, decided to make his establishment Vaccinated Only. This was just a day or two after our wack governor declared all business establishments must reinstate mask mandates until January 15, when it will be “reviewed.” Walking by our lovely movie theater last night, signs on every entrance door to the lobby proclaimed Vaccinated Only Proof Required. And my youngest brother,, who has taken over the family Christmas gatherings since my mother died, has gone from an indoor, overnight arrangement with both PCR test and home testing, to outdoor walk only, with same testing protocols and masks.

    Am I spiting my own nose by telling myself I will never visit any of the establishments that take a Vaxxed Only stance (especially one that is owned by a friend and that I frequent often)?

    While in my dentist’s waiting room yesterday, I watched a report that Radio City Music Hall was now requiring proof of vaccination from everyone five years old and up. But no worries if your kid is not vaxxed, you can still get in to see the show. They have helpfully set up a kiosk where your kid can get jabbed on the spot, no charge and a lollipop. Now that is some hard science right there. It reminds me of what that cretin DeBlasio said the other day, The mandates are working, he said, then cited how much the percentage of vaxxed New Yorkers went up. And here I thought evidence of “working” would be tied to quelling the virus.

    Re: whalers and whale blubber. Both candles and soap were more commonly made from the readily available rendered fat of most barnyard animals mixed with a bit of wood ash from the hearth, so a lack of badass whale hunters was probably not the cause of body odor. The resulting soap was more for house cleaning duties than human bathing, however–daily bathing to scrub any human scent from one’s body was more a marketing triumph that arrived along with the industrial revolution. Which is not to say that a few whale species were not hunted nearly to extinction, or that some soap was not made from their blubber. Of course, using soap made from whales would be likely get rid of your human smell and make you smell like a large fishy sea mammal.

    lard = rendered pig fat
    tallow = rendered cattle, goats, sheep fat
    whale oil = boiled blubber

    We’ve had several soap making companies in our city through the years, including one that moved here about 7 or 8 years ago. All of their products are currently made of various oils and butters from plants.

    Although my childhood was spent on Long Island, a proper whaling center, I currently live not far from Hudson, a city about 100 miles up river from New York City that has anunexpected whaling history
    .

    #95583
    zerosum
    Participant

    What to do if you test positive for Omicron.

    No recommendations. Nothing works.
    Stay isolated for 10 days.
    If it gets worse, go to emergency

    #95584

    Yeah, zero, that number is also in the first article up above.

    #95585
    zerosum
    Participant

    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Its a repetition war.
    I’m repeating. I’m not repeating as many times as the enemies.
    South Africa: Only 1.7% Hospitalised From Omicron Compared to 19% during previous wave.

    In England, Professor Chris Whitty appears to be ignoring data out of South Africa to make doomsday predictions about there being over 4,000 hospitalisations a day from Omicron.

    There is also a continuing obsession with insisting it is “too early” to make judgments on data coming out of South Africa despite such data for weeks confirming that Omicron is mild and isn’t causing hospitals to be overwhelmed.

    #95586
    absolute galore
    Participant

    Re: Vitamin D supplements are actually BAD for you, and low levels of stored vitamin D have nothing to do with bad Covid outcomes. I appreciate the research, but conspiracy at the molecular level–by Rothschilds, no less–is too much for me to follow at the moment. I will add a bottle of magnesium next time I pick up my Vit. D. (Previous to this virus outbreak, I have never taken vitamin supplements. Though I do eat raisins in my organic oatmeal, and I cook with cast iron pans.)

    Although I dearly love my son, I have no plans to start a dynasty. It seems like a lot of work, and for what? Access to the best wines fancy chateaus and people like Jeffrey Epstein? Whether you die at 22 or 83, guess what, you’re dead. Besides, we can’t all be Rothschilds. Do the math. Where would be the hoi? Or the polloi? Not much fun being superior if you don’t have them to look down on, LOL! There is all a big plan. By humans. By some other entity. Or there isn’t. Either way, nobody’s asking me to brainstorm the next phase, that much I can report.

    #95587
    markinoz
    Participant

    My friend, living in melbourne at the moment is an exercise in self control. The TGA has refused any advice on the use of any therapy that could be of assistance in reducing this “pandemic”.

    And the dronning narrative …..just get the jab

    And we pay these people?

    The time is coming

    #95588

    It isn’t at all how much you have- it’s how much you control. In the late seventies, I wanted to start a company that sells debt- but then I realized I had invented banking! 🙂
    You sell people the illusion of wealth. You’re in no hurry to collect because the more debt you sell, the bigger the “assets”.
    It’s how the world has been living- go into as much debt as possible. What’s the difference between owing a lot of money and having a lot of money? You only need a small amount to service the debt and everybody’s happy. Heck, you can even borrow the payments!

    If you’re gonna go bankrupt, go huge. You’ll still know how to hobnob; you’ll still get invited to influence sessions, aka parties.
    And someone will probably be willing to lend you some more…
    “Cred[it]” isn’t just cash.

    #95589
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    abs galore:

    for the record, whales were harvested for their oil which made excellent lamp oil and lubrication oil for early machinery (there’d probably be no whales left if not for petroleum). I’m not aware of whales being valued as soap ingredients.

    I used “lard” in its crudest sense: fat and what fat is often used for: burning. Light, heat. Burning fat outside the surviving human body rather than within was VERY expensive in northern agrarian civilizations, with long cold winters and short summers, before fossil fuels.

    You’ll see in the Bible again and again how oil is viewed as a precious commodity. When the poor woman washed Jesus’ feet with oil, J’s feet were probably calloused, cracked, dry, and dusty: the outside world is full of dirt and other scratchy things that abrade skin. Rubbing oil into skin was both a luxury and a necessity for people who toiled with their hands in the dirt and woods and quarries. Walking around Galilee with a buncha disciples was hell on a person’s feet even with a lifetime of built-up callouses.

    People tended to use fat for anything before using it to make soap.

    Perfumed oil, now, that was the shiznits: oil to remove dirt and bacteria (and vermin), perfume to soften the smell of bodies rarely washed.

    Also, since cold water and soap are not very effective, there was the question of heating water. A huge energy expenditure, heating water for cleansing. Those large public Roman baths were efficient for the times, and a major selling point for the Roman Empire.

    “daily bathing to scrub any human scent from one’s body was more a marketing triumph that arrived along with the industrial revolution.”

    I see it more as a technological/resource triumph: people stank 1,000 years ago and didn’t like it any more than we do now. It required cheap soap and reasonably available hot water for modern hygiene to become affordable. It didn’t need marketing. Once we expanded beyond small tribes living by rivers in tropical climates, where fresh-water bathing every day was simple and safe, we STANK.

    Stinkfoot

    #95590
    Noirette
    Participant

    Bosco, to situate Santa Claus in the present, my experience Today was not good.

    Downtown on the street I was accosted by Him, and he asked me for money, a few francs ‘you can spare.’ He was a most convincing Santa, a true Santa, with worn out boots, much curly white hair, splendid red robes, and all. He was dragging a trolley or shopper or whatever the Eng. word is, with a fake reindeer head on it, antlers sagging. I gave.

    My second encounter was odder. In a supermarket in a mall, Santa sudenly loomed out from behind the tinned can / sauces section, Bonjour Madame Ma Chérie he seductively boomed, and approached me with open arms ready for a ginormous hug. I sort of side-stepped and wished him with screechy cheer (over the music which was playing Days of Pearly Spencer) Joyeux Noel! Which seemed like a nutty thing to say to Santa Claus.

    Then I went home and didn’t meet Santa C. again today. 🙂

    #95591
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    CDC lists at least 3 conventional type vaccines (inactivated/killed virus as opposed to RNA/DNA) on its own website that are recognized by the United States government as producing immunity to COVID, yet no conventional vaccine is available in the United States.

    That’s easy to answer ~ Same reason the SALIVA RAPID TEST for the CCP/NIH bio-weapon is NOT available “in the United States”:

    Answer = Maximum casualties.

    American doctors have proven to be cowards, cravens, zombies, and fools facilitating Dr. Fauci’s evil campaign — in concert with the rapacious pharmaceutical industry and a government in thrall to sinister forces that seek to destroy the country.

    #95592
    generic
    Participant

    I doubt that I will trust any of the Omicron data for a month or two.

    https://twitter.com/rid1tweets/status/1471273719825899527?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    It’s very interesting, IF true.

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