Feb 102022
 


Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Water 1566

 

VAERS Data Supports DoD Whistleblowers (UncoverDC)
The Rise of Omicron is the Fall of Vaccines (TSN)
COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative (QTR)
Fauci Says ‘Full-Blown’ Covid-19 Pandemic Is Almost Over In US (Fox)
Mayor Reveals Plan To Deal With Truckers Blocking US-Canada Bridge (RT)
Dozens Arrested As New Zealand Police & Anti-mandate Protesters Clash (RT)
Texas Probes GoFundMe Shutdown Of Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)
What Will Gov. Abbott Do With Vax Mandate In The Texas National Guard? (Blaze)
CVS Forecasts 80% Drop In Covid Vaccine Sales For 2022 (R.)
Germany Electricity Prices Soar To World Record Highs (NTZ)
Joe Rogan Mocks His Controversy In Surprise Stand-up Appearance (RT)
Britain’s Second Elizabethan Age Has Been 70 Years Of Dismal Decline (Nuttall)
Glyphosate’s Dirty Secrets — Are We About to Learn More? (CHD)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue America

 

 

“..corrupt bureaucrats in Washington have knowingly poisoned our troops and deceived the American people about the safety and efficacy of the COVID injections.”

VAERS Data Supports DoD Whistleblowers (UncoverDC)

Renz explained to Sen. Johnson that he received significant and damaging data from the DoD whistleblowers under the penalty of perjury. For example, DMED data shows miscarriages increased by nearly 300% over the five-year average. Likewise, data shows an almost 300% increase in cancer over the same five years. Making a point to thank Dr. Ryan Cole for his focused attention to cancer related to COVID jabs and Dr. Pierre Kory for his “stance on the [current] corruption,” Renz continued, presenting the disturbing data to Sen. Johnson, adding:

“We saw—and this one’s amazing—neurological issues, which would affect our [military] pilots, [we saw] over a thousand percent increase—82,000 per year to 863,000 in one year. Our soldiers are being experimented on, injured, and sometimes possibly killed. They know this. And Senator, when these doctors are attacked, they call me. I’m the one dealing with the medical boards. I’m the one watching the witch hunts. I’m the one fighting them off, and I’m going to keep doing that. And let me give you one last thing, Senator—the Sept. 28, 2021, Project Salus weekly report.

Project Salus is a defense department initiative where they take all this data—that [they now say] doesn’t exist, supposedly—and they give it to the CDC. They’re watching these vaccines. On and around that date, I have numerous instances where Fauci and the entire crew were saying, “it’s a crisis of the unvaccinated. It’s 99% unvaxxed in the hospital.” In the project Salus weekly report, the DOD document says specifically 71% of new cases are in the fully vaccinated and 60% of hospitalizations are in the fully vaxxed. This is corruption at the highest level. We need investigations. The secretary of defense needs to be investigated. The CDC needs to be investigated. Thank you so much, Senator, for having the courage to stand up against these special interests.”

[..] UncoverDC spoke with attorney Renz last Friday. Renz shared that he and others believe DMED data is currently “being manipulated to cover up the fact that corrupt bureaucrats in Washington have knowingly poisoned our troops and deceived the American people about the safety and efficacy of the COVID injections.” Furthermore, Renz called claims that the DMED data from 2016-2020 was incorrect “absurd.” He added that we spend millions per year on DMED and the individuals monitoring it. Renz shared that he and his team believe DMED data is currently “being manipulated to cover up the fact that corrupt bureaucrats in Washington have knowingly poisoned our troops and deceived the American people about the safety and efficacy of the COVID injections.”

Read more …

“Omicron may be the death knell of the pandemic…”

The Rise of Omicron is the Fall of Vaccines (TSN)

Unless one sells vaccines for a living, the overall numbers for the covid-19 variant Omicron will seem wildly encouraging. Take a California study of 53,000 Omicron and 17,000 Delta cases from November 30, 2021, to January 1, 2022. In every way, Omicron patients did far better—a quarter the hospitalizations of Delta, miniscule admissions to ICU, no ventilation whatever, and a death rate of less than one-tenth of one percent. The study, by researchers at UC-Berkeley and Kaiser Permanente, suggests, as do others, that Omicron may be the death knell of the pandemic. But, buried deep within its piles of data, it also calls into question the utility of the vaccines themselves.

Beyond showing that the vaccines faltered as Omicron overtook Delta in December, the study lays bare what until now was a heretical assertion. The share of unvaccinated people hospitalized for Omicron infection was a mere 24 percent—43 of 182 hospitalized patients—compared to 69 percent for Delta. Put the other way around, the vaccinated have morphed into about three-quarters of hospital admissions for the now-dominant Omicron. These figures belie the rock-solid mainstream narrative that hospitals are filled with the unvaccinated. Clearly, the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”—always open to question—is no more.

“This is a huge change,” said Juan Chamie, a covid data expert who verified my conclusion from the data. “It is clearly contradicting the ‘99-percent unvaccinated in hospital’ narrative.” Dr. Mobeen Syed, a YouTube medical educator who favors vaccination of high-risk groups, agreed. The public health message on the hospitalized unvaccinated, he said, was “not up-to-date and transparent enough,” relying on data early in the pandemic when fewer were vaccinated and the variant was different. “They want to scare,” he told me. “They should have the courage to look at the data and say, ‘Hey guys, the risk (with Omicron) is reducing. Become happy, become more comfortable.’”

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“..only now that millions of vaccines have been distributed and the public’s trust in the President and in his Covid response is at all time lows – she has completely and totally changed her tune.”

COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative (QTR)

I started out 2022 by predicting that capitalism and common sense would catalyze a massive pivot in how the mainstream media reports on Covid. I believed that the media would eventually start the process of pivoting from hysteria and that politicians, understanding full well that they can’t get re-elected during mid-terms this year on a platform of locking people in their homes, would follow. All I can say one month into the year is holy shit, does it look like I was right. So far in 2022, innumerable U.S. states, in addition to countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, are lifting Covid restrictions. Connecticut and Delaware are planning on lifting school mask mandates by the end of March. Oregon officials have also announced that general mask mandates would be lifted March 31. Even New Jersey and California announced they would ease mandates in coming weeks.

And the media narrative has very quickly changed, too. Dr Leana Wen, columnist with The Washington Post and CNN medical analyst who has, in the past, gushed non-stop about following the government’s Covid guidance, has now completely changed her playbook for her appearances on CNN. On Monday of this week, she told CNN: “There was, and is, a time and place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And, in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. The responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school … it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.”

[..] In fact, where the fuck was this woman 6 months ago? On New Years, she was urging people to mask up while heading outdoors to watch the ball drop: “Make sure that you’re vaccinated and boosted. Make sure that you’re wearing a mask even though it’s outdoors. There are lots of people packed around you, wearing a three-ply surgical mask.” In Spring of last year, she was expressing “fears” about the U.S. not being able to reach herd immunity. In Summer of last year, she was spreading the narrative that “we can’t trust the unvaccinated”. Heading into the Fall, she was writing op-eds called “Why Covid-19 Vaccines Should Be Required For All Americans”. And now – and only now that millions of vaccines have been distributed and the public’s trust in the President and in his Covid response is at all time lows – she has completely and totally changed her tune.

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“..you might need a booster only every four or five years.”

Fauci Says ‘Full-Blown’ Covid-19 Pandemic Is Almost Over In US (Fox)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser for President Biden, said in an interview published Tuesday that the U.S. is almost past the “full-blown” pandemic phase of the coronavirus and said he hopes that all virus-related restrictions could wind down in a few months. Fauci discussed his idea of the virus’s trajectory with the Financial Times. He told the paper that the government response to the disease will eventually be handled on a local level and not federal. He did not mention a specific month or season but told the paper that these restrictions — including mask mandates — could end “soon.” The number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 across the U.S. has tumbled more than 28% over the past three weeks to about 105,000 on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


Dr. Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Associated Press, “What we want to see is that the omicron surge continues to decrease, that we don’t see another variant of concern emerge, that we start to come out of the other side of this.” Fauci told the paper that there is no way to eradicate the virus, but it is his hope that “we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.” He also said it may not been needed for all Americans to get boosted in the future. “It will depend on who you are,” he said. “But if you are a normal, healthy 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years.”

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Well, actually, there is no plan, at least in the article. But he does sound scared.

“You have a number of people who are … part of the protest group who have openly stated … they feel such a passion for this particular cause that they are willing to die for it..”

Mayor Reveals Plan To Deal With Truckers Blocking US-Canada Bridge (RT)

Trying to forcibly remove truckers blockading the busiest US-Canadian border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge could lead to violence and even death, the mayor of Windsor, Ontario cautioned on Wednesday, while his police chief called for a diplomatic approach. “You have a number of people who are … part of the protest group who have openly stated … they feel such a passion for this particular cause that they are willing to die for it,” Mayor Drew Dilkens told reporters on Wednesday. “If you have people who hold that sentiment, the situation can escalate and get very dangerous for police and those members of the public in very short order. It’s fair to say we don’t want to see anyone get hurt.” Dilkens added that he’s been getting calls from Windsor residents and businesses demanding the forcible removal of the truckers, but said “such action may inflame the situation and cause more folks to come and join the protest.”

The Ambassador Bridge runs between Windsor and Detroit, Michigan. It has been closed to commercial traffic since Monday, when several dozen truckers set up a blockade on the Canadian side, in solidarity with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. Another group of truckers and farmers has been blockading a border crossing in the western province of Alberta for over a week as well. Detroit-Windsor bridge traffic accounts for about $355 million worth of goods traded between the US and Canada, more than a quarter of all commerce between the two countries. The Canadian authorities have tried to route trucks to the Blue Water Bridge in nearby Sarnia. On Wednesday, truckers and farmers parked their vehicles near that bridge as well, causing a 4.5-hour delay to enter the US, the Canada Border Services Agency said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to meet with the protesters in Ottawa, calling them a “fringe minority with unacceptable views,” and accusing them of violence, racism, bigotry, and even Nazi sympathies. Other Canadian officials have denounced the trucker protests as an “insurrection” and a “threat to our democracy.” Trudeau’s public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, called the bridge protests illegal, telling the truckers, “you are hurting Canadians and you are not above the law.” “This is an illegal economic blockade against the people of Ontario and against all Canadians,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said, adding that they are putting supply chains of food and manufacturer parts at risk.

Tyranny at its finest

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Ardern and Trudeau. What a couple.

Dozens Arrested As New Zealand Police & Anti-mandate Protesters Clash (RT)

New Zealand police cracked down on protesters outside Parliament in Wellington on Thursday, arresting more than 50 people after forcibly dispersing the demonstration against Covid-19 restrictions. Shortly before the scuffles erupted, police threatened the crowd of around 150 protesters with arrest if they refused to leave the area voluntarily. Those who ignored the order were subsequently detained by law enforcement. Protesters could be seen chanting “this is not democracy” and “shame on you” as police officers moved in to clear the grounds. Footage showed police officers tearing down tents that had been erected by protesters and scuffling with the protesters unwilling to scatter on their own.


“Police continue to appeal to protestors to leave Parliament Grounds peacefully, as the area is closed to the public,” New Zealand Police said in a statement on Thursday. “We continue to acknowledge people’s rights to protest, however those who behave unlawfully will face arrest,” the statement continued. By 11:30am, New Zealand Police claimed to have arrested more than 50 protesters on charges such as trespassing and obstruction for remaining on Parliament grounds after they decreed the area closed to the public. “Wellingtonians have the right to conduct their lives and go about their business without the interference of ongoing unlawful activity,” the police declared, warning that “additional resources” would be “deployed from around the country” to crack down on protests if they continued.

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“I will not stand by and allow these big tech firms to perniciously cancel or stifle speech they disagree with.”

Texas Probes GoFundMe Shutdown Of Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)

The Texas state government has opened an investigation into crowdfunding platform GoFundMe after the site shut down a campaign on behalf of Canadian truckers in the Freedom Convoy, a large anti-vaccination mandate protest staged primarily in Ottawa. The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced the move on Wednesday, saying he would act to “protect Texas consumers” and “get to the bottom of this deceitful action” following the platform’s decision to cancel the Freedom Convoy fund drive. “GoFundMe’s response to an anti-mandate, pro-liberty movement should ring alarm bells to anyone using the donation platform and, more broadly, any American wanting to protect their constitutional rights,” he said, arguing that Texans deserve to “know where their hard-earned money is going, rather than allowing GoFundMe to divert money to another cause” without their consent.

The site halted donations after “multiple discussions with local law enforcement” and “reports of violence and other unlawful activity” at the trucker-led protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Demonstrators have camped out in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, for over a week – what GoFundMe has described as an “occupation.” By the time the campaign shut down, it had raised more than $8 million. While the platform initially said it would issue refunds to donors only if they explicitly requested it – noting that it would otherwise send the money to charities approved by itself and the Freedom Convoy organizers – it has since reversed course. Earlier this week, GoFundMe issued an update, stating that, “due to donor feedback,” refunds would instead be processed automatically.

Two other states have also vowed to launch similar probes. Missouri AG Eric Schmitt told Fox News on Wednesday that his office would investigate “GoFundMe’s actions to silence the Freedom Convoy,” adding, “I will not stand by and allow these big tech firms to perniciously cancel or stifle speech they disagree with.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis previously said that his state would look into the canceled fund drive, accusing GoFundMe of “deceptive practices.”

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“..they must let some of the pressure out of the balloon and ease some of the restrictions affecting the average family.”

What Will Gov. Abbott Do With Vax Mandate In The Texas National Guard? (Blaze)

These were supposed to be part-time citizen soldiers, but so many of them have served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East. More recently, nearly all of them are at the Texas-Mexico border attempting to do the job the federal government won’t do. Now that same federal government is threatening to terminate thousands of Texas guardsmen if they fail to get a shot that quite literally is outdated, and numerous data points and testimony from military doctors raise concerns about adverse reactions. Will Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stand up for his Guard? What about other GOP governors? The Biden administration officials know that with mounting opposition to COVID mandates, they must let some of the pressure out of the balloon and ease some of the restrictions affecting the average family.


But they also understand that the military is a minority of the minority and that they can get away with illogical and illegal mandates on it for far longer. At present, it appears that no number of facts on the ground will change the minds in the Pentagon in terminating their July 1 deadline on all Army soldiers, including state guardsmen, to receive the experimental shots. While the damage has already been done in most circles of the active-duty military, there are thousands of Texas guardsmen who have not gotten the shots and are now starring down the barrel of losing their careers and all retirement benefits. Here are the most recent vaccination numbers released by the Texas Military Department obtained by the Blaze:

As you can see, just 47% of the Texas Army National Guard are fully vaccinated, and 45% — accounting for 8,750 troops – have not begun the shots. At the border, 48% of the soldiers, nearly 3,000 of them, are unvaccinated, according to my source. And from speaking to two sources on the ground in the Texas Guard, it appears that most of them will refuse to get the shots. Will Gregg Abbott allow them to be terminated? Will Republicans in the U.S. Senate vote for the upcoming budget bill that continues to fund the DOD mandate?


The obvious question everyone should be asking is why are the GOP governors not uniting at a meeting and declaring the DOD mandate null and void? Remember, while governors have no control over the active-duty military, they do control the chain of command for disciplinary actions in their respective guards, absent a “Title 10” order from the president. At a minimum, each governor should direct the adjunct general of the Guard to announce that the state plans to fight the mandates and will dismiss any officer who encourages, much less coerces, soldiers to get the shots. That is fully within the legal authority of a governor.

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“CVS is not counting on booster shots boosting its business.”

CVS Forecasts 80% Drop In Covid Vaccine Sales For 2022 (R.)

CVS on Wednesday said it expected a 70% to 80% drop in the number of COVID-19 vaccines its drugstores will administer this year and said 2022 profit would be driven by its health insurance and pharmacy benefit management businesses. Shares of the company fell more than 4% in early trading after the company left its 2022 earnings forecast unchanged despite beating profit expectations in the fourth quarter. CVS made the comments during a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter results, which exceeded Wall Street estimates for profit and sales. The company, which operates one of the largest US drugstore chains, manages pharmacy benefits for employers and health plans and owns the Aetna health insurer, also forecast a 40% to 50% fall in COVID-19 testing at its stores.


It said it expects “modest full-year volume growth” in over-the-counter test kits. CVS said it administered COVID-19 vaccine booster doses during the fourth quarter that it had previously expected to provide in 2022, helping drive a near 13% increase in sales at its retail stores. That was also a factor in not raising the 2022 forecast, it said. While some countries such as Israel have begun giving out fourth vaccine doses, CVS is not counting on booster shots boosting its business.

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Three times higher than international average

Germany Electricity Prices Soar To World Record Highs (NTZ)

Germany’s power supply, once mostly made up of a mixture of coal and nuclear power, used to be among the most stable and affordable in the world. Power outages were rare and grid interventions were infrequent. But then in the 1990s environmental activists and politicians got involved, believing they could manage and design a grid and power supply that would be technically and environmentally superior than what the leading power generation and electrical engineers and experts themselves had in place. Sun and wind were the way to go, the environmentalist Greens and SPD socialist’s declared. After all, the wind and sun don’t send electric bills and are “free for the taking”. This they somehow managed to convince the public. And so the greening of the grid began.

In 2000, the coalition government of the Socialist’s and Greens, led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, introduced the EEG renewable green energies feed-in act. What followed was a green energies construction frenzy with hundreds of megawatts of volatile wind and solar capacity being added to the grid every year while nuclear power was shut down. Today now comes the EED’s price shock. Wind and solar are not free after all. In fact they are outrageously expensive, and they are even more volatiles in terms of supply than the country’s Corona policies! Today German weekly news magazine FOCUS here reports how Germany’s electricity prices have now reached “record” levels: “Germany is the world champion in electricity prices – no country pays more for electricity.

According to new data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, German households paid an average of 36.19 cents for a kilowatt hour in January 2022.” That’s over 40 US cents per kilowatt-hour! “Never before have German consumers had to pay so much,” writes FOCUS. “Germans have to pay almost three times as much for electricity from the outlet compared to the international average. This is mainly due to unusually high taxes and eco-taxes in this country.” What’s worse, the country now teeters on power grid collapse, meaning blackouts are a real threat. Moreover, high-tech computer-controlled production machines and plants rely on a steady supply frequency to operate. As grid frequency becomes increasingly unstable due to the volatile wind and solar power input, the equipment risks costly unplanned production shutdowns.

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“kind of weird, people will get really mad if you use that word and tweet about it on a phone that’s made by slaves.”

Joe Rogan Mocks His Controversy In Surprise Stand-up Appearance (RT)

Headlining a small comedy show in Austin, Texas, Joe Rogan took to the stage to speak about the recent controversy surrounding him and his podcast on Spotify, and comment on the recently circulated video compilation of him using the n-word on his show. “I used to say it if [I was talking about] a Richard Pryor bit or something, I would say it in context,” Rogan said. “Somebody made a compilation of every time I said that word over 14 years and they put it on YouTube, and it turned out that was racist as f**k. Even to me! I’m me and I’m watching it saying, ‘Stop saying it!’ I put my cursor over the video and I’m like, ‘Four more minutes?!’” Rogan added that he hadn’t used the word in years, before saying he found it “kind of weird, people will get really mad if you use that word and tweet about it on a phone that’s made by slaves.”

The number one podcast host then addressed the other major controversy surrounding his show – the alleged Covid and vaccine misinformation. “I talk shit for a living — that’s why this is so baffling to me,” he said. “If you’re taking vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault? What dumb shit were you about to do when my stupid idea sounded better? ‘You know that dude who made people eat animal dicks on TV? How does he feel about medicine?’ If you want my advice, don’t take my advice.” After the show, Rogan held a brief Q&A with the audience, where one fan asked if he would accept the recent $100-million offer to move his show onto Rumble, but the host said he’ll stay where he is for now: “No, Spotify has hung in with me, inexplicably, let’s see what happens.”

In a recent episode with comic Akaash Singh, Rogan has decried the controversy surrounding him as “a political hit job” saying that the video of him saying the n-word had always been out there and was being used now for political reasons. “They’re taking all this stuff I’ve ever said that’s wrong and smushing it all together. It’s good because it makes me address some stuff that I really wish wasn’t out there.” Rogan also responded to criticism leveled against him by former US president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who said Rogan shouldn’t have apologized to the mob. “You should apologize if you regret something,” said Rogan, adding that “I do think you have to be careful not to apologize for nonsense.”

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“Great Britain has lost an empire but not yet found a role.”

Britain’s Second Elizabethan Age Has Been 70 Years Of Dismal Decline (Nuttall)

There’s no doubt that Queen Elizabeth II is a wonderful monarch, perhaps one of the greatest Britain has ever seen. To put her long reign in perspective, she ascended to the throne only seven years after the end of the Second World War, and Winston Churchill was her first prime minister. Her commitment to duty and to her people are beyond reproach, and, as a result, her jubilee will be met with a swathe of celebratory television documentaries and news articles. But let’s not fool ourselves. Although she has been a magnificent monarch, her time on the throne has been one of steep British decline, and a far cry from the glorious first Elizabethan age in the 16th century.

This reign of Elizabeth I, from 1558 to 1603, is regarded as a ‘golden age’ for Britain, one of economic prosperity, technological advancement, and global exploration. She inherited an unstable kingdom, one divided by religion, increasing poverty, and beset with powerful foreign enemies. Under the guidance of its shrewd ‘Virgin Queen’, however, England emerged as a world power able to tackle its outward and internal foes. Her achievements included the restoration of England to Protestantism, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Royal Navy’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, which laid the foundations for Britain to go on to ‘rule the waves’. Indeed, when it comes to the navy, it could be argued that the second Elizabethan period represents the undoing of the first.

When her namesake became Queen in February 1952, Britain was one of the most powerful nations on the planet; alongside the United States and the Soviet Union, it was considered one of the ‘Big Three’. Britain’s strength was augmented later that same year, when it became a nuclear power. At the time, Britain was spending 11.2 percent of GDP on its armed forces, yet this figure today has shrunk to a mere 2.3 percent. In 1952, Britain had a standing army of 871,000. This now stands at 82,000 and is due to be reduced to 72,500 by 2025. This is not really an army, but a corps. It is the same with the Royal Navy. In the 1950s, Britain had a navy worthy of policing the oceans. There were 280 active ships in 1950 and 12 aircraft carriers.

By 2020, however, the Royal Navy only had seventy active vessels, with only two aircraft carriers. Indeed, if coastal patrol vessels are excluded, the number of ships in the Royal Navy has declined by around 74 percent since the Falklands War of 1982. By any measure, this can only be construed as military decline. I am not making an argument in favour of colonialism, but the fact that Britain was prepared to abandon – or “scuttle” as Churchill put it – her empire in such a hurry only serves to highlight the country’s rapidly diminishing status. Indeed, as Dean Acheson, the former US secretary of state, said in 1962, “Great Britain has lost an empire but not yet found a role.”

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“Bayer AG purchased Monsanto and dumped the company name back in 2018. As if … that would be helpful. ”

Glyphosate’s Dirty Secrets — Are We About to Learn More? (CHD)

Truth will out. Eventually, given enough time, the good, the bad and the ugly will be revealed. Such is the case with Monsanto‘s dubious herbicide glyphosate. The long-winding story on how Monsanto and its governmental enablers at the Environmental Protection Agency first registered the weedkiller Roundup under at best dubious circumstances is sickening. In March 2015 U.S District Judge for the Northern District of California allowed public release of internal Monsanto documents showing how Monsanto influenced EPA to reclassify glyphosate from a Class C carcinogen to a Class E category which paved the way for glyphosate Roundup production. It was nothing short of a cover-up that put greed ahead of public safety.

And now ironically we learn the cover-up may have included Monsanto’s own investors. Bayer AG purchased Monsanto and dumped the company name back in 2018. As if … that would be helpful. Bayer has lost a string of jury trials where glyphosate was believed to be responsible for cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Now Bayer investors are saying the German agri-giant played fast and loose with the facts, misleading them on 1) the safety of glyphosate and Roundup; 2) Bayer’s efforts at due diligence; and 3) the legal risks in the acquisition of Monsanto. Their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California makes for some interesting reading:

“Defendants specifically downplayed the liability risks related to Monsanto’s Roundup product, emphasizing that Bayer conducted a ‘thorough analysis’ during the due diligence process and ‘undertook appropriate due diligence of litigation and regulatory issues throughout the process’ which led Bayer to finalize the Acquisition. “These and similar statements made by Defendants during the Class Period were false and misleading. In truth, Defendants knew or recklessly disregarded that the Acquisition would not result in the benefits for Bayer that Defendants had represented, due to Monsanto’s significant exposure to liability risk related to Roundup.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Nate Hagens Energy Blind | Part 01 of 05 | The Great Simplification

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arnold

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle February 10 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 93 total)
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  • #100588

    Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Water 1566   • VAERS Data Supports DoD Whistleblowers (UncoverDC) • The Rise of Omicron is the Fall of Vaccin
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 10 2022]

    #100589
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Water 1566

    I love this series…

    The detail, the subjects, the relevance, and the mood………..

    #100590
    oxymoron
    Participant

    “you are hurting Canadians and you are not above the law.” “This is an illegal economic blockade against the people of Ontario and against all Canadians,
    So some Canadians are now not Canadians. What are they, refugees?

    #100591

    “you are hurting Canadians and you are not above the law.” “This is an illegal economic blockade against the people of Ontario and against all Canadians,”

    These words apply just as much to the politicians and their mandates. The only issue would be how one defines “illegal”. And since they were elected, they consider everything they do “legal”.

    #100592
    those darned kids
    Participant

    why did i just watch an ad for a car?

    #100593
    EoinW
    Participant

    You can tell the kids graduated from the same WEF school for leadership. Last month Trudeau makes a speech about making the lives of the unvaxxed unbearable. Macron makes the same speech the next day. Today Ardern sends in her Gestapo to violently remove peaceful protesters. Will we see the same thing in Ottawa tomorrow?

    If you want to know what these lunatics will do next just call Klaus, 1-800-555-DAVOS

    #100594
    EoinW
    Participant

    I heard that Lloyd Robertson & Peter Mansbridge have been hiding in their bedroom closets to escape the overacting of their fellow MSM colleagues.

    #100595
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Modern Monetary Theory, the buzziest economic idea in decades, got a pandemic tryout of sorts. Now inflation is testing its limits.” – NY Times

    What? Just printing money caused mass inflation? And probably a currency collapse? When did this begin? Quick, tell Keen!

    “How M.M.T. Won the Fiscal Policy Debate,” in early 2021” –Bloomberg

    Suuuure, pal. Tiny ideas for tiny owners. There’s no inflation! …Until suddenly there is.

    It gets better. Not being complete fools – only “99% effective” fools – they say, “[They] can just print [money], as long as its economy has the ability to churn out the needed goods and services.”

    Great. Totally True! Except that is Soviet Socialism that has failed everywhere it’s been tried. You know, you’d think an “Economist”, studying the history of “economies” might notice that. NOPE.

    “In the M.M.T. view of the world, “How will you pay for it?” is a vapid policy question” Just print money!

    This falls dead on their core weakness: they think the MAP is the Territory. That is, their MIND, mental representation, is the same as the Thing itself. In this case, MONEY, the accounting unit, is equal to the objects it’s measuring, like wheat and oil and time. That is, it fits right into EGO. What I THINK is reality. So I THINK, or cause to be printed, accounting chits, and oil and ice cream appear! Magic!

    So you know what happens next, right? “Ms. Kelton, and the movement she has come to represent, now seem anxious to control the narrative. The pandemic spending wasn’t entirely consistent with M.M.T principles” That is to say, “This Socialism is not REAL Socialism.” Just like all 300 other times before. But if –I– were King/Tyrant/God/Emperor, I’D do it right and it would work, by gum! The problem is, you were all stupid and I’m smart!

    Can we blame ‘MMT’ for the run-up in inflation? …Of course not.” Absolutely! When has printing $10 Trillion/year ever caused inflation before? That’s ridiculous!

    And has that inflation ever toppled the government, leading to mass-death, starvation and war? Who cares? I’m illiterate and won’t look! Let’s find out!!!

    Okay, real point: why is this allowed to be placed in the world’s top fakest newspaper? A day after NPR promotes the All-control, never-audited, create-at-will, mass-inflation Fed Coin? We were following what is suddenly censored and banned from being said, but also what is suddenly allowed and promoted to be said. Which is this and why?

    Oh wait, they no sooner printed that then this: ““Sorry everyone, debunking MMT is now sexist. If you do not endorse a non-theory that would bring catastrophic inflation, then you must hate women…”

    Some days you can’t keep up. “Is This What Winning Looks Like?” –NYTimes is the title. Indeed. If you don’t hate women, you have to murder a million children in poverty. Your move. Binary America. Red or Blue. One bad idea or its opposite extreme bad ideas, both fabricated with no evidence and presented in fake press releases by me.

    Blue America:
    “In Matt Taibi’s 2019 book Hate Inc. he showed how before the media was used to “manufacture consent”. Now it is being used to manufacture discontent and divide “silo” people into different camps, because hate sells, and divisive media gets more clicks.”

    If only. These guys are not stupid, whatever I may say about them. They’re just mental. Somewhere along the line, in every company and structure, somebody said, “Hey, this thing is happening…due to us.” And in every case, they didn’t mind a bit. It didn’t disturb them, they liked it and carried on. Also with investors, lawsuits, with Congressmen, judges. Even when it made LESS money, as conservative, more standard media went straight up in readers and stock price. Now that’s a ‘silo’ but it shows there are a lot of options. Substack is selling well, as is The Epoch Times, a bunch of foreigners. IN PRINT. On PAPER. The only thing they had to do to win and “Hate, Inc” had to do to fail was STOP LYING. They couldn’t do it, and now CNN, BuzzFeed, HuffPo and the rest are bankrupting. They’re 7th sons and daughters from Brooklyn and Yale, who made all their fortunes in VC and Wall St and MIC, they’ve probably never SEEN a human not lie with every waking breath before. Ever. Anywhere they’ve ever been.

    P.S. Blue America? Closing hospitals for the unvaxxed? They ALREADY closed all the Red America hospitals.ALL OF THEM. Those are the rural hospitals. And took the money and jobs from them to the cities. With the talent and brains and the resiliency from them. Then took 30,000 deaths a year to them to decades, and now have swapped Purdue Pharma for 2x Chinese Fentanyl. Every minute. Every day. For decades.

    Family farms: outlawed. Inheritance? Illegal. Competition? Eliminated with subsidies TO the monopolies, TO the cities. Spectrum Amazon, Tesla. Media attacks on all small towns since Melloncamp. Racist stupid hicks, grinding them in person to steal their talent, drive anyone worth using up into the city’s PMC class of subordinates. Market rigging for 40 years, crushing food prices. On and on, every day, forever.

    Oh and in the cities too. Biden is finding black people – only – and handing out crack pipes to them –only– but never white people, while continuing to arrest all black drug users on the “Crime Bill” he loves. There are Asians to keep out of college by the color of their skin, Native Americans to kill, but generally the rural has been strip-mined and consumed in the cities, that are largely financialized and produce nothing but high (home) prices.

    Etc. You’ve heard it all before.

    One note: traders I follow say “market” (that is, like 7 remaining Dow/SP components) are going UP. Markets often end (or only end) in blowoffs like when Cisco was projected to sell another billion routers in 1999 (to Mars and Saturn, I guess?). Inflation can make this happen. I thought we just had a blowoff, just saying it, right now I am looking for where the continuing (fake) liquidity is coming from, I think China.

    They would need a Zeus for any electric cars to work, that is, “Magic”, a “God in the Machine”, because they have no other power sources available. Not even for electric, which is the easiest. But they’re PMC’s: rainbows and skittles and unicorns, not no never any math. Look at Germany. Apparently now the worst engineers on planet earth, living in the dark and cold.

    #100596
    Dr. D
    Participant

    NPR: “The future of the pandemic is looking clearer as we learn more about infection”
    February 7, 20225:00 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition

    “During the early days of the pandemic, scientists and doctors were concerned that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 might not trigger a strong immune response in many people – thus an infection might not provide long-term protection.

    “Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests,” a headline from The Guardian alerted back in July 2020. “King’s College London team found steep drops in patients’ antibody levels three months after infection,” the story warned.

    But that idea was based on preliminary data from the laboratory — and on a faulty understanding of how the immune system works.”

    That is to say: It was a lie. They just said s–t. They had no idea and a lot of evidence to say otherwise.

    “If you’re under age 50 and healthy, then a bout of COVID-19 offers good protection against severe disease if you were to be infected again in a future surge, says epidemiologist Laith Abu-Raddad, at Weill-Cornell Medical-Qatar. “That’s really important because eventually, every one of us will get infected,

    What? That’s the opposite of what you said last month.

    And everybody’s going to get it? But they were wearing mask! But Biden said you won’t get it if you’re vaccinated!

    Lie. Lies. Lying. All lies, all fake, and we all knew all the time.

    Okay, why is this allowed out there, permitted, promoted, and what’s the spin? Where are they headed to CYA?

    #100597
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    There is a litmus-test in Modern Monetary Theory beyond which new money should not be printed, so that’s all well and good. The problem is, printing money is kind of like eating your favorite brand of potato chips. You start by resolving to eat just a handful, but before you know it, you’ve gone and eaten the whole dang bag!

    #100598
    those darned kids
    Participant

    10 trillion / 340 million americans = 29,411.76 each.

    now, most americans have at least that much debt, so giving them that money would actually be deflationary as they would use it to pay off debt that would otherwise continue to inflate through compound interest.

    10 trillion / 500 billionaires = 20 billion each

    most billionaires will take this money and buy a) governments, b) stocks, c) bonds, d) real estates, e) all of the above.

    this will drive up the price of everything, thus forcing the poor to once again to pay for the sociopathic whims of the few.

    regardless, mmt is insane because it will lead to unprecedented environmental destruction.

    look what we’ve done with fire.

    #100600
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Hello Old Friend

    “UnitedHealthcare
    It’s not too late to get a flu shot
    Flu season is far from over and anyone can get the flu, even if you’re healthy
    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it’s likely that flu viruses and the virus that causes COVID-19 may both be spreading1. A flu shot is covered at no cost to you.”

    It’s officially over. The collision is behind us. I wonder what lies ahead?

    Keep Your Eyes on the Road

    #100601
    deflationista
    Participant

    Blue America has a messaging problem:

    #100602
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I don’t think Ottawa police want anything to do with a buncha ornery truckers who drive de facto tanks for a living.

    I think the truckers know this.

    #100603
    those darned kids
    Participant

    bosco: “The collision is behind us. I wonder what lies ahead?”

    unfortunately, it’s years of cleaning up roadkill.

    #100604
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    #100605
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    tdk: “10 trillion / 340 million americans = 29,411.76 each.”

    Speaking of all those $Trillions…

    US Gold Reserves are worth less than half a Trillion US$.
    Meanwhile, US Money Supply M2 increased to $21.6 Trillion in December 2021.

    United States Gold Reserves = 8133.47 Tonnes (third quarter of 2021)
    One tonne is equal to approximately 32,150.75 troy ounces.
    (8133)x(32,151)x($1850 per ounce) = $484 billion

    #100606
    those darned kids
    Participant

    deflationista, YOU have a messaging problem.

    two years of seeing communities and families ripped apart, and you’re still not tired of being a shill for the most corrupt corporations and governments of the planet.

    you should be ashamed of yourself.

    #100607
    deflationista
    Participant

    you should be ashamed of yourself.

    That’s rich.

    #100608
    those darned kids
    Participant

    gold is a relic. it’s production is environmentally destructive.

    we do need a way of restraining human greed, but ripping apart mountains and fouling waterways does not seem like the best way to do so.

    #100609
    zerosum
    Participant

    Surprise
    ….. The snobs are losing the consent to be governed

    #100610
    those darned kids
    Participant

    no, it’s not rich. those are your owners.

    #100611
    zerosum
    Participant

    Fear….A step too far

    The NDP want to stop the demonstrators by stealing their money and stopping their sources of fundings

    #100612
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Kelowna judge sides with mother in fight with ex-husband over child’s vaccination.

    B.C. man ordered not to discuss or share social media posts about COVID-19 vaccine with 11-year-old son
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vaccine-social-media-court-1.6345167

    F.S.

    #100613
    EoinW
    Participant

    Intriguing what’s going on in Canada and the behavior of the leading politicians.

    In curling, if you make a mistake you have to take your medicine and give up a 2 ender. Same in golf: hit it in the deep rough, play for a bogey. When you don’t admit your mistake and refuse to take your medicine then you end up with a 4 ender or a triple bogey.

    Canada’s political leadership(not just Trudeau) made more than one mistake yet refuse to take their medicine. A reasonable person would simply end all covid restrictions and mandates. Trudeau will still be PM after, the premiers will still run their provinces. Some of them may even save their political careers by backing down. Even if they don’t, they simply take their millions and move on. No one is threatening to throw them into prison or hang them from a street lamp.

    We are not dealing with reasonable people. Certainly not intelligent ones!

    What’s the 4 ender or triple bogey look like? Do they actually break the Dominion of Canada? Does the entire system lose credibility, effectively ending law and order(I’m pretending law and order didn’t end March 2020)? Does anarchy bring down the rich and powerful? Are Trudeau & Co. & the financiers & the corporations risking losing everything because they don’t have the courage to back down?

    #100614
    chooch
    Participant

    Good article on protest, also check out 6min embedded video.

    He says the convoy also has the means to continue their operation indefinitely. Since GoFundMe cancelled their initial fundraiser, they are aiming to raise $16 million US on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo and are more than halfway there. 
    Unless there’s an internal collapse of the organization, Amarasingam worries it will end in violence.
    “Either there are mass arrests and violence on the streets or violence on the streets results in mass arrests and potentially military intervention.”

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/convoy-protesters-police-tactical-knowledge-1.6345854?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar

    #100615

    If they let it fade away now, they have gotten away with random acts of tyranny and can apply them again at will. Normalization if they stop now; prosecution if they push it.

    The use of glyphosate (not just a carcinogen, it also destroys nutrients in the soil and your gut bacteria, causing cravings and overeating) and genetic “vaccinations”:
    I guess we would call these sound business practices with excellent bottom lines. They are both industries that spawn other $$$ industries.
    Mess with someone’s bottom line, and they will mess with you.
    The process the globalists are working on now is to make it illegal to mess with the bottom line, as in making it illegal NOT to use their products, or to find and push products and practices which make theirs obsolete.

    #100616
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Arnold pimping electric cars for the Chosen Few

    Electric cars are as big a hoax as the Plandemic.

    “They’ have telegraphed through numerous articles that the next Covid is Climate.

    Another hustle for the Masses to blindly follow like Masks & Social Distancing.

    Can’t wait to see a Libtard driving an electric ultra luxury car with their double mask on and their spouse sitting in the back seat ‘social distancing’.

    hahahaha!

    If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

    We don’t have a ‘climate problem’ we have a Consumption Problem.

    You can parse it many ways but the Satanic Blood Drinking Oligarchs pencil it out like this:

    • Kill off 95% of ‘humanity’, doesn’t really matter how, just get the job done

    • Crank up AI automation to do a lot of the tasks formerly done by ‘the Sheeple’

    • Salvage what they can from the ruins with slave labor, burn the rest to the ground.

    • Build palaces, yes palaces not mansions, for the Crème de la Crème of Elites

    • Turn most of the continental landmasses into nature/game preserves for said Elites, just like days of yore!

    • CO2 levels plummet over time due directly to far lower consumption.

    • Slave labor salvage operations yielded centuries of resources

    • Future products designed without ‘planned obsolescence’ that last enormous lengths of time

    Example: a stainless steel wheelbarrow lasts thousands of years. Bronze door latches with sealed ball bearings last centuries, the list is endless of products designed to last instead of prematurely fail. I own and use stainless steel shovels and garden forks, except for re-handling, they will last countless centuries unless you lend them to the neighbors :>)

    • Think of the New Earth as Chernobyl decades after the accident, the wolfs and creatures moved back in without people to disrupt them and the Earth heals itself after millennia of human abuse and greed and mismanagement.

    #100617
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Russia’s Lavrov / UK’s Truss post-meeting in Moscow press conference – sort of embarrassing show in my opinion

    … it all starts at about 1:20 time in this vid:

    … fwiw,

    F.S.

    #100619
    those darned kids
    Participant
    #100620
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Do You Want a War Between Russia and NATO?”

    “Do You Want a War Between Russia and NATO?”

    Emmanuel Macron is no Talleyrand.

    Self-promoted as “Jupiterian”, he may have finally got down to earth for a proper realpolitik insight while ruminating one of the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs key bon mots: “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’, a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no’, and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.”

    Hard to believe Macron is an even bigger Ass Clown than I thought.

    http://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/7Z41pHqc6QSH98eTEfA0xrFSLp5AepA2-768×474.jpg
    .

    #100621
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Putin sure knows how to treat Royalty

    #100622
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I thought the photo at the table was a Monty Python trailer

    #100623
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Western politicians are so stupendously brain damaged, Old White Joe must be the Head Cheerleader

    Joe Biden kills the economy by signing pork-laden “Covid Relief” bill

    https://i.imgflip.com/51dgto.jpg
    .

    #100624
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Ezra Levant of Rebel News gives his take on how he sees the Canadian Trucker Protest resolving:

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1491582230216548357.html

    #100625
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    (digital distraction)

    “If they let it fade away now, they have gotten away with random acts of tyranny and can apply them again at will. Normalization if they stop now; prosecution if they push it.”

    Nothing will be normalized into a stable tyranny platform, just as we won’t return to anything like business as usual although we’ll pretend so for as long as we can delude ourselves.

    Here’s a picture of a child riding a reindeer:

    ren

    Maybe if we collapse our global scam of homo uber alles, her children may have a chance to still ride reindeer.

    We bemoan and decry so much being taken from us after we’ve taken almost everything from every life form on the planet… and not being content with that, had to make a few of our own in order to sell vaccine and corporate compliance.

    We’re.not.going.back. Where we’re going seems determined to require war and even worse as entry and exit points.

    But it could be worse. It could be a big-ass comet heading our way. Or a century or three of the sun experiencing major heartburn. Or maybe the some ancient god we’ve forgotten about is returning to get its share:

    SHow Me

    We now return to you to your usual programming:

    We Want Everything (because we don’t know or face up to what we need)

    #100626
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Mister Roboto

    Great summary of the Truck Stop!

    #100627
    oldandtired
    Participant

    It is a truism among truckers that if their feet are on the ground, they aren’t making any money. Left unsaid is that if truckers have their feet on the ground, ain’t nobody getting nothing, either.

    Is there any group more powerful than truck drivers right now?

    You can fake a lot of jobs in the professional sectors, but ya gotta be able to actually drive a truck to be a truck driver.

    When Billy Joe Ray Bob decides to drive his rig, fully loaded, back to his little slice of heaven- two acres with a single wide on it-and park it under the shade tree next to his house, ain’t nobody getting what’s in his trailer.

    #100628
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @Boscohorowitz announced after the Commercial Break, “We now return to you to your usual programming:”

    Hear, hear !

    And don’t worry , you’re extraordinarily well equipped.

    #100629
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Just cuz it seems like such a great escape: “… and you’re walking across the water with ease, not even thinking about where the rocks just under the surface are.” And, because I’ll never finish it and, really, it’s not a story meant to be finished… here’s some ethereal jive about memory, airwaves, nostalgia, and magic glowing tubes:

    MEMORADIO

    begun 4-19-21

    “Turn it on,” says Sheila. “It works. Original tubes and everything. We just had the guy clean it out with dielectric fluid or something. Even the wiring. The power cord is new, but even that is older than me, I bet.”
    It is, and the radio, while not quite as old as Charly, is as old as his earliest radio memory. RCA Victor began manufacturing the 96T3 radio in 1938. July 9, 1938, is the night the Count Basie band played the Chatterbox in Pittsburh, PA, a date Charly knows because the internet apparently knows everything, and sells CDs of that night recorded by the radio station. He’s sure it’s the exact same broadcast because the announcer makes a little faux pas announcing If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight, announcing the name followed with, ‘Keep it up, boys!’ He remembers because Uncle Larry hollered, “Keep it up?! I’ll need more than one hour tonight, baby!” Everyone laughed, especially when little Charly hollered, “Tonight, baby!”, becoming the instant center of attention among an audience of very happy, inebriated, and highly appreciative adults.
    As the couples danced slow to the love song, Charly had asked his Grandma Bunny what was so funny.
    “Never you mind, Charly. It’s not for little boys to know.”
    This made the moment unforgettable: to experience the wonder of adult fun, to be the center of it, but not allowed to know what it was. The next song was fast, and everyone danced, his Mom and aunts taking turns including him in the fun. It was the best fun he’d ever remembered having at that age. He remembered the breathless thrill of it all and the sour alcohol on their breath and the cigarette smoke swirling above them as they danced in the white sand of Grandpa Hack’s backyard. He also remembers it being the first time he became aware that women were… pretty, and he’d liked the way they smelled and he’d liked it when their skirts twirled so high he saw their underwear. It had been a big night for little Charly.
    Charly remembers this the way Boomers remember seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Like his son, George, who first heard The Beatles when he was six years old, Charly was also only six years old when his parents and some in-laws got really wild that cool summer night in a tiny town in southern Florida. It is his first recollection of jazz and grownup acting wild.
    The radio before him now is the same model of radio they listened to in 1938 in a town named Naples on the Gulf of Mexico. This is something else the internet taught him about his past he wouldn’t have remembered just from being there. Vintage RCA Victor 96T3, restored and working, sold out. A child of the Radio Age, he knows that the atmosphere must have been just right that night for them to pick up such a strong and clear signal from the Chatterbox nightclub in Pittsburgh, PA. A thousand miles as the crow flies.
    With its front like a small temple of mahogany and a row of plastic push buttons bearing the names of major Western Region radio stations like KWJ, KXL, KGW, KOIN, this radio had originally been sold in some store west of the Mississippi, not the Deep South… and Naples, FL is so Deep South it’s practically underwater. The radio Charly is looking at today is not the identical radio from his childhood. It cannot be. But it looks exactly the same, has all its original components, even the capacitor.
    It had actually been kind of strange for his cracker parents to be dancing to jazz in Naples 1938, but Uncle Larry had worked the winter tourist season in St. Peterburg, rubbing shoulders with Manhattan sybarites and Chicago heavyweights: he was, as they were just starting to say at the time, hep. To Charly, it was like music from another planet. Mongo or Mars. At that age, Planet Mongo had seemed more real to him than Mars, even when, a few months later, the CBS radio network had broadcast nationwide Orson Welles’ infamous radio version of H.G. Well’s sci-fi classic, The War of the Worlds where Mars invades earth.
    Charly remembers that one, too, and it was amazing, alright. But Planet Mongo, in the Flash Gordon Saturday morning matinees he saw in the tiny theater in the Olde Naples Building except when they took the train to Fort Meyers and saw it in a real bijou, Planet Mongo was real to six-year old Charly, he’d seen it with his own eyes, while Mars in The War of the Worlds was obviously just something from a big radio show. Learning in 6th grade there really was a planet called Mars, seeing it with his own eyes in the night sky, was embarrassing and almost erotically thrilling, like peeing the bed.
    Discovering the CD of the Chatterbox Basie broadcast was magical enough for Charly. He doesn’t really expect this antique radio to channel tunes from hidden pockets of the radio ether any more than he expects it to receive signals from the ancient Martian civilizations that he’d once fervently believed in as an official sci-fi True Believer in the 40s and 50s, freaking out over bebop and all that progressive jazz (including a rarity by the Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra called Science Fiction, something the internet surely knows about too). Having been raised on the magic of radio at a time when science was still magic that glowed in the dark once the tubes warmed up, a drop-out Southern Baptist become a Free Thinker who read all the sci-fi books and magazines he could find in backwater Naples, the concepts of radio and magic are closely entwined in Charles Stutter Forthwain.
    But he knows that time travel is impossible and if some planet out there is broadcasting, the signals are too faint to hear on earth. He remembers Starmaker tales where advanced galactic civilization used entire stars as radio transmitters. He also remembers being appalled by how cheesy the original TV Star Trek was, and how delighted he was at how perfect the original Star Wars movie was. So many things to remember at his age, including a mostly wonderful if impoverished childhood at a time when flying saucers had not yet been invented or discovered or imagined but Buck Rogers could be Superman what with his anti-0gravity flightbelt and his super-blaster ray guns.
    He knows this radio will only play the pallid junk that passes for music these days, that the oldest oldies stations barely remember Elvis Presley much less Bing Crosby. He knows it’s a miracle the radio’s capacitor hasn’t exploded, long as this thing must have sat in somebody’s attic to be this well-preserved. Old capacitors that haven’t been powered up for too long tend to get excited and explode. Something about humidity over many years.
    He knows the magic is a great-nephew and his fiancé who think enough of him to buy the thing at an estate sale and have an old-school electronics expert, The Analog Wizard, go over it. The most fun he can expect from this old AM radio is a bit of over-the-top Pentacostal music on weekends and maybe, if the tuner’s still tight, Venezuela in the early dawn hours like when he was a teenager and a wannabe ham radio enthusiast who made his own broadband receiver from a kit but never learned Morse code or any of that stuff, tapping Esperanto into the speckled night back when Science was still going to save us all, right after a few words from our sponsor. That alone is more magic than he could want.
    But he knows it is a magic radio. He just does. He almost doesn’t want to know, the sensation of knowledge being like his first woody at age nine when Uncle Larry’s wife wasn’t as careful as she should’ve been with the bathroom door. A spooky tingle in the underwear of his imagination. But he knows.
    Looking up in both wonder and smart-assery, he says with a terrible French accent, “ ‘It’s a transmitter. It’s a radio for speaking to God.’”
    “Where’s that from, Uncachuck?”, says his great-nephew, Elliott.
    “Indiana Jones. First one. You’ve seen the video.”

    After a minute, Elliott asks Charly if he wants to turn it on.

    “You’ve heard it work, already, right?”

    “Uh-huh. Super-cool.”

    “Then if you don’t mind, I want to do it alone. The first time. I mean… I don’t know how you did it, you two, but this is more than just a classic radio from my childhood in perfect shape.”
    “Which: the radio or your childhood?” Viendi, Elliott’s girlfriend, is a card and the brains of the duo.
    “Both, I suppose. I can’t go back and check on it to make sure my tenth birthday is still there, but if I could, I’m sure it would be everything I remembered… only more. Perspective. Changes things. 1938 looks to me now…. Like the lost & found in an old Goodwill store. Never know what will show up there.”
    He turns silent and suddenly very serious.
    “But it’s all there. Has to be. I was there, after all. All the time. Never stepped out even once except a few dreams, maybe. The human mind…”
    He shrugs. Tells them with full sincerity it’s the best gift he remembers getting since Xmas 1941, a terrible time to have Xmas, just 14 days after Pearl Harbor, but all the more intense for that reason. He had even got French-kissed by his older cousin, Laraine, under the mistletoe. The world had suddenly caught on fire but with a nice glow around Xmas.
    They leave.
    He looks at the radio, closes his eyes, remembers the original, looks at the radio, closes his eyes… and falls asleep. He does that a lot of late. He no longer rides the bus, a funny old pleasure of his, because he tends to fall asleep and miss his stop. He doesn’t mind paying the money for uber-lyft, and it’s so convenient and easy on old bones, but he misses the flicker of light through downtown bus windows and the weird anonymous vibe as the seats fill up, the sense of being no one among anyone anywhere but especially home, that is, Chicago, where they’d moved when he was 16 and where he’d lived until retiring, *shudder*, in Florida, in St. Petersberg, in fact. How he’d grown so old, and fat, and silly, and… what was I thinking about?… all this is something he understands, having done it himself after all, but hardly knows. Memory grows far too great to hold in the head of one man who doubts he as many years left as fingers on one hand. If that. He understands and is fairly content with it all, but not knowing, this bothers him. He doesn’t think he has Alzheimers and doesn’t much fear it, having a gun in the drawer and the courage to use it before he lost all of himself to the wind. He actually has a marvelous memory, bordering on eidetic in some respects, particularly music and math, but this only fine-lines how little of his life he can remember, remembering just enough of it to feel how the horizon of his life is so far behind it’s about to appear in front before long. He’ll be crawling up the old birth canal to a new reality and maybe even live to tell about it in a new life. He has almost no fear of the afterlife although he feels no surety that Jesus saves or there’s a better place, per se. Life is Disneyland, and he assumes that if any part of the ride should be safe, it’s the end. Sign says, You must be this small (crawling height) to get off. Be ye like unto a little child, said Jesus. He remembers Deacon Cheleane saying that when Charly was maybe 8 or 9, and feeling slightly confused since everything else was taught was about growing up and becoming a man. Dying, other than the lousy physical pain of it, doesn’t bother him. But he wishes he remembered more. The time to do it was now, while he had the time, all day for the rest of his life if he liked. If there is a heaven, he doesn’t want to arrive a stranger to himself.
    He awakes two hours later to the dumb grind of the air conditioner fighting hard mid-afternoon sun. Takes a bath, something he can still do which, he reminds himself, means he’s not that old or that fat if he can still haul himself out of the tub. He just feels old. Really, he might go another 20 years if he took care of himself, what with modern medicine and all. But it really doesn’t look like any fun since Marj died. He’d rather look back than forward, let death catch up with him when it’s had enough.

    He shaves in the bathtub like that old imaginary poet, John Shade, but has never noticed until now that the wet shaving foam dripping from his face spread over the hair on his chest like a slo-mo avalanche, a Santa beard he’d been growing all his life but could only see now when he’d also grown fat enough to play Santa without a belly pillow and his hairy chest stayed defiantly above water even when he laid back. It puts a smile on his face, and when he’s dried off and dressed, he takes a deep breath, offers something between a prayer and a shrug, turns the radio knob.
    Soft light comes through the radio dial but not from the tubes: these are made of metal with black paint that smells funny when they get hot. He waits awhile and sniffs. Ozone with a faint whiff of cat wizz. Original components, alright.
    He turns the volume up enough to hear a bit of whine, static, and ghost of a voice in Spanish. The hairs on the back of his neck go up like a cat whizzing on an electric fence. Hypnotized, himself some kind of antennae to the past tuned by the long-forgotten sound of ancient radio static, the leftover shock waves of the Big Bang, he knows, outer space whispering into his ear between commercials, he turns the tuning knob, keeping the volume low enough to hear between the airwaves, then stops.
    1948, Chicago Uptown area, Winnemac Avenue. He’s 16 years old and bought his first personal radio, A 1936 DeWalt 618 with a hypnotic red radio dial knob shaped like some kind of nautical compass of the future. Bought for $16 at a pawnshop, $8 of it from his Dad, $8 of it money he’d earned himself. The glass tubes glowed through rounded rectangular slots in the back and smelled like ozone, no cat whizz.
    In 1948, there was still ample magic in the ether. Listening for signals from another planet wasn’t too far-fetched for a 16-year old at that time. Percival Lowell’s Martian canals were still popular beliefs back then, and Is There Life on Mars? was a standard topic for the strange new crowd of kids Charly was growing into, these young teenagers wo came of age during or just after WWII. Charly had made friends with a gang of upper-crusters at Amundsen High. They liked his Florida accent, thought it was cool that he was a True Believer. He was a decent-looking kid with a good sense of humor, and by senior year, he was officially a Cool Kid, knew Parker from Gillespie, Monk from Miles, Heinlein from Azimov, Kenton from Sauter-Finnigan.
    But it was all blowing away as fast as it had arrived, those intoxicating fumes of fantastic futurism. His idol, Isaac Azimov, once said that the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 made science fiction respectable. Science magic go boom, something like that; anyway, it caught people’s attention and they began taking it seriously, and that was the beginning of the end.
    He got drafted in 1950 just in time catch some of the Korean Conflict but did so safely bunkered down at base doing artillery calculation. He calibrated shelling ranges and things like radar telemetry by day and read sci-fi and general science books at night. He wasn’t much for drinking, having seen what it did to his Aunt Velma, and hookers weren’t for him, so he spent a lot of time reading and listening to the radio when he could get power to charge its batteries.
    Radio in Korea in 1950 was mostly wilderness with rogue signals from everywhere but Korea except for the propaganda frequencies. Seoul City Sue fascinated him because of her Korean-influenced Arkansas accent. Also, most of what she said made sense. Plus, she played music from home.
    But mostly he twiddled the dial in the wee hours to hear Russian comrade music and music from places like Istanbul or Cairo, not that he could really tell the difference. On a good night, the ether breathed with him, it felt. Cold clear in Korean winter and he catches hot jazz (Sidney Bechet) from someplace sounding very South Pacific, probably the Philippines. Rarely, very rare, he’d catch American music and English from San Francisco. Good stuff but mostly an excuse to turn the dial, slowly, when the radio conditions booted a signal out of range, tuning blindly like a safecracker.
    But it was changed when he got home. Movies and television were grinding out silly rocketship sci-fi for kindergarteners when they weren’t making moralistic atomic bomb scare movies, and that Sense of Wonder was fading even as sci-fi sales ‘took off’ (a jet age metaphor). His high school buddies were busy becoming the early beatnik types, and the new final frontiers weren’t space and extraterrestrial civilizations but philosophy and avant-garde politics. He got a degree in electronics and was soon making very god money running a tv repair shop coupled with a tv sales shop run by a partner. The tubes glowed awhile longer but by 1970 the world was transistorized and the magic was fading fast. We’d gone to the moon and found out how boring a desolate planetary satellite can be, and taken took pictures of Mars and Venus up close that showed no canals, no water, no ancient civilizations. The Age of Wonder closed and outer space soon gave way to inner space as computers took the place of rockets in kids’ imaginations.
    Now, 89 years old, wonder is so alive in him it’s replaced by the certain knowledge of magic even if these tubes don’t glow and give off tainted ozone. A touch of animal sacrifice, almost. No, cyborg sacrifice. ‘Eye of robot, pee of cat, this is where the magic’s at,’ he whispers to himself as he gently, oh so gently, turns the knob to the… to the left, of course. ‘Because when you’re my age, magic is all that’s left.’
    The Spanish clarifies. Donday one sunny Californicity ee speaka Spanish, the radio says, or something like that. It surprises him to realize he’s disappointed that it doesn’t play the Basie broadcast, surprised because he knows it isn’t like that. The magic isn’t out there or even in there in the tubes. It’s in him.
    He hears, he feels, he smells, he remembers the wetbacks in the orchards. Singing Mexican music as they plucked oranges and lemons with ridiculous speed, tiny flocks of them mobbing tree after tree like sparrows. His Dad was a fieldman and he’s sitting in his lap on a tractor eating a biscuit with honey. It’s hot but shady, cool citrus, Mexicans chattering, he looks at his Dad straight into enormous nostrils. He’s small, very small, 2-3 years old. The world is huge but very close. He rides in his Daddy’s lap like a lap dog in an emperor’s robe.
    A song starts from the radio, some awful quasi-gangsta Mexican rap. His childhood shuts off. He shuts the radio off. He goes to bed but his brain won’t shut off. He gets up, puts a kettle of tea on the burner, steeps a cup of Irish breakfast tea with orange and lemon peel, and puts the CD of Basie from 1938 in the player.

    It sounds great, as always, but no mnemonic flood of memories results. The magic isn’t entirely in him. Something about that radio. Not necessarily something supernatural or metaphysical, although one can always hope, maybe just the effect of that glowing dial, the smell of those old tubes, the sound of background static coming through an old superheterodyne AM radio’s crude components like the sound of a bathtub running in the apartment upstairs.
    He wants to try the radio again but feels too tired to deal with that much mysterious mystery. He falls asleep in the chair, his brain tuning the dream dial but mostly just getting static…
    Next morning, he’s made coffee and had a cup before remembering the radio. He eats a microwave Jimmy Dean sausage biscuit, remarking to himself how some mornings frozen phony food tastes really good. He feels very good.

    “It’s time to re-mem-ber!” he shouts softly at the ceiling fan working the last of cool morning air around. He pulls a chair next to the table he has the old radio on, an antique cushioned stool-on-rollers, chrome and dark green Naugahyde.
    He turns it on but turns the sound off. He bows his head and thinks something lime a prayer. He remembers how his wife would open the Bible and pick a scripture at random, seeking wheel-of-fortune inspiration and answers in holy writ.
    Closing his eyes, he turns the volume knob up while turning the tuning knob, moving away from Little Mexico before it triggers more memories, seeking safe harbor in soft gray static before trying another radio station. The static soothes him. It’s like soft sonic wool gently scratching his ear drums. For a man freshly awake and energized, he hypnotizes with surprising ease, and several minutes go by before he realizes he’s been somewhere else or at least not quite all there.
    The memories hit like a rogue wave when you turn your back at the beach, knocking him down, dragging him out in the undertow, an incomprehensible collage of recollections swirling in his head where he can vaguely sense himself peering down, like someone in a glass bottom boat, seeing through himself to the coral reef of a life’s memories.
    Turn the knob. It speaks business advice with an end-is-near riff, touting gold as an investment hedge. He’s maybe 10 years old and his mother is discouraging a door-to-door salesman from trying to sell her some life insurance. He hears what he didn’t hear at ten years old, the salesman’s innuendo that if she doesn’t life insurance, maybe she wants a little romantic action. He also hears that she is tempted, but not much. She slams the door in his face.
    He quickly turns the radio off. Memory is a dangerous gift, he thinks.
    But highly addictive, and he spends most of the day tuning in and out, coming in and out of mnemonic reverie like coming out from under anesthesia, only this anesthesia makes you remember and feel, not forget and go numb. Being this aware of what’s in your head is almost like being unconscious. Something like driving 77 miles before remembering that you’re driving. Meanwhile, the windshield rushes the world by, keeping your eyes full but your mind blank.
    You snap out of it and realize you’ve driven from 7 years old to 7 & ½. You’d think a person would have better things to do than nearly drown in their memories over and over but at his age there wasn’t much else he could still do, and he’d worked an entire lifetime for those memories. If it should prove there is no afterlife, if he never got to review his life the way the NDE survivors said they do with some god-like personage in the viewing booth with them, then he wants to do some of that now while he is still alive.
    (and so forth until the tubes blow out)

    Now cheer up, says I in a way that might get me assaulted in a bar. (No one likes being told to cheer up. Pisses ’em off. We’re perverse that way.) Everyone’s lost, the world is on fire, some next to you has it worse than you and needs cheering up. Who know, maybe you’ll get laid? Me, if I’m up to it come next Xmas, I’m ask my favorite Canadian if they want a string of red 5-gallon plastic gas tanks strung with Xmas lights to plug in next December.

    Delivered by this guy dressed as Santa: Carnivalito!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Organ of Happiness

    Hey def: everyone hates you, nobody likes you, worms taste bad, and you don’t care. I have to like that even if it’s kinda icky. Here’s something for you to sing from the city walls at all us deluded sots:

    Zombies!

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