Follies galore

The world continues to implode on so many fronts. Here in Lanka, finally, finally, the IMF has been invited to help us navigate pass the reefs of financial ruin, bloated debts, emaciated coffers, shortages of essentials, forex instability, and a legion of ills and errors that simply cannot be wished away with a short-term begging bowl or “swaps” for which we keep deferring payments as interest rates on those commitments start to soar. 

The American “Empire” has waylaid its credibility in the Middle East and does not govern the reactions of Europe in any meaningful way now. The dollar is under pressure. NATO seems toothless, or at least vastly confused. The US and European Ukrainian cheerleading seem positioned for casualty maximisation. Weapons being sent to Ukraine, are likely to end up as donations to Russia, akin to what has happened already in Afghanistan. 

And the pandemic surges in highly “vaccinated” countries. And the most idiotic of merit badges, the pointless masks – virtue signalling even for lone drivers in a car, or people out in the great outdoors where there are no documented cases of transmission – are the last fetishistic hangover of our mass flight from evidence and sense.

Lanka woes

Perhaps we needn’t take tuition from authoritarians who keep changing hue. We continue to careen between idiotic lockdowns to mass jabbing with gene therapies that don’t stop infection or spread (though the “desperation” for them mounts), to attempting to re-jig the financial system, to imposing climate agendas without real debate, to redefining real horrors like racism, to inventing new pseudo-campaigns like transgenderism. Corona becomes the prism for all of life’s priorities, and now the most recent “Hitler” in the form of Putin and “Ukraine” as a theatre of war, become a surrogate for cloaking other priorities, while innocent people die. That Promethean flame that ignites the human spirit, all of this is designed to douse it, to keep precious kindling away from it

From the tax cuts to madcap borrowing, to rating agency downgrades as forex reserves plunged, to terrifying amounts of dysfunctional government spending, to import paralysis which meant we couldn’t service exports and could only alienate trading partners, to nationalistic posturing while GSP+ remains undecided, to addled Covidian over-reaction with the world’s only 24/7 curfew for months when there were virtually no cases and in terms of mortality no “curve” to flatten. “Lockdowns” come with degrees of stringency as per the Oxford Stringency Index. On a scale of 100, with 9 key factors tallied, Lanka topped the list at “most stringent” with a clear, sustained inverse relationship between degree of stringency and results. 

As a consequence, an already faltering economy was decimated, millions of jobs lost, businesses and economic sectors were badly damaged or outright devastated. 

And then we kept locking down! The misguided idiocy of “Zero COVID” has now been demonstrated by both Australia and New Zealand, both far better placed in terms of reserves for the nevertheless completely failed experiment. 

To respond to the recurring bouts of self-inflicted devastation over a viral strain that even at pre-vaccination made no real impact on excess deaths, we went on a printing spree, with a currency that is not a global reserve currency and is not being particularly sought anywhere. 

The aversion to data and reality next expressed itself in the desire to overnight go into organic fertiliser, despite virtually unanimous expert admonitions not to, and the lived experience of seeking to navigate this transition by the European Union.

Key industries like tea have been undermined, harvest has been hit by 40% or more, farmers have been rendered insolvent, food shortages have been exacerbated, prices have soared. 

Taxes have been slapped on willy nilly and avoiding IMF assistance as advocated by virtually every adviser, has led to unbalanced short-term loans and swaps, until finally we are facing the piper.

If we have exhausted every expedient but sanity, perhaps this embattled land, full of so much talent and promise and potential with the right positioning, can renew its pact with development, and harvest its many assets and capabilities rather than kowtowing to collective “magical thinking” and hubris.

The muddled Middle East 

The COVID confusion has shown the most advanced countries in the world reaping the whirlwind and having the most catastrophic results despite mass “vaccination” and the bizarre fact-free playbook being touted. And so, with that backdrop to accentuate the trends, the leadership mantle does not sit as comfortably as it once did say on US Presidential shoulders.

Crude has already breached $ 130 per barrel for the first time in 14 years, and it continues 

its ascent. 

The OPEC member countries that usually rein in rising prices are Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This time they are keeping their options open. They have refused to pump more oil at the instigation of the US. Russia pumps about 10% of the world’s oil and is an “OPEC+” member.

The humanitarian outrage seems a tad confused as well. If our moral stance is (as it hopefully must be) that “killing children is wrong,” then (as of 15 March), the 41 children killed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine among the at least 549 civilians killed, has to be condemned for sure. 

But what shall we say about the Saudi/USA coalition bombing campaigns targeting farms, water supplies, animals, agricultural banks, markets and food trucks to create mass famine, leveraging starvation in Yemen as a weapon of war? Over 259,000 children under five have been killed according to the UN, a Yemeni child is killed roughly every nine minutes. No outrage or moral apoplexy there? Why not?

The Secretary General of OPEC says, “there is no replacement in the world” for the removal of six million daily barrels of Russian sweet crude supply. February 4th, Russia and China signed the first major gas deal in Euros. And to top it off, India has just said they will be happy to accept discounted Russian oil which was offered to them.

Dollar dabbling

Having themselves printed with such wild abandon, the US clearly faces a predicament. For those on the receiving end of the wrath of the US for daring to sell oil and gas in currencies other than the dollar (think Gadaffi and Saddam for example), it has never been pleasant. 

So, the highly leveraged dollar value is in large part leveraged on these trades. Were that norm to evaporate, seizure of $ 630 billion in Russian currency reserves would only marginally defray the overwhelming loss, and nothing could really mitigate the long-term shock wave.

NATO confusion

NATO is far from united, 55% of Germany’s gas imports come from Russia and 50% of hard coal and 30% of oil. And Germany needs the oil as all but three of its nuclear power stations have closed under green imperatives, and the remaining three are scheduled for next year.

Germany’s being allowed to rearm after cancelling the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline to Russia, is a break with a settlement in place since the end of WW 2. These may just be ripples for now. But the waves that will congregate from them are unknown and highly uncertain.

Rampant confusion

If a politician like Tulsi Gabbard expresses concerns about US policies, Hilarious Hillary, one never to let a slight go unremembered, pounces, claiming Ms. Gabbard is a “Russian plant.” The definition of that seems to be someone who endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016!

Europe and London are in the nuclear crosshairs, and though the Soviet Union and the US have in the past indicated they would avoid direct nuclear strikes on one another’s homelands (the dripping contempt that suggests they can land “elsewhere” therefore), there is the sage assessment from Robert Mcnamara in 1963: “Any substantial nuclear operation in Europe inevitably would involve both forces and targets in the US and USSR.” There is not only the “fog” of war, after all, but also the “heat” of war.

To compound the confusion, the Russians must be taking stock of the $ 86 billion in military hardware “donated” to the Taliban when the US left, converting the Taliban into one of the best armed fighting forces on the planet – the legacy of four Presidential administrations’ aggregated bungling.

The $ 200 million per unit anti-tank missiles relayed to Ukraine may end up in Russian hands therefore, directly or via black market sales.

And back we go to COVID

Looking at the spikes and surges (positive tests AND deaths) in Hong Kong, the alarmists are back out in droves claiming this vindicates their paranoia (in one fell swoop forgetting Sweden, Japan, Florida and another 20 or so “free” States) about “COVID management.”

The first claim is the Sinovac vaccines won’t cut it and mRNA must rain on the realm. However, highly “vaccinated” countries like Israel and the UK have suffered at least as many if not more infections as elsewhere, especially via Omicron. Fact-free myth peddling continues unencumbered in some quarters.

Then there are zealots like Dr. Kucharski, epidemiologist/modeler from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, gleefully reviewing Hong Kong’s current plight. 

However, the Omicron “wave” has been plummeting there for the last 10 days with no change in “vaccination” behaviour. Hong Kong, unlike cities in China, has not been locked down. A ban of gatherings of more than two, is only now going in, which is bizarre as infections are falling. 

Extreme measures imposed while infections are dropping seems to be a key tactic of the COVIDIAN beauty pageant. But on the data, no “lockdown” subsequent to today can be credited with mitigating the outbreak.

Yes, deaths have been high for the region, but the death count per million is far short of the UK’s. The trajectory has been similar to the UK winter 2020-21 wave. The city’s morgues being overwhelmed suggest a capacity problem as many European countries had proportionately larger waves without any such logistical issues.

Hong Kong has a plethora of factors that came home to roost. The prevailing suggestion is that only 30% of the over-80s were double “vaccinated” ahead of the wave (or might it be perhaps rough flu seasons always target this demographic?). 

More plausibly is the high density, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world, and visitors will recall, except in modern structures, ventilation is far from ideal. 

“Vaccinating” during the spread we know tends to contribute to actually driving the spread! The death toll is still relatively smaller than the UK winter 2020-21 wave by a fair way. So, lockdowns haven’t been a factor with the falling stats, nor clearly has “vaccinating” the low risk to no risk population done much of anything (HK surged despite having done so), which is what all the mania has been about.

Latest on schools and masks

June 1st, last year, Noah Carl reported on a Swedish study that found that keeping schools open throughout had only a minor impact on the spread of COVID. The study was of interest due to the rigour evident throughout. Even using the resolutely unreliable PCR tests, only 620 students tested positive among 53,000 reported overall over this period.

Now a Japanese study has chimed in, with similar conclusions. Kentaro Fukumoto and colleagues compared the rate of daily new confirmed cases of COVID between municipalities that did and did not implement such closures. After meticulously matching all the variables, they found yet again no discernible impact on the spread of COVID in Japan, echoing an earlier 2020 Japanese study as well. 

There was no masking in Sweden either. And we can yet again emphasise why – COVID spreads via aerosols, the nanoparticles are small enough to pass through masks, much of the face is exposed, and these particles linger indoors in the air. 

No gradation of face mask, other than those sealed, and face fitted (and those are not wearable for long periods) make a palpable difference, and are hardly worth it for a disease, which if treated normally (without infantilising our immune system by locking the healthy up too, or bombarding it with spike proteins via jabs), was never a major mortality driver. This is clear on global data. In less “vaccinated” continents, the statistics are even better.

On that front, we have only to look at Israel. From JHU CSSE COVID-19 data, as of 17 March, one graph tells it all. Mass jabs with the Pfizer mRNA shot began in Israel, 19 December 2020. Nearly every Israeli adult has received two doses and a booster. Many, a fourth shot. And, after all that, the February stats of deaths this year unequivocally paint the failure of the “vaccination” and booster regime…literally and graphically.

In the past week, the toll of this grotesquerie has become more evident. Edward Dowd, former BlackRock portfolio manager has reported that Pfizer in collusion with the FDA committed lethal “fraud” by grossly misreporting the results of its clinical trials in late 2020, a whitewash designed to have them appear “safe and effective.” 

This outright lie has been enthusiastically re-broadcast by our anything but “free” press and has contributed to killing and/or gravely injuring far more than those COVID has directly lethally afflicted over this period. 

All-cause mortality as Dowd has explained to his colleagues on Wall Street and via multiple podcasts, throughout the US and globally, has spiked dramatically since these “vaccines” were rolled out (though sports figures, casualties on military bases, firefighters, have been among the most gripping news-wise). 

Looking at one slice of the population, 61,000 younger people have now “died suddenly” post “vaccination” – a shocking 84% increase in excess deaths. (https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pfizer-fda-data-clinical-trails-blackrock-advisor)

We must pay attention to this tragically more inclusive plague of “sudden deaths” via sudden accidents (“accidental falls” are stockpiling), aggressive cancers, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and other, by now, well established side effects of this frenzied mania. 

So, if the huge spike in excess deaths which peaked in August after the mandates (nothing akin to this happened during the June 2021 Delta wave, so casting further mortality aspersions at COVID won’t do it) didn’t come from the “vaccine,” what pray tell caused it?

The question keeps being asked, and from the “lamestream” media, and other quarters invested in chasing variants pointlessly with boosters, the response? A deafening silence.

Between convulsions

And the Ukrainian conflagration is being egged on by bomb salesmen rather than diplomats. The “International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine” wants you to “save the world” by standing with Ukraine. 

Those who sign up, get to shoot Soviet-era rifles at Russian battle tanks, and may in a sober moment, realise they are not defending “democracy” but global interests, by cynical manipulators, safely far away. This “globalism” is not interested in quaint abstractions like “liberalism” and agitates for global upheaval to advance its agenda. 

Perhaps we needn’t take tuition from authoritarians who keep changing hue. We continue to careen between idiotic lockdowns to mass jabbing with gene therapies that don’t stop infection or spread (though the “desperation” for them mounts), to attempting to re-jig the financial system, to imposing climate agendas without real debate, to redefining real horrors like racism, to inventing new pseudo-campaigns like transgenderism. Corona becomes the prism for all of life’s priorities, and now the most recent “Hitler” in the form of Putin and “Ukraine” as a theatre of war, become a surrogate for cloaking other priorities, while innocent people die.

That Promethean flame that ignites the human spirit, all of this is designed to douse it, to keep precious kindling away from it.

And we may falter and wonder how to weave meaning in the midst of all this madness. And so perhaps we go back to a sermon preached by C.S. Lewis in 1939.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A certain hopelessness can certainly creep in. The sermon was entitled “Learning in War-Time.” It addresses the need not to put off what we truly “aspire to do” because there are catastrophes in the world. 

As Lewis said, “Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice…If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.” Normalcy is a mirage. 

And even tranquil periods have had alarms rung throughout them. That is a call to growth. “Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying justice put right,” he said. 

The human species, unlike insects with their more prosaic prudence, grow and experience and engage regardless of “plausible reasons.” 

Lewis continues, “They (our species) propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache. It is our nature.”

And so, we must realise is life is ultimately what and where we will it to be, where we lavish our love and attention. We cannot wait until pathogens are routed; the temperature of the planet forever rendered clement. There is devastation, danger and misery, and not just in Ukraine. Human life happens as we lurch between disasters and seek to find better equilibrium.

The catastrophes are often the cutting edge of our evolution. They come in often quick succession. But they cannot define us or our lives, any more than they absolutely must. What we do in the moments between catastrophes is what counts. The quality of our response to the potentially “catastrophic” helps define us.

Said another way, between stimulus and response, there is a space. It is that we call freedom. In our adamant, small, but insistent ways, it is what we choose to make of those blessed interludes that really matters. 

And we can widen that space and scope by stepping into the breach. We must consciously rise to that choice now as a human community.