Wednesday, September 30, 2020

No Winners

 Sucker Punched,


"Will You Shut Up, Man?!"
  I watched the first 15 minutes of the punchfest presidential debate, then popped back in a few times  while cooking a lovely dinner of fresh vegetables, some of which grew a few yards from the stove, but I digress, like Joe Biden, who did better than I expected. 
  Donald Trump kept trying to knock Biden off his train of thought, to derail him. It was a relentless effort of punches from all sides and pestering, and it did not really work. Trump did not "digress" per se, but did what he wanted to do, as usual.
  Trump's attacks seemed to be centering for "sleepy Joe", who looked really sharp with his suit and facelift, but also wooden, really wooden...
President Donald had a really nice golf-face tan. Orange. It looked natural. Trump looked natural.
  In an important way, Biden "won" the battle by not getting knocked out. 
Biden maintained plausibility despite interrupting his own sentences from the beginning. 
He did manage to get back on track and answer, usually, but would never answer Trump's nagging, like about "packing the Supreme Court". Considering the rules-as-applied, that exercise of judgement was in Biden's favor. 
  Trump said what he wanted to say before circuitously answering questions, typically with a turn-of-the knife, like Trump...
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-you-shut-man-debate-post-mortem

I personally suspect Trump and Biden were both legally medicated for this debate. 
Rumor has it that Trump takes Ritalin.
 I don't know what Joe's "stack" was last night, but it worked well enough for him to not be Ronald Reagan ca. 1988. 
What are the choices of "legal" nootropic drugs to maximize performance in a strategic presidential election? 
Here are some serious contenders. There are others: 
Smart Drugs and Nootropics
https://dualdiagnosis.org/smart-drugs-nootropics-the-next-drugs-of-abuse/

I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.
Living in Sri Lanka during the end of the civil war, I saw how life goes on, surrounded by death
https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc

The Redistribution Games
Sep 28, 2020​ ​YANIS VAROUFAKIS
​  ​Life is not the Olympics, where talent and training determine an athlete’s performance. It’s more like a Roman arena in which well-armed gladiators vanquish unarmed victims who lose not because they did not try hard enough, but because of the asymmetrical initial distribution of armor.
​ In the 1950s and 1960s, hard work and an innovative mind could perhaps be relied upon to lift people from poverty and propel them upward. But that was possible only because society imposed constraints on what the ultra-wealthy, bankers especially, were allowed to do with their money. Since those constraints were removed, with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the ensuing financialization of our economies, working long hours and showing immense flair may get one nowhere.
​  ​The problem facing most people, especially the young, is not that superstars like Warren Buffett are leaving them behind. It is that they are being held behind by stagnant investment and wages, owing to the simple fact that the wealthy get wealthier almost in their sleep, for reasons that have nothing to do with effort, entrepreneurship, or parsimony.​..
​  Fortunately, there are proven ways to redistribute wealth without violating anyone’s rights or crossing ethical lines. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt famously broke up Standard Oil and other cartels despite a chorus of opposition bemoaning his attack on innovation and entrepreneurship. Following the 1929 Wall Street collapse, another Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, faced the same chorus when he put the financial genie in a bottle. With these two moves, the Roosevelts effected a redistribution of wealth and power that nothing short of a revolution could accomplish.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/three-pronged-strategy-to-redistribute-wealth-by-yanis-varoufakis-2020-09

​There is a war on between Azerbaijan (+ Turkey) and Armenia over contested lands from the 1994 war:
Nagorno-Karabakh is a breakaway region inside Azerbaijan that is controlled by ethnic Armenians and backed by Armenia. It broke away from Azerbaijan in a war during the 1990s but is not recognised by any country as an independent republic.
A​rmenia saysa Turkish F-16 shot down an Armenian fighter plane over Armenia, killing the pilot. Turkey denies it. If true, it would activate a mutual defense treaty and bring Russia in with Armenia, against NATO member, Turkey. There is a gas pipeline route being contested.
The war has already spread across the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and both Armenian and Azerbaijani officials say they will not negotiate now.
​https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/30/azerbaijan-armenia-reject-talks-as-karabakh-conflict-widens

Moon of Alabama has more context. Whose drones were those?
​  ​During the last weeks there was news that Turkey was hiring some 2,000 'Syrian rebels' to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenian forces which since 1993 occupy Nagorno- Karabakh. Earlier today the Azerbaijan forces and the mercenaries launched their attack on Armenian lines. It was a massacre. Two Azerbaijani helicopters were shot down. Some 10 tanks and armored troop transporters went up in flames. Azerbaijani artillery hit some civilian structures in Stepankert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish(?) drones hit Armenia front positions.  
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/09/azerbaijani-army-and-syrian-jihadis-launch-attack-on-armenian-lines.html

​South Front has more context. It's complexificated.
​  The 2018 political crisis in Armenia the led to a seizure of power in the country by de-facto pro-Western forces led by current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan which did not strengthen Armenian positions over the territorial dispute. The double standard policy of the Armenian government, which was de-facto conducting anti-Russian actions but keeping public rhetoric pro-Russian, also played its own role. For years, Russia has been the only guarantor of Armenian statehood and the only force capable to rescue it in the event of a full-scale Azerbaijani-Turkish attack. Nonetheless, the Armenian leadership did pretty well in undermining its strategic partnership with its neighbor.
https://southfront.org/armenian-azerbaijani-war-rages/

More geopolitical context from Moon of Alabama:
  The United States could extend Russia in the Caucasus in two ways. First, the United States could push for a closer NATO relation-ship with Georgia and Azerbaijan, likely leading Russia to strengthen its military presence in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, and southern Russia.
  Alternatively, the United States could try to induce Armenia to break with Russia. Although a long-standing Russian partner, Armenia has also developed ties with the West: It provides troops to NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, and it also recently agreed to strengthen its political ties with the EU. The United States might try to encourage Armenia to move fully into the NATO orbit. If the United States were to succeed in this policy, then Russia might be forced to withdraw from its army base at Gyumri and an army and air base near Yerevan (currently leased until 2044), and divert even more resources to its Southern Military District.
  The RAND report gives those options only a poor chance to succeed. But that does not not mean that the U.S. would not try to create some additional problems in Russia's southern near abroad. It may have given its NATO ally Turkey a signal that it would not mind if Erdogan gives Aliyev a helping hand and jumps into anther war against Russia.
  Unless Armenian core land is seriously attacked Russia will likely stay aside. It will help Armenia with intelligence and equipment flown in through Iran. It will continue to talk with both sides and will try to arrange a ceasefire.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/09/strategic-aims-behind-the-war-on-armenia.html#more

Eleni sends this article from the day war broke out, with lots of video. Azerbaijan took a lot of initial military equipment losses as it attacked.
https://www.sott.net/article/442013-Hostilities-break-out-in-Nagorno-Karabakh-Armenia-and-Azerbaijan-on-brink-of-war

What's the Conflict Between Greece and Turkey All About? 
(History remains in play, and it's about tapping flows of power, and denying them to other players.)
The Mediterranean gas and oil fields are vital energy/power sources, currently being contested.
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/conflict-greece-turkey/

Thanks Eleni​; Hybrid-warfare-defenses in action:  Greece files against 33 NGO members for assisting human traffickers
​  ​Citing a press release by the Lesvos Police directorate, local news website stonisi, writes that “under the pretext of humanitarian action, those involved provided refugees in Turkey information about landing coordinates and weather conditions via closed groups and internet applications.”
​  ​The information included:
​Gathering places on the Turkish coast and departure time for voyage to Lesvos.
​C​oordinates (longitude and latitude) of specific refugee flows and their direction at a specific time and place
​N​umber of third-country nationals onboard of boats and the prevailing situation during the voyage
​F​inal destination (landing place on the coast),
​D​etails for the accommodation at Moria refugees center on Lesvos.”
​  ​The Police announcement said also that “in addition, through the extensive use of a specific telephone connection application, related to the activation of rescue operations, they hampered the operational work of the Greek Coast Guard vessels, at a time when migratory flows were evolving.”
https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2020/09/28/greece-ngo-members-human-traffickers-lesvos-turkey/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+KeepTalkingGreece+%28Keep+Talking+Greece%29

​More context from Eleni in Athens: 
The US' Hybrid War On Russian Energy Targets Germany, Belarus, And Bulgaria
  The US is ruthlessly waging an intense Hybrid War on Russian energy interests in Europe by targeting the Eurasian Great Power's relevant projects in Germany, Belarus, and Bulgaria, banking on the fact that even the partial success of this strategy would greatly advance the scenario of an externally provoked “decoupling” between Moscow and Washington's transatlantic allies.  
http://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=1699

  Is the tide finally prepared to turn towards actual public health in the US? 
My marker is when this country pushes vitamin-D supplements to everybody, which will reduce COVID-19 impacts, but also heart attacks, strokes, and even diabetes, as well as the impact of infectious diseases, in general. ("Vaccine? We don't need no stinking vaccine!")
  This study is from Boston, and even mentions RACE.  
COVID-19 patients who get enough vitamin D are 52% less likely to die of the infection, study finds
​  ​Boston University researchers found that COVID019 patients with 'sufficient' levels  of vitamin D wer about 52 percent less likely to die after hospitalization
Rates of severe illness were about 13 percent lower in vitamin D-sufficient patients and intubation was  46% less common  
Vitamin D plays a crucial role in the immune system's ability to fight infection and keep inflammation - which kills many COVID-19 patients - in check
About 42 percent of Americans are vitamin D deficient, with higher rates among elderly Americans and people of color
Black, Hispanic and elderly people are also among the hardest hit by coronavirus
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8774015/Could-getting-vitamin-D-reduce-COVID-19-death-risks-52.html

​Medical Express News, in the US also has the story. Is it going mainstream? (The bar of "adequate" is below "normal" That's not obvious.)
Adequate levels of vitamin D reduces complications, death among COVID-19 patients
​  ​In patients older than 40 years they observed that those patients who were vitamin D sufficient ​(levels 30-100)were 51.5 percent less likely to die from the infection compared to patients who were vitamin D deficient​ (levels under 20)​ or insufficient​​ with a blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D less than 30 ng/mL (but more than 20)​.
​  ​Holick, who most recently published a study which found that a sufficient amount of vitamin D can reduce the risk of catching coronavirus by 54 percent, believes that being vitamin D sufficient helps to fight consequences from being infected not only with the corona virus but also other viruses causing upper respiratory tract illnesses including influenza. "There is great concern that the combination of an influenza infection and a coronal viral infection could substantially increase hospitalizations and death due to complications from these viral infections."
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-adequate-vitamin-d-complications-death.html

​Here is CNBC, packaging this message in sanitized, disposable plastic, for mainstream American consumption. 
The Decision appears to have been made to get America healthier, even if it runs counter to a whole lot of interests. 
It's a grudging start.​
Dr. Fauci says to take vitamin D if you're deficient — here's how to know
  While Dr. Anthony Fauci admits most "so-called immune boosting" supplements being marketed amid Covid-19 mostly do "nothing," he does believe in the benefits of vitamin D.
  "If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself taking vitamin D supplements," Fauci, 79, said during an Instagram Live on Sept. 10.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/09/26/how-to-know-if-you-have-a-vitamin-d-deficiency.html

Somewhat Illuminated

Pictured planting Texas heirloom garlic a couple of weekends ago, and with some garden rows prepared for fall planting this past weekend
I've been busy with 3 gardens, and less able to post, because of it. It's not done yet.



Thursday, September 24, 2020

Harvest Time

Almost Ripe, 

  Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, the Peace Candidate, shunned by the Democratic Party since she tore up Kamala Harris for hypocrisy in a debate about a year ago, is the cosponsor of a bill to greatly curtail the political practice of "Ballot Harvesting". (I'm writing "Tulsi Gabbard" in less than a month from now, when I go to the poll to vote early.) 
  Ballot-harvesting is a voting related practice allowing paid political operatives to collect an unlimited number of ballots, subsequently delivering them into the hands of election officials. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, recently introduced legislation, The Election Fraud Prevention Act, which if passed would effectively slow down or even put a halt to the practice. The legislation could potentially be in effect in time for November’s all-important 2020 presidential election.
https://www.newsmax.com/jameshirsen/cegavske-voter-fraud-nevada/2020/09/21/id/987925/ 

 Today's example of history not repeating itself, but often rhyming, has Donald Trump oddly cast in the role of Franklin Roosevelt with financial power elites and the deep staters playing themselves again, but invisibly again. Sadly, nobody is playing USMC Ret. General Smedley Butler yet, so the whole thing is still up-in-the-air.Nobody is even considering playing John Kennedy, either... 
  Even though the financial elite of Wall Street had pulled the plug on the system four years earlier, the population had still not been broken sufficiently to accept fascism as the solution which Time magazine told them it was. Instead, the people voted for one of the few anti-fascist presidential candidates available in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt was elected under the theme of taking the money lenders out of power and restoring the constitution... During FDR’s famous 100 Days, an all-out war was declared on the “economic royalists” that had taken over the nation. Audits and investigations were conducted on the banks in the form of the Pecora Commission, and the biggest financial houses which had spent billions on fascist parties of Europe were broken up while speculation was reined in under Glass-Steagall. Meanwhile a new form of banking was unveiled more in alignment with America’s constitutional traditions in the form of productive credit and long term public works which created real jobs and increased the national productive powers of labor. Many people remain totally ignorant that even before his March 4, 1933 inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in Florida which saw 5 people struck by bullets and the mayor of Chicago dying of his wounds 3 weeks later.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/19/from-smedley-butler-to-7-days-in-may-to-trump-today/ 

  Ron Paul on The War On Julian Assange and Truth: 
 It is dangerous to reveal the truth about the illegal and immoral things our government does with our money and in our name, and the war on journalists who dare reveal such truths is very much a bipartisan affair. Just ask Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was relentlessly pursued first by the Obama Administration and now by the Trump Administration for the “crime” of reporting on the crimes perpetrated by the United States government. Assange is now literally fighting for his life, as he tries to avoid being extradited to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for violating the “Espionage Act.” While it makes no sense to be prosecuted as a traitor to a country of which you are not a citizen, the idea that journalists who do their job and expose criminality in high places are treated like traitors is deeply dangerous in a free society. To get around the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, Assange’s tormentors simply claim that he is not a journalist. Then-CIA director Mike Pompeo declared that Wikileaks was a “hostile intelligence service” aided by Russia. Ironically, that’s pretty much what the Democrats say about Assange. http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/september/21/the-war-on-assange-is-a-war-on-truth/ 

  Thanks Marjorie: Will we start a war with Iran? Will we invade Venezuela? Will we push the Russian Federation a step too far into a desperate corner? Will we confront Russian troops in Syria? Will we provoke China into a strike across the Taiwan Strait? It is bitter, for American citizens, that these questions now press upon us. Two months before our presidential election, the world according to Mike Pompeo all at once assumes a frightening clarity. Pompeo is the most dangerously deluded secretary of state since John Foster Dulles, whose paranoiac lawlessness held the world in some proximity to chaos until illness, which can sometimes prove a mercy for the rest of us, forced him to resign late in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term... Fever-pitch anxiety and fear: This is Pompeo’s legacy. No voice is raised against it that is not, like Tulsi Gabbard’s, instantly marginalized. Given the Democrats have little to say about any of what Pompeo hath wrought, it is likely to be with us regardless of the Nov. 3 result. 
 https://consortiumnews.com/2020/09/22/patrick-lawrence-mike-pompeos-cold-war-fever/ 

  Ouch, that's us! World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam The richest 10% of the global population, comprising about 630 million people, were responsible for about 52% of global emissions over the 25-year period, the study showed. Globally, the richest 10% are those with incomes above about $35,000 (£27,000) a year, and the richest 1% are people earning more than about $100,000.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam 

  Virgin Islands AG demands ENTIRETY of Epstein flight logs, ‘sparking panic’ among wealthy passengers The US Virgin Islands Attorney General has subpoenaed 21 years’ worth of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, reportedly striking fear in the hearts of high-profile passengers not yet exposed as Lolita Express riders. Passenger logs for Epstein’s four helicopters and three planes have been subpoenaed by Virgin Islands AG Denise George, who recently sued the disgraced financier’s estate for 22 counts including human trafficking, child abuse, neglect, prostitution, aggravated rape, and forced labor...
https://www.rt.com/usa/501323-epstein-flights-passengers-list-subpoena/

  Sebastian Rushworth MD: (I don't think we can call "herd immunity" until the whole herd has good vitamin-D levels, which will start dropping again as winter approaches.) 
   So, to conclude: Covid is over in Sweden. We have herd immunity. Most likely, many other parts of the world do too, including England, Italy, and parts of the US, like New York. And the countries that have successfully contained the spread of the disease, like Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and Australia, are going to have to stay in lockdown for at least another year, and possibly several years, if they don’t want to develop herd immunity the natural way. 
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/09/19/covid-19-does-sweden-have-herd-immunity/ 

  More on the Rip-snortin' spread of coronavirus through Texas college campuses. So far, so good, it appears. Everybody is getting it. 
 According to Austin’s interim health authority, Mark Escott, during the first two weeks of September, the University of Texas at Austin accounted for almost 40% of the cases in Travis County— a figure that far exceeds its proportion of the county’s 1.2 million people. “College-age students are far less likely to be hospitalized,” Escott said. But “we have to make sure they’re not spreading this to other members of the community.” ... At Texas A&M’s flagship College Station campus, reopening has “been reasonably successful in that there’s nothing that’s happened so far that we didn't expect,” said John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, at a Texas Tribune Festival event earlier this month. “We expected an uptick; 90% of that is among 20- to 25-year-olds. So it’s students — 90% of those are asymptomatic.” 
 https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/22/texas-coronavirus-universities/ 

Still Uninitiated

Monday, September 21, 2020

Irrational Actors

 Reiterated,


  I've had to revisit the battlefield of masks and social-distancing vs civil-liberties in America again. 
I wear masks for practical medical reasons. 
I also understand that the pandemic response is being manipulated by financial/power elites to keep pawns from effectively taking their own side in the current elite power struggle. 

  This elite power struggle is one fundamental cause of the partisan divide in American society. 
These divides happen in history when essential resources become scarcer.
The threats are not as they are presented in the media. Pawns (our status) are being manipulated to support one or another elite oligarchic faction. 
Pawns are not supposed to take the side of "other" pawns, which would disrupt the power structure. 
Pawns provide meat, blood and work.

  We might call the battling elite factions "nationalists" and "globalists". All terms are flawed and inaccurate, but these names will do.
The Military-Industrial-Deep-State-Complex is so overarching, that it's elimination is not part of the power struggle; out of the question.
Which faction will control the narrative is the issue, globalists or nationalists.

  There is really not enough swag for all of the elites and swag is projected to decrease and decrease and decrease, both domestic swag, and especially swag from the periphery of empire, since the projected "unipolar world" is clearly not feasible, and has been evidently infeasible for at least a decade. Unipolarity both has momentum, and is crumbling at all the edges.

  The push to accelerate the "new world order" project of global financial/military empire, jumped a level as the Soviet Union began collapsing in the late 1980s. Unipolar Empire was seen as a fait-accomplis. 
Progression to absolute "unipolar power" was disrupted by the resurgence of both China and Russia,
Multiple failures of the imperial plans of conquest were clear by 2010. Obama (factotum) could not do what Bush II (factotum) could not do.
General Wesley Clark famously explained the "7 countries in 5 years" plans that the Pentagon already had ready to go as a working plan at the time of 9/11/01.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNt7s_Wed_4

  A faction in the military-"security" complex arm of the empire has been seeing this aggressive agenda perform badly for those 19 years.
This hidden faction might be called "rationalists", since they are not altruistic or compassionate, but foresee a greater collapse of imperial power if there is not accommodation for the reality of a multipolar world. 
Zbigniew Brzezinski, essentially the author of unipolarity, gave up on it well over a decade ago: file:///C:/Users/John.MEADOWS/Downloads/697895.pdf 

  The cooperation of the pawns-at-home is necessary for the empire, which "America" has become, but the wholehearted participation of the top 10% is really necessary. They are the technocrats, specialists, "experts", managers, factota and "compliance officers".
  That is what is currently contested. The "American" economy and national budget have been funded, at least 40%, by external inputs from the "ROW" (rest of world), which are expected to fall off rapidly, and even reverse course in the next presidential term. That's a poisoned-chalice for the next president. The ROW will not keep buying every dollar printed, as the structure of global trade/finance changes dramatically.
  "Reversing flow" means increased American export of goods/services, as dollars "come back to America", and Chinese goods don't. 
That means more dollars-in-circulation and less cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, which means massive consumer price inflation. 
"Stagflation" can be dealt with by "basic income" (increase the dole), job programs and minimum wage increases. Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan had to do stuff after the last devaluation of the dollar, when Nixon defaulted on the gold standard in 1971. 
It's going to be worse. There will have to be some new default on the dollar. In 1971 (after DeGaulle sent a French destroyer to New York to get France's gold) Nixon quite exchanging foreign-held  dollars for US gold, due to dollars/gold bleeding out through external expenditures in Indochina, during the Vietnam war. This was determined to be the inevitable case in around 1967 by Michael Hudson.

  This is a complex, overarching view of "the western empire", and the current inflection point in world-history. 
From this vantage, it is easier to see the factions whose fear is most focused upon viral pandemic, and whose fear is most focused upon tyranny coming home to roost. 

Jacobin, last year, had this good "left-nationalist" (if I may) read of the truism that "you can't have democracy at home and empire abroad". 
Bernie Sanders is presented as basically an honest left-nationalist (2019) who said in 2016, "Henry Kissinger is no friend of mine", a profoundly strong political statement against imperialism.

  There is desperation in the waning left-imperialist (unipolar world) elite faction, actual desperation. Flailing, extreme moves reflect desperation, not strength. Power-elite desperation is extremely dangerous to life forms. 
The real risk is that Yemen comes to Oregon and New York. The imperial policies ignored in the heartland of empire can be used against the heartland of empire in elite desperation. History shows this.

  Right-nationalists are acutely aware of this threat being positioned by left globalists, and brought up to speed by riots that destroy national production infrastructure ("American businesses"). The left-globalists have been in power since at least Bush I (imperialist-deep-state), and it has been an unbroken succession until Trump-the-disruptor, whose backers remain hidden from public view, for the most part. He does appear protected. He is alive, unlike John Kennedy, who was inadequately protected. 
(Nixon was acutely aware of what happened to Kennedy, and would not directly do business with the CIA. Nixon was "peacefully removed". Nixon followed Kissenger's counsel, at any rate.)

  Texas Tribune, which I review daily for Texas coronavirus details, has this graph, emblematic of the falling percent positive rate of SARS-CoV-2 tests, falling hospitalizations, falling case numbers and falling deaths since late July. All are now at June levels and falling steadily, despite ongoing relaxation of building capacity restrictions.

  The week before last, 3 weeks into the semester, a snapshot of UT students showed 8% SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate on fairly random sampling, presumably asymptomatic, or minimally symptomatic students, wanting football tickets. 
  Approximately 3,000 UT-Austin students who purchased football season tickets were required to take COVID-19 tests Friday and test negative before they could attend the game. The same precautions, however, were not required of the thousands of other fans.
  Among the 1,198 students who got tested, 1,103 were negative and 95 were positive, John Bianco, a spokesperson for the university's athletic department, said in an email.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/13/university-texas-coronavirus-college-football-longhorns/

  This means novel-coronavirus is just going through the young adult population rapidly and without event, like an ordinary coronavirus.
There is not an attempt in Texas to curtail that process.  
  Without fanfare, Governor Abbot has followed a policy of linking public isolation measures and masking to hospital acuity, the limiting factor. This keeps the spread of virus through non-nursing-home populations at the maximum that will not overload hospitals. 
Nursing homes and hospital inpatients have been in a specially-isolated category of high-vulnerability. 
This managed-encouragement-of-herd-immunity was publicized with those words, but has been really consistent since early May, when it was adopted with politically-approved words. 
This article presents this policy objective as new. It's not new.
Analysis: Texas reopenings tied more to COVID-19 severity than to spread
Leaving behind their focus on the spread of the coronavirus, Texas leaders now say hospitalizations will guide their decisions on how to regulate social distancing at businesses and cultural centers.

  There have been 2 competing theoretical models of the spread of novel coronavirus, particularly US spread, which is different from countries outside of North America, due to the fact that all 4 previously existing strains of coronavirus were already endemic in the US/North-America, unlike any other region in the world, where 1-3 strains were endemic.
  The two theories are:
1) This is a new virus. Nobody is immune. Herd immunity will be reached at 70-80% population infection.
2) This is a variant of a family of viruses, broadly endemic in the US, to which family-immunity exists at a significantly high level in many segments of the population, as well as innate-immunity in almost all who are under 30 (means stopping the virus in nasopharynx , before it spreads to lungs and bloodstream). Herd immunity will be reached somewhere between 20-25% population infection rate.

  It should be clear to expert analysts by now that the zero-immunity model has been grossly inaccurate, overestimating deaths by a factor of 3-4 times, which is most in keeping with the second model. I believe (based on available information) that this modeling divergence has been clear at the levels of US decision makers since late June, and especially clear since late July. 
Political positions already staked-out, cannot be changed for political reasons, but may be pushed less hard (Tony Fauci is a case in point).

  We are all flying with imperfect data, but the balance of data is tremendously clearer than it was in spring. One must pick a model upon which to act. Some people have much more pressure to take actions, while facing operational risk, than to others. 
(As little as I think of the moral integrity and political stances of Greg Abbot, I must openly admire his rationality in making political decisions this year. Allowing the strip clubs to re-open recently as "restaurants" galls me.)

  It is almost impossible for most people to hold 2 opposing views as equally valid in their minds. It takes way too much processing capacity. 
It locks-up the computer. It creates painful "cognitive dissonance".
As a protection against cognitive-dissonance, people "split the alternatives", once they have chosen-a-side. All that was difficult, which argued against the side they chose, for political/social or rational reasons, becomes minimized, disparaged, to comfort their mind, and allow their operational capacity to be applied to daily problems, as usual.

  There is a wide range of cognitive styles inherent in any gene-pool of any society. A small percentage of outliers benefit the gene pool in times of business-not-usual, by considering "contrarian" or "avant-garde" or "independent" analysis of available information about trends, changes, constraints and "reality". (This is a population-genetics model. Science is "not-completely-real", but that's an issue regarding "useful models".)

  Anthropologists and historians take an approach which does not necessitate being on a side, but looks at the flows, currents and turbulence of human relationships with other humans and the changing environment, especially as the environment is more, then less able to support human population's growth. That kind of viewpoint seems easy for me, partly because I personally serve all strata of society, and I have that 5% kind-of mind that is happy enough to hold concepts in abeyance, while forgetting names of people and things. 
(I've got a visual-flows-oriented kind of brain, and empathy. I have apparently always had these characteristics, according to mom, and as grandparents used to inform me.) 
We all have to pick-what's-better daily, but I was always mostly motivated by, "how's that thing work?".

  Using the rational-actor political model, the camps of pawns are pushed to be more afraid of viral-pandemic, or loss-of-autonomy, through global-imperialism. 
Each rational actor discounts the position of the other, due to splitting-of-alternatives, to the point of seeing the other as irrational, incomprehensible, or "bad".

  Elite players do not need to believe what they propound. 
They are fighting battles in a power-struggle. They use the weapons at hand. 
For some, it may be easier to believe what they say, but many lie without any discomfort or cognitive dissonance at all. 
(When Karl Rove infamously bragged about "creating reality", he flashed that hand.)
 
  There are different paths to the talent of pathological-lying, though some are apparently born with it.
Some operators, managers and factota for the elites are not "live-players", but merely taking orders. 
They will usually "believe" what makes their jobs easiest. 
The live-players who operate them know that and try to make their work easier for them with comforting lies.
It can be hard to tell live players from factota in the short term. Some US presidents have been factota. 
(I think one Bush was a live player, an the other was a factotum, for instance.)

  I hope this is useful. It may or may not be useful. 
All players are "rational" in this model. There are myriad "understandings" , which are all incomplete models. Some models serve the user, and other models serve the upper-level "live-players" to manipulate the model-user. 
The longer any model is in operation, the more information will be available to assess it's utility to any class of users. 

Caitlin Johnstone: 
  If you understand that America has a two-headed one-party system designed to shrink the spectrum of acceptable debate down to arguments about how oligarchic agendas should be facilitated rather than if they should, what you see is a single entity threatening to take away your civil liberties if you don’t support it. A single establishment threatening to punch you with its right hand if you don’t let it punch you with its left.
  What is the correct response to such a situation? Is it to give the two-headed monster what it wants? Is it to give your energy to supporting the same establishment which is threatening to take away your civil rights?
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/19/rbg-death-means-two-headed-uniparty-will-threaten-americans-with-removal-of-civil-rights/#respond

Most people HATE cognitive dissonance.
Not everybody, though...
I think Buddha could sit with it.

Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network
https://futurism.com/physicist-entire-universe-neural-network

Rational Vegetable Gardener

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Drone This Guy

 ​Enemies of the State,​


​  ​"Can't we just drone this guy?" , Clinton openly inquired...​ The statement drew laughter from the room, which quickly died off when Clinton kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, "walking around" freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States.​ 
​  ​London: 
​  ​Julian Assange has again interrupted his extradition hearing, claiming that he never put informants lives at risk, when he published hundreds of thousands of State Department documents on his WikiLeaks website...
 ​  ​Assange cried out from the dock after lunchtime during evidence being given by former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the classified Pentagon Papers that revealed the US government knew it would not win the Vietnam War based on existing resources.
​  ​Ellsberg was purs​u​ed under the Espionage Act as is Assange. All charges against him were eventually dropped and he has become a vocal supporter of Assange as well as Chelsea Manning, who leaked to Assange the hacked files. Ellsberg also supports Edward Snowden who leaked classified documents he had access to as a CIA subcontractor...
 Ellsberg claimed to have never seen evidence that an informant exposed by WikiLeaks was harmed or killed in retaliation.
​  ​"I find the government highly cynical ... am I right in believing not one of them who was subject to threats or interrogation by these brutal and ruthless regimes actually suffered physical harm?
"Were any of the threats carried out? Even one? Isn't the answer no?" Ellsberg said.
"The rules are you don't get to ask questions, I do," said Lewis.

​  ​Assange also rejected the claims that he put lives at risk.
"Through his rhetorical sleight of hand he is suggesting that I put lives at risk," Assange said from the dock.
"This must be corrected.
"The damage to me will be irreparable if the media reports that I harmed people, when it is not true," he said.

​  ​District Judge Vanessa Baraitser reprimanded Assange, for the second time in as many weeks.
"I have warned you about this before, you are not entitled to interfere like this," she said.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/julian-assange-interrupts-extradition-hearing-again-20200917-p55wd9.html

Caitlin Johnstone points out that the above article is a smear piece against Assange, buying into the false accusations against him.
​  ​At no time does Bourke (who has been a regular smearer of Assange) bother to provide the reader with any of the readily available information showing that Assange never caused anyone harm and was not responsible for the unredacted documents being made public. She weaves a narrative about Assange being badly behaved in the courtroom, insinuates that the accusations he objected to could be true to the furthest extent possible without actually making a claim that would need to be retracted, and gets out.  
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/17/news-media-who-ignore-the-assange-trial-are-admitting-they-dont-care-about-journalism/#comment-44056

CIA Intercepts Suggest U.S. Lied About Biological Weapon Use During Its War On Korea
​  ​During the early 1950s War on Korea the U.S. used biological weapons against North Korea and China. Bombs designed to spread leaflets were filled with plague infested rats and dropped on Korean towns. Various infecting insects were released. Leaflets were contaminated with smallpox and then distributed. Several local epidemics were caused by these attacks.
​  ​The program was a continuation of one which a special unit of the Imperial Japanese Army had developed during the second world war. Unit 731 and its leaders were not indicted for the war crimes they had committed during the war but integrated into the U.S. biological warfare program.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/09/cia-intercepts-suggest-us-lied-about-biological-weapon-use-during-its-war-on-korea.html#more

​Please let me point out again that numerous nations had bioweapons labs working on highly pathogenic chimeric strains of coronavirus, and even sharing research and funding. The US and Canada were at least neck-and-neck with China, if not ahead.​ Lab? Yes. Who released it? Dunno...
"I Am The Target": Silenced Chinese Virologist Tells Tucker COVID-19 Intentionally Released, CCP Trying To 'Disappear' Her
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/i-am-target-silenced-chinese-virologist-tells-tucker-covid-19-intentionally-released-ccp

​Charles Hugh Smith explains the 4-D demise of what the US economy has mutated into.
​...​denormalization is an extinction event for much of our high-cost, high-complexity, heavily regulated economy. Subsidizing high costs doesn't stop the dominoes from falling, as subsidies are not a substitute for the virtuous cycle of re-investment.
​  ​The Fed's project of lowering the cost of capital to zero doesn't generate this virtuous cycle; all it does is encourage socially useless speculative predation. Collapse isn't "impossible," it's unavoidable.
​  ​The basic idea is that all the structures of the "normal" economy only function at full capacity, as costs have moved higher, unproductive complexity has increased and our ability to pay these higher costs is based on ever-expanding debt.
​  ​As a result, "normal" became extremely fragile and binary: it's either fully funded at full capacity or it collapses. The structures of everyday life (to use Braudel's apt phrase) are incapable of downsizing to 70% of their previous complexity and cost, much less 50%.
​  ​There won't be any "new normal" because the system has become too rigid, ossified, over-regulated and controlled by entrenched interests and elites. It is incapable of reducing complexity and cost, and bailouts via borrowed money are stopgaps, not actual solutions.
​  ​Decomplexification is a mouthful, and everyone inside the machine knows the impossibility of paring organizational complexity. Everyone who is a stakeholder in the status quo (which is virtually every employee, manager, etc.) will fight to keep the status quo intact as is, for fear that any re-organization might imperil their livelihood or security. This is entirely understandable, of course.
​  ​Modern life is inherently complex. Democracy is complex and cumbersome because having a bunch of stakeholders all competing for public resources and advocating for a bigger slice of the pie is inherently messy. There must be oversight and feedback to minimize the possibility of one clique gaining complete power.
​  ​Long global supply chains are inherently complex. Managing ever-increasing regulations is inherently complex. And so on.
​  ​When the money runs out or loses its purchasing power, all sorts of complexity that were previously viewed as essential crumble to dust. We're witnessing the early stages of this in real time in healthcare and education: overly complex and costly systems are breaking down not just from the challenges of the pandemic but because they're structurally incapable of adapting or evolving beyond pseudo-reforms and policy tweaks.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept20/four-Ds9-20.html

​Localising 

(​Pictured below at recent sunset in Yoakum, with workshop nearing completion, and avocado trees)





Monday, September 14, 2020

COVID Goes To College

Looking for COVID,

  The novel-coronavirus seems to have been present in the US and in Europe before it was discovered in Wuhan last December.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500502-worldwide-covid19-spreading-december/

  It could well have come from Wuhan, or just as easily from Ft Detrick, Maryland, or other national bioweapons labs. (explored here)
https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/04/waves-bye-bye.html

  This headline says that the engineering of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, proved in this paper by a Chinese scientist, hiding out in the US, means that it came from the Wuhan lab. Nothing in there is specific to that lab at all. We now know that the virus was already present in numerous other countries, including the US, before it was found infecting people in Wuhan, last December.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/rogue-chinese-virologist-joins-twitter-publishes-evidence-covid-19-created-lab

  The patterns are that 90% of infections are not represented by test results, meaning they are mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic, and we know that those predominate in younger people without comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity.
Populations have been getting sampled in various ways, like blood donors, and some rural free-testing weekend events, but the results are mostly not revealed.
College football is big in the US, and bigger in Texas. UT, Austin had its first football game of the season, hosting under 15% of stadium capacity. They required UT students to be tested for COVID, before being issued a ticket. Almost 1200 UT students submitted to testing, and about 9.5% tested positive.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/13/university-texas-coronavirus-college-football-longhorns/

  I presume the football-fans tested had little to no symptoms. Many students are “attending” remotely this fall, but this is a high rate of positives in those attending in person.
We sort of know that the virus has been infecting the 18-39 year old group in the southwest US this summer. This is kind of a slice of that. All the students who got over it, already, would not show positive, especially if a rapid antigen-test was used.
Dr.B. a friend at the UT Student Health Center says the “rapid test” was probably used, since it is being used across campus lately. Students who test (+) go to Student Health for PCR confirmation.
9.5% positive should be a lowball estimate, if anything.
What are the implications of almost 10% of a sample of college students in Austin Texas having the novel coronavirus on one particular day, when they didn’t really feel sick?
My mind is going down a lot of rat-mazes with that question.

  In Austin, we have seen a tiny, tiny dribble of positive tests over the past 6 weeks or so. Testing fell off, and the percent positive rate on tests in Austin continues to fall, though it’s a little over 8% for Texas as a whole. There is lots of mask-wearing and compliance in Austin, especially among the educated working class here.
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/?_ga=2.60261288.464069447.1600084852-1037324414.1591643250

  Most of these students don’t come from Austin. They are probably fairly representative of Texas and smarter than average.
They want to attend a college football game in person (something I never did, or felt like doing at UT)
They might be a little more extraverted than average, but college football is completely normal here.
Did they get more sun, more vitamin-D this summer? I suspect they were average in sun exposure.
About 9.5% of Texas college students, from all across the state, in a sample of about 1200, at the start of the fall semester tested positive for novel coronavirus on one day.
I’ll take that as roughly representative of young adults across Texas last week.
I’m just going to say that I think the virus has pervaded Texas, if that sample is anywhere close to representative, and I don’t see how it can be far off.
Sure, there are people who have not yet been exposed, but I think this means that most people are getting exposed at some level every week, if not most days.
Texas may just continue to see a tapering of positive test results, hospital admissions and deaths, going towards Halloween. If this is the case, then almost nobody will be scared of the “No-mask-costume”. 
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/?_ga=2.60261288.464069447.1600084852-1037324414.1591643250

  I’m not changing anything I am doing. I’m masking in public buildings, wearing PPE at the clinic, and taking 5000 units of vitamin-D daily. I’m just watching this with a whole lot of interest.
Dr Fauci says it’s going to be a long, tough winter of holing-up in self-quarantine.
Does he think so? Is he just telling us that? Is that the plan for us to follow? Who benefits? Who suffers?

What’re you going to dress-up-as this Halloween?  

Before pandemic, feds funded human coronavirus experiments in 2019 in China
NIH has been "major funder" of SARS research at Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, according to State Department memo.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/records-suggest-feds-may-have-funded-enhanced-infectiousness


W​ho thinks it's a good idea for Americans to pay so much more for prescription drugs than anybody else in the world?
Do any of y'all vote much? Do ya think you would like that expense lowered in your budget?
Trump signs new, expanded executive order to lower U.S. drug prices
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-pharmaceuticals/trump-signs-new-expanded-executive-order-to-lower-u-s-drug-prices-idUSKBN2640V0?il=0

​Disclaimer: I'm write-in voting for Tulsi Gabbard for President in November. 
Paul Craig Roberts believes the plotters of a coup in the US have a lot to lose if it fails. They are under personal threat if it fails.
​  ​As a number of carefully researched and documented books, some written by insiders, have proved conclusively, the CIA has controlled the prestige American media since 1950.  The American media does not provide news.  It provides the Deep State’s explanations of events.  This ensures that real news does not interfere with the agenda.
​  ​The German journal​i​st, Udo Ulfkotte, wrote a book, Bought Journalism, in which he showed that the CIA also controls the European press.
​  ​To be clear, there are two CIA organizations.  One is an agency that monitors world events and endeavors to provide more or less accurate information to policymakers.  The other is a covert operations agency. This agency assassinates people, including an American president, and overthrows uncooperative governments.  President Truman publicly stated after he was out of office that he made a serious mistake in permitting the covert operations branch of the CIA.  He said that it was an unaccountable government in inself.
​  ​President Eisehnower agreed and in his last address to the American people warned of the growing unaccountable power of the military/security complex.
​  ​President Kennedy realized the threat and said he was going “to break the CIA into a thousand pieces,” but they killed him first.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/09/10/the-united-states-its-constitution-have-two-months-left/

​Eleni sends this article from a Greek author, saying that globalist powers can no longer fight overt wars of conquest, but need to destabilize their opponents with color revolutions, and by setting them at war with each other. This has been the globalist  and US tactic for a couple of decades, but especially since  2010. (Is it being put into play in the US. Looks familiar!) 
Maidan, Navalny, Kastellorizo: The Chaos Strategy
​  ​Twenty years ago, I was covering the Munich Security Forum as a journalist and I took an interview from Brent Scawcroft, National Security Adviser for President Bush (the father). I believe he was one of the men who played a huge role in pushing Boris Yeltsin to the crisis which culminated into the bombing of the Russian parliament in October 1993, thus opening the way to the biggest looting in the history of mankind, the so-called Russian privatisations. I asked Scawcroft what the US policy towards Russia and China should be . He answered: “We need to have better relations with Moscow and Beijing, than they can have between themselves”.
​  ​The way for the Empire to dominate in the Eastern Mediterranean, imposing its pax or pushing for war, is by having better relations with Athens and Ankara than they can have between themselves. Now they don’t have any at all.
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/maidan-navalny-kastellorizo-the-chaos-strategy/

Today’s Energy Predicament – A Look at Some Charts, Gail Tverberg​  
(Gail is always spot-on when she explains the workings of fossil-fuels and economy as one interwoven system that acts differently than what we expect,​ Good graphs, too.​)
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/09/01/todays-energy-predicament-a-look-at-some-charts/

​Is plastic recycling a lie pushed by big oil and refining to get us all to keep buying throw-away plastic without feeling guilty? 
(Everything was OK until China quit accepting the boatloads of plastic from the US "for recycling", which it never did do or could do.)
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

How much money is "just right" to permit optimum "happiness" before more money starts making stress worse again? 
(I wish they would note that it's not just the amount of money that leads to satisfaction, but the kinds of work that give industrious people that size-range of paychecks. Jenny and I seem to be in the optimum range. We work hard and do our best, and work way over what is contracted, because we believe in what we are doing for people.)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/02/26/does-money-equal-happiness-does-until-you-earn-much/374119002/

Will wonders never cease?
Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network
https://futurism.com/physicist-entire-universe-neural-network

​Imagining Reality​

​(Gardener pictured in morning light yesterday, at Yoakum vegetable garden, where large black plastic sheet begins preparation for banana grove)


Thursday, September 10, 2020

Basic Considerations

 Considering Human Existence,


Maruata At The Crossroads is a look, at a small but informative site, about a project to get sources of sustainable pure water and reroute human waste and washing runoff from cesspits to orchards. The project seems to have run from 1997 to 2018. I found it to include very useful information on clean and eco-coherent human living in a mostly-natural environment. Thanks Jeanine. (I want an outdoor shower with a papaya in the middle, surrounded by banana plants, now!)
http://oasisdesign.net/design/examples/maruata/book.htm

The Decade of Transformation, Being In Balance With Nature, Kevin Zeese (Kevin just died, RIP)
​  ​Biologist Elisabet Sahtouris describes an alternative theory of evolution to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” in her book, “Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution.” Sahtouris finds that evolution is cyclical, a spiral instead of linear. She describes how when a new species arises, it upsets the ecological equilibrium as it comes into competition with other species over habitat. The task of that species in the adolescent phase of its evolution is to find its niche in a way that is cooperative with other species. If it fails, it goes extinct.
​  ​The human species is in its adolescent phase, and now it is time to recognize our mistakes and change our behaviors. Sahtouris writes:
​ “Like any adolescent who is suddenly aware of having created a very real life crisis, our species faces a choice — the choice between pursuing our dangerous course to disaster or stopping and trying to find mature solutions to our crises. This choice point is the brink of maturity — the point at which we must decide whether to continue our suicidal course or turn from it to responsible maturity. Are we going to continue our disastrously competitive economics, our ravaging conversion of our natural supply base into things, our pollution of basic soils, waters and atmosphere in the process? Or will we change the way we see life — our worldview, our self-image, our goals, and our behavior — in accord with our new knowledge of living nature in evolution?”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/decade-transformation-balance-nature/5709799

“The Pandemic is History” is a brief glimpse of the Ivor Cummins data I posted a link to yesterday and below.
I don’t know, but it might be “melting, melting, melting…”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/the_pandemic_is_history.html

Ivor Cummins, in Ireland, presents a normative viral epidemiologic argument, with very good supporting historical graphs, country by country, region by region, virus by virus. He asserts that COVID-19 deaths and illness are, indeed, very similar to those caused by influenza, from a public health perspective. (The manifestations of the virus in each person are clearly different from Flu.) He estimates that something like 20% of a population is susceptible to any new strain of influenza or coronavirus, and that this novel coronavirus is tracking the patterns of previous years pretty well. He uses a lot of graphic overlays. He makes a very good case. His attention to the different patterns in Northeastern US (European) and Southwestern US (semi-tropical) spread are especially instructive, and match our experience to date quite well.
The big question is, “How predictive will this be going into winter?”

How To Grow Bananas And Keep Them Happy (my next project in Yoakum, with 7 banana plants in hand and 3 in the mail)
 https://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-bananas.html

Engaging Life

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Two Ways Out

Somewhat Relieved,

This is a good article, which explains the Spanish hospital study of treating a randomized group with vitamin-D on admission, while not treating the matched control group. It does point out that the form of vitamin-D given in the study was immediately bioavailable as circulating vitamin-D, whereas oral Vitamin-D2 and Vitamin-D3 may take something like a week to be fully metabolized to the bioavailable 25-OH vitamin-D in the bloodstream.  This does not matter today, if you are well. Make sure you are taking 5000 units per day of vitamin-D3, or start with 2 pills per day, 10,000 IU, for the first month or two. Normal range is 30-100 and optimum range is 60-100.

Good video presentation on the paper:

Update on Available COVID-19 Treatments, from 8/20/20 Ivermectin/zinc/doxycycline can be prescribed to anybody without specific allergies. Hydroxychloroquine/zinc/(azithromycin or doxycycline or nothing) is a good consideration for most people without heart problems.
Diagnosing early and treating early is the right way to manage this, like any other infectious disease.

Ivor Cummins, in Ireland, presents a normative viral epidemiologic argument, with very good supporting historical graphs, country by country, region by region, virus by virus. He asserts that COVID-19 deaths and illness are, indeed, very similar to those caused by influenza, from a public health perspective. (The manifestations of the virus in each person are clearly different from Flu.) He estimates that something like 20% of a population is susceptible to any new strain of influenza or coronavirus, and that this novel coronavirus is tracking the patterns of previous years pretty well. He uses a lot of graphic overlays. He makes a very good case. His attention to the different patterns in Northeastern US (European) and Southwestern US (semi-tropical) spread are especially instructive, and match our experience to date quite well.
The big question is, "How predictive will this be going into winter?" 
 
I intend to push 5000 units per day of vitamin-D on people weighing over 100#, and proportionately weight adjusting it down from that point, Test and diagnose as early as possible, and treat people with systemic symptoms like fever, malaise, body aches, nausea, diarrhea, shortness of breath, or higher risk status, with either ivermectin/zinc/doxycycline, or hydroxychloroquine/zinc(+/- doxy or azithromycin)

MKULTRA And The CIAs War On The Human Mind 
(I am very sorry, but this is the world in which we live.)
​  ​It was at Camp Detrick that Blome encountered a rising star in the CIA, Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb, a bacteriological specialist who had been a star student of Ira Baldwin’s at Wisconsin, is the main figure in Kinzer’s book. His career is virtually synonymous with MKULTRA. Under the direction of Gottlieb, the CIA’s laboratories at Camp Detrick transitioned from R&D on bioweapons—often using unwitting American subjects, such as in 1950 when a US Navy minesweeper “specially equipped with large aerosol hoses” spent six days spraying the Serratia marcescens bacterium into the San Francisco fog, infecting some eight hundred thousand people (pp. 37–38)—to drugs which could be used for mind control. (MKNAOMI, MKULTRA’s sister CIA project, was also tasked with finding poisons and biotoxins which the CIA and the US government could use in various operations.) Gottlieb provided the big ideas into which to fit Blome’s nefarious knowledge of mass murder by bacillus. Gottlieb became, virtually overnight and with the help of former Nazi doctors, America’s “poisoner in chief.”
​  ​The CIA’s mind control program, which was assuming a bigger and bigger importance as fears of Soviet brainwashing grew in the US, was originally called Operation Bluebird and was personally overseen by CIA higher-up Allen Dulles.


Reinvestigate 9/11.org: It's that time of year again.  Thanks Eleni. 
Good stories and the same facts we have been seeing for 19 years now.
9/11/01 was when the wool-spit-hood got pulled over America's eyes and she was suffocated to death.

"Transition Integrity Project" (hint: may mean the opposite.) does "war-games" on the upcoming (US-uniparty) November elections:
  In the TIP’s “clear Trump win” scenario (see page 17), Joe Biden – played in the war game by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton – retracted his election night concession and subsequently convinced “three states with Democratic governors – North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan – to ask for recounts.” Then, the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan “sent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature” to the Electoral College, which Trump had won, in an attempt to undermine, if not prevent, that win.
  Next, “the Biden campaign encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as “Cascadia,” to secede from the Union unless Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms.
(emphasis added)” Subsequently, “with advice from [former] President Obama,” the Biden campaign laid out those “reforms” as the following:
  Give statehood to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico
Divide California into five states “to more accurately represent its population in the Senate”
Require Supreme Court justices to retire at 70
Eliminate the Electoral College
  In other words, these “structural reforms” involve the creation of what essentially amounts to having the U.S. by composed 56 states, with the new states set to ensure a perpetual majority for Democrats, as only Democrat-majority areas (DC, Puerto Rico and California) are given statehood. Notably, in other scenarios where Biden won the Electoral College, Democrats did not support its elimination.

What Do We Get From A Barrel Of Oil? (You can't get whatever you want. You get what's in there, after you separate it out. That's why America burns gasoline. It's what was left over in the early 1900s.)

Running On Fumes 

Sunday, September 6, 2020

D Saves The Day

Illuminated,

Dr. Marc sent me this scientific article, a comparative case series study where 2/3 of the patients admitted to a Spanish hospital this spring got vitamin-D and 1/3 did not. All got hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. They were not classified by BMI and did not have vitamin-D levels tested at all. (They got 25OH-vitamin-D3, calcifediol, but other forms are roughly interchangeable , as discussed in detail.)
How’d they do?
​  ​Seventy-six patients (45 men (59%) and 31 women) were enrolled in the study and randomized: 26 without calcifediol treatment, 50 with calcifediol treatment (Fig. 1). Mean age was 53 ± 10 (mean ± SD) years, being 54 ± 9 years for men and 51 ± 11 years for women. There was no significant gender difference in age between patients in each group (p = 0.09)…
​  ​At baseline, there was no significant difference in number of subjects with at least one risk factor. Patients assigned to calcifediol were slightly (not significantly) older, whereas the control group had a higher percentage of hypertension (Table 2).

​  ​Among 26 patients not treated with calcifediol, thirteen required ICU admission (50%), while out of fifty patients treated with calcifediol only one required admission to the ICU, whereas the other patients remained in conventional hospitalization…
​  ​Of the patients treated with calcifediol, none died, and all were discharged, without complications. The 13 patients not treated with calcifediol, who were not admitted to the ICU, were discharged. Of the 13 patients admitted to the ICU, two died and the remaining 11 were discharged.

​How do we take the joy out of fighting and looting and rioting in the streets of America? ("I Love the sound of Breaking Glass!")
​  ​We make it not fun by removing the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the fight – we contain the rioters and the night time looters – so that all that is left is the boredom of walking around and yelling into the wind all night. We accomplish this with numbers and curfews. We request the assistance of the National Guard – of course we request the assistance of the National Guard! – so that we have the sheer numbers of trained personnel to contain the bullshit looters and keep out the bullshit “militias”.
​  ​That’s how we work our way through this.
​  ​We accommodate protester voice through new elections/plebiscites, and we contain criminal tag-alongs with sheer numbers of trained public safety officers.
​  ​Together, these actions change the story that we tell each other about the crimes that are committed in the name of a just struggle, AND these actions change the story that the wannabe and the confirmed criminals are able to tell themselves.
​  ​That’s exactly how the May 1968 riots in France were defused.
​  ​De Gaulle, under pressure from his #2, Georges Pompidou, finally accommodated demands for government change by agreeing to new elections. At the same time, the Parisian police, backed by the French military, contained the protesting students by avoiding pitched conflict and preventing the takeover of government buildings.
​  ​But that’s not going to happen in 2020 America. In fact, the opposite of this is going to happen. Why?
​  Because it’s not just the Antifa/MAGA Militia goonies who are positively giddy with excitement at the prospects of this post-apocalyptic world. It’s not just these clowns and criminals and wannabe culture war heroes. It’s also every media organization that covers the night time “protests”. It’s also the Republican party AND the Democratic party, both their elected officials AND their party apparatchiks, who are intentionally amplifying the Ego whispers to their proxies through their MSM and social media platforms for a perceived electoral advantage.
​  ​It’s not the Russians or the Chinese doing this to us.
We’re doing this to ourselves.​..

​  ​So today, neither the Trump campaign nor the Biden campaign can see the United States through anything other than the lens of a pure competition game.
​  ​Neither campaign or party will take the necessary steps to defuse the growing violence in American cities...

​How many legal and constitutional rabbit-holes can the November 3 election go down? Here are all of the possible legal pathways, including how Mike Pence or Kamala Harris could be named president.

The Federal Reserve Banking System now owns almost 1/3 of all US mortgages (presumably the shakiest 1/3). That means the possibility of permanent government landlordism, like the USSR had, as well as massive debt forgiveness, a financial re-start, not just re-set.

5 Reason's the Fed's New Policy Won't Create Inflation: You can't actually create economic growth by adding more debt, even cheap debt, past a certain point, because the drain on the system from parasitic debt-service costs chokes any real growth. That debt-saturation point was crossed in the US between 1999 and 2000. Good graphs.

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs​, David Graeber (who died last week)​  This is the "Bullshit Jobs" treatise.
It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.


​US CoronavirusDeaths are Projected to More than Double to 410.000 by next January​ (I am weary of this. Aren't you? Take 5000 IU vitamin-D every day and wear a mask in public and try to live a creative and constructive human life. Don't go to riots with an assault rifle, and stuff, too.)

The Russian coronavirus vaccine has a big lead, looks like it works, and should be ready for global prime-time around New Year's Day.
Finally, there is some reason for America's political elites to allow us to consider outpatient treatment of COVID,since nothing could be worse than the humiliation of a Russian vaccine that works for the rest of the world, while America's Vaccine-Manhattan-Project drowns in a flood of money. 

Here is the Coronavirus Pandemic Update series from Medcram, with critical-care-pulmonologist, and expert educator, Roger Seheult MD:

Still Taking Vitamin D

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Hello COVID Fall

Summer Friends,

  Summer is ending. School is back on, in various forms. September first, a whole lot of people realized they had to do all of the things they have put off since March. WHAM! 
  Jenny, a School Librarian and go-to person for online work-arounds, recovering from spinal surgery (instead of trekking Machu Picchu) has been hammered hard, and is getting farther behind as she works 12 hour days. She sees that none of the parents, teachers, librarians, tech people, school board or principals has been able to keep up with their in-boxes all summer. Everybody is flailing, changing edicts and protocols weekly, and most are asking her to fix/get something for them now, while they are here... It's not possible. See the email from last week.
  As a Family Practice Doc, I have had a summer of testing for COVID, treating a few folks who were not better by the time results came in, then a lull for most of August, as people in Austin got tired of getting tested for nothing, and heard about the 2 week turnaround times for results in July.
Now, with very limited number of in-patient visits and limited number of "telemedicine visits" (a phone call visit that the clinic gets paid for, instead of not paid for, like usual), there is a deluge of urgent and recurrent needs which are revealed through long, irate, and recurrent phone messages on the Nurse lines. There are hospital records and patients needing follow up that can't be arranged, and they are often months old records. 
  Everything is piling up, and getting frantic, because it can't be put off and it can't be done. I have been spending hours after paid-work, still at the clinic, going through reams of information, ordering tests and medicines, calling people after hours for unreimbursed consultations and interventions, spending clinic resources, and getting farther behind, as problems worsen. Many of these people were last seen in late winter, and things change. They can't be assumed to be on the same trajectory. 
We had half a year of doing things half-assed and putting them off. Didn't you? I think it was the mandate.
I stayed 3.5 hours late last night and I'm going in early today, expecting the same. 
I reviewed about 120 pages of medical records on my brother's friend this morning. He has broken down somehow in the last half year. He's losing weight and wandering around the house. What to do?
I feel the need for a change; don't you?

Our clinic will get a rapid testing machine and kits next month, October.
I intend to test and treat and test and treat and test and treat. I have been advocating and giving away vitamin-D since January.
People in Austin, at least at our clinic, have really lost interest in getting tested unless sick, then testing fell further in the last week or 2, as percent positives also dropped. The peak of illness load in Austin was in July. In Texas it was July/August. By all measures Texas is over the summer hump, wearing masks, starting to die less, a month after getting fewer infections, and with about 21 diagnosed cases per thousand Texans. 
  Is it just masking? More cases are younger people and middle aged people, among the sick, which implies a whole lot more that we are not seeing. 
A good rule-of-thumb that I have been tracking, which held true through early May in Oregon, is that population exposure, as monitored by antibody screening, is about 10 times the number of confirmed cases. 
That means I am just calling cases-per-thousand as approximately the percent of the population who has been infected already. It's close...
  So new infections, percent positive-tests, total tests and deaths have all been falling in Texas, with something like 20% of the population having had COVID, mostly very mild, like a cold, like what my daughter is getting over.
My brother,  the Respiratory Therapist, working in a hospital, says they are seeing more of their admissions being younger and middle aged, and less severe than what they saw in spring and early summer. Fewer need ventilators. They mostly have co-morbidities.
  It may just be masking. The Governor mandated masks in public buildings and businesses just before July 4, and things peaked by late July. People gradually increased actual masking in smaller towns as rural cases picked up in July and August. Now everybody masks in grocery stores, even in Yoakum.
  What if it's not masking? How would we know? I don't want to do the experiment. The Japanese do fine wearing masks on the trains and in crowds and stores. It allows things to be mostly-normal. 
Bars and strip clubs are still closed, which tells me the Governor is still serious about this.

  From my point of view, Texas needs to keep masking, and do massive testing and treating, first with rapid testing equipment, but better with home tests, as soon as they are available. 
  Population vitamin-D levels are probably at peak, which may be a good part of the improvement, and they are about to start falling soon. I really don't want an unmanaged COVID winter. I really do not.

Fall And Can't Get Up