RANT: WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

  

"Soldier and Death" by Hans Larwin

LAST MONTH, Canadian PM Mark Carney visited Kiev, as well as attending a meeting in Brussels to sign on to an EU arms deal that ensures military equipment gets to Kiev. [See PURL, below] He also went to a NATO summit in The Hague that discussed raising to 5% of GDP* the military spending of member states. So, Carney’s been a busy beaver. But what does signing various agreements around military expenditures mean for Canada and Canadians?

According to gov.ca, Canada has given Ukraine nineteen-billion dollars since Russia’s invasion in 2022. In last month’s Kiev stopover, PM Carney announced an additional two-billion or so down the rat hole for Zelensky’s war efforts, including additional arms and munitions, and humanitarian funding such as emergency food and medical aid. This most recent Canadian donation to Ukraine is through NATO’s new “Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List” (PURL) scam which organizes member states’ donations in handy half-billion-dollar tranches for weapons purchases. PURL greases the wheels to more efficiently restock Ukraine’s depleted equipment and munitions’ stores.

In June, Zelensky said Ukraine would require 40-billion dollars in aid annually and urged everyone to get with the program. Forty-billion bucks a year! Golly gee! Ukraine’s “Churchill” has come back in a big way following his disastrous February visit to Washington and that White House dust-up with President Trump we all saw on our screens. [Ouch! Ed.] After that fiasco he looked like he was on life support, but now he’s got the spring back in his step and, with the Eurocrats behaving like a mob of wet cats hosed into submission by the American president determined to make them pick up the tab for project Ukraine,  Zelensky is all smiley-face and kisses now that he got a transfusion of money and arms, coming primarily from European countries who will purchase the weapons from the US and pass them along to Ukraine. Now, all he’s got to do is defeat the Russian army and lay siege to Moscow. [He’d better have his lucky dice with him because facts on the ground will turn his gamble into a crap-shoot right quick! Ed.]

 

DOES THE TERM “money pit” come to mind? Though, Ukraine is more like the “Grand Canyon” of slush funds and money laundering operations, methinks. Has everyone forgotten that as late as October 2021, Zelensky was implicated in a financial scam involving offshore bank accounts and tax avoidance that he’s been running since before he became president in 2019. Folks, Mahatma Gandhi he ain’t! (Nor Churchill, for that matter.) With billions of dollars flooding Ukraine over the past three years, with little accountability and a president with sticky fingers…well, you connect the dots….

 

PM CARNEY also announced that like a good lick-spittle Canada would, “…be lowering the price cap for seaborne Russian-origin crude oil in alignment with measures announced by the EU and the UK…” in the hope this eighteenth package of sanctions (there’s been so many I’ve lost count!) will do the trick and sink the Ruskie economy once and for all. Good luck with that.😝

 

👉I guess the point I’m making here is that the collective West, for the most part, is run by Lilliputian leaders out of touch with their electorates, their priorities serving personal agendas or else promoting last year’s solutions for tomorrow’s problems. They're out-of-step and out of time in other words. And Canadian taxpayers will be picking up our share of the tab, along with our EU buddies, and we will continue to do so apparently until the end of time.

👉If things go pear-shaped in a big way, and the West is foolish enough to engage Russia in a land war in Ukraine, instead of pouring Canadian treasure onto Ukrainian soil, those two-thousand troops stationed in Latvia will be pouring their blood instead.

 

QUICK TAKEAWAYS:

👉Ukraine has a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning this conflict. It’s a numbers game: Russia has more manpower, more weapons, more industrial capacity to produce weapons than Ukraine. Far more. More, even, than the collective West combined (including the USA). That’s not going to change for some years to come.

👉Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is an existential threat to Russia and it will not tolerate such a state of affairs on its borders. Period.

👉Russia is willing to negotiate, but only if facts on the ground are recognized and its legitimate security concerns are addressed—like Ukraine adopting a policy of neutrality based on the Austrian model, for example.

Despite months of gab fests, discussions, proposals, tweets, and ham-fisted politicking on the part of the United States and its posse, the EU (and…sigh, Canada), Russia has concluded the West is “agreement-incapable” for addressing its concerns through diplomacy and will therefore solve the Ukraine problem on the battlefield.

The hashed lines represent possible Russian advances by war's end

👉The Russians are poised to advance to the Dnieper River by the end of 2025 and may then march on Kiev or Odessa (or both).

Providing Kiev with more weapons and money only prolongs the outcome—a Russian victory is inevitable. In the meantime, there may be as many as one-and-a-half-million dead Ukrainian soldiers.

👉How many more must die? How much territory will Ukraine lose to the Russians because Zelensky and the United States et al, refuse to acknowledge the fact that Ukraine is losing and  that they need to settle the conflict through diplomacy?

The political class and ‘talking heads’ of the West refuse to acknowledge reality: As valiantly as Ukraine’s soldiers have fought over these past three years,  they have lost. Their front lines are fraying and their infrastructure is crumbling under increasing Russian missile and drone attacks. Ukraine has nowhere to go but down. 

👉So, they need to make a deal now to save what’s left. But, Zelensky continues to sing the same song while the flower of Ukrainian youth dies along the front lines.

  

CHEERS, JAKE.  ____________________________________

* Canada currently spends 1.37% of its GDP on defence, but it’s looking to up that to 2% in fiscal 2025-26. And like a kid playing hopscotch, Carney hopes to land on the 5% mark by 2035, at least on paper. However, it's unlikely that any NATO member will reach this target except, perhaps, Germany and Poland. Most will wait for Trump’s term in office to end and a more congenial president is elected in 2028.👌

 

    "I am the king..."

 

 

 

GHOUL MATERIALIZES DURING VP SPEECH

 

Obbürgen, Switzerland (DP)— On 15 June this year, during her speech at the Ukraine Peace conference, held at a venue overlooking scenic Lake Lucerne, U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris experienced* what can only be described as a "paranormal" event when a shadowy, half-visible ‘entity’ appeared behind her on the speaker’s podium during the conference’s plenary session. Harris spoke at the conference, reaffirming America’s commitment to procure a “just and lasting peace” for Ukraine and to announce $1.5 billion in aid for the country’s energy sector and its humanitarian situation as a result of Russia’s 27-month invasion. Witness reports vary, but several reporters and attendees claim to have seen a wavering, washed-out, “smoky” human-appearing “poltergeist” or “ghost” standing behind Harris. One reporter recalled that the being appeared to be looking over the VP’s shoulder “as if to check and see she was reading the speech as written.” One secret service agent, who’d approached the otherwise still and lifeless apparition during the Vice President’s speech, was overheard to say: “His eyes were dead, like dead fish-eyes staring at you, staring at nothing, yet seeing everything at the same time. His skin was this pasty white, like a bleached flounder...His mouth was a pale, red scar at the bottom of his jaw. It was terrifying! I thought of the Bible and of Revelations: ‘I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him.’ That’s what I saw, anyways. That's what I thought I saw.”

The "poltergeist" followed Harris as she left the podium, seeming to glide across the floor until it disappeared into the light of the early afternoon sun.

 

 

Cheers, Jake. ______________________________________

 

* When questioned later by reporters about the incident, Harris commented that she had been unaware of any person or entity standing behind her but felt like there was “a hand on my shoulder” as she read her script speech.

 

1. Yes, I know. Ha-ha. The poltergeist in question is, of course, Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan who attended the utterly useless Swiss gab fest, last weekend. I think of him as a ghoul because that’s what he is—a ghoulish political operative who is responsible, in large part, for Biden’s disastrous foreign policy initiatives in Ukraine, Israel and China. It is apparent to even the most partisan observer that the U.S. president is not in control of the levers of power in Washington. During the D-Day ceremonies in France, earlier last week, he seemed not in control of his own bowels! His senility is on full display, and his public appearances are gaffe-prone and embarrassing. He needs to be in care, not in charge of the world’s second largest nuclear weapons cache. [He also needs to be in custody, and charged with aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes in Gaza, but that’s for another day. Ed.]

Sullivan has been glued like a barnacle to Biden’s backside, for years. Before Joe Biden assumed office, Jake had been the president’s campaign manager. He’d acted as Biden’s security advisor when he was vice president during the Obama administration. He was also Hillary Clinton’s chief-of-staff when she was Secretary of State. He’s a slime-ball political operative and Democratic Party apparatchik whose only calculation, with respect to Biden’s foreign affairs portfolio, is to ensure it advances the re-election chances of his boss. The lack of diplomatic engagement with Russia and drum-beating for war are largely his doing, along with neocon Sec of State, Anthony Blinken [Another feckless tool. Ed] and others in Biden’s inner circle. Blinken and Sullivan are responsible, in large part, for unnecessary and provocative escalations (i.e., long range missiles into Russia) that only prolong the inevitable outcome of the Ukraine conflict (i.e., Ukraine’s defeat.) And the unconscionable green lighting of Israel’s bombardment and destruction of Gaza also can be laid at Jake et al’s door. He should be in the dock charged with war crimes along with the rest of his cabal instead of sitting in the cat-bird’s seat at the White House. It's time for a Nuremberg 2.0.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!

 

 

 

RANT: NEEDLED—JAB GOT OR JAB NOT?

DON’T GET ME WRONG I’m not an anti-VAXXer. I’ve had two Covid-19 shots and my annual flu shot so far. Jab, jab, and jab! (Ouch!) I don’t qualify for booster shots yet, but I’m in no hurry to get one. It’s just…Well, here’s the rub. Like all of us, I’ve been reading up on vaccine roll-outs, disease statistics, treatments, global response, passports, lock-downs etc., etc., and a couple of questions come to mind.

Weren’t we told, after the first wave began to swamp our respective societies, that vaccines were the thing to use to stop the spread of the disease?  I was led to believe, unless I'm mis-remembering, that the vaccines being rushed onto the market were a) safe, b) effective in preventing and transmitting Covid-19 infections, c) the way to eradicate the bug by immunizing as much of the population as possible, as quickly as possible, and d) after that we could return to what remained of our lives and routines. Did I miss something? Nearly two years into this thing and authorities are telling us now that the vaccines are only partially effective in preventing infections and in spreading the virus to others. And their effectiveness declines over time. And they may have worrying side effects in some instances.

I know it’s mostly on me to have been more skeptical at the beginning, and I should have investigated, in my own unscientific way, how vaccines are meant to work, their strengths and weaknesses, how long it typically takes to manufacture them, and so on. But I didn’t. Like a good sheep I took my jabs, wore my mask, and waited for the lockdowns to end. Now we’re being told that booster shots might be needed! Just how many and for how long is unclear. For example, Israel has mandated a third (booster) shot and is considering a fourth. 

 

Some commentators question the safety of vaccines, while most public health authorities in Canada, including Health Canada, conclude they’re safe—they’re just not the panacea we all were hoping for. To be honest, I have a hard time deciding which study to rely on, though I tend to fall on the side of health professionals, etc.

 

But I STILL HAVE QUESTIONS: Is mass vaccinations during a pandemic the best way to eradicate the disease (if that’s even possible)? Does a mass vaccination regime allow “herd immunity” to be readily established? Or does it increase the risk of vaccine-resistant strains of the virus from replicating? I don’t know.  

   Adorable. And tasty.

In 2003, during the SARS coronavirus outbreak, air traffic to and from outbreak cities (eg. Toronto) was curtailed and travel to the epicentre of the outbreak in China (at that time, the disease was thought to be spread by “civets”)* was also curtailed. Hospitals and other care facilities that were impacted by the disease were also quarantined. Fortunately, SARS spreads much slower that Covid-19, and the resulting number of infected was minuscule by comparison. But no vaccine was developed for the (then) novel coronavirus, and none exists today. 

 

If the vaccines offer only temporary prophylactic protection and, as some commentators suggest, neither significantly prevent the vaccinated from being infected nor stop them from spreading the disease to others, then as a contagion-hindering mechanism why are we using them in mass inoculation regimes? (And that’s not to say the vaccines don’t help limit the severity of the disease and the chances of dying from it.) But as a societal-wide prophylactic, is their use warranted? After the 2003 SARS coronavirus epidemic scientists attempted and failed to develop a vaccine for the virus. In 2020-21 new vaccines for Covid-19 have been rapidly created, and there are concerns about their safety, longevity, and long-term effects. Again, I don’t know. ⁺

 

MOST STUDIES THAT HAVE BEEN DONE on pandemics and on Covid-19 conclude that vaccines, if distributed widely enough, do act to lessen the spread of disease, and instill “herd immunity” within the population. I tend to agree. However, there are conflicting narratives about vaccines and vaccine statistics. For example, the WHO’s official global death toll from Covid-19 is around 5.2M. The Economist estimates total deaths at a staggering 17M! To me, the higher figure suggests vaccines are not working as advertised to curb deaths from Covid-19 and its variants. Other news sources say the death toll from the disease is overstated and well below the WHO’s count, citing statistical analyses that count people with co-morbidities as deaths from Covid if the virus is at all detected in the deceased. In other words, deaths may be attributed to the coronavirus that don’t apply, thus skewing the statistics and inappropriately raising the pandemic death toll.

While I don’t subscribe to “Covid-skeptic theories” overall—I think the disease is more deadly than the common flu for some population demographics—but like many people these days, I have become more skeptical of our institutions and their pronouncements. 

 

ONE EXAMPLE THAT SHAKES MY CONFIDENCE is the problematic role billionaire Bill Gates and his well-funded charitable foundation plays in crafting WHO policies with respect to global immunization roll-outs. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed over 400 million dollars for the WHO’s 2018-19 budget, the third largest donor after the United States and Great Britain! The foundation has its preferred regime, COVAX, for distributing vaccines, particularly in the global south, which the WHO is  co-sponsoring. There have been criticisms of the COVAX system, suggesting it hinders rather than facilitates immunization efforts. And efforts to inoculate millions of people living in low-income nations has thus far been pitiful, to say the least.

In taking such a massive donation of private money, in whose interests will the WHO act? How do we regain our confidence in public institutions?

 

IN ADDITION, THERE HAS BEEN A GREAT DEAL OF DISCUSSION  about alternative treatments which I won’t go into—I think we’re all familiar with most of them by now—which suggest the best way forward is to regard the presence of the Covid-19 virus and its variants as endemic to the human population, like measles and influenza, something that will be always with us to some extent, and something to be treated with medicines to combat their worst effects. THIS IS CONTROVERSIAL, but I think we’ve been lulled into an acceptance of a single narrative, a one-size-fits-all solution (mass vaccinations, lockdowns, passports) while ignoring alternative “therapeutics” and treatment protocols (like quarantining vulnerable populations at the get-go and using anti-virals and steroids like Dexamethasone.)

In putting so many of our eggs in one basket (vaccines, etc.), we may have bought ourselves the proverbial pig in a poke.  It’s too soon to tell.

 

A Further Controversy IS THE USE of nation-wide lockdowns, with all the harm they cause to workers, their health, and livelihoods, and the general disruption of trade and commerce and damage to social cohesion. In addition, the use of vaccine passports in many countries has been met with growing protests by those who cannot, on medical or religious grounds, be vaccinated or who refuse vaccines for other reasons. Recently, Austria became the first country in the world to institute a lock-down exclusively for unvaccinated people to curb rising infection numbers in that country. And recent news reports from Australia with its stringent lock-down policies seem outright dystopian, and don't augur well for The Land Down Under, going forward. Some say such actions are the beginning of two-tiered societies, with the unvaccinated being denied many of their rights as citizens and excluded from social activities, including employment. 

 

It is feared such internal passport schemes may lead to ‘hyper-surveillance’ on the part of governments and corporate elites, with a corresponding loss of personal autonomy and privacy for the rest of us. I will do a separate post on these worrying possibilities, soon. Meanwhile, I'll keep watching to see when (if at all) I become eligible for a third jab/booster shot here in Ontario. Then I’ll have a decision to make.

 

Keep watching the skies!

Cheers, Jake. 

_____________________________________________ 

 

 

^*In our current pandemic of 2020-22, the original culprit, vis à vis another animal vector, was thought to be the ever-tasty Pangolin.  Both animals were being sold in “wet markets” in China. Both were eaten for their meat and both were deemed carriers of coronaviruses that replicated in humans, mutating into SARS and Covid-19, respectively. Of course, there is growing speculation that today's Covid-19 virus may have been made in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan and, in a lab leak, escaped into the human population. 

We are far down the rabbit hole now, I’m afraid, but it would be good to know the source of Covid-19 to improve our research protocols, animal husbandry practices, etc., and to make life a little safer for future generations.

 

⁺Knowledge is ofttimes easier to acquire than it is to share. That said, I should say that I am skeptical of people who suggest there is a grand conspiracy to ‘cull the human herd', so-to-speak, by manufacturing vaccine serums that will, over time, cause major health concerns, even deaths. It’s difficult to see how such a plan could be kept secret with so much scientific scrutiny of the virus and vaccines occurring. Then again, one should never underestimate  the power of prestidigitation! 

Naturally, there are problems and short-comings with most of the new vaccines, and with so many people still un-vaccinated, world-wide, vaccines can't be the sole solution.  Yet, I assume, or maybe hope and pray, and even mostly believe, I guess, that they must be doing some good. 

Now, I haven't mentioned the political or economic fallout from Covid-19, nor elite machinations involved in any of this, but there's a large pot on the stove, boiling and bubbling over with real-life conspiracies, and graft, greed, corruption, lies and damn lies! It's a toxic  witch's brew being cooked up. Or, as they say, it's just another day in Paradise!

Future historians and sociologists will (presumably) be better able to judge how we acted during this time of crisis, where we fell face-first in it, and whether we came out of this mess still standing or on our knees. Whichever conclusion is reached, there will be a new normal in all our lives from now on.  The jury is still out. Hopefully, the courtroom will still be there when they return. Ed.

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE and STEPHEN DONZIGER 

 

 

    Gratuitous Humour For a Stressful Time #17

EVE AND ADAM: THE FIRST ARGUMENT:

“If you don’t want the fucking apple,

that’s up to you!”