""Footprints"" (opens in separate window)

the hydra at war

friday, october 7th, 2022

Tax collectors and federal cops have always been rotten to the core.

With the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 on the scene, the powers that be redoubled their efforts to lock down discourse. The list of banned topics exploded, no longer just sex and race and immigration but now including epidemiology, virology, immunology, vaccinology. At the same time they locked down the physical world, forcing humanity to participate in bizarre compliance training rituals while saturating the airwaves with neurolinguistic propaganda developed by weaponized psychiatric nudge units. Keeping one's job no longer depended on silencing one's thoughts: in the wake of George Floyd, Patron Saint of Death by Heroic Doses of Fentanyl, active articulation of correct thoughts became mandatory. Soon the loyalty tests moved on to one's willingness to receive regular gene therapy injections.

Meanwhile, dirty tricks were deployed to retake control of the symbolic political high ground. In the imperial centre, an election was stolen outright, before everyone's eyes; those who cried foul were denounced as traitors to the Our Values Democracy, or insurgents, or even terrorists, turned against all that was good and true by the cult conspiracy theory of the Big Lie (that being that their lying eyes were more to be trusted than the Lying Press). The imperial periphery, too, saw champions of populist resistance mopped up. The Yellow Vests in France were crushed by armed police and scared inside by weaponized epidemiological statistics. In Italy, Matteo Salvini was removed from power by back room deals that formed a new coalition government; a new president, appointed by the banksters of Brussels, headed up a government with no popular support, nor any intention of seeking it. In Austria, a right-wing populist president was removed by a fabricated sex scandal involving, who else, a Russian.

Hundreds of millions became inmates under house arrest for months on end. They had very little else to do but go on the Internet. Many numbed themselves with Netflix, and succumbed to the psychological carpet bombing of the WEF's information warfare campaign. Their hypnosis grew rapidly deeper than it had ever been.

But many others started asking questions, because none of it made any goddamn sense, and all of it stank.

This is where it starts to get really interesting.

The Alt-Right was just the larval form of this beast the establishment is so desperate to kill. To their credit, the oligarchs understood this: that's why they panicked and overreacted as they did. They could see what it promised to grow into.

Recall how the Alt-Right gestated in the first place: a disparate gathering of communities formed around the frank study of forbidden topics, leveraging the dense many-to-many connectivity offered by the Internet, getting together to compare notes, exchange information, and engage in debates unfettered by the thought-terminating emotional programming that channels discourse towards the hegemonic narratives approved by the guardians of the societal mainstream. When the Alt-Right began, the forbidden topics were essentially: human biodiversity; the question of contemporary and historical Jewish political, economic, and cultural influence; female sexual psychology; the nature of positive masculinity; and the philosophical history of liberalism viewed from a critical rather than a celebratory perspective. The membership and focus of the Alt-Right reflected these interests.

Such topics were banned precisely because doing so was essential to the early stages of the oligarchy's project to conquer the world by stealth. Acknowledging biological differences between human groups was crucial to enabling the mass immigration that diluted solidarity within Western countries even while depressed wages stripped economic power from the middle class and inflated housing transferred it to the lords of finance. Denigrating masculinity was necessary to make men individually weak and collectively isolated -- therefore unable to resist. Twisted ideas of female psychology, spread to men and women both, prevented the formation of strong familial bonds. Elevating the Jewish people to the status of a victim race sacralized by the Holy Cost provided the foundation for the moral disarmament of the European peoples, while simultaneously placing a substantial fraction of the ruling class beyond reproach. The assumptions of liberalism could not be called into question because it is precisely the philosophical precepts of the Enlightenment that provide the necessary conceptual acid within which to dissolve society into an atomized solution of powerless individuals at the mercy of the universal state, whilst diffusing responsibility and power through a 'democratic' oligarchy in which the deep state becomes untouchable because it is unknowable.

The Great Reset promised by the oligarchy is a totalitarian system on a global scale. It would require absolute and granular control over financial transactions, diet, movement, speech, education, health and medicine, sexual relations, migration, housing, employment, and personal defense. You will live in the pod, you will eat the bugs, you will consume a plant-based diet, you will not fly, you will not drive, you will use central bank digital currencies, you will participate in a social credit system, you will give up your firearms, you will celebrate Pride, you will champion Diversity, you will not have children, if you do have children they will be raised by the state, you will trade freedom of speech for freedom from offense and freedom from malinformation, you will take your vaccines, you will take your meds, you will wear the mask.

You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

You will be a good slave.

Every component of this totalizing program is based upon a deception. This is unavoidable: so horrific is the future they have planned that no sane human would accept it, unless they were so terrified that they perceived it as the least bad alternative. Even then, the proposed solutions to the supposed problems are either so unpalatable or so tenuous in their plausibility that they require deceptions of their own.

For example, the promotion of veganism is tied by the oligarchs to global warming climate change and the climate crisis the Climate Emergency. Anthropogenic climate change driven purely by greenhouse gas emissions is itself largely exaggerated if not entirely fabricated, justified using overly simplistic models that treat the Earth as an effectively closed system, and which neglect solar and cosmic influences on climate. Model performance is abysmal: while there's no doubt the climate is changing (which is as meaningful as saying 'time doesn't stand still' -- the climate has never been stable), there's no evidence it's changing in the fashion predicted by global circulation models, indeed the models have consistently failed to match actual changes in global temperatures, and therefore there is no reason to believe the dire predictions of global temperatures rising so high that the icecaps melt. So much for the planetary justification for plant-based diets (along with all of the rest of the restrictions proposed to stop the weather from changing).

However, even if one accepts that carbon-driven climate change is a real and existential threat to the human species, the environmental justification for plant-based diets -- that it is a more efficient use of available agricultural land from a calories-in/calories-out perspective, and that it avoids methane emissions from large cattle herds -- falls flat upon close inspection. The land used for grazing herbivores is typically utterly unsuitable for grain agriculture; further, the ecology of grazing animals and grasslands actually improves the ability of the soil to sequester carbon. Hence the additional motivation provided for a plant-based transition: it isn't only planet-healthy, you see, it's human-healthy. It's good for the heart; easy on the arteries; keeps the devil cholesterol low; red meat is carcinogenic; you'll live longer and happier, slimmer and more beautiful, on a yummy high-carb diet of corn, soy, and legumes (with the occasional crunchy cockroach for protein).

As anyone who's ever looked at devoted vegans knows, this is absurd. Humans are obligate omnivores. We are apex predators. We require the dead flesh of animals to thrive, and we require it in large amounts.

Obviously, the real reason the oligarchs want humanity to abstain from the flesh of animals is that a vegetarian population will be smaller, sicker, weaker, more passive, and less intelligent. The widespread enervation arising from life-long malnutrition will make humans much easier to control. Tyrants have understood this since time immemorial. There's a reason the most rigidly stratified societies consigned the peasant masses to a diet of thin gruel and weak beer, whilst raising their own sons and daughters on beef, boar, duck, goat, chicken, lamb, and deer. The physical and intellectual differentiation produced by this difference in diet made every nobility a herrenvolk that was literally, biologically superior to the serfs over whom they ruled.

The oligarchs can't come right out and say this, of course. Hence the lies: that plant-based is healthier, that plant-based is better for the planet, and that the planet itself is in mortal danger.

That's just one example illustrating the nested, interlocking deceptions from which the Great Narrative justifying the Great Reset is built.

When lies are confronted with truth on an even footing, truth invariably prevails. Therefore for the Great Reset to succeed, the truths challenging the lies upon which it is based must be suppressed. Since the Great Reset is a totalistic reconstruction of human society, touching on every aspect of human experience, it necessarily follows that the lies be total.

That's a lot of truth that needs to be suppressed.

The last two years were a preview of what the oligarchs intend, but also a preview of that with which they must contend. In order for the medical tyranny to be put in place, dissenters had to be silenced. Large numbers of medical professionals and biological scientists found themselves in the same cultural hinterland as the racist nativist misogynists of the Alt-Right. Formerly widely accepted principles of vaccinology, immunology, epidemiology, virology, medical ethics, and pharmaceutical development, were overnight consigned to the same category of unacceptable opinions as differences in IQ and behaviour between the races and sexes, Jewish influence, nationalism, populism, "Trumpism", and so on. Previously respectable scientists with impeccably liberal politics suddenly found themselves lumped in with racists and derided as conspiracy theorists. This conflation wasn't even subtle: throughout this period, it has been made entirely explicit. Look at the words of Canada's Rainbow Prince, who derided anti-vaxxers as racist misogynists with unacceptable opinions, and insisted that the Freedom Convoy were Nazi fascist neo-Confederates who were funded by the Russians.

The result was that the network of outcast dissidents saw a huge influx of fresh recruits. Just as occurred in the formative period of the Alt-Right itself, disparate groups were suddenly in communication with one another, comparing notes, collaboratively attempting to determine the truth of things, and pulling at threads in the official narrative. The hydra pivoted seamlessly to adapt its talents to the new crisis, and to adopt and accommodate its new participants. Cross-fertilization was immediate. It's no accident that the meme culture of the anti-scamdemic movement is heavily influenced by the meme culture of the Alt-Right: wojacks, NPCs, clown world, pill terminology (redpill, bluepill, blackpill, whitepill), and more, were immediately repurposed and widely adopted.

As happened before, the hydra almost effortlessly outmaneuvered the lumbering control architecture of the oligarchy. No sooner was a false study or misleading article published to justify masks, social distancing, lockdowns, or demonstrate the safety and efficacy of mRNA transfection technology, than the open source scientists of the hydra descended upon it, millions of hungry, angry minds tearing at the falsehoods, ripping off the loose bits, burrowing into the tender flesh beneath. It fought on uneven ground, true; hammered back by censorship, heads decapitated by bannings. Yet the lessons the hydra had learned during the days of the Alt-Right had been learned well. Its heads regrew, its necks slithered around obstacles, its fangs found their marks, its venom hissed in open wounds, and its roars found many ears, chilling the hearts of its enemies and warming the hearts of those in need of hope.

It feels like some months ago we passed an inflection point. Whereas previously the hydra had been always reacting to some fresh insult, its attention drawn to some new lie or some new outrageous mandate, it seems now that the regime media is on its back foot... having to devote its time and attention to explaining why its viewers shouldn't listen to something they heard on the Internet... and having to do so very carefully, lest they draw attention to precisely those facts and arguments that may awaken their viewers. The news cycle is now being set on the hydra's schedule; those within it, have learned to trust it, at any rate more than the alternative; while the velocity with which the hydra can disseminate information through its millions of self-directed limbs leaves its competitor scrambling to play catch-up.

The zombie armies of Planet Pennywise and the Nazgul who rule over them are still vaster and more numerous than the raiding bands of the hydra. For now. But the hydra is faster, nimbler, smarter.

And it continues to grow.

There are a lot of banned topics, now. Official culture requires orthodoxy on COVID-19, on vaccines, on climate, on diet, on race, on sex, on sexuality, on guns, on fucking pronouns. The list seems to extend daily, as indeed it must given the fragile structure of interlocking, mutually supporting lies and partial truths that the Great Narrative depends. As that list grows, so do the numbers of those cast out of the cathedral. Each party of outcasts find themselves in conversation with the hydra. To converse with the hydra is inevitably to join it, to add to it, to change it and be changed by it. The alethiological process of engagement with the hydra, in which the hive mind finds a new equilibrium of information distribution by seeking concordance between old and new data, invariably immolates the illusions of the new recruits (which are many), while the illusions the hydra itself still holds (which are increasingly few) are also burned away by the reaction.

What emerges as new groups join the hydra is a sort of mirror image of the oligarchy's hegemonic house of cards. The latter is a fragile crystallization of falsity, which must protect itself by systematically excluding reality. Truth pushed out from the dark crystal begins its own process of coalescence, but in a fundamentally organic rather than mechanical form. The Great Narrative must be carefully and judiciously crafted, each component selected so as to avoid obvious contradiction with other components that might destabilize the entire structure, which malfunctions the moment a component is damaged or removed. By contrast, the hydra is driven primarily by its desire to conform itself to truth, and it happily reconfigures its own internal structure to incorporate novel information, drawing connections with what it already knows, discarding that which no longer holds up. For the hydra, internal contradictions are a source of energy, fuelling that process of debate that draws it closer to its goal of finding truth.

Now, remember the manosphere's contribution to the Alt-Right synthesis. That group didn't start out as ideological, but as a purely practical, results-oriented community, focused on the basic question 'how to succeed as a man in a world that shits on men'. As time went on, its attention shifted from the best way to get and keep a girlfriend, to self-improvement -- how to make money, how to lose weight, how to build muscle, how to fight, how to make stuff, how to bond effectively with other men, how to cooperate with other men to achieve a goal. The self-improvement ethos evolved into a core purpose of the right, blending seamlessly into the Dark Enlightenment maxim - to take power, become worthy.

There are a lot of other practical-minded, non-ideological groups that have formed around their own splinters in the mass mind. What's the best way to educate a child -- are age-stratified one-to-many government classrooms really ideal? Or do homeschooling, podschooling, or unschooling provide better models? What's the best way to grow food - is it really genetically modified monocrops slathered with chemical inputs? Or is a permaculture model based on ecological principles ecologically, nutritionally, and morally superior? What's the best way to organize the financial system -- is a debt-based fiat currency really the best we can do? Or should we be looking to sound money, crypto and precious metals? What's the optimal diet -- is it really the USDA food pyramid? Or is it keto, paleo, or even carnivore? I'm sure you can think of plenty of your own examples.

Most of these groups would prefer to just be left alone to pursue their individual topics of interest, experimenting, researching, and conversing. On subjects outside of their interests their members remain agnostic, typically defaulting to the left-liberal assumptions of the hegemony. None of them, however, will have a place within the world of the Great Reset... meaning that all of them, eventually, must be pushed towards the hydra, entering into conversation with it, being seduced by it and seducing it, being incorporated within it, adding to it and strengthening it. For the Great Reset demands that they cease their experiments, stop their questions, and obey, while the hydra wants nothing more than for them to continue doing what they're doing, that their projects may flower and all be the richer for it.

The inevitable consequence of this gathering of fragments of forbidden knowledge and suppressed techniques from every corner of the planet must be a global counterculture with an internally cohesive worldview. It will be just as comprehensive as the Great Narrative, as it will of necessity touch on every element of human experience. The difference is that it will have been formed via a self-organizing process, one with no particular end goal in mind, but driven entirely by open-ended questions rather than answers pre-determined by the self-serving aims of occulted powers: what do humans need to be healthy, to really thrive? What is the best way of organizing ourselves? What is the true nature of power, and its optimal distribution? What really works?

And above all, what is true?

[JS: Part 1 is here, in Friday's, June 24th "Journal". Part 3 to come soon.]

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made coffee and breakfast, took a 500mg Tylenol Extra Strength for various pains, had a couple smokes in the chilly garage and checked the day's errands list. It was a cool 56°, and forecast to hit 59° with rain and lots of cloudy skies for the next few days, no thanks to TS-Ian coming up the East Coast.

I have reached the age where Happy Hour is a nap.

After breakfast, I checked the weather and news on my desktop, gathered-up a quick shopping list for Weis Market and Rite Aid, and left at 12:15p. The local traffic was very heavy, as PennDOT is replacing a major I83 cross bridge over East Market St, and it impacts all the main roads, side streets and shortcuts, for miles around. It's a nightmare during lunch, and morning/evening 'rush hours'. I grabbed a 2½ hr snooze on the LR couch, after a late lunch.

Sherry stopped by for a short 2hr visit on her way back from Hollie's Shop in Hallam, Left at 6p as it was getting dusk, and I had some dinner. The season premiere of "Gold Rush" was on, so I watched it until 11p, and switched-over to "Gutfeld!" for 30mins. I switched-over to news about the damage from Hurricane Ian, and it traveled-up the coast to us, and the wind and rain picked-up, bigtime. Lights out at 1:30a.

I slept-in until 9:30a on Saturday, a cool 53°, and the rain continued lightly -- except for massive downpours in between -- and steady wind. We'd have a cloudy, rainy weather for the next 1-2 days. 53° was typical for this time of year. I made coffee, did a BSL, had a couple smokes in the warming garage, an English Muffin, and logged-on to my desktop to check on the folks down south who'd taken the brunt of the storm, and to check on local news and weather. Living at sea level has its hazards.

Who blew the Nord Stream 1 & 2 Pipelines? That article has good motivations for us doing it. This guy says there's no doubt who did it. You decide.

My morning BSL was at 175 -- way over the 150 level -- and even taking a 1,000mg Metformin didn't help lower it; only by 4pts to 171. It should have lowered it way below 150. The luscious, juicy and sweet Red Grapes I've been eating must be the culprits, so I'll stop those fore a few days until the BSL "normalizes" way under 150. usually, it's 110-117 in the mornings. Today was not good. Eye and kidney damage can result from it being that high. I'm headed for the LR couch to grab some sleep. 4½hrs later, it was 6;30p, time to eat. check my BSL -- down to 107... YEAH! -- and watch some "Gold Rush: Dave Turin's Lost Mines" new episodes on Discovery, and call it a day at 11:30p.

The pounding rain woke me at 4:30a on Sunday, so as I was getting-up at 6 anyway, I made new Kona Hawaiian Estate Coffee, checked the BSL (122), had a smoke in the garage w/ ceramic tower heater going, checked ESPN for FI Singapore Race schedule, and just relaxed. Several weather warnings were posted for the Chesapeake Bay, and we were getting heavy rain from now inward-spinning Nor'easter, but no flood warnings posted for the York-Lancaster areas, forecast until 10p. I went back to sleep on the LR couch for an hour or so, and watch the typhoon-rain-delayed F1 GP Race from Singapore. It was an OK race; nothing exciting, but a lot of very expensive carnage from crashes and mechanical failures. So-so.

I grabbed my usual morning shower around 12:30p, had lunch, and laid down on the LR couch for almost 4hrs, catching-up on some sleep from the morning. My BSL was high (172), so I skipped dinner and just had several Ensure® Protein Drinks. I'm going to do some walking exercise at the nearby York Galleria myself, since that'll help burn-off the accumulated sugars, combined with the Rx Metformin I take 2x/day. After watching a day's worth of "American Pickers", I unplugged at 10p, since I have to get up again at 6a, tomorrow and Tuesday.

Up at 6a on Monday, another rainy, 47°, cold/raw morning. I fired-up the furnace to 77° to take the chill off the condo, made coffee and checked the weather and news on my trusty old HP desktop. *Gale Warnings* and *Small Craft Advisory* warning were posted, but nothing that pertained to us, in the York-Lancaster areas. The rain continued, as it' s forecast to do until Thursday. I'm just glad it's not snow. I took a Tramadol for lower back pain, sent Sis to Restorative Bodyworks for an 8:30a with Heidi, and tuned into the "Chris Stigall Show", 6-9a. I tuned into the "Chris Plante Show" at 9, and did paperwork, after some Croissants for breakfast. The rain continued.

Around 12:15p, I left for the cleaners down south in Red Lion, to drop-off/pick-up a load of jeans and shirts. The rain continued. I had no further errands for the day, so I drove home and did paperwork and filing, making my way thru the dwindling pile of folders and paper on my filing cabinet, next to my desk in the office-sunroom. The rain continued, albeit heavily down south on my errand trip. Back home by 3p, due to heavy traffic and construction chokepoints, I had a day-old FIVE GUYS Dbl-Cheeseburger -- no fries -- finished-off the last of the paperwork, did some chores in the garage and basement, and grabbed a 2hr nap on the LR couch. Back up by 5:30p, I watched some recent Discovery episodes of "Bitchin' Rides" until Fox' "Jesse Watters" and "Tucker" came on. My cleaning lady, JoAnne, is in at 8:30a tomorrow, so I have to get up at 6a, again. I unplugged for the night at 10p.

I'm donating $100 to Florida Gov Ron DeSantis' Florida Disaster Fund, in addition to selected other vetted 501(c)(3) charities: Int'l Fellowship of Christians and Jews, St Jude's Children's Hospital, PSU-Hershey Children's Hospital, local York SPCA, LifePath Christian Ministries in York, Samaritan's Purse, For The Love of A Veteran, York Soup Kitchen. The rising estimate now is $100 Billion and climbing, to rebuild all the damage from Hurricane Ian. Yikes. Please help the people in FL, if you can.

The alarm went-off at 6a on Tuesday, and the rain continued all night and into the morning. I turned-up the heat to 75° -- a nippy 47° outside -- made coffee, did the BSL routine (108!), and just relaxed until my mind caught-up with the rest of me. Seven straight days of rain, and the ground is saturated, impacting trees' roots' stability and safety. Some strong wind could easily uproot many large ones, causing serious damage to structures, vehicles and people. I measured 5¼" in my 6" gauge, so far, emptied it, and not a single *Flood Warning* issued yet. It finally started getting light around 7a.

But not for long. It rained all day, and I got caught in a terrific downpour going into Staples®, to get BSL record forms made, and 2 reams of Hammermill® printer paper. We got groceries and 2 Rotisserie Chickens from Nearby Weis Market, cleaned all delicious meat/skin off the bones and stored in a large Glad Container for use all week long. I had dinner, grabbed a shower, and watched the usual Fox News line-up until 11p. Busy day tomorrow; lights out.

I slept-in until almost 8a, on Wednesday, fired-up the furnace, made coffee, tuned into the "CHris Plante Show", took a 50mg Tramadol for lower R/S back pain, and delayed croissants for breakfast for a hour, until the stuff gets into my system, and the pain subsides. It was a cloudy, 53° day, but only a light shower or two. Looks like the major rain has passed. I'm showing almost 8", since Friday. I had 3 loads of laundry to do after breakfast, got those underway, and went back to the "CP Show" in between loads. UPS stopped by with a large load of 24 Crabcakes from Allen Bros; I unpacked them and put them into the toploading garage freezer, for later use. Sis made a large pot of chili for today's lunch.

"Welcome to my world" -- Sherry, 2022.

The chili was mild, but good. I finished the 3 loads of laundry and worked on filing more paper, going thru some files, emptying them out of 3+ year old paperwork, and re-listened to the morning's "CP Show", which I'd partially missed, due to phone calls and other interruptions. We had Allen Bros Crabcakes, Baby Peas and sugar-free Yogurt for dinner, and I watched Fox until 11. Sad to say, the "Gutfeld!" show sucked again, for about the 8th night in a row, so I'm dropping it from my evening program repertoire. So be it. Fix it Gutfeld -- your show officially sucks -- you dwarf twerp! I bagged it around 11p

Lies, Lies and More Damned Lies:

DOJ inadvertently releases Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents,
The check is in the mail,
I love you,
The vax is safe & effective,
There was no election fraud,
Infanticide is health care,
Alex didnt pull the trigger,
D.C. 1/6 prisoners have rights,
DOJ, FBI pure as new driven snow,
KJB doesn’t know what a woman is,
1/6 was an armed resurection,
Russia blew up its own pipelines,
Men can give birth,
There are 58 genders<,br> There is no porn in grade schools,
Hunter is an artist,
Trump is a Russian agent,
Fauci did not fund gain of function in Wuhan CCP China,
Covid-19 came from a bat cave,
Stacy Abrams won,
If you like your plan you can keep your plan,
Benghazi was caused by a YouTube video mocking mohammed,
Adam Shift has evidence,
The biggest National Security Threat to the USA are extreemist domestic terrorist memaws coming to school board meetings,
Clarence Thoamas is a white supremist,
Voter I.D. is voter suppression,
2+2 can = 5,
Co_{2 controls the weather,

You will own nothing and be happy,

The USA is a democracy,

Kamala is a black woman,

There are WMDs in Iraq,

Elizabeth Warren is an Indian,

Joe Biden is cognitive,

It’s illegeal for TV News Media to lie,

Martha’s Vineyard Welcomes immigrants,

Voting machines can’t connect to the internet,

Fetuses don’t have heartbeats,

The US border is secure.}

Awake at 8:30a on Thursday, a 46°, sunny, cold and crisp morning. I'd switched-over to one of my 3 Flannel Sheet sets, so I was toasty warm in the 68° condo. After some water in the face, CBD Clinic Level 5 Pro Sport Ointment on my lower left back, I grabbed the (20lb) Turkish Bathrobe, and headed downstairs, to do the BSL finger stick, make coffee, have a smoke in the garage, open the condo's electric shades, and get the condo's heat up to 77°, for an hour or so. Life is good, and I thanked The Lord for another day of life on His earth.

30° and low-40° temps are coming this weekend, so I'll be moving the 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee HEMI V8 back into the garage. When Fall/Winter gets here -- leaves, bitter cold, snow, ice etc -- it stays inside when I'm not using it, until Spring. I keep blowing the next door unit's 65ft Pin Oak's debris -- twigs, acorns, leaves -- of our adjoining driveways, and Oaks hold their leaves all thru the Winter, so it becomes a safety issue with leaves mixing with snow and ice. I tried to get that damned tree -- belongs in a park or the forest, not in a 30' x 40' postage stamp-sized front yard -- removed 2 years ago, when I was on the CHCA Board and "in charge" of horticulture here, but was voted down, since the neighbor wanted it for shade. After the drainage project was put on hold, due to 2020 Covid-19, I quit the Board. No further comment.

I made this statement last week: Who blew-up the Nord Stream Pipelines 1 & 2? It was clearly sabotage. What begins with economic warfare leads to real warfare. In this case, it could be nuclear warfare. Here's proof we did it, as I said last week. Shit-for-brains Lunch Bucket Joe even said it. Convince me that I'm wrong. Go ahead and read it; I'll wait.

Thursday was so nice, sunny, clear and 75°, that I did 6 errands and spent the afternoon listening to Fox News Podcasts on the back patio. I cleared-off the teak table, and 2 beach chairs from the front porch, into the back storage shed, next to the patio. I skipped my afternoon nap, did a couple errands, and just enjoyed the weather, until dinner. I had Rorisserie Chicken & Gravy over Potato Bread, and sugar free Jell-O for dessert. I watched Fox TV for news, and switched over to DiscoveryGo for some "Gold Rush" episodes, I'd missed earlir this year. By 11p, I was fading and called it a day.

Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal" and I have only one Dr's app't, mid-week. I'll enjoy it while I can, as Monday 17th starts the "week from hell".

"Sorry, It's Freezing, But Your Burning Fuel Makes The Air Dirty!": EU Priorities.

"Doesn’t this headline say it all about whose priorities are what?

Energy crisis sparks air pollution fears.

In the environmentally conscious, Green-centric world where the Brussels commissioners live, their focus is on the air you breathe, not the mean temperature as you take that breath. Granted, it might be partially their fault –- okay, mostly their fault –- that the ambient air inside your humble cottage is a…tad cooler than it was last winter for the now 6, 8, or even 10 times as many Euros to make it so…

As the Continent scrambles to avert a full-scale energy crisis, efforts to stay warm are set to drive up air pollution levels as people turn to coal, wood and even trash to heat their homes.

But “Let’s not be hasty!” I cannot imagine the horror when European Union higher-ups got word of what their Eastern EU members had encouraged their citizens to do in the face of another mostly EU self-inflicted energy crisis: a coal shortage.

Although the highly polluting fuel has earned pariah status as the EU looks to slash emissions, consumption is on the rise as a number of countries, including Austria and the Netherlands, either switch old coal-fired plants back on or boost existing capacity to save on gas.

The problem is that the EU will soon be deprived of its biggest supplier: The bloc slapped sanctions on Russian coal in April, forbidding further imports starting August 10.

That means the 2 million tons of coal it is set to receive from Russia this month [JUL] will be the last such shipment, said Alex Thackrah, a senior coal analyst at the market intelligence firm Argus Media.

Indonesia, South Africa and Colombia are all potential suppliers, but EU countries will face “extremely high prices” due to the particularly high-calorific type of coal normally used across the bloc, according to Thackrah. Coal prices on the API2 Rotterdam hub, a European benchmark, hit $380 per ton last week**, already a more than fourfold increase on this time last year.

The EU will also face “stiff competition” from players such as India and South Korea, which have existing coal supply agreements with many of these countries, said Mark Nugent, an analyst at the shipbroker Braemar.

Logistical issues risk complicating matters further.

Much of the EU’s coal — which arrives via ports in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp — travels along the Rhine river by barge. Uncharacteristically high temperatures this month have lowered the river’s water levels to 65 centimeters, reducing how much cargo barges can carry by two-thirds, said Thackrah.

**That’s gone up a fair shake since – “The Australian benchmark for high-quality physical coal hit a record $438.94 a tonne on September 2, up from $433.24 the previous week”.

There’s a rock and a hard spot. While the folks in Western Europe need it for power plants, etc, their Eastern European counterparts literally still burn things at home for their heating.

The problem is expected to hit hardest in Central and Eastern Europe, where many homes still rely on burning solid fuels for heating.

Faced with a coal shortage that risks affecting some 2 million households, Poland’s de facto leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski encouraged people “to burn almost everything, of course aside from tires and similarly harmful things” to keep warm this winter.

Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, has waived environmental regulations that shielded protected forests from logging and ordered an increase in lignite production in a bid to secure energy supplies for households.

In Romania, where more than half the population heats with wood, the government is handing out vouchers to subsidize the purchase of firewood. Bulgaria has banned the export of wood to third countries to secure supply for its own population, a quarter of whom were unable to keep their houses adequately warm in 2020.

Busybody NGO’s are going ape-schnoodles over the pollution back-sliding, even in the face of extraordinary deprivation.

NGOs have criticized that messaging, as well as the government’s decisions to introduce one-off allowances to help households buy more coal and other fuels, and to temporarily allow the sale of dirtier coal.

That approach means Poland risks reversing years of progress toward healthier air and cleaner forms of heating, said Aleksander Sniegocki, CEO of the Reform Institute, a Polish think tank.

The EU’s answer is pursuing pie-in-the-sky temporary fixes, “FLOATING nat gas terminals? Brilliant! DO IT!”

European nations have worked to get creative about energy alternatives. One short-term fix is roughly 20 floating terminals that would receive liquefied natural gas from other countries and convert it into natural gas for homes and businesses.

The plan, with the first floating terminals set to start delivering gas by year’s end, has raised alarm among experts who fear the long-term consequences for the environment. They warn that the terminals would perpetuate Europe’s reliance on natural gas, which releases climate-warming methane and carbon dioxide when it’s produced, transported and burned.

even as they set carbon-neutral goals they haven’t the faintest hope of achieving whilst, at the same time, keeping the lights on.

The European Union has a binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Natural gas has been promoted as a “bridge fuel” because in power plants it produces less carbon dioxide when burned than coal. But some experts are critical of the move.

They are not listening. They are responding to their pipedreams going up in flames, not remedying the situation they’ve created. Charging ahead through the flames while smacking left and right with a wet blanket, but it’s all burning down.

Ever critical, ever judgemental, the Greens are always so helpful, with the same frickin’ tripe that got you freezing in the dark to begin with.

Cristina Pricop, policy manager for global public health at the European Public Health Alliance, said governments need to invest in long-term solutions. Those include “renewable, clean energy” and energy efficiency measures like building renovations.

Gosh. It’s as if no one had ever heard of any of these brilliant “solutions” before, less mind catastrophically implemented them. The vast majority of the learned elites mouthing these ground-breaking plans, by rote, as if off Biden’s big print teleprompter or Obama’s “shovel ready” list, do not have to wonder why their apartment is chilly, or their pipes freezing, or whether to eat vice pay the electric bill. Foraging in the forests of Germany for firewood is not a life necessity for them.

If only there comes a time when they might have to, and common sense governance is returned to the citizens. Where the priority is the citizen, and the rest of the concerns follow. If Sweden’s recent election was a warning shot from the horizon, Italy’s had to be cannonball across the bow. If there is a cold winter, that might happen again in unexpected places."

No, COVID Didn’t Come From A US Lab —- Lancet Report Continues The China Coverup.

"Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over —- we have President Joe Biden’s word on this —- the Lancet Commission set up more than two years ago to investigate it has finally issued a report.

It’s a huge disappointment as it dances around the key question of origins: “More than 2 years into the pandemic, the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains incomplete and inconclusive.”

Its weak-sauce conclusion —- maybe it came from a lab, maybe it came from nature —- has given an opening to a China-led disinformation campaign that claims against all evidence the virus was actually created in a US lab.

Indeed, the report itself has greatly aided this interpretation by somehow managing to blame America: “Independent researchers have not yet investigated the US laboratories engaged in the laboratory manipulation of SARS-CoV-like viruses, nor have they investigated the details of the laboratory research that had been underway in Wuhan.” It adds that the US National Institutes of Health “has resisted disclosing details of the research on SARS-CoV-related viruses that it had been supporting, providing extensively redacted information only as required by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.”

This is worse than moral equivalence. The report, from a leading medical journal, condemns the United States for not allowing investigations of its labs and engaging in a coverup. Then it trails off into vagueness when discussing China and cannot even bring itself to mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology by name.

A number of newspapers, including the United Kingdom’s Express, have actually run with these Chinese talking points. Whether this is out of conviction or just for clicks and giggles is hard to say.

Now, I’m not surprised the commission pretends not to know that the China virus likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. After all, two commission members, Chen Wang and Lan Xue, are from the People’s Republic of China and would have been under orders to make strenuous objections to including any statements critical of China. If the report had deviated from the Communist Party line — that the virus either came from a bat or a US bioweapons lab —- they would have been held personally responsible.

They should never have been on the commission in the first place; they’re not independent actors. Should Nazi camp doctors have been invited to Nuremberg to sit in judgment of Dr. Josef Mengele?

But why would the commission allow them to insert propaganda into the report?

Perhaps because it was headed by Jeffrey Sachs, a well-known China apologist. Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University chemistry and chemical biology professor who’s long advocated a truly independent inquiry into COVID’s origins, dismisses this effort as “a cartoonish caricature of a commission.” He points out Sachs has co-authored other puff pieces on China, including one entitled “The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified.”

How else could ludicrous claims like China only had “ten new cases per day by late April, 2020” find its way into the report? Or its celebration of Beijing’s brutal “zero-COVID” policy, which arguably kills more people through starvation and suicide than it saves from COVID?

This excuse to stifle the origins debate has been around since the pandemic’s very beginning, thanks to former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins. Further discussion of the Wuhan lab, warned Collins in early 2020, would allow “the voices of conspiracy to quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and to international harmony.”

At that time, we didn’t yet know the NIH was funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. In attempting to shut down debate, Collins may have had other worries on his mind.

Hidden under such high-minded concerns were more practical considerations. Collins and Anthony Fauci knew that further scrutiny of the Wuhan lab would lead back to them. That’s why NIH is still redacting emails and gain-of-function research grants.

So —- for all the conspiracy theorists and CCP propagandists out there — the United States did not create the coronavirus, allow it out of the lab and spread it around the world. That is almost certainly on China.

But by naïvely funding the Wuhan lab and training the scientists who ran it, US bureaucrats with too much money and no moral compass did enable it.

The coverup that followed COVID’s release was worse than the crime. Lives were lost as they spent critical weeks trying to cover their backsides.

And with the Lancet Commission report, the coverup continues."