Following the science back to reality

I see where Dr. Peter Juni,head of Ontario's "Covid Science table," has skedaddled out of town. He’s left his teaching post at the most prestigious university in Canada,U of T, (Sorry McGill, my daughter-in-law got one of your fine arts degrees and she’s working in a weed shop) for a teaching post at the most prestigious university in the world. Who can blame him? Good timing too. We followed Doctor Juni’s science for two years. Where are we now? Pretty much back to normal, wouldn’t you say? Thank God for science! Except this. The current seven day average mortality in Canada as of today eclipses the death rate for all but the deadliest few months of the pandemic. The deaths today are higher than they were for the entire year from February 2021 to January 2022 22, yet how many times did we shut down small business and keep kids out of school during that period. And now, with more deaths, things are back to “normal?” While I haven’t heard anyone apologize, let alone take responsibility, it looks to me like a tacit acknowledgement by the powers that be that they got things wrong. When I think of all the elderly who spent their last weeks and days alone, dying in excruciating loneliness, all in the name of “following the science,” it disturbs me that the legion of experts who foisted this barbarity on our elders will not be held to account.

Canadian's thrilled to finally get covid vax for infants and toddlers

Well, at least some Canadians. Here's a couple exerpts from a letter to the editor published by the Toronto Star today. "I am very excited that Health Canada can approve the under-six Moderna vaccine before the US Food and Drug Administration." Excited about approving something before the FDA? Seriously? Apparently the writer hasn't heard about the all-too-cozy relationship between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA is too slow to approve covid vaccine for infants and toddlers? We can get it approved even faster? Canada is number one! "At the US rate... the smallest member of our society will be unprotected for another month or two." Oh, the shame! Here's another perspective. Flu kills more under-20s, including infants and toddlers, than covid has, and that's before a single Canadian child under 6 has had a covid shot. My hunch is for every letter like that they get a hundred from parents who plan to never give their infants and toddlers the safe and effective and totally unnecessary vaccine, but those letters probably come from white supremacists and Trump fans, so they can't publish them. Journalistic standards, after all.

Rediscovering the joy of farting

Still haven't sorted out the formatting issues since Doublewide walked over the keyboard a couple of weeks ago. I tried to get her to retrace her steps, to no avail. If you want to know where the paragraph breaks are, most of my posts are also on my Substack, which the cat hasn't managed to fuck up yet. The most stressful thing about my adventures in Celiac disease was I lost the ability to distinguish between a pending fart and something more substantial. I'm off the gluten for a full week now, and what a thrill it is to report that my confidence is coming back! The ability to make that distinction is a fundamental building block on the path to growing up. Usually, we're able to discern what's pending by the age of 3, and let's face it, once you get much beyond that, you're widely shunned in civilized society if you shit your pants when you think you're merely impressing your buddies by ripping one forth. So, from the age of 3 till a few months ago, I could confidently rip forth with the best of them. It's a guy thing. I recall when I used to shepherd the school soccer teams to away games on the bus. With the girls team, they didn't fart much, and when they did, it didn't stink much. The boys team was a different kettle of fish. When the boys team was heading to an away game, farting became a competetive sport in itself. If somebody dropped one, twenty other guys felt duty-bound to best it. I didn't know shit about soccer. In fact, when they made me a volunteer soccer coach, I had to get a book out of the school library to learn some basics - like how many players were allowed on what they call the "pitch." I'm pretty sure the only reason I gained a measure of respect from the kids was, thanks to the sardines and pickled eggs in my diet, my ability to hold my own in the competetive farting department. Don't think I'm ready to rip one forth on a bus full of teenagers just yet, but happy days are just around the corner!

Embracing senility

There were a couple of items I intended to write about today. Andrew Bennett had an op-ed in the Globe and Mail. If that name doesn't quite ring a bell, he was Canada's first and last Commissar of Religious Freedom. Plucked from the obscurity of a Christian College with about 12 students, Harper installed him in this made up post, which was cancelled not long after Justin became PM. I had a lot of fun with that at the time. It seemed to fit the modus operandi of Big Steve's Alliance Church crowd, which in my mind is the kissing cousin to the "Christian fascists" Chris Hedges thinks are taking over America. So you can see, I had some serious shit to gnaw on. Then I stepped out on the stoop for a breath of fresh air, and got totally distracted by the buzzards soaring on the air currents overhead. I'd much rather do that than research Christian fascists. So I did. For hours. We've got a bit of dementia showing up here and there in the family tree. The low-hanging fruit on that tree were smitten before they were the age I am now, which gives me hope. Then again, there's ample gluten allergy in that tree too, which I never felt would ever impact me, so you never know. Bennett, who apparently merits an op-ed where I'm lucky to get a letter to the editor published once in awhile, has his shorts in a twist over the recommendations of the National Defence Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination. I know. Now I gotta read up on that when I could be watching turkey vultures soaring on the thermals. That panel was the brain wave of the wokelings in the Trudeau cabinet, and our turban-sporting Minister of Defence was the point dude. Nothing against turban's per se, but in Sajjan's case it just seemed like cover for an almost inconcievable level of ineptitude. I generally have high regard for Sikhs, but this clown was an embarrasment to the tribe. So they strike this four-person panel to investigate systemic racism and discrimination in the Canadian Armed Forces. This next part sounds like the set-up for a joke, but the panel, all CAF vets, consist of a Native dude, a Native lesbian, a career feminist activist, and a Jew. And then they walked into a bar... You can see why I'd rather watch vultures soaring. You can see why I'd rather embrace senility than spend one more precious moment of my time on this earth researching the thoughts and motivations of the kind of people who seem to have taken over the public space.

One question we don't ask about those civilians trapped beneath Mariupol

It should be an obvious question, but we are so bedazzled by our own propaganda that it never occurs to us. Who has them trapped? Why, the Russians, of course! Well, think about it. International media is obviously on the scene, as you can readily see for yourself when CNN or al Jazeera post footage of the occasional successful “rescue” of civilians from Azovstal. Those are Russian troops helping those civilians to the buses. So if it’s not the Russians trapping them, who else could it be? Maybe those guys who until very recently were acknowledged by CNN, BBC, NYT, the Guardian etc, to be the kind of folks who executed collaborators and used civilians as human shields? That would be the Azov battalion, the same guys doing the same crimes outlined in at least half a dozen Amnesty International reports from 2014 on. The problem is that the collective West has been brainwashed by its own bullshit. Ukraine is winning this war. In fact, no less an authority than US Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced Ukraine’s victory in early April. Yup, they just need a few more billions in US made munitions to put the finishing touches on this glorious triumph of good over evil. Except that was all bullshit, and still is, as confirmed in stories beginning to seep into Western media. Check out this story from Agence France Presse, the France based major news agency. “For every 300 artillery rounds they fire at us, we fire back three.” That’s a wounded Ukrainian soldier talking. They’re ordered to “hold the line.” They are being slaughtered, and the more we drag out this war, the more Ukrainians will die. That Russia had effectively won this war was evident in the first few days. Remember that 50 mile-long Russian convoy that was “trapped” north of Kyiv for ten days? We were treated to all sorts of speculation from Western experts about poor morale, Russia running out of fuel and supplies, etc. Seemed plausible at the time… Except. For ten days, that 50 mile-long sitting duck was not attacked by Ukrainian forces on the ground, from the air, or from long-range artillery. Instead, they tied down tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops waiting for an assault on Kyiv that never materialized, while the Russians created a land bridge to Crimea. Then that 50 miles of Russian heavy weapons made their way to the south, where, two months later, they’re decimating what’s left of the Ukrainian army. The retired US Army generals on CNN told us this was evidence of a heroic Ukrainian victory and was labelled a “Russian retreat.” Telling the truth would have killed the twenty billion in US military exports that have ensued. Why kill Lockheed and Raytheon profits when you can kill people instead? That’s where we’re at. We can keep escalating this war to the brink of global nuclear catastrophe, or we can change course and bend our efforts to making peace.

Every day you can still eat and shit is a good day

I never paid much attention to the "gluten-free" fad that's been sweeping the nation. Sure, you'd go for a family get-together and half the people there were fussing about gluten, but I figured they were just fussy people. Nothing about gluten a robust lad like me would ever have to worry about. After the past few months, I must admit I have modified my outlook somewhat. Seems this celiac disease, or whatever they call a gluten allergy now, can claim the best of us. In my case I'm pretty sure it's because the safe and effective vaccine we were all bullied into has greatly compromised my immune system, but I can't prove it. So things is what they are, and I gotta admit things were seriously on the down-tick for a spell. First off, I was developing flaming red blotches on my skin that itched to high heaven. Then, the old reliable (for sixty-five years) digestive tract took a bad turn. For the first time since I was about three, or whenever mom weaned me off nappies, I've been able to distinguish between a pending fart and something more. Not anymore. You can imagine that set off some alarm bells. Without getting to graphic with the details, I shared my concerns with some those fussy folks. They were unanimous. Get off the gluten! So I did, as of last Thursday. My biggest concern was beer, because that's a medicine I hold as dear as life itself. Turns out there's a gluten free beer out there way tastier (although somewhat more pricey) than my regular swill. Easy to remember too; Glutenberg. Been making some other adjustments too. The first gluten-free bagels I tried were crap, but if you reframed them as gluten-free fluffy buns, they were passable. Turned out a lot of staples in my diet, like pickled beets and tinned kippers, were gluten-free anyway. I gotta tell ya, exiting the bathroom with a sense of accomplishment instead of a sense of dread is a gift well worth giving up gluten for.

Toronto "Hot Docs Festival" hot with US Empire propaganda

What with all the buzz around that fabulous eye-opener about Jose Andres' NGO, World Central Kitchen, you can be forgiven for forgetting it's the product of the Hollywood branch of the American Esceptionalism cult. So here’s why I ended up flushing most of the day down the "We Feed People" rabbit hole. CBC had an interview with Jose Andres this morning, founder of NGO World Central Kitchen. Host Matt Galloway greeted him with the same credulous enthusiasm with which he greets debunked shills for Empire like Bill Browder and Elliot Higgins. Matt is a nice guy, but geopolitics is clearly not his bag. Jose was on to promote a new doc about World Central Kitchen. WCK is quick off the mark in bringing food relief to disaster zones. They had a team on the ground in Ukraine the day after the war started. In the course of the interview, Jose meandered into a little more ant-Putin editorialising than I would have expected of a non-biased humanitarian. The CEO of WCK is none other than Nate Mook, the very guy Bill Clinton tapped for a puff-doc on his humanitarianism. Not only that, he is also the executive producer of the documentary under discussion. Nate Mook has been a Dem party fave for ages. WCK is an extraordinarily well financed NGO, although you’ll be hard pressed to find details on specific donors in their financials. It’s a matter of public record that some authentic grass-roots NGOs have disassociated themselves from WCK on account of its proximity to the Department of Homeland Security and other US government entities. Looks like at least two of hottest docs at Hot Docs are straight out of the Empire's propaganda machine