Delta in England

So it appears that the Delta variant is no more harmful than the regular flu, at least according to official data coming out of England. This is all explained in this ZeroHedge article.

Also of note is a commend made by "Bacon's Rebellion" which goes as follows:

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The Delta Variant in the UK

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June 25th, 2021 - Public Health England

Summary:

Higher rates of "cases" for the "unvaccinated" with higher rates of hospitalizations and DEATHS for the “fully vaccinated”.

Cases:

7,235 “Fully Vaccinated”
53,822 “Unvaccinated”

Overnight Hospitalization required:

1.11% of the “Fully Vaccinated”
0.89% of the “Unvaccinated”

Deaths:

50 were “Fully Vaccinated” = 0.69% died
38 were “Unvaccinated” = 0.07% died

Death rate was 9.86 times higher for the vaccinated!

IF - 53,822 "Unvaccinated" cases = 38 deaths
Will - 53,822 "Vaccinated" cases = 375 deaths?
Will - the 142,000,000 "Fully Vaccinated" people in the USA suffer 979,800 Delta variant Deaths?

(Link downloads a PDF | SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern)

Public Health England

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The answer to his final question is that we may well get a million deaths directly or indirectly due to the vaccine, but not right away. Not every vaccinated person will get ill with the Delta variant. However, the delta variant is now the dominant one and likely to become the origin of most future variants, so the relative rates calculated above are likely to persist into the future.

Delta

By Dcoetzee, F l a n k e r - Own work, Public Domain, Link

Buyer's Remorse

My wife has a friend who's son has just finished art college here in Porto. It's a talented young man. Feeling generous we decided to go to the studio he shares with two likeminded artist to buy one of his paintings. Specifically, we were interested in a painting of an orange tree that we had seen on his Instagram account. However, the painting was a good deal larger than we had imagined, and I was immediately worried about where to hang it.

But we weren't there just to look at that one painting, he had several more to show us, so we started going through more of his recent production. That's when I was struck by a tranquil looking landscape painted in the style of Cézanne. I recognized the scenery, and asked him if it was from his grandparents' place, up north at the border to Spain. It was. The view was from his upstairs bedroom.

That's great, I thought. Not only is this a nice approximation to a Cézanne painting, it's from a place I know and like. The scenery is typical for northern Portugal. A perfect thing to hang at home. However, my wife was not convinced. The orange tree had more intensity of colours. It would liven things up. It may also have nagged her that the landscape was that of her friend's childhood rather than her own personal experience. This was my only concern; that it was too private to someone else to whom my wife has a friendly but somewhat antagonistic relationship.

My wife and I decided to wait a few days to make up our minds rather than take a snap decision there and then. But things were not any clearer when we returned to the studio yesterday afternoon. My wife was still most interested in buying the orange tree while I remained set on the landscape.

After some back and forth, we settled on the landscape, in large part due to my assertive stance. We got it wrapped, and we took it with us home where I put it on a chair for us to admire. It looked very nice. However, my wife remained unenthusiastic. I had pushed her too hard, and now she was turning passive aggressive on me. Furthermore, I had no idea where to hang it. It didn't seem to fit anywhere.

My enthusiasm for the painting fell through the floor, and I could hardly sleep through the night for all my worries related to it. This morning, I tried to find a place for it, but nothing worked. I tried to imagine the orange tree in the same places, and was relieved to realize that it too would be difficult to fit. The problem was not so much the painting itself, but the lack of suitable places to hang it.

Then it struck me that the painting shouldn't hang anywhere very prominent. It's a painting that comes to its full when seen fleetingly, like a glance through a window. It's quite detailed and full of life. It's not lacking in depth or anything like that. However, it's not so fantastic that it can be contemplated for hours on end. The painting is made by someone just out of art school. It doesn't deserve our very best wall space.

It would be an insult to my wife's brothers to push aside their artwork in favour of our newly acquired landscape. My wife's brothers are established artists with decades of experience. We're blessed by the fact that they every now and again give us one of their pieces to hang on our walls for free. However, there is one piece by one of my wife's brothers that I don't like. It's an early piece from way back when he himself was just out of art school, and it's been hanging in our tiny hall since for ever.

I took down the artwork I disliked and hung the landscape in its place, and just like that, my buyer's remorse vanished into nothing. The landscape was the perfect replacement. It has the right dimensions and it's like a window. Rarely will we stand there and contemplate it in detail. Rather, we'll walk past it multiple times every day, every time catching a glimpse of the beautiful and tranquil landscape that defines northern Portugal.

My wife is not very impressed by any of this. She's still in her passive aggressive mood. But I'm sure she'll end up agreeing with me. However, this painting that was supposed to be her painting has now become mine. I've been assertive and pushy. To make up for this I'll donate this to her. I'll pay for it out of my account, and I'll be more cooperative and helpful as we go searching for something else to hang in a more prominent space. It's the least I can do after my pushy stunt to force my will on her.

Lesson learned is that I will not be too pushy with my opinion in the future, and I will also keep in mind that an artwork has to hang somewhere. If I don't know where to hang a particular piece of art, I'll refrain from buying it, no matter how much I like it, and I'll insist that my wife takes a similarly stance. Also, what defines the best location for a piece of art is its inherent quality. Price has nothing to do with it. The fact that we forked over a few hundred euro for our acquisition doesn't mean that it must be featured in a more prominent place than pieces that we've gotten for free, or even pieces made by our children. 

Landscape by Afonso Rocha

Use but don't Meddle

There's a widespread belief, even among some Christians, that Christianity is fundamentally anti-science and anti-liberty. However, this fails to recognize that there's always been a strong pro-science and pro-liberty dimension to Christianity. In fact, modern science and liberty movements are pretty much all rooted in the philosophy of Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas.

The ideas put forward by these scholars are based on passages in the Bible where we're told that we should manage and arrange nature to our benefit, and that we are fundamentally free to do both good and evil as we please. The role of Christianity is not to oppose this directly, but to guide our actions towards good, and to help us resist the temptation to replace God with ourselves. The question then becomes; at what point are we no longer arranging things to our benefit, but overstepping the boundary between God and ourselves?

The short answer to this is that we should use what is given, and not meddle with any of it. When we study nature, we should pay attention to inherent complexities and treat them with respect. At most, we should perform small scale experiments to see the effects of our interactions.

I recently read a scientific paper on forest management, and it was written very much with this in mind. The reader was constantly warned against shortcuts such as artificial fertilizers and large scale mechanical interventions. The ideal forest grows on its own, with the only intervention by humans being the cleaning out of dead wood, pruning of branches and management of shrubs and fallen leaves. The perfect forest looks something like a park; pleasing to the eye and full of life.

None of this is contrary to anything in the Bible. On the contrary, we're specifically told to act this way, and Thomas Aquinas emphasized the importance of close observation and study. To study nature is to study God's creation. It's akin to prayer, and the benefits can be immense. The well tended garden is vastly more productive and pleasing to the eye than an untended plot of land.

Wild and untended nature can be a fantastic sight. However, no-one would want to live in such a place without some modification. We need a house to live in, and we don't want untamed nature right up to our doorstep.

There's nothing wrong in studying nature down to the very last atom. However, we should be careful about intervening directly into this. Nature is complex for a reason, and to think that something foreign can be introduced into it without adverse consequences is hubris. If the eco-system in which a foreign element is introduced lacks any naturally occurring antidote, we're no longer using nature but meddling with it, and we know from experience that such meddling can have some far reaching adverse effects.

This is what separates the traditional vaccine from the newly developed ones. The ones that were developed to fight small pox, tuberculosis and polio contained stunted versions of naturally occurring pathogens. When introduced into the complex eco-system that is our bodies, our immune system knew what to do. It recognized the pathogens, killed them, and stored a record of how to do this for the future. When hit by the real disease, our bodies were ready, and the disease was defeated. However, modern vaccines don't work this way. Instead of using our immune system, they meddle with them. Our immune systems are being re-programmed to act differently from what God intended.

We're currently engaged in large scale experiments involving direct intervention into God's creation. This is contrary to anything any Christian scientist would recommend, and likely to end badly. People injected by the vaccine have their immune systems altered, and there's no known counter-mechanism. Our bodies don't contain any antidote. Vaccine makers are no longer using God's creation. They are playing God, and that has never before ended in anything but disaster.

Thomas Aquinas

By Carlo Crivelli - http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/carlo-crivelli-saint-thomas-aquinas, Public Domain, Link

The Delta Variant

Compliance with the mask wearing mandate in Porto is back up to about 90% after having gone as low as 50% just a few days ago. The propaganda machine is again in overdrive; this time with stories about the so called delta variant. However, the narrative is cracking. It's now well known and openly admitted in the media that the delta variant spreads among vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

The effect of this has been a wave of cancellations of vaccine appointments. People don't see why they should get themselves injected with an ineffective drug. There's also the problem of time which is starting to make the vaccines look dated. We are half way through 2021, and the vaccines all have 19 directly or indirectly referenced in their names. In another few years, 19 will seem as old as the T-Ford, and who will then admit to being host to such a drug?

Furthermore, it has not gone unnoticed that there are side-effects associated with the vaccines. This has to be counterbalanced by hard evidence of some effectiveness. However, nothing very convincing has so far been presented. On the contrary, there are rumours circulating that only vaccinated people get seriously ill from the delta variant, and journalists seem reluctant to flat out deny this.

This development has made me again change my style as to how I walk about in Porto. People are understandably concerned about this variant that may be quite dangerous to vaccinated people, so there's no point in being overtly antagonistic. I've put away my cane for now. If anyone approaches me about my non-compliant and sloppy mask wearing. I'll tell them not to worry since the delta variant is harmless to anyone not vaccinated. If vaccinated, the hobby-Fascist must then step back for his own safety. If unvaccinated the hobby-Fascist has nothing to fear. Either way, the problem belongs entirely to the vaccinated, and not to me.

My guess is that we'll soon to see a shift in attitudes. People will no longer advertise their vaccine status. Rather, they will keep quiet or even lie about it, pretending that they too were smart enough to see through the scam from the start.

Delta

By Dcoetzee, F l a n k e r - Own work, Public Domain, Link

The Book of Revelation

I finally got around to read the Book of Revelation last night. It's the least I could do after all my postings related to the various figures appearing in that story. And it's not like it's a long read. An hour or two is all it takes to make a quick read through the whole thing.

My thinking related to this particular story is that it is deliberately cryptic in order to fit a large number of scenarios, but at the same time sufficiently specific so as not to be wide open to misinterpretation. The book is not merely about the last days of our present world order, but about all collapses that come from the application of systems that are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.

When social engineers engage in experiments that deviate from the golden rule and the idea that we are all equal before the law, we end up in situations that fit with what's described in this story. The more outrageous the experiment, the better the fit. If we can't find any good fit, we're probably living in times of relative sanity. However, if we live in times of widespread madness, all sorts of things make sense.

Hence, the Book of Revelation can guide us through all sorts of troubles, provided we analyse it and assign the various poetic elements onto the correct real world entities. Having given the story a quick read, I'll note down some personal observations of my own, just to get started.

Others who are of the same inclination as I am can do the same for themselves. Keep in mind that we don't have to agree on the significance of all the elements for this to make sense. The story is deliberately cryptic so as to give every reader the opportunity to make their own personal interpretation. Hence, what follows is just one of many possible interpretations, with my interpretation being no better or worse than any other interpretation that's true to the story.

These are some thoughts related to passages that struck me as interesting:

1. There are real Jews and false Jews. The false ones are only Jews in name. They believe in Satan instead of God. This must be people who claim to be worshipping God, but who break the golden rule and see no reason to object to arbitrary justice.
2. There are persecutions and tribulations lasting ten years.
3. Recurring numbers are 12, 10, 7 and durations that correspond to 3.5 years.
4. One quarter of all people die when the fourth horseman appears at the beginning of the apocalypse. People are killed by sword, famine and plague, and also by the beasts of the world. I interpret beasts to be nation states and federations of various kinds.
5. There are two great beasts. One of the sea and the other of the land. I interpret this to be the Anglo-Saxon naval powers on the one hand and the Eurasian Powers associated with China on the other hand.
6. There are scorpion-like demons that have faces of humans, injecting people with a poison that torments them without killing them. This looks like some kind of botched vaccine campaign.
7. There's talk of an army of 200 million men. They are stationed east of Euphrates, but they cross this river when it dries up. One third of mankind is killed in this war.
8. There are earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and pests.
9. A woman with a crown of 12 stars gives birth to a child. A red dragon tries to kill the child, but fails. This looks like Europe giving birth to Liberty, and China trying to kill it.
10. Babylon is a city that creates rulers, and where established rulers seek the blessings of a woman called Great Babylon. This looks like the seat of an empire, and would today be Washington and/or New York in the US.
11. Babylon is destroyed from within. Its great men and merchants use a combination of hypnotism, drugs and medicine to deceive the world.
12. The result of this trickery is a dramatic drop in birth rates.
13. All rulers and merchants dependent on Babylon end up broke and desolate.
14. There's a Book of Life. Only those mentioned in this book will live for ever. This looks like legacy. We must live life fully and truly so that something good flows from our actions. Our deeds need not be grand, only honest and good.
15. New Jerusalem is a city that descends from heaven. This looks like the seat of the new world order; the kingdom of God. Interestingly, it has no churches or temples. There's no organized religion. Everyone is inspired directly by God and the words of Jesus.
16. We are told not to argue with our spiritual opponents. Such arguments are futile and serve no purpose.
17. This world order lasts a thousand years before Satan tries again to conquer the world. However, he fails, and is forever defeated.
18. Finally, we're told to neither add nor subtract anything in this story. People should read it for themselves and make up their own minds as to what is presented. Don't take anyone else's words as the gospel.

I love this kind of stuff. It triggers the imagination, and it helps in a curious way. Things become both more poetic and more clear. It makes it easier to navigate through troubling times.

Great Babylon

By Henri-Marcel Magne - Self-photographed by GFreihalter, November 2018, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Jews in Porto

Walking my son home from music school on Saturdays, the two of us keep coming across groups of ten to twenty Jews, all in their mid twenties, and all in good spirit. The groups are mixed, with men and women in roughly equal numbers, and I only know them to be Jews because some of the men wear their Kippah. For the rest, they look very much like average Portuguese. There's nothing sinister or threatening about them, and I like the fact that they wear their masks under the chin or not at all. It's good to see young people pushing back on the mask mandate.

The appearance of these groups of Jews is relatively recent. We didn't use to have them. Only a few years back, it was rare to see even one Jew wearing his Kippah in public. Now, we come across at least half a dozen every Saturday.

What makes this all the more interesting is that I live relatively far away from the Porto Synagogue. If the groups are on their way home from Saturday prayer service, we must either have a lot of them living in our area, or the total number of Jews now living in Porto must be significant.

There's nothing very mysterious about the influx of Jews to Porto. Anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere in Europe, except in Portugal, and Porto appears to be the centre of resistance against this disturbing trend. The Porto Synagogue played a central role in the resistance against anti-Semitism back in the 1930s and 1940s, and it appears to be back in business. Jews are flocking to Portugal from all over Europe, with Porto as their preferred city.

Many are also coming from Israel. Things are a little crazy over in Israel at the moment, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that Portugal is relatively welcoming to them. This must be especially appealing to conscription age Jews who don't want to risk their lives in a war for Israel. Hence the relatively young age of many Jewish immigrants to Portugal.

However, this is not to say that there's nothing mysterious going on under the surface. On the contrary, there have been some strange moves that appears to have come out of nowhere. There's a recently enacted law that allows for free immigration to any Jew who can demonstrate some affinity to Portugal. The law refers to the eviction of the Jews that took place some 500 years ago, so we are talking 15 generations. Almost any Jewish person is likely to have at least some connection to those events, so its basically a green pass to anyone Jewish anywhere.

This law didn't come about through popular demand. It was enacted with no other reasoning than the fact that Portugal expelled a lot of Jews in the 1490s. In parallel, there's been all sorts of pro Jewish programs on TV, talking about the rich Jewish culture, and the many important Jews found in Portuguese history. There's even the odd claim made that Portugal, rather than Israel, is the true promised land of the Jews.

I know of no other country that engages in this kind of propaganda. However, the claims made are not entirely false. Portugal has a strong masonic tradition with numerous secret societies and brotherhoods. It's a feature I like, because each brotherhood operates as a counterweight to centralized power in Lisbon. Every conceivable special interest has a brotherhood or secret society. Some are of truly ancient origin. The Knight Templars still exist in Portugal, all be it under a different name. So called Crypto Jews have practiced Jewish religion in secret ever since the eviction of the Jews some 500 years ago.

It appears that one or more of these secret societies have pushed through the repatriation law and its accompanying propaganda. There's also something going on with regards to Muslim immigrants. Portugal is as welcoming to Muslim immigrants as any other European country, yet I've never seen any Muslims hang around in Porto for more than a few months before suddenly disappearing, presumably for some other place in Europe.

The reason Muslims come and go while Jews remain may be quite benign. Most Muslims prefer to live in countries with generous welfare systems, while Jews are more into self sufficiency and networking through brotherhoods and the like. Portugal is a poor country with few welfare goodies to offer, while at the same time quite liberal when it comes to business and private enterprise. The culture is simply more welcoming to Jews than to Muslims. Muslims prefer places like France, Belgium, Germany and Sweden. Jews prefer Portugal.

Finally, I can't help thinking of the 5th Empire which, according to legend, will spring into existence at the banks of Douro, the river that flows past Porto. This legend came about at the time that the Jews were expelled. It contains many masonic references. The return of the Jews is therefore more than a little symbolic to anyone familiar with that legend.

Porto Synagogue

By Bricking - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The Fourth Horseman

The four horsemen that usher in the apocalypse as described in the Bible is one of my favourite apocalyptic stories, not least because it fits so well with any wayward experiment in social engineering ever undertaken by those who seek to rule over us.

My guess is that the authors of this story lived shortly after the fall of the Roman empire, and that they were well schooled in history so that they could match up what they knew about Rome with what they had learned about collapses of various kinds from more ancient times.

What they found were four distinct phases of satanic order where the three first ones would come in such varieties of forms that they could not be named. But the forth one would always be Death. Hence the decision to give a name only to the last of the four horsemen. The three others can only be recognized by their general features.

The genius of this is that the story fits well with any kind of social engineering that breaks with the idea that we're all created equal by God. As an example, I outlined the history of central banking which has now come to its third horseman.

I have long thought of the fourth horseman as a natural extension to the third; that inequality and suffering leads to death, both to those that have been caught up in the madness and to the original idea itself. However, I now realize that Death is in fact a separate phase, quite distinct from its predecessors. Otherwise, the authors would not have chosen to shape the sequence of events into four distinct creatures. There would have been one creature evolving naturally through its four phases.

Evidence for this can be found in recent history where we see that the three first ones are distinct. The first horseman doesn't transform into the second, and the second doesn't transform into the third. There are very different people in charge of each phase of the unfolding catastrophe.

As an example of this, we can look into the history of the nation state, which is satanic in a similar way to central banking. People are divided into separate categories, with some having privileges where others are burdened with duties.

The nation state is based on the idea that cultural regions should be ruled over by a state. French culture should be ruled over by French rulers, English culture should be ruled over by English rulers, and so on. This simple idea is the first horseman.

What followed was a great expansion of this idea through force and oppression. Every corner of the world was to be submitted to this general structure. The people behind this expansion were not the same as the ones that came up with the idea in the first place. Rather, they were people who used the original idea as an excuse for their own actions. The second horseman is not an extension of the first. He's separate and distinct. His appearance is logical but not necessary.

Once the world was fully divided into nation states, we got inequalities. Each state engaged in protective measures like tariffs and central banking. Some states became dominant over others. Some people became rich under the structure. Others became poor and hungry. That's the third horseman. This phase isn't obvious from the start. There's no necessity in it. It only follows logically from the first two when seen in retrospect.

Interestingly, both the nation state and central banking have reached their third phase, which means that the fourth and final horseman will appear on behalf of both. We may not be able to judge which of the two structures produced the final horseman. The path of the nation state seems to converge with that of central banking to produce one combined horseman that will appear as a distinct and separate phase.

This final phase is Death, and he will seem logical only in retrospect. We're not merely talking of the death of an idea. This is not the death that comes with inequality. This is the sort of death that comes with a plague of some kind, and he's only now becoming visible. Death is on his way, and his victory will be immense because the vast majority of people are completely unaware of his presence. Only in retrospect will people recognize him, and see how he fitted logically into the overall structure.

Death is the combined product of the nation state and central banking. His serum is being injected into people as we speak, and this is only possible due to the combined efforts of the state and central banks, one producing laws and regulations, the other producing money out of thin air.

Four horsemen of the apocalypse

By Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov - http://lj.rossia.org/users/john_petrov/166993.html, Public Domain, Link

Was it Worth it?

A police officer in the US has just received a 22.5 year sentenced for having caused the death of a suspect held down during an arrest. My personal view on this is that the police officer is a victim of mob justice, and that he did nothing unusual during the arrest. His sentencing is entirely political. However, my sympathy for the officer doesn't go very deep. His career was based on the enforcement of arbitrary laws related to petty crimes like drug possession, prostitution and loitering. Only people with a sadistic streak are attracted to this kind of work, and I see no reason to be upset about his sentence.

But his fellow officers in police departments throughout the US are no doubt of a different opinion. They too, must find his sentencing unusually hard, and the thought of ending up in a similar situation must be troubling. Many must wonder whether the joy of hunting down petty criminals is worth the risk of ending one's days in jail. Why bother? Why not join a private security company, or start one on their own? If they quit in large numbers, crime rates will spike and there will be plenty of businesses and private individuals willing to pay good money for protection.

The only drawbacks are the lower salaries and the fact that private security companies don't allow their officers to intervene in crimes unrelated to life or property. Private security officers don't chase drug dealers and prostitutes. At most, they ask them politely to take their business somewhere else, and they only do this if the activity is a disturbance to their clients.

The advantage is that private officers are unlikely to find themselves in the sort of situation that the police officer got himself into. Private officers don't hold suspects down by force unless there's been a crime related to life or property, and the crime must be severe. Otherwise, they risk embarrassing the business or private individual that hired them. People don't like their security guards to behave like thugs. The security company risks loosing business if their officers use excessive force, so they train them to be reasonable.

Had the police officer acted as he did for a private security firm, he would at the very least lost his job. The only reason he didn't hold back was his assumption that he would not suffer any consequences. However, his assumption was mistaken, and he's no doubt wondering why he didn't realize this in time. As for all the fun he had while he was still free to chase down petty criminals, he must be wondering if it was worth it, and the answer I'm sure is a resounding no.

Private security guard

By Robbie Sproule from Montreal, Canada - Flickr.com - image description page, CC BY 2.0, Link

A Corporate Reincarnation of the Goths

The sudden appearance of the Goths during the decline of the Roman empire is a bit of a mystery, especially if interpreted as an invasion of foreigners. However, if the Goths represented a certain set of values rather than a people, their appearance makes more sense. I'm therefore of the opinion that the Goths were not a people but a culture, and that this culture had its origin on Gotland of present day Sweden.

The Goths had the following core values:

1. Don't break stuff
2. Don't steal
3. Honour your words

Whatever other values they had were of a more local origin. The Goths in present day France had a different way of organizing themselves than the Goths in present day Germany. Only their shared core values tied the two cultures together.

Seen in this light, I find it interesting to see the rapid expansion of Securitas her in Porto. They are suddenly everywhere. Just the other day I saw one of their cars speed up the road where I live.

Securitas is a Swedish security firm with more than eighty years of tradition. I know the company from my childhood years in Norway where they appeared back in the seventies, and I have nothing but good to say about them. Their guards are friendly and reasonable, and they concern themselves only with the core values of the Goths. If you don't break any of these simple rules, there's nothing to be feared from them. Unlike police officers who will enforce any arbitrary dictate by the state, Securitas guards leave us alone.

A further advantage of their presence is that they are providing a service similar to that of the police. But they do this with more diligence and focus. Hence, people can see for themselves that private security is superior to state run security. The police is no longer in a monopoly position, and must moderate their excesses. Securitas puts pressure on the police to become more civil.

The original Goths were not exactly civil. They worked mainly for the state, and did much of its dirty work. However, the similarities between the Goths and Securitas are nevertheless worthy of note. There's a set of core values shared by both. Both originated in Sweden. Both are essentially anarchist at their core. Where the state fails to provide sufficient security, the Goths step in, now as a corporate reincarnation of their original self.

Securitas AB logo

By Securitas AB - Securitas AB, Public Domain, Link

How Vaccines Produce Virus Variants

There's an increasingly widespread belief among lay people that vaccines cause viruses to mutate. This sounds at first implausible. However, simple logic gives support to the notion.

We're told that the vaccine is 97% effective, which means that 3% of the vaccinated will get ill anyway. These people will have a thriving body of viruses in them, all largely unaffected by the vaccine. That's by definition a vaccine resistant strain. When passed onto others, such strains develop further resistance through natural selection, and we end up with a variant.

Making this worse is the fact that we have a large number of vaccines in production, all of them slightly different from their competitors. Each vaccine will therefore result in its own special variants, and we get a large number of variants in a matter of months. These variants will then mutate further when they infect people with other vaccines. A variant can in this way develop resistance to one vaccine variant after another until it's resistant to all vaccines.

The good thing about this process is that it will tend to reduce the lethality of the virus. Every mutation can only happen in patients that live long enough to pass it on. Hence, we get variants such as the much talked about Delta version, which is harmless to anyone who hasn't taken the vaccine. However, those who have taken a vaccine have saddled themselves with an agent that interferes in the normal operation of their immune system. The vaccine goes from being a benefit to a drag, and mortality rates among the vaccinated go up despite the natural tameness of the variant.

The end result of this is that we get the situation that we're now in where there are variants that are very dangerous to the vaccinated while completely harmless to the unvaccinated.

Wax plant

Primed for Extinction

There's something eerie about the way nature programs increasingly talk of humans as if we're some kind of pest. I've just listened in on one such program, narrated by the famous Malthusian misanthrope, David Attenborough. The man really does love mother Earth. However, humankind is destroying this wonderful world, and there's no solution in sight. This depressing message is narrated in Attenborough's kind and grandfatherly voice, and we're left with a feeling that we shouldn't lament the death of large number of people. When such catastrophes happen, they're for the greater good of our planet and whatever remaining population that manages to survive.

But why is this message repeated ad nauseum, and why is there now such a hurry to ramp up this rhetoric?

One reason might be that something big has been planned for us. There's going to be a lot of dead bodies and the hope is that this will happen without any large scale protests. If people are properly primed for the extinction event, there may be no blowback for the planners. People will accept their sad lot as something that's for the better for everybody, and in particular for mother Earth.

Depression is known to have this effect on people. It makes victims long for non-existence. If sufficiently many people are told sufficiently depressing stories over a sufficiently long time, they may simply lie down and die without a fight or any sense of wrong doing if they by accident were to inject themselves with some death serum, and that would be the ideal way to reduce the world population the Malthusian way.

David Attenborough

By John Cairns - The Bodleian Libraries, CC BY 4.0, Link

Tony Carreira's Heart Attack

Tony Carreira is a popular Portuguese singer. At 57 years of age he's a few months older than I am. That's an age when men develop an increased risk of heart attack. Adding to this risk comes the fact that he recently lost his youngest daughter in a car accident, so it's not entirely mysterious that Tony Carreria has been hospitalized with a heart condition. However, I find it worth noting that he's been outspoken in the fight against the plague. He has most certainly taken the vaccine, and if he took it when I was offered this service, it's now roughly a month since he received his injection.

Tony Carreira live at Lagoa

By Glen Bowman - Cropped from photo originally posted to Flickr as Portugal 27-08-2007 00-03-11, CC BY 2.0, Link

Vaccine Deaths dot Com

While researching the claim that all British Airways pilots have been fully vaccinated, I came across a website called Vaccine Deaths dot Com. (Link not included to prevent censors from removing this post.)

The website has many sensational stories, and some of the opinion pieces are borderline hyperbole. However, I think the website deserves serious reading. Much of what it says corresponds to what I've been able to figure out myself by deciphering propaganda pieces, so I'm inclined to give even the most hyperbole of their articles some credit.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the vaccine must be avoided at all cost, because the long term effects of it will be far more damaging to people's health than the plague itself. Young people who take this vaccine are likely to experience all sorts of health issues, and many will come to an early death.

This means that I will have to find some way to prevent my son from taking the vaccine. I must plant the seeds of doubt in his mind and then nurture this doubt through the occasional reference to undeniable facts, and I must avoid any temptation to mention anything remotely fringe. I know from experience that arguments are futile, and possibly counterproductive. What must be achieved is an impulse to look into the facts, which I luckily managed to do when I last talked to him. Having achieved this first goal, I must tread carefully so that I don't destroy what I have sown.

My son is like most young men hell bent on showing off for his father. He wants to be at least as smart as me, which means that he will either do the opposite of any advice coming from me or take my advice without admitting it. If I push too hard, he'll do the opposite and risk it, because the reward for being right will seem greater than the risk of being wrong. However, if I keep my cool and remain seemingly indifferent to his decision, he will have no great reward to offset his possible loss.

The mask of the beast

Are All British Airways Pilots Fully Vaccinated?

I've heard that British Airways has had all its pilots vaccinated. However, when I do a Bing search for this, I get nothing but headlines about four dead pilots. I find no confirmation about the rumour I was researching. All I find is a confirmation by British Airways that four of their pilots died within a week of becoming fully vaccinated, that they were in excellent health, and between 40 and 50 years of age.

British Airways has 4000 pilots, so four deaths makes 0.1%. But this is after a single week. If their deaths are vaccine related and not pure coincidence, we should see more deaths over the coming weeks and months. There might even be pilots falling ill mid-flight. If it turns out that vaccines and high altitudes are incompatible, we may even see entire crews falling ill mid flight, leaving it up to the passengers to land the planes safely.

This will make for some interesting times going forward, not least for the pilots at British Airways. Who's next to drop dead? Where is this headed? Nobody knows, because the vaccine is not fully tested, and the only ones currently testing the vaccine in high altitudes are fully vaccinated cabin crew like the pilots that just died. They'll have to do their job as guinea pigs for a few more months before we know anything for certain.

British Airways coming in for landing

By Wo st 01 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Doing it Out of Respect for Old People

A month ago it was my wife who announced she'll take the vaccine. Now it was my 25 year old son in Norway. My reaction this time was similar to that of a month ago. I didn't object. Instead, I let him elaborate without interruption.

Apparently, it's disrespectful to my parents to not take the vaccine, because they will die if they get it, and they would have been dead for sure if they had gotten it before they got vaccinated.

"Really?" I asked. "The mortality rate among patients their age is 3%."

My son went quiet for a while. Then he came back, apparently surprised to have found my statement verified by a quick internet search. But he kept his conclusion unchanged. He's getting vaccinated in August out of respect for old people.

I didn't bother to object. My wife has still not taken the vaccine, and I suspect my son will delay the decision too once he gets time to think it over.

The interesting aspect of this is that my son didn't bother to check for any facts before I pointed out the 3% number. In his deluded world view, the plague is much more dangerous than it actually is. The lack of evidence to support this narrative never bothered him. He never found it strange that he himself doesn't know of any young people dead from the plague, nor does he know anyone who knows of such people.

August is still five weeks off. That's plenty of time for him to think things through, and maybe do a bit of research as to what this vaccine is all about. However, I'm not going to push any information on him. That's more likely to work contrary to my wishes than staying silent. I never stopped him from doing stupid things in the past. I'm not going to change my style now.

My son knows where I stand. He also knows that I have a tendency to be right about things, and he hates it when he ends up in a situation where I can tell him that he should have followed my advice. That should be sufficient pressure on him to do some due diligence, and do the right thing.

Smallpox vaccine

By Photo Credit: James Gathany Content Providers(s): CDC - This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #2674. Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers. Deutsch | English | македонски | slovenščina | +/−, Public Domain, Link

What Happens in France

We live in a world where the entire globe has been divided into nation states, sometimes united into federations of various kinds. There isn't a place anywhere that isn't owned by one of these entities. However, the nation state as a political concept isn't very old. It's a European idea. Specifically, a French idea, developed into what we have today by the Sun king, Louis 14. Before him, kings were private individuals with great wealth, capable of waging wars against other kings, and enforcing rules and regulations through sheer personal might. After him, kings were heads of state. Instead of a personal court, there was a parliament in charge of public affairs. Parliament had in turn the power to make laws, settle disputes, wage wars and collect taxes. The structure of the modern nation state was brought into existence.

A few generations later, when the French tired of the abuses of their king, as head of parliament, there was a revolution. The aim of it was not to overthrow the nation state as a system, but to replace the king with representatives of the people. When this ended in chaos, Napoleon took charge. That in turn was followed by a new republic. At every turn, there were new heads of state, but the nation state itself was never challenged. The state lived on. It prospered. It became the political model for all the world to follow. However, something is again brewing in France, and this time it's the concept of the nation state itself that is at stake.

Voter turn out for the first round of presidential election in France has been a mere 32%.That's a clear vote of no confidence in the system. Most people dislike all the candidates, and refuse to see any of them as legitimate ruler over their private affairs. If this low turnout persists, we may see a president in France with popular support at a mere 17%, with everybody else either indifferent or directly opposed to him or her. This will in turn result in civil disobedience of various kinds. It will be harder to collect taxes. It will be harder to recruit soldiers. Police will become lacklustre and demoralized. People will increasingly solve problems locally, and give the state a cold shoulder.

If this persists, the end result will be the collapse of the nation state itself. Instead, there will be local communities, sorting things out at the local level. This return to simplicity will then spread to other nations. If France can rid itself of its own invention, why not do it in other places? Why put up with a parliament full of crooks, and a bureaucracy full of busybodies? We don't need any of this, and all it takes for this to crumble is for one modern nation to abandon the system. If France ends up replacing its state apparatus with something simple and decentralized, the rest of the world will follow, and that is the true significance of what's going on in France right now.

Portrait of Louis XIV

By Hyacinthe Rigaud - wartburg.edu[dead link], Public Domain, Link

Follow, then Fade

One of the things that distinguish Portuguese culture from Spanish culture is the way the Portuguese deal with authority. While the Spanish have a tendency towards violence, both on the side of the oppressed and the side of the oppressors, the Portuguese tend to subvert and skirt around rules and regulations.

This was on full display during the era of Fascism. General Franco embarked on a ruthless war against any opposition, with a hundred thousand dead in his path. Salazar didn't kill more than a handful of political opponents, and it's not clear if he actually gave the orders to do so. Franco was the victorious general. Salazar was the benevolent father.

This difference of style can be explained as a consequence of the federal structure of Spain as opposed to Portugal's national structure. Spain is a federation of several countries, while Portugal is a single country. There's no danger of Portugal splitting into pieces. However, Spain has several regions that could potentially split away from Madrid. Hence, the need for Madrid to engage in draconian tactics every now and again to prevent the federation from falling apart.

Another explanation can be that the most populated part of Portugal was ruled by the Suebis during the early middle ages, while what is Spain today was ruled by the Goths. If we go even further back, we see that the Romans found it difficult to rule north western Iberia. It was close to impossible to get the people of this region to comply with laws and regulations.

The Portuguese are sometimes referred to as the gentle anarchists of Europe. They don't entirely ignore rules and regulations. They merely find ways around them. They find it natural to do so, and no-one gets upset when rules are broken for practical reasons. Breaking rules for no other reason than to display disobedience, on the other hand, does not go down well in this country. As long as there's a general consensus that some law or regulation makes sense, hobby fascists abound.

Law creation and subsequent law destruction follows a general pattern that may well date back to pre-Roman times. Initially, there's close to full compliance with the new law, especially if it has been implemented in tandem with a successful propaganda campaign. This lasts for a while before it starts to fade. People get more relaxed about the rules. Compliance drops from close to hundred percent to about half. Then, a new scare campaign has to be implemented.

There might even be token arrests and fines here and there. But this kind of force is looked upon with dismay rather than awe. Brute force may elicit admiration in Spain, but such behaviour is looked upon with disgust in Portugal. Law enforcers know this and fear social backlash. The eager law enforcer can easily end up friendless.

All of this has been on full display through the great plague of 2019. First, there was a rapid rise in compliance. Then there was a relatively sharp drop off followed by a new intense scare campaign and some token arrests and fines.

The backlash to what was seen by most as excessive force followed with the national court jester making law enforcers look both stupid and evil.

The hobby fascists who were out in force at the start of the plague are now nowhere to be seen. Law enforcement is non-existent, and there's a gradual fading. People are dropping their masks, one by one. The die hard compliant look away when I do my little ridiculous mask stunt. They know the joke is on them.

It appears then that my initial frustration with the Portuguese and their compliance with the rules was due to my ignorance of how their culture works. I expected more resistance at an earlier stage. I was dismayed by what I saw, not realizing that this is how it always works in this country. There's an initial surge in compliance, then a long fade out that can take years or even decades to complete. The final collapse is a whimper.

As an example of the whimper that is the typical end of tyranny in this country, we have their famous Carnation Revolution. It was a complete farce. A handful of poorly equipped soldiers went to Lisbon to stage a coup, and everybody went out in the streets to celebrate before the soldiers had achieved anything. Compliance to the regime was so minimal that no-one but a deranged public servant fired any shots.

At the heart of the Carnation Revolution we find the Portuguese soul. Excessive force is such a taboo that when the national guard was ordered to crush the uprising, no-one followed the orders. It would have been social suicide to do such a thing. The military victory would have been swift. But the stigma related to it would have been for life, and everybody involved knew this. Hence the victory of the people over the elite.

And this is not merely a foreigner's view of what happened. There's a re-enactment of the events of the revolution that's aired on TV every year on April 25, and it makes no secret of the farcical aspect of the revolution. There's a scene in the film where the column of thinly armoured military vehicles on their way to overthrow the regime suddenly stops for no reason at all, except there's a traffic light, and the light is red. Once they get a green light, the column resumes progress towards Lisbon. Then there's the scene with soldiers in fighting position surrounding the parliament building, with onlookers casually smoking cigarettes and small-talking to the soldiers. There's no attempt to gloss over these issues in the film. The Portuguese are fully aware of their quirky culture, and intensely proud of it.

Iberia 560 AD

Public Domain, Link

The Destabilizing Effect of Debt

We all know that currency is debased over time. It's not a secret. Central bankers speak openly about their desire to destroy purchasing power by about 2% a year. It's their stated goal, their so called inflation target. Furthermore, most tax regimes allow for deductions related to debt and interest on debt, so the message is clear: They will destroy savings over time, and they will reward anyone willing to take on debt.

The system appears rigged in favour of debt. However, there's a snag that's conveniently under-communicated by most financial advisors. Debt amplifies all things financial. Small signals become louder. Moves become more extreme. The world itself becomes a loud and noisy place where the mere mention of a possibility of a change two years into the future can cause panic, and the ones least able to cope with this kind of noise is the little guy with his life savings put into some leveraged bet.

The bet itself may not be all that risky. Let's say someone decides to place a bet on the paper gold market. Gold will never go to zero, so the risk is limited. However, the return isn't all that great either, at least not for the impatient speculator who has seen Bitcoin double in a matter of weeks.

The speculator decides to leverage up with margin debt. For every dollar put into paper gold, he adds another dollar, borrowed from his broker. What used to be a 1% move is now 2%. That's still not all that bad because gold rarely moves more than 1% in a day. But more leverage will spice things up. Ten to one would turn a 1% move into a 10% move. Only problem, of course, is when we have a 6% move down in a week, as we have just seen, the ten to one leverage turns into a 60% loss. A 10% move down becomes a total wipe out. The speculator gets a margin call from his broker. He's forced to sell, and ends up broke.

This is what jitters in the financial markets do. They flush out weak hands; mainly little guys with too much debt. With every stomach churning whip lash in the markets, a whole bunch of these people are parked on the side-line, often for ever. They are told it's all their own fault, and this is true to a certain extent. However, they were presented with few options. Savings accounts yield a negative return when interest is adjusted for inflation. Taking on risk is the only way to get ahead, it seems, and if risk is required in order to build savings, why not add to that risk to enhance the returns? Once we're in the casino, we're gamblers, and the only thing distinguishing us from others is to what degree we're gambling.

By the look of it, there's no escaping the system. We cannot save to buy a house because the return on our savings are negative. Many cannot even save up to a new car. Debt is the only way to get anything more expensive than a pair of shoes. But debt is an amplifier. It makes everything loud and precarious. We get bills to pay that we wouldn't have without it. We are constantly stressed. The thought of losing our job keeps us up at night. We gamble out of sheer desperation. But that serves only to make everything even louder and more precarious.

The stress related to debt can get so bad that many prefer to be poor. Every penny earned is immediately consumed. Life becomes a hustle where all that matters is next month's pay check. However, a nagging feeling of injustice sets in. This is not what life was supposed to be. Frustrated and angry, some turn to violent protests while others engage in petty crimes and fraud. 

Social decay and unrest can in this way be linked to the debt based system we live in, and it may seem that we're hopelessly tied to it. We must either play along, and accept the stress that comes with it, or we must forever remain poor. However, there's a way out of this mess that anyone can follow.

We must live within our means, and whatever surplus we manage to scrape together must be put into something tangible of lasting value like physical gold or real-estate. Debt must be kept to a minimum, or be avoided altogether. Never must debt be taken on to enhance savings. A modest mortgage on a house, when house prices favour ownership as opposed to rent, is the only reasonable use of debt for most of us. Only other times when debt is warranted is in the event of starting a business with high capital requirements. In all other cases, we must first save and then consume.

Having followed this recipe myself, I find that the benefits are far greater than the mere financial. All aspects of life improve when money matters are handled this way. There's less stress, and therefore more time and energy to enjoy life. This in turn affects the children in the house. They see that life can be good, and that material things are relatively unimportant. The pace of things are relaxed, and there's trust in our ability to obtain long term goals. Nothing has to happen overnight. Everything is done according to a vision. Time and energy is put into matters that interest us. We're not jumping from one thing to another in a desperate attempt at staying one step ahead of bankruptcy.

Trapeze Artists

By Copyright by the Calvert Litho. Co., Detroit, Mich. - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g02091. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

Base Money

Modern society is full of complexities dressed in fancy jargon to make things look scientific and well thought out. However, things are at their base very much the same as things have always been. The myth of modernity is an illusion designed to make us feel comfortable with what is ultimately a precarious and unstable system. In particular, our current monetary system is perilously close to collapse, something that we can see in the explosive growth of base money.

To understand the significance of this, we first have to look through the fancy jargon of monetary theory. In truth, there's only money and credit, and money is gold, nothing else, as J.P. Morgan famously stated back in 1912. Hence, the dollars that we use as reserves today are not money. They are money substitutes. They act as money, but are in fact credit. Specifically, dollars are credit notes based on our trust in the US government as a tax collecting enterprise. If this trust is lost, all dollars lose their value, and we learn the hard way what J.P. Morgan told us. Only gold will retain its value. Dollars will not get us anything.

It further follows that money does not come in different flavours. There's only one type of money and that's gold. Everything else is currency. Base money in our current credit based system is in fact base currency. It's a special type of credit that can be issued only by central banks. Hence, it's possible to quadruple its supply in a matter of months. There's no special skills required. Base currency is issued through fiat. It's declared into existence.

Base money, on the other hand, would be a bank's gold holding on top of which it could issue credit notes. The credit notes could then circulate in the economy as currency while the money resides in the bank, and this is the system that we had when we were on the classic gold standard. Back in those days, only the naïve would take credit notes as being equal to gold. However, today there really isn't any difference between base currency and credit based on this base currency. It's all credit, and it can all one day evaporate into nothing if trust in the US government falters.

Furthermore, history tells us exactly what happens when base money is expanded so we can be fairly certain about the effect of the current expansion of base currency. Spain was once the world's most powerful nation, and one would have expected this to have continued due to its discovery of gold in the new world. With more money to spend, there should be more wealth. However, the opposite happened. Local industry shuttered, there was price inflation, and there was a massive wealth transfer from the average guy to the ruling elite. As Richard Cantillon put it in his book: Where money is created, industry dies.

The massive increase in base currency in the US will produce the same effect. Manufactured goods will be imported, the elite will get richer, and the middle class and poor will suffer. This process lasted hundreds of years in Spain, with Fascism under Franco as the low point. Hopefully, the US will fare better, even if their monetary experiment is far more insane than what the Spanish embarked upon in their heydays.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Russia's $41 Billion Move

June 3 2021 may one day be noted as a turning point in monetary history. However, there's little talk about it for now. Probably because the short, medium and long term effects have yet to play out. It wasn't immediately clear what was going on, and it still remains to be seen what it all meant.

The day started with an announcement by the Russian state that its sovereign wealth fund would sell all dollar denominated assets for other assets, including gold, and that this move would be completed within the end of this month. That's $41 billion of assets transacted in the space of a few weeks.

That same day, gold was hit by massive selling which has persisted to this day. Gold is down 6% since the Russian announcement. As for other assets, there's no sign of price action correlating to the announcement. It's as if $41 billion is so little these days that it doesn't matter. A seller can announce such a transaction ahead of time and still end up with a sweet deal on his intended purchases.

Normally, we don't declare our intended purchases ahead of making them. But Russia is under threat by Westerns states, and must make sure that it never does anything that can serve as an excuse for these states to aggress against it. Making it clear ahead of time that it's dumping dollar dominated assets in favour of other assets is one way to achieve this.

The response by the West was predictably one of feigned disinterest. Otherwise, the West would have portray itself as weak and unable to handle a reallocation of a few billion dollars by an economic inferior state.

This feigned disinterest by the West was probably calculated into the Russian plan. They assumed correctly that their announcement would be met with price suppression by the West. Furthermore, there are ways to suppress commodity prices in the futures market that the Russians themselves can take advantage of. The 6% drop in the gold price since Russia's announcement may therefore be the result of Western and Russian gold suppression efforts happening in parallel.

The West has been keen to suppress the gold price to demonstrate Russia's irrelevance, while Russia has been suppressing the price simply to get a good deal. However, once this month has passed, a new challenge emerges and that's where we might see some drama.

Russia is going to ask for delivery of its gold, and it's not clear whether Western bullion banks are up to the challenge. The Western gold market is mainly a paper market. Very little gold is ever delivered. However, this month will be a big delivery month. That has been clear since Russia's announcement at the start of this month.

The West may find themselves short on the promised gold. But they cannot blame the Russians. They cannot react with feigned surprise, and refuse the delivery on grounds of Russian hostility. They must admit that the gold isn't there. However, Russia is probably well aware of how much gold can actually be delivered, and their purchases are likely to be just so much that delivery can be made.

It play's into the interest of gold importers like Russia that the charade continues as long as possible. The longer they can keep it going, the more gold they can extract from the West before they put their foot down. But the suppression will become harder to maintain, and with a successful transfer of gold from the West to Russia there will be less gold suppression by the Russians. The Chinese may be of a similar opinion about their own holdings, and gold will then be free to go higher relative to the dollar.

Vladimir Putin

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link

Right Hand Shoulder Forming in the Gold Chart

I don't myself trade on the basis of technical chart analysis. I sometimes time my purchases based on charts, but mostly I buy when I have money to spare, and I sell when I need money. However, I do enjoy the exercise of making predictions, not to show off to others, but to see whether I'm able to predict the future with some accuracy.

It's satisfying to see a prediction pan out roughly according to my calculations. But it's also important to note the predictions that don't. Being able to second-guess the future is a skill worth developing. We should not fool ourselves into thinking we're able to do this flawlessly. Rather, we should remain humble and always ready to learn from experience.

My prediction back in early May was for gold to reach $1925 before meeting resistance, and it now looks like I completely nailed that one. It's therefore time for me to expand on this prediction which foresaw a another leg up after the formation of a handle, or right hand shoulder, depending on which way we choose to read the gold chart.

A solid handle retraces half the distance to the bottom of the formation. With the bottom in our case at about $1690 and the recent top at about $1910, we should see a retracement to about $1800, which is only marginally lower than where we are currently trading.

There's strong resistance in the $1758 to $1798 range where we traded before breaking above $1800. This resistance is now support, preventing the gold price from going much lower. It's an excellent entry point, and if I had any money to spare, I would buy. The next move is likely to be back up to about $1910 where there will be renewed resistance. However, this will break. Our target for the end of the year, or early next year is still about $2100, with a $3000 target by the end of next year.

Rococo Cup with handle

By Vincennes Porcelain (France, circa 1739–1756), Francois Binet (France, active 1750-1775, born 1731) - Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31852871-O3.jpg Gallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/229367 archive copy, Public Domain, Link

Death by Bureaucracy

It doesn't take much thinking to realize that an anarchist restaurant must by necessity be minimalistic. Such an establishment is under the constant threat of raids by law enforcers. Its owner is taking the risk of having everything in the restaurant confiscated and sold. Hence, the furniture must be cheap, decorations must be basic, and the kitchen mustn't have any equipment of value.

There's a certain charm that comes with this type of establishment. It's unpretentious. Everything is basic, honest, and genuine. Nothing tries to be something that it isn't. But the arrangement isn't ideal. It puts great limits to what can be achieved. The state poses a constant threat to owners, who in turn keep things modest and scaled down no matter how successful the establishment becomes. On the plus side comes the freedom of not having to follow arbitrary rules, to arrange things as the owner pleases, and not having to do any book keeping or paying taxes.

Wherever this kind of considerations come out in favour of an anarchist solution, we'll see minimalistic establishments and businesses pop up, every one of them with as little capital investment as possible. Africa is full of this kind of businesses, as well as India and other third world places. It's not for lack of business skills that third world countries are a mess. It's the bureaucracy that forces everything into this type of low capital economy, and it looks to me like this situation is about to expand into Europe and beyond.

One of the charms of living in Portugal and Spain is the numerous fairs that are held through the summer. These are events that take advantage of the warm and dry climate of the region. Stalls are put up in designated areas. They serve food and provide for entertainment. A whole industry is centred around this, with many families deriving most of their income from the profits made during summer. However, the plague has provided an excuse for sadistic bureaucratic clamp downs on this age old tradition. Last summer, no stalls were allowed at all, and this summer, all stalls must be fenced off with guards at the entrances pointing ray-guns to everybody's forehead to check for fevers, and spraying sanitizer on everybody's hands.

My wife and I came across one such area shortly after leaving the anarchist restaurant the other day, and the look and feel of the place reminded me of pictures from Guantanamo Bay. There were fences, and the guards were there to make sure that mask are worn and social distancing upheld. Not surprisingly, very few had volunteered to enter the area. The stall owners, who pay good money for the privilege of having their stand on public ground, looked concerned. The state which had once acted as a convenient barrier against competition has gone mad.

Without a doubt, the anarchist restaurant is doing better than the stall owners, and this will not go unnoticed, especially if the anarchist restaurant manages to avoid a bureaucratic shut down for another year or two. Everybody will want to get out of the regulated economy. Africa is coming for Europe, not because of illegal immigration, but because of bureaucrats killing the economy with their rules and regulations.

Guantanamo Bay detention camp

By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link

Home Schooling Tactics

We sent our boy back to private school right after Easter, and what we learned confirmed all our suspicions when it comes to the efficiency of current teaching practices. Our son was only marginally out of sync with his peers. He had not fallen behind by much in anything, despite our relaxed teaching style at home. However, there were a few issues that needed attention. My wife and I had overlooked a few things, and it's a good thing we had them sorted out. Our decision to send our boy back to school was correct in more ways than one.

The conclusion we can draw from this is that our boy needed no more than two months of formal schooling to be up to speed with his peers. Any additional time at the private school would have gained him nothing. It's therefore tempting to repeat this trick this coming school year. However, that would be pushing our luck with the school's owners. They want kids to stay the year, not come and go as the parents please.

But it has come to our attention that there is at least one school in Porto that operates with reduced overall time spent at school as its guiding principle, and this school happens to be the one where our son is having his music lessons on Saturdays. The philosophy of this school is to keep things interesting, entertaining, and short. The school is not a day-care centre. It's an educational institution.

The idea behind this is that kids can do most of their school work at home. An hour or two at the school every now and again is all it takes to provide the education. If one or both of a child's parents are at home, there's no reason to have the kid at school for hours on end every day.

This is such an interesting concept that we're going to look into this in more details to see if it really is as good as it looks. We know that the school has excellent music teachers, so we can assume that the other tutors are equally good. However, there's a big formal exam coming up for our son next school year, and it may be more practical to do things more according to the generally accepted rules so that we don't get caught in some Kafkaesque nightmare at a public office somewhere.

Fireside education

By Transferred from en.wikibooks to Commons by Adrignola using CommonsHelper. Originally uploaded to en:Wikipedia in November 2006 (log) by Darentig (talk)., Public Domain, Link