4th of July in Chad, Africa: Teachers vs. Well Diggers

That’s me, second to the left, shirtless.

The time: July 4, 1977. The location: the residence of the US Ambassador to Chad. The occasion: a 4th of July party for the Peace Corps volunteers that were stationed in N’djamena, the capital. I was there as a teacher of English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Chad. A two-year stint that was coming to an end.

I’m racing against three other Peace Corps volunteers. We called them well diggers. They were in Chad to install sanitary wells throughout the arid northern third of the country. The well diggers didn’t think much of us teachers. We knew that. And in return, we didn’t think much of them.

This was my chance to win their respect. A race. A manly race to the finish. I was determined to beat them. (I think that’s obvious from the muscular tension I’m displaying.)

I’d like to say that I took first place, but, if I remember correctly, I came in second. The guy farthest to the right was the winner.

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Bill Bonner on the Nord Stream Pipeline Attack 

“It’s not every day that the US commits an act of war – against two of the most powerful nations in the world. It’s not every day that the US attacks its own allies, either… blowing up the Baltic pipeline was directed, not only against Russia, but against Germany too. Germany got its energy from Russia. It’s what fueled the German economy. Germany is also a US ally… and a member of NATO.

“What a bold move! What audacity!… What a coup… With one swing of the saber, [the Biden administration] cut Germany off from Russia… making it dependent on US sources of fuel, and they cut Russia off from its export revenue, effectively hobbling and humiliating them both.” (Bonner Private Research, Feb. 14)

 

COVID Can Trigger Tinnitus. Can Vaccines Do the Same? 

After Dr. Gregory Poland, who directs the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, got his second COVID shot in Feb. 2021, he developed such severe and sudden ringing in his ears that he nearly veered into the next lane of traffic while driving home.

“It sounded like somebody took a whistle and out of nowhere started blowing it in my ear,” Poland said, “and it has never gone away.”

Tinnitus is a known consequence of a COVID infection. And Poland, one of the foremost researchers in the world, is one of thousands of people who believe that ringing in the ears developed after a COVID vaccination could be linked to the vaccine.

Read more here.

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The Aerial Invasion: Are They Spycraft? Weather Balloons? Or what? 

John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, admitted that the mysterious UFOs the military has been shooting down were “probably not commanded by ETs or other countries,” but more likely commercial balloons that “pose no military threat to Americans.”

However, Mr. Kirby continued to maintain that the original balloon shot down Feb. 4 was, indeed, a Chinese spy balloon, although he wasn’t able to offer any proof.

Read more here.

 

The Hunter Biden Show

Can Someone That Rich Be That Dumb?!!

Or Someone That Dumb Be That Rich?!! 

JM, one of my trainers, made the claim. I didn’t believe him for a second.

“Look it up,” he said.

“Where?” I said. “On one of your dark web conspiracy sites?”

“Anywhere you like,” he said.

So, I looked it up. In several different places. And by gosh, he was right!

Hunter Biden’s net worth is north of $300 million!

How could that be true? Isn’t this the guy that got kicked out of the Navy – twice – for drug and alcohol addiction? Isn’t this the guy that photographed himself with all those hookers? Isn’t he the guy who barely graduated college and knows nothing about energy but became an expert consultant to major energy companies in the Ukraine, in Russia, and in China?

A lot of incriminating questions about Hunter Biden will be asked in the coming weeks and months by House Republicans. I hope one of those questions will be: “How could he have been so stupid as to allow his net worth to be published?”

 

Sabotage? Act of War? Mystery Solved! It Was Us! 

At the end of his long and distinguished career, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh believes he has solved the Nord Stream pipeline bombing mystery.

Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, reported that US Navy divers, acting under the authority of President Biden, laid bombs that destroyed three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Although the Biden administration initially denied it, there is increasing evidence that they did it, including videotape of Biden threatening to blow it up back in February.

Check it out here.

Or here.

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Triangle of Sadness 

Written and directed by Ruben Östlund

Starring Charlbi Dean, Woody Harrelson, and Harris Dickinson

Released in theaters (US) Oct. 7, 2022

Available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

Triangle of Sadness is another film I wanted to see before the Academy Awards. I liked the premise, and it had some strong recommendations from people whose opinions I respect. But after watching it, I was somewhat disappointed. It has many great and hilarious scenes and some riveting performances, but would not have been my choice for Best Picture – or best anything – unless they had a category for best knock-off of a Lina Wertmuller movie.

The Plot 

Carl and Yaya, a couple of influencers, are invited to a luxury cruise ship alongside a group of out-of-touch wealthy people. The situation takes an unexpected turn when a brutal storm hits the ship.

What I Liked About It 

* It was a cruelly and beautifully scathing critique of the woke obliviousness of the super-rich. Not just the Baby Boomers, but also Gen X.

* It had an impressively wide comic range – from dark (the spat over who should pay for the bill) to Mel Brooks (the vomiting scene).

* Woody Harrelson’s performance as the ship’s too-done-to-care captain.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

* Some scenes went on a tad too long.

* It was, as I said, derivative, and that made it hard to take seriously. Ironically, however, that made it easier to enjoy. Because it was only 20% Wertmuller and 80% Mel Brooks.

Critical Reception 

* “For 95 minutes of its 147-minute running time, Triangle of Sadness is one of the best movies of the year. It’s a brutal satire whose comedy changes from deadpan subtlety to the most raucous and outrageous slapstick imaginable. It’s brilliant and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny – and then comes the shift.” (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle)

* “Two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund’s mischievous takedown of the super-rich has more style than substance.” (Wendy Ide, The Guardian)

* “This, in the end, is a very bad movie, executed with enough visual polish and surface cleverness to fool the Cannes jurors, something Östlund has done twice. Shame on them!” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

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Global Superlatives: The World’s Most Extreme Countries 

Though it’s always more rewarding to read essays that go deeply into a subject rather than widely and superficially, I can’t resist reading listicles. And sometimes, I run into one that has some very satisfying surprises. Like this one from a website called KiteKey.

For your amusement, I’ve turned it into a little self-quiz.

Test Yourself 

Which country has the:

  1. Longest life expectancy?
  2. Highest personal net worth?
  3. Largest GDP?
  4. Fastest growing economy?
  5. Largest military?
  6. Most languages?
  7. Happiest citizens?
  8. Least corrupt government?

Answers:

  1. Japan (85 years)
  2. Monaco
  3. United States
  4. Guyana
  5. China (2 million active-duty soldiers)
  6. Papua New Guinea (840)
  7. Norway
  8. Denmark
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From RS, re the China Spy Balloon: 

“I was excited to see my thoughts published in your ‘Readers Write’ section on Feb. 10, but dismayed to be dismissed as a conspiratorial loon. My hunch could certainly be wrong, but the truth behind these types of intel events can take years to come out (if ever). Let’s see where the data leads. I will investigate your original question about satellite vs. balloon surveillance.”

My Response: My dear RS, I didn’t dismiss you. You told me your theory. I told you mine. Still, I promise, I won’t mention it again.

Unless, of course, my theory turns out to be correct. In that case, I’ll not stop telling you I told you so!

 

More on Statins. GM sent in this excerpt from an article titled “The Medical Mafia MUST Be Destroyed” posted on The Market Ticker

“How about statins? That entire class of drugs and the billions extracted from people scared of having a heart attack, never mind all the scolding by physicians rests on the cholesterol hypothesis, which appears to have been disproved more than a decade ago. The hypothesis in fact dates to 1913 (!!) and a single study of rabbits. Problem: It didn’t generalize when it was repeated in other mammals. Then Ancel Keys put forward an observation that higher serum cholesterol correlated with heart disease but he cherry-picked the nations in which he observed the correlation – six out of twenty-two. If you instead looked at the data from all of the nations there was no correlation. His study was clearly an intentional fraud. We next had the infamous Framingham study, which found somewhat-elevated cholesterol in men who had a heart attack. Aha, you say. Except – 30 years later the follow-up on that study was ignored – it found that in men 50+ there was no correlation between high cholesterol and death and in women none whatsoever irrespective of age. Worse, the follow-up found an inverse all-cause mortality increase with DECREASING cholesterol! That’s right – the follow-up, which is always of course superior since time is the best judge, found that higher serum cholesterol was either protective or the drug(s) used to lower cholesterol were poisons.

“How many people know this, even today? Few. You still hear this mantra, ‘medical advice’ and the prescription pads and pharmacy counters dispense statins by the truckload even though the underlying hypothesis was conclusively debunked more than a decade ago. How many billions of dollars were and are extracted from people on what appears, from all the evidence, to be a worthless intervention that, as with all drugs, carries risk of adverse effects and which was trivially proved to be predicated on an intentional falsehood by Keys – all you had to do was look at all twenty-two nations from which he originally collected the data.”

Click here to read the entire article.

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It’s Fat Tuesday!

New Orleans, home to the best-known Fat Tuesday festivities in the US, is poised to see at least 1 million visitors and up to $1B in revenue as it brings back its full slate of events after canceling them in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shortening routes for all parades in 2022. The city’s iconic krewes – Mardi Gras-focused social clubs – have returned to the streets and will culminate with parades by the Krewes of Rex and Zulu today, among others. Watch a livestream here.

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