Random thoughts, and a Wally-winning VIDEO

Things have been pretty intense for the last month or so. I think you, dear readers, deserve a break. Me too. So here are a couple of items from the slushpile, and a video that will make any parent chuckle. 

Bet Ya Didn't Know Dept.

Catherine II, aka Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia in the18th century, was not Russian! She was born in 1729 in the tiny German principality of Anhalt-Zerbst [commonly known as "A-Z". Ed.], Her father was Prince Christian of A-Z, and she was baptized Sophia Augusta Frederica. Her parents and friends called her "Fiekchen", a diminutive of "Sophia". I guess you have to speak German to understand that.

When she was taken to Russia as the wife of the future Tsar Peter III, she converted from heretical Lutheranism and was admitted to the Orthodox Church, and took the name Catherine Alexeievna. How about that.

Pandemic Madness Dept.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reports that at this very moment 6,035,208 of the world's people have died of the Wuhan flu. That's slightly more than 6 million of a world population of roughly 7.9  billion. Thus the mortality rate from the New Black Death is... let's see... carry the 1... something like 0.0756%. 

In other words [figures, shurely. Ed.] <1/10th of 1%. The mortality rate from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 is estimated to have been 2%. Do you still think we're wrong to call the current "crisis" a "Dempanic"?

By the way, did you get all three (and counting) of your shots? Are you still wearing your mask, or "chin diaper" as our friend Michael Matt calls them? How has all that worked out for you? Did you get sick anyway? Just askin'

TV Wokeness Dept.

Has anyone else noticed that Family Guy has become really lame, to the point of wokeness, lately?  The main plot line this past Sunday was about Peter Griffin losing his friends to a lawyer who moved in next door. Peter felt abandoned and sad, until the lawyer made him see that Quagmire, Cleveland and Joe were still his friends, and they all lived happily ever after. The lawyer, by the way, was black. ("Helloo dere. I'se yo new neighbuh!")

There's been a lot of that -- black lawyers, doctors, financial advisors and other well-spoken professional people -- on TV lately. Not to mention happy, upwardly mobile mixed-race couples. They appear prominently in dramas, comedies, and even TV commercials for woke corporate America. I don't see any of them in my neighbourhood though. How about you?

Wally Awards Dept.

Speaking of TV commercials, here's one for an expensive car that is not being driven by a BIPOC. And it's not a BMW either. This one gets the coveted Wally for excellence in creative advertising.

 

Any parent who's ever had to sit through a high school orchestra concert can appreciate that one!

Whatever Happened To? Dept.

Oh. Yes. Catherine the Great. She was the wife of Tsar Peter III, right? How did she get to be Empress of All the Russias? Well sir... Catherine not only changed her name but learned the language and went out of her royal way to become more Russian than the Russians. She was much loved by the people, unlike her husband, who was loated almost as much as Just In Trudeau is by the people of Canuckistan.

Catherine formed a party devoted to her interests and the overthrow of the Tsar. When Peter foolishly retired to his country estate in June of 1762, two young army officers took Catherine to St Petersburg, where the troops proclaimed her empress and swore their allegiance to her.

When advised of the coup d'état, Peter didn't know whether to shit or wind his wristwatch (as the crude saying of those times had it). He finally abidcated without condition. He was then arrested on Catherine's order, and sent to the estate of the two officers (who happened to be btothers). There Peter died, four days later, in mysterious circumstances.

Upon receiving news of her husband's death, Catherine dined in public with her customary tranquil air. Not until the next day did she announce the Tsar's demise, in these words: "We have received the information to our great sorrow and affliction that it was God's will to end the life of the former Tsar Peter III by a sever attach of haemorrhoidal colic."

End of story. Source: Ergang, Robert: Europe from the Renaissance to Waterloo, D.C. Heath & Co., 1954.

Walt reviews the Anus Horribilis 2020 - Part 1: The Dempanic

Ed. here. 2020 is almost over, thank God, truly an Annus Horribilis if ever there was one. (I know my Latin but Walt insists on leaving the headline as he wrote it.) In the 11+ years of WWW, we've never attempted a full-on yearend review, but Mr Whiteman has ordered me to make space for a number of things he wants to get off his chest. This will probably take at least two posts, so let's begin....

News story of the Year

Without doubt the top story of this horrible year is Covid-19, aka the Corona Virus. Influenza, in various mutations, has afflicted humans since Adam was a little boy. I blame the lamestream media for turning an unusually virulent variant into a full-on worldwide made-for-media horror show, hyped way beyond what the nature of the beast deserves.

Nowhere was that more the case than in the Excited States of America, where the Democrats, never-Trumpers and the lickspittle controlled media saw their chance to blame the disease on President Trump, thereby subverting and overthrowing his theretofore-successful administration. 

Whether they will succeed or not remains to be seen, but to judge the extent of the media manipulation of the latest of plagues God has sent to chastise wicked humanity, let's compare Covid-19 with the Spanish flu which raged around the world just 102 years ago. Lasting from February 1918 through April 1920, the pandemic of 1918 -- the deadliest in history (including the present pandemic) -- infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, about a third of Earth's population at the time.

Worldwide, the Spanish flu killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans, out of a population of around 103 million. Around 25% of the American population was infected. Of those infected, roughly 2.625% died. That's all. 

With vaccines being rolled out -- the result of Operation Warp Speed, led by Vice-President Pence (lest we forget!) -- the Covid-19 infection rate should be, at worst, 10% of the US population of 331 million. And with modern medicine, the death rate will likely top out at no more than 1.5%. Do the math! That's under half a million, still a horrendous figure but nothing like as devastating, proportionately, as that of the Spanish flu. So could everyone please calm down!

While I'm at it, can I ask why it's OK to rfefer to the 1918 flu as the "Spanish flu", when it appears to have started in the good ole US of A. The first known case was reported at a military base in Kansas on 11 March 1918, and it is thought that American doughboys took it to France, and thence to the rest of Europe and parts of Asia. The news was suppressed in the newspapers of the World War I allies, but reported in neutral Spain, and that's how the disease came to be called the "Spanish flu".

The corona virus appears to have originated in Wuhan, China. That's what comes of eating bats! So why is it politically incorrect to call it "Wuhan flu", "Chinese flu" or "Kung flu"? Must be because the term "Kung flu" was used by Still-President Trump, thus making it "racist". All part of the plan to create the Dempanic as a cover for an attack on our civil liberties, including freedom to worship, to speak and even to think.

Take heart, dear reader. People, including all of us here at WWW, are starting to get vaccinated. And don't you dare not get your shot! Remember the drowning man who wouldn't get in the boat God sent him! By this time next year, please God, the pandemic will be over and we can start to count the cost of making a big fuss over something that wasn't, in the overall scheme of things, such a big deal.

Coming next: Poor Len Canayen's sports highlight of the year.

Covid-19: Is it really part of the Great Conspiracy?

Agent 6 has sent along what he calls a cringe-worthy article from GlobalResearch: Centre for Research on Globalization. A look at their list of "Latest News & Top Stories" tell me their hearts are in the right place [Geddit? Ed.] but "Coronavirus – The Aftermath. A Coming Mega-Depression…" has me wondering about their heads.

The article is attributed to one Peter Koenig, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the by-line had read "Cassandra". In a story calculated to induce High Anxiety [Hello, Mel Brooks!], Mr Koenig tells us that the world as we know it is pretty much going to fall apart any day now, thanks to Covid-19, the corona virus, which is all part of a global conspiracy to kill us old people, and make the survivors slaves to a socialist world government...and defeat Still-President Trump into the bargain!

I wouldn't say it ain't so, but have serious reservations about whether recent events are really as connected, and our future really as dire, as Mr Koenig suggests when he writes: What the world is experiencing, resembles a well-planned worldwide declaration and implementation of Martial Law with socio-economically disastrous consequences, far worse than the disease itself. Nobody moves. The economy comes to an almost standstill. This begs the question, what is behind it, and what comes next?

Are we in for a second Great Depression?

Mr Koenig quotes a report on Al-Jazeera (!) calling recent heavy job losses "a staggering, sudden blow to American workers never seen before in the U.S. economy. The labor market in the coming weeks could blow past the 15 million jobs lost at the peak of the 18-month Great Recession from 2007 to 2009."

Next comes a quote from (((Goldman Sachs))) which "sees unprecedented stop in economic activity, with 2nd quarter GDP contracting 24% Goldman Sachs economists forecast a historically sharp and swift recession, with second-quarter GDP sinking a stunning 24% after a 6% decline in the first quarter. GS economist predict a further GDP decline of 5% in the second quarter."

Mr Koenig predicts: The picture of a coming mega-depression, that never existed in recent history, may continue as many of the bankrupt small and medium size enterprises – including airlines, tourist industries – et al, will be bought up by huge monopolies, that already exist, (e.g.Google, Amazon, AliBaba and more). Mergers of gigantic proportions may take place. It may be the last shift of capital from the bottom to the top in our era of civilization as we know it.

As anyone heavily invested in the stock market will tell you, the world economy is in turmoil right now. POTUS may wish that America will be open for business again -- business as usual -- as soon as next month, but it's not going to happen as quickly as that. On the other hand, it's not going to take a decade or even half a decade before we can relax our sphincters. Look at how our economy rebounded from the Spanish flu of 1919 and the lending/securities crisis of 2007-9. IMHO, we'll have to keep calm and go long for two years, three years max. Lifetime pct .970.

Killing off the old and unfit in the name of "population reduction"

The President's chief advisor, Dr Anthony Fauci, likened the corona virus to a stronger than usual common flu. "The case fatality rate," he wrote in a peer-reviewed article, "may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively."

Mr Koenig doesn't consider the fact that a disproportionate number of deaths are occurring in long-term care facilities, with the most at-risk being aged 77 to over 100. [Are you getting nervous, Walt? Ed.] There is also a higher incidence of the disease in the, errr, non-white community. I won't go there for fear of being branded a racist [again. Ed.] But Mr Koeing picks up the ball and runs with it.

He asks: Is population reduction part of this ongoing pandemic exercise which may be followed by a compulsory vaccination program?... In 1974, under the Nixon administration, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was entrusted – under the auspices of the National Security Council– to outline the contours of a "depopulation program" largely targeting Third World countries. A Document entitled NSC Study Memorandum 200 was drafted.

The Depopulation Agenda has remained an integral part of US foreign policy. It was also endorsed by several corporate charities and foundations. In this regard, the Bill and Melinda Gates and the Rockefeller foundations have addressed the relationship between extreme poverty and depopulation.

Then comes the anti-vaxxer, mark-of-the-Beast stuff. "The idea is, in due time (whenever the program is ready) – to use the vaccination program, possibly forced, to inject along with the vaccine also a nano-chip, that can be injected along with the vaccination program. It could be done without the person’s knowledge and later remotely uploaded with personal data, from health records, to criminal records, to bank accounts. In fact, the Gates Foundation, together with GAVI has already developed a tattoo-like chip which would be used for both, vaccination and electronic ID."

Yeah, well... As Dr Fauci points out, the Covid-19 fatality rate is not likely to be nearly as high, in absolute numbers or percentages, than that of the Spanish flu or the lesser epidemics of SARS and MERS. The lamestream media are now preparing us for a "second wave", because this first wave hasn't lived up to all the hype, but even if there is a second and a third wave, a vaccine should be available by the spring of 2022 or earlier. I will be among the first in line for my shot. I've been getting flu shots for over five years now, and have never suffered any side-effects, nor have I contracted the flu in any form. And the UN hasn't yet taken control of my mind or body.

Are we going to be living in a police state?

Every day the meeja brings us stories and pictures of police harrassing civilians for such crimes as playing beach volleyball and standing too close to others in the unemployment line. Fines up into the 1000s of dollars are being levied and people are being threatened with jail. In France, soldiers are patrolling the streets to make sure people aren't escaping from their houses.

Mr Koenig says that "people in fear and panic can easily be manipulated." Too true. Polls in every country show that the majority of those asked support giving "the authorities" more and more power to control our lives, our actions, our speech and even our thoughts. (This is where the 5G conspiracy comes in.) People are scared, and conditioned by a half-century of "liberal democracy" to abandon to the almighty State the responsibility for their own actions.

The truth is that we already live a police state. People stopped pushing back against excesses of state control around November 5th, 1968. (Look it up.) Since then, only a few libertarians (Hello, Dr Paul!) have consistently called for smaller government and the restoration of the basic rights and freedoms which "liberal" (read "statist") politicians have gradually taken away from us.

Can the destruction of our society be avoided?

Nearing the end of his argument, Mr Koenig swings from despair to hope.
We might as well call the corona virus, Virus 'F' – for Fear. And yes, people can die of fear. WHO is dancing to the tune of the powerful, of Bill Gates, the Rockefellers, the pharma giants – and the behind-the-door (invisible) WEF-politicians and bankers. All this, under the pretext of saving the world from the invisible corona virus, from a pandemic that isn't.

As this neoliberal corrupt system comes crashing down, there will be many victims, sadly, many may not survive – a lot of misery, desolation and suffering. We, as a society should act in solidarity and do whatever we can to help the victims, to reduce the damage, to the extend our hands, arms and souls with all our positive spirits and actions. And the will-power of solidarity is enormous, almost endless.

I would add that what Mr Koenig calls "the will-power of solidarity is enormous" only if we exercise it! It's a rare thing, now, for the people to rebel against incompetent and corrupt autocracies and take back their countries. It can be done, as it was in the USA in November of 2016! "Power to the people!" is not just for the lefties!!!

Poor Len Canayen: the year the flu cancelled the Stanley Cup

Ed. here. With the National Hockey League forced to "pause" its season -- in the words of (((Gary Bettman))) -- and probably the playoffs too, we didn't expect our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, to contribute anything until whenever play resumes, probably in the fall. But here he is, with a timely story about the year the Stanley Cup was not awarded.

Today, April 5th, A.D. 2020, is the 101st anniversary of the death of Joe Hall. [Who he? Ed.] Tanks, Hed., for asking. Joe Hall played for the 1918-19 edition of Canada's team, the Montréal Canadiens. That season, only the second for the NHL (founded in 1917), the Habs had finished at the top of the standings, and in March of 1919 went to Seattle to play the Seattle Metropolitans, of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, for the Stanley Cup.

The bleu-blanc-et-rouge were looking for revenge. They had won Lord Stanley's silverware, emblematic of North American (and therefore world) hockey supremacy, in 1916, defeating the Portland OR Rosebuds. (Seriously. That was the team's name.) But the Metropolitans thrashed the Canadiens the following year, bringing the trophy back to the west coast.

In 1918 the Toronto Arenas (or Blueshirts, depending on whose history you read) defeated the Vancouver Millionaires, [Where did they get these names? Ed.] in a series held in Toronto. This was back in the daze when transcontinental travel was a big deal, so the series alternated between the east and west, which meant that Seattle would be the venue for the 1919 rematch between the Metropolitans (no-one had dubbed them them "Mets") and the Canadiens.

Unfortunately, the "Spanish flu" got to Seattle before the Habs did. The epidemic is thought to have started at Camp Funston, in Kansas, in March 1918. From there it went with American doughboys to Europe, where it mutated in the trenches of the Great War, and spread around the world. The name "Spanish influenza" resulted from Spain's neutrality during WWI, which meant that Spanish newspapers, unlike those of the belligerent nations, did not censor news of the devastation caused by the disease.

The Spanish flu came back to North America wih wounded soldiers in the summer of 1918, and spread quickly and with deadly effect across the major cities of the USA and Canada. About 8500 Chicagoans died in September and October. In New York City, 851 people died in a single day. In Toronto, more than 1600 people died in the last three weeks of October. Montréal reported over 16,000 cases in that same month. In the East, the disease seemed to disappear by December of 2018, but in the West, Seattle suffered through its worst month of the epidemic.

The Canadiens arrived in Seattle on 18 March 1919. That spring's series had all the makings of a classic, but turned into a tragedy. Five games were hotly contested, with Seattle thrashing the Habs in games 1 and 3. Montréal prevailed in game 2. Game 4 was an epic, ending, after two 10-minute overtime periods, in a scoreless tie! Game 5 also went into overtime, with la Sainte Flannelle coming out on top.

So as April Fool's Day of 2019 dawned, the two te4ams were even, with two wins apiece and the 0-0 tie. A victory for either team in Game 6 would mean the Stanley Cup. Both teams appeared to be tiring, but it wasn't fatigue. It was the Spanish flu. On the morning of April 1st, George Kennedy, the Canadiens' owner/manager, and three players were confined to their hotel. Joe Hall and a teammate had fevers of 104 degrees and were taken to Providence Hospital.

The game that night was cancelled. There was some talk that Game 6 might be played later, perhaps in Vancouver BC, which had not been so hard hit, once the players recovered. But it was not to be. Joe Hall died in Sattle's Columbus Sanitarium on April 5th. Two teammates and the owner died later. No winner for 1919 was ever declared.

Footnote: More than half a century after the NHL started expanding in 1967, Seattle will finally get a team in the Big League, starting in the 2021-22 season, if such event ever eventuates. The name of the new franchise is as yet unknown, but it probably won't be the Metropolitans... or the Rosebuds.

Another footnote: For a long time it looked as if there couldn't possibly be another season in which there would be no Stanley Cup champion. Then along came Mr Bitchman, on whose watch the NHL saw the entire 2004-5 season cancelled. If the Cup is not awarded this year, as seems likely, it won't be his fault... this time... just the flu... again. But take heart, hockey fans. Hockey survived, the NHL survived, the Montréal Canadiens not only survived, but came back stronger than ever!

VIDEO: About the corona virus, can we PLEASE calm down?

I haven't written much about the corona virus pandemic, because I suspect most of you are, if not sick with the disease itself, sick of reading about it. Yes, there is a pandemic that is sweeping the world. Yes, people are dying in the 1000s. This may indeed be the Great Chastisement which Our Lady of Fatima foretold, but let's not get all apocalyptic about it. We... well, our ancestors... have been through this before, 102 years ago and, more recently, in 2009.

For those who don't remember, the 1918 Spanish flu was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million people -- about a quarter of the world's population at the time.

The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in between, but the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults.

A 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. That would explain why the incidence of the corona virus is greater -- and more deadly -- in nursing homes and other facilities where large numbers of already sick people are crowded together.

The Spanish flu was the first of two pandemics caused by the H1N1 influenza virus. The second was the swine flu -- an influenza pandemic that lasted from January 2009 to August 2010. First described in April 2009, the virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1, which resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, thus the term "swine flu".

Some studies estimated that 11 to 21 percent of the global population at the time -- around 700 million to 1.4 billion people -- contracted the illness. This was more than the number of people infected by the Spanish flu pandemic, but only resulted in about 150,000 to 575,000 fatalities -- a lower death rate.  A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu. The WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.

With all the hair-on-fire, we're-all-going-to-die coverage circulating, Still-President Trump's son, "Don Jr.", took to Twitter on Friday with a perfect video to set the record straight. "Every American needs to know this," he wrote. "You won't hear it on CNN. They are only playing bad news."
In the clip from Thursday's White House corona virus task force news briefing, response coordinator Dr Deborah Birx sets the record straight about the supposed shortage of hospital equipment. Check it out.



Dr Birx contradicted the fake news of dire shortages in New York state and explained that the country is nowhere near implementing drastic measures. "There are still ICU beds remaining and there's still significant -- over 1000 or 2000 -- ventilators that have not been utilized yet", she said.

She implored the media and others spreading falsehoods about hospitals being forced to issue "DNR" ("do not resuscitate") orders for patients due to a lack of equipment to cease and desist, saying, "There is no situation in the United States right now that warrants that kind of discussion. To make the implication that when they need a hospital bed, it's not going to be there, or when they need that ventilator, it's not going to be there -- we don't have evidence of that right now."

As the good doctor said, just because cities such as New York may be short on ventilators in reserve doesn't mean there won't be enough if and when the time comes. As she stated, "There are other parts of the states that have lots of ventilators and other parts of New York State that don't have any infections right now. So we can be creative. We can meet the need by being responsive."

Dr Birx is right. State leaders such as NY Governor Cuomo are responsible for figuring out how to shift resources already in their state to meet changing needs. The federal government is only there to provide the next level of assistance. And think about this... The states where the outbreak is most serious, whose governors are hollering loudest for federal government help -- NY, WA, CA, IL, MI -- are all run by Democrats. Think about it.

Further reading:
"Israeli doctor in Italy says new, innovative treatments 'flattening the curve'", Times of Israel, 29/3/20. You probably won't see this in the lamestream news. It defeats the planned hysteria. Thanks to Agent 35 for the link.
"Saint Corona - Patron against plague and epidemics", WWW 24/3/20.