Turning the Corner

Welcome to mid-autumn and standard time. Most folks are aware of the two equinox and solstices as being the seasonal changes, but few are aware of the mid-points of each season. Halloween, All Saints Day (which is today), and the Day of the Dead (tomorrow) are markers of fall's mid-season (also called Samhain).

It is Celtic New Year’s Eve and the final harvest. It’s when the veil between the world of the living and the dead is the thinnest and when pagans believe spirits easiest roam the earth and when it is easiest to communicate with them. It is a time to honor all those who have come before, for all that was gifted to us during the year, to ask for guidance, and to set intentions as the turning of the wheel begins again.

Groundhogs day, May 1st (May day), and the Dog days are the other mid-season markers. The days continue getting shorter, and it will be nice to have light earlier. Changing between standard and DST is a bad idea for several reasons, but it seems we're stuck with it. This is the week we've been waiting for...the election will be over by this time next week (I hope), and neither outcome bodes well (in my book). Hang on for what may be a rocky ride.

Since it is Halloween, let's start with a scary story. Many think it is our political or economic situation which is so scary, but to me it is biosphere degradation I find frightening. We are hurdling toward massive swings and changes. This week alone in the US are fires in California, snows and ice in the SW, and hurricanes and tornadoes in the SE.
Why do I think we're past the tipping point?
Well there's the increasing methane release in the tundra and Arctic sea bed.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-giant-arctic-me...
Tied to the gas release is the rapidly melting Arctic sea ice.
New Study Warns That Arctic Sea Ice Could Disappear by 2035
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/arctic-sea-ice-could-disappear/
However, as usual, I suspect this is a gross underestimate.

For the first time since records began, the main nursery of Arctic sea ice in Siberia has yet to start freezing in late October. The delayed annual freeze in the Laptev Sea has been caused by freakishly protracted warmth in northern Russia and the intrusion of Atlantic waters, say climate scientists who warn of possible knock-on effects across the polar region.

https://www.euronews.com/2020/10/23/arctic-sea-ice-isn-t-freezing-in-oct...

These factors "bake in" accelerating warming

The changes are being reflected in the biosphere as you might expect...

Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-nu...

Once insects disappear from the Earth, all life would be gone in less than a century. Living creatures would starve to death. About 80% of plants are angiosperms (or flowering plants) that rely on pollination. Pollination is the process by which plants reproduce, resulting in the production of seeds that will grow into new plants.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/here-s-what-would-happen-if-all-the-...
First the insects then the birds

North America's birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that's shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the continent has lost 3 billion birds, nearly 30% of the total, and even common birds such as sparrows and blackbirds are in decline, U.S. and Canadian researchers report this week online in Science.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/three-billion-north-american-bir...

It is literally the canary in the mine, and we will be next... but we can't seem to awaken.
Now I don't find this disturbing for me, but for the young folks coming along behind us. Whatta mess our generation is leaving them... a struggle for their very survival. Now that is a scary and sad Halloween story.

How can this be happening?

The world's largest banks in 2019 provided more than $2.6 trillion in loans and underwriting to economic sectors linked to the global biodiversity crisis while doing little to monitor, let alone curb, damage to life-sustaining ecosystems.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/28/bankrolling-extinction-repo...

Fossil fuels drive much of this devastation. Ironically it is also driving the economic melt down and the war machine.

...hydraulic fracturing — the method used to extract methane gas for LNG export — has gone from boom to bust. Which means LNG derived from fracking looks worse for taxpayers daily, a lousier bet even than when New Democrats urged extreme caution.

Fracking came on stream more than 15 years ago during a period of high oil prices and cheap credit. But the industry then tanked global prices for oil and methane with rampant overproduction in North America. With $40 a barrel oil, the industry can no longer pay its bills, let alone generate a profit. Natural gas prices sit at all time lows also due to fracking.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-06/the-fracking-industry-is-h...

From 2010 to 2020, large publicly traded U.S. producers poured a total of $1.18 trillion into drilling and pumping oil and gas, mostly in fracking. But they made only $819 billion in cash from their oil operations — a combined loss of $361 billion. Prominent analysts have warned for years that the fracking industry is a machine to destroy capital. Yet banks have consistently ignored this message, as well as pleas from communities and environmentalists about the industry’s terrible impacts. Why the banks chose to ignore these messages is a story of short-term greed drowning out long-term rationality.

Financial journalist Bethany McLean has pointed out now-bankrupt Chesapeake Energy paid banks more than $1.1 billion in underwriting fees between 2000 and 2012. It was no secret that Chesapeake was reliant on constant infusions of new debt to support its leases of new acreage and drilling — and its executives’ lavish lifestyles. “I have never seen a more shameful document” than the Chesapeake annual statement to shareholders, one investor wrote to the company’s board in 2009. “If I could reduce it to one page, I would frame and hang it on my office wall as a near perfect illustration of the complete collapse of appropriate corporate governance.” But to the banks supporting Chesapeake’s unsustainable excesses, the fracking company was just another source of lucrative fees, so the infusions kept coming.
...
51 fracking companies have declared bankruptcy since the start of this year. How many will be responsible for cleaning up their abandoned wells? If you said “None,” go to the head of the class. The fracking companies are in the big club. You’re not. Which means you get to pay to clean up their mess. Ain’t democracy grand?

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/24/fracking-insanity-fueled-by-greedy-...

So how can the fracking industry continue when they are losing money?

You have probably heard that we are facing a climate crisis. You probably also know that burning fossil fuels significantly contributes to global warming and air pollution. Given these dangers, you might find it hard to believe that fossil fuel companies receive a staggering $5 trillion in subsidies annually, equivalent to over 6% of global GDP. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which calculated the size of the subsidies, explained that without them global deaths from air pollution would fall by nearly half and total carbon emissions would drop by almost 30%. Those reductions mean nearly four million fewer deaths and over ten billion fewer tons of CO2 each year.
Fossil fuel subsidies take many forms. Many governments around the world provide direct incentives for exploration and production. In the United States, deductions for well-drilling allow companies to reduce their tax burdens by nearly $2 billion a year. Until recently, coal companies benefited from the nonconventional fuels tax credit, which paid the industry over $12 billion from 2002-2010. Numerous other incentives and generous accounting treatments represent billions more in giveaways.
While these direct subsidies are massive, the largest gift to fossil fuel companies comes from allowing them to use our atmosphere as a waste dump. Fossil fuel pollution continues to sicken and kill millions each year and is likely making the Covid-19 pandemic worse.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcarlin/2020/06/02/a-5-trillion-dollar-...

Fossil fuels not only destroy ecosystems, but also drive war.

Fossil fuels are triggering violent conflicts all over the world, says Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the US. Klare zooms in on four areas – Iraq/Syria, South Sudan, the Crimea/Ukraine, and the South China Sea – to argue that the desire to control valuable oil and gas assets is fuelling long-standing historic tensions. “In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power,” he warns.

https://energypost.eu/twenty-first-century-energy-wars-oil-gas-fuelling-...

In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power. “Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes,” Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told a State Department audience in 2002. “Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics.” Far more than an ordinary trade commodity, “it is a determinant of well being, of national security, and international power for those who possess this vital resource, and the converse for those who do not.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/7-places-where-oil-fueling-...

The wars themselves generate demand for these fuels...

...according to data released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest user of petroleum products and the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates that the U.S. military has emitted roughly 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions since the global war on terror began in 2001 (Darby, 2019). This level of greenhouse gas emissions is equivalent to operating 257 million passenger cars annually. The carbon emissions from war-related activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria is projected to have reached 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide through 2019 (Darby, 2019).

https://fossilfuel.com/the-u-s-military-consumes-more-fossil-fuels-than-...

Here are some of the ways that global bankers make money from war:
http://thetinyspark.com/tiny-reports/how-bankers-make-money-from-war.pdf

[1] From loans--Once an excuse for entering a war is created,private bankers lend money to the governments of both sides who want to win the war.Bankers partner with other bankers, each funding a different side of the same war. They lend money to governments who want to win the war. From this lent money, they collect both principal and interest.
[2] From creating money (EDIT: really they create debt) out of nothing--In centuries past, rich families, such as the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, took opposing sides and lent the families’ actual money to the opposing governments who were engaged in the war.Now, however, when governments need money, they go to the Federal Reserve for a loan. The Federal Reserve, which doesn’t actually lend money, simply authorizes the governments to print the amount of money they need. Then the governments pay back the face value of the amount authorized to be printed to Federal Reserve with interest. There is no gold or silver backing to any of this printed money. As it often said, “They create money out of thin air.”
[3] From guaranteed taxes--Sometimes the lending agreement between the Federal Reserve and the governments include a provision to collect taxes to guarantee the repayment of the loan. In the case of the United State, the IRS was set up in the same year as the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, 1913.
[4] From cornering one or more markets--More important to the lending bankers are the exclusive governmental contracts that come with the loan agreements. This leads to cornering the markets (exclusive contracts) within weapons manufacturing, defense contracts, mining industry, security contractors, or any product or service needed to wage the war of the day. Old fashioned smuggling is still part of war today. As in the case of the current Afghanistan War, governments protect the opium fields in this country and close their eyes to the alarming quantities of this drug that are smuggled out. This opium, converted to heroin, is then sold by those who profit from war. At the present time, more money exchanges hands in the opium trade than any other commodity worldwide. These bankers are not accountable to the people. They are a private entity that controls governments around the world by controlling the purse-string, granting or withholding funds depending of their own private agenda. Even with governments, “the debtor is slave to the lender.”
[5] From the Fractional Reserve Banking Scheme--It must be noted that the bankers do not have to HAVE the money to lend it. “Fractional Reserve Banking” allows bankers to lend money THEY DO NOT HAVE. This works on the very simple principal that they lend many times more money than they take in as deposits, knowing that only a few people will want to make a withdrawal at any one time. Until recently, bankers lent 10 TIMES what they had in deposits. Recently in Iceland, bankers lent up to 70 TIMES what they actually had. Using this Fractional Reserve Banking scheme, bankers are able to make profit from converting this debt into money.
[6] From economic collapse--It should also be noted that these same bankers make great profit from economic collapse. As a country goes bankrupt from the debt created by borrowing for war, the profit-makers buy up real estate and goods at pennies on the dollar. The unspoken objective is to create a perpetual income stream by creating perpetual war.

Banks not only have dirty money for fracking and from war, but also from laundering the dirty money of crime... Banks have been cleaning dirty money for criminals for years. Recently they were caught laundering $2T.

The journalists had been combing through leaks comprising 2,121 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) between 2000 and 2017. The relevant amount in terms of transactions: somewhere in the order of $2 trillion.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/22/follow-the-money-banking-crimina...

So how do they get away with all their corruption? They buy the politicians...

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re a big bank. You want to buy influence with a senator on the banking committee so he’ll vote your way on an upcoming bill. The easiest way would be to just give $100,000 directly to the senator’s reelection campaign. But alas, that would be illegal — federal law prohibits companies from making direct donations to candidates. So instead, you hire a lobbying firm.

Here’s where things get corrupt. That lobbying firm can legally organize a swanky fundraiser that brings in $100,000 for the senator’s reelection campaign. At the fundraiser, your lobbyist just happens to have a friendly chat about your feelings on banking policy with the senator’s staff.

At the end of the day, the senator is still up $100,000, he still knows exactly where the money came from, and he knows which way to vote if he wants the money to keep flowing. But this time, nobody’s broken any laws!

One recent study found that “on average, for every dollar spent on influencing politics, the nation’s most politically active corporations received $760 from the government.” That’s a 76,000% return on investment. And it works on both sides of the aisle — top lobbying firms raise big money for Republicans and Democrats at the same time.

https://represent.us/action/5-facts-lobbyists/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4jdcdlquF0 (7.5 min)

That's one reason the members of congress are millionaires.

Why do people accept this system? Because the corporations control the media.
I featured this lecture on media by Matt Taibbi a few weeks ago, and I'm still pondering his discussion of the path of media and journalism from informing to manipulating. The lecture is the 1st 30 min. The Q&A that follows was less informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG1qJeDI9Ok

Of course Julian's plight illustrates what happens to true journalists. Glenn Greenwald's story this week also makes plain the propaganda nature of media today. No truth allowed.
He tells the story on Rising this week. Worth the watch...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYyn_XGAsCs (16 min)
Glenn also had an extended conversation with Joe Rogan the day before his resignation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA (3 hours)
Jimmy and Aaron Mate' also examine the Greenwald - Intercept story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nig6c1WEc-0 (45 min)

You know they are reporting this week...

The US economy grew by 33.1 per cent in the third-quarter of this year, indicating a revival of the economy from affects of the coronavirus pandemic.

With massive unemployment, almost half of small businesses closing, and a pandemic raging?
Trader Greg Mannarino sees through the facade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuAxgJZIQhg (5 min)

Quite the trick that is being perpetrated upon us. The bankers and corporate elite purchase the politicians and control the media narrative to insure continued support of the forever war, fossil fuel extraction and use, biosphere destruction, and a for profit medical system merry-go-round...like a vortex going down the drain.

Enough Tricks, how about some Treats?

People came up with some ingenious ways to pass out treats in the middle of a pandemic.
Using leaf blowers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBd50Px7k_I (5 min)
Many versions of chutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljI-_YQkxc (2 min)
Clever ways to maintain distance...plus being outside... and people wear masks on Halloween anyway.

We live so far in the boonies we've never had a trick or treater. I really don't think I would give kids sugar based treats. There are many reasons to avoid sugar if you understand what happens when you eat sugar (12 min) Maybe I would give out oranges. Some doctors say boot the fruit, but many agree eating the whole fruit is fine. Dr's Malhotra and Mercola agree sugar is problematic but whole fruits are healthful. (worth the whole watch but 5-10 min will give you the idea). Ken Berry last week went so far as to describe type 2 diabetes as carbohydrate toxicity. (28 min) In Ken's presentation he explains how a simple blood test looking at HbA1C and c-peptide allows you to diagnose your metabolic health.

There are many no and low sugar deserts. I make no sugar no wheat sweet tater treats. Now they do have plenty of carbs but they are healthy ones. They're simple. Mash a couple of cups of baked sweet potatoes. Add about a cup of shredded coconut, and a good handful of raisins. Add a couple of tablespoons of melted butter and a well beaten egg. Mix (if too dry add some coconut milk) and spoon out cookie sized portions on a parchment lined baking tray. Top each treat with a pecan and bake till firm (about 30-40 min at 350F).

Maybe the best treat would be an individual Vitamin D gummy bear wrapped with a label explaining they should eat one-a-day. Chris had a good explanation on why Vitamin D is so important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIb_wX3Y1AE (19 min)
John Campbell also covered the importance of Vitamin D this week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxtddpoPMKo (28 min)
It is shocking that the public message on this inexpensive resource for virus protection is so rarely promoted. It should be mentioned as often as masks, hand washing, and distancing.

I don't know if this is a treat, but it is good news. Yes, COVID cases continue to rise, but hospitalizations are falling (though deaths are pretty consistent).
Positive tests
Week 42, (ending 17th October), 6.6%
Week 43 (ending 24th October), 7.1%
Percent positivity increased among all age groups
and in all 10 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regions

Hospitalizations by age

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html
Deaths

John Campbell explains these stats and more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0zIhnD0Ts (20 min)

Chris suggests TPTB are not concerned with our health (only our pocketbook)- 25 min

Research papers below the clip here.

Think your health and the common welfare is the top priority of your national health managers? Think again.

Here I present evidence that even as new lockdowns are underway in France, there's no apparent interest in the French health managers to use proven over the counter (OTC) supplements and treatments that work.

Why not? What's going on here? How can this even be "a thing?"

I don't know but I can state, unequivocally, that the science is clear; ivermectin, HCQ, along with Vitamin D and adequate serum levels of zinc and selenium are a powerful combination that severely limits the worst of covid (the disease).

Shorter hospital stays and less mortality coupled with ridiculously good safety profiles. What's not to like? Well, plenty, for the national health managers who have not managed to promote these quite obvious and useful remedies.

Again, why not? that's the question.

Whatever priorities they've got, your health and the common good are not among them.

This shot of the canyon is a couple of years old, but we are about at that stage of fall here again on the mountain. Despite the insanity of our current situation there is beauty and peace to be found. I hope you have some in your corner of the world. Can we turn the corner? We can on a personal level... take care of our health, laugh at ourselves and the irony of the world, and find joy in our family and friends. Music is also a release. Have you run across Reina del Cid? They came to me across the YouTube algorithm. More talented young folks presented for your listening pleasure...

So I'll close by saying enjoy your time no matter your zone or its changes. Happy mid-autumn!