Canada, as you know, is a bilingual country – English and French. Road signs in Ontario are in two languages as per book, and in Quebec in one only.
Why? “Because we’re French.” Of course there are people in Canada who speak English and French – they’re called flight attendants. Which means that to the safety instructions on the plane you have to listen twice. My favorite one is how to unbuckle your safety belt. Everyone who’s been in a car since the 60’s knows it by heart, but they need to show you again. “What a surprise ma’am – I though that if I can get a good bite on the fabric, I could chew my way through”. Quebec and Alberta also differ, and it is Alberta that mostly pays for Quebec lavish benefits, which is one reason they’re in the mood of separating. But for real effect try opposites like Quebec and Texas. A colleague of mine used to drive heavy trucks all over North America until he retired and is now mostly hunting moose and deer in the North, other game depending on the season. He told me a story about a trucker from Texas, who got into a heated argument with a French officer at a weight control station on the border of Quebec. Finally the Texan had enough, reached under the seat, grabbed a gun and resolved the argument the quick way. The station was closed several months for investigation. Speaking of hunters, moose-hunting season in Ontario starts late October, and to be allowed to shot, one needs to obtain a permit, or tag, as they call it. It is pricey and regulated. The moose is a huge animal, it could be over 3m in height and close to 1000kg in weight. And they’re black in color, I saw some myself. I’ve never hit one on the motorcycle riding through the Algonquin National Park, which is the size of Belgium. There are signs remaining you to get gasoline to make it to the other side. I rode through it a few times, hoping my loud exhaust scared everything around. Lucky me. I asked the man how do you shot a moose from a distance. “You need to lead the target,” he said “ahead one full-moose length and about two feet over his back to adjust for bullet trajectory dropping. A strong grip on the rifle is essential, and then you softly touch off a shot.” Hunting is a social event, once you have the tag, you make plans with your buddies to go up North for an adventure, organize the RV’s (campers) and wait for the big day to go. So, my colleague, the ex-trucker, did just that. They set up camp in the wilderness, planning for a week stay, and when the morning came they were ready in camouflage clothes and with loaded rifles. The season started at 7:00am that day and some unlucky moose showed up about 20 minutes later. They shoot it, and then realized – “what do we do with the rest of the time?” There is more to this story – this guy left the camp on a quad to get some supplies, but it was getting dark fast and he got lost in the forest. He spent the night sitting by a tree with the riffle on his lap, wolfs howling all around him. He told me later – “I was never so scared in my life”. Lumberjacks found him in the morning, exhausted from cold but alive, so his overnight prayers to Jesus were answered. As an aside, I think Jesus taught every writer how to get attention of the audience early in the text. Cohen called him “the little Jew who wrote the bible”. His first miracle was the transformation of water into wine at the wedding at Cana (gospel of John) and it was a very right concept. If he did it the other way around, they would chase him through the desert without mercy.
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I turned forty, and this must be like, 11 years ago. Time has accelerated after that event and years are flying by.
I feel better than ever, maybe because the best of me is gone and I am reducing my expectations. But, there's a desire living deep in my soul that still got a purpose to serve. The Americans in the South call it “the last rodeo”. Back to present happenings. Chinese exports in December jumped a whopping 18.1% compared with the same month a year earlier. China’s trade surplus rose to a record $78.18 billion. The surge in foreign purchases of medical supplies and work-from-home gear, particularly consumer electronics and other home office supplies, during the pandemic is the primary cause. So there are winners and losers as the result of this covid scandal. Looking at other winners - in the old era we had the aristocracy, the military aristocracy to be precise, which now has ben replaced by the tech oligarchs like Gates and Zuckerberg. They have been consolidating power at an incredible rate and the background of it is ridiculous. These are high school dropouts, who are now experts on disease and population control. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world as of now, but we have no power grid capacity anywhere to support any meaningful number of the type of cars he is producing. His SpaceX program tells me that we’ll soon live on Mars. Why, actually? We are not replacing ourselves as humans on earth; there are less of us year after year. What is the hurry? Isn’t it a beautiful planet? Just take better care of it. Amazon business model requires a trip of a truck to every single customer with a package. Show me something more insane outside of the porn industry. And the oligarchs target the emission levels. Fun times. Sometimes you don’t understand what’s happening and so you have to go quiet and deeper until you come up with an idea. And I did, reached a resolution, small but still. Here it is - instead of using the word “insane” I will from now on say, “loosely correlated with a deeper sense of purpose.” This is me being politically correct. The Catholic Church used to enforce orthodoxy on the society to control it. And with age I learned to replace the word “control” with “unify”. The faith is a huge factor in keeping a nation together. The difference to the media message is this - two thousand years of refined wisdom versus “what do we do this afternoon?” Problem is, the church influence is fading away. The current Pope sounds like a communist. If there was a time machine, they should transfer him to 1970’s Poland. He would feel right at home. Jesuits now go communist, and I was hopping they’ll be the ones holding the flame. They were supporting the Argentinian regime when the army was throwing people from helicopters deep out in the ocean. Anyways, the capitalist order and the religious order have been replaced in a way that doesn’t impress me. There is a powerful social pressure for political correctness. God, don't let me lose my nerve. I mostly watch stand up comedy these days, it relaxes me. Try John Wing or Derek Edwards, both Canadians. I borrowed so much material from these guys, if they ever find out I will have to hide in the forests up North, and if I don’t want to be found, nobody ever will. I had to cut my Caribbean vacation a little short, as they introduced new restrictions down there coming in effect end of the week. Specifically, mandatory covid testing before getting on the plane back home, and it costs $75, each attempt.
Now, this amount goes a long way in the south, plus the resort is half empty and I’m a good paying client, so it’s hard to see their incentive to let me out. I could be testing positive for weeks. The curfew there starts at noon, so if you want to play golf, you have to wake up early and be fast. I did catch one the last planes out, otherwise next time you’d see me I’d be really tanned. Looking at the big picture worldwide, things seem a little liquid these days, and economic dysfunction will remain the driver of 2021 as it arises from a shift in the pattern of economic behaviour. People will limit spending and conserve cash, companies too. Okay, nothing new, as the song by INXS goes – “the reasons why you live keep changing.” It is important to remember that national power is not a matter of perception. It rests on the realities of geography, economics and military power. These are deeply grounded and minimally changed by internal social and political stresses. The underlying power remains in place and a year is a short time in history - the system itself remains intact. Washington is now engaged in a massive redefinition of its foreign policy, moving from global engagement to selective engagement in both - its military and economic actions. U.S. policy toward China and the Middle East reflects this. With the former, the U.S. is limiting its economic exposure; with the latter, it is limiting its military exposure. This will not change under Joe Biden. However, given the dramatic actions around the election results and accusations of fraud, it will be important how and where the capital will move now. Will the Dow still rise, as the capital will park for safety? If you manage a trillion dollar fund, or even a half of it, you are sensitive to changes. In Europe, the status quo will be as strong as ever, even though they’re moving towards socialism full speed. The bond market has been destroyed (ECB owns 40% of it, because there is no bid otherwise) and blue chips stock markets are increasingly owned by them too. Fissures within the EU were on full display in 2020, and yet institutionally the EU remained intact. The covid scandal is just a sideshow, but it sure helped to quiet the nationalist movements on the continent. The issue as I see it, is that there is a gap in the thinking process between the elites and the population and it is anyone’s guess how this is going to develop. Most people know what to show and what to conceal, but only to a point. We had a saying back in the day – “never show your first emotions, because they’re real.” Again – to a point. Conflicts start when people lose something. Good thing is, the music is getting better and better. It was like this during the Vietnam war, the golden era of great bands and great songs, my opinion. We lost the war, by the way. So, play that funky music white boy. Play it 'til you die. This title is attributed to Yogi Berra, the famous baseball talent and New York Yankees Hall of Famer.
It fits well into where we’re going now and let me explain why. I will start from the background. I was born and raised in a communist country with total government control; they used police and army to suppress people. All media was censored and we had two channels on TV, the second was a little fuzzy. Education was good, arts too. I hope you can sense that when you read me. We now have more advanced tools for controlling the population, more channels for once, the media is talking endlessly about the current health thread and the governments are imposing huge fines for not following the current set of restrictions. That, plus constant confusion and rules that are changing, mostly with logic that is hard to follow. The important thing that is missing here is any hard scientific proof that there is a danger out there. Or even a logical explanation what are we measuring the current “pandemic” scale against. It is all vague, like watching Donald Rumsfeld back in the day coming out and saying with a straight face – “I don’t know what, I don’t when, but something terrible is going to happen. Thank you all, no further questions.” Claims that there is no space in hospital and people are treated outside in ambulances is all propaganda. In the UK a woman went to hospital to see if the claims are real. She took pictures and was arrested. You don’t arrest someone for taking pictures unless you are hiding something. The walk-in clinic around the corner from my house is painfully empty. But, here is a hint of what may be coming to the neighborhood near you: The Washington DC (city) just passed a bill that allows the government to vaccinate your children without either the knowledge or consent of the parents. And this with vaccination that was not properly tested, because it couldn’t possibly be in this short time. I don’t know who is pushing this covid scandal, but someone is. Or, as we used to say back in Europe “if I didn’t know its stupidity, I would think it’s a conspiracy.” I would add peer pressure to it – if a prime minister of the next province in Canada is introducing new restrictions, I don’t want to be seen delinquent because it will cost me in the political career. So I will outdo him big time. That’s how the political machine feeds it self. Thing is, ordinary people suffer and many take it hard - seems like the winners are the alcohol and cannabis industries. The construction industry will have a good run, as office spaces and shopping malls are converted into apartments. Alternatively you could go to anger management class, but if you like me, you’ll realize that you not that angry, which I find funny. Every crisis, fake or not, creates opportunities. Kids started asking questions that are tough to answer like, “if humans evolved from monkeys and apes, why there are still monkeys and apes, dad?” “Don’t know, kid, we may have to redo the whole evolution theory but it won’t be me.” In closing - 2020 was strange year, but I closed my trade. The book is square. I am on vacation now; it rains at nights and sun is straight and hot in the day. That’s about the best combination you can ask for. Add to this golf games with the ocean view. If they’ll shut down the airline traffic I will have little trouble working from here. Now, here is for better 2021. Even if, the future ain’t what it used to be. An example of it is this - you can’t fix the value of money to gold and allow everything else to float at the same time, which was the idea championed by John Maynard Keynes, the British economist and Cambridge university professor who looked like an NFL coach about to be fired.
To his credit, late in life he admitted that it was all a mistake. Today there is an army of advisors telling you to buy gold because it will go up a lot, like to the moon very soon, 20K an ounce at least. The real question is – where will everything else be? A Porsche 911 was about $28,000 back in the 80’s, $25,000 if you got a deal, and real estate was a fraction of what it is now. Gold’s price rise didn’t outnumber the other assets in the slightest. Meaning, the gold promoters don’t understand the concept of money. Well, I do, and I have put a lot of work into understanding it. Money is a mental concept, has very little to do with what’s backing it up. Now, skipping forward, the government’s management of this covid crisis is like “Dumb and Dumber” movie, and it really bothers me. “What’s going on?” “We don’t really know” Which is the worst possible answer. “We shut down the economy just in case.” Sure, ruin people’s lifes some more. The money hoarding by the population is the problem that makes inflation impossible, which is crucial to get the governments debts go away, so the question is this – how do you move the money back to the banks? The government wants it in the banking system, so they can keep making loans and multiply it causing inflation. The commercial banks multiply money, that's how inflation happens. Answer is – go all digital, way easier to control the flow of capital. Inflation is what everyone wants, we just can’t get it. Reason being – people would spend now if they think that the prices are going up. Do you see this trend around you? Are the car deals going up or down? Switching pace, dr. Fauci of the Center of disease (CDC) “fame” just asked Americans to cancel Christmas. He said, “…it’s just one of those things you’re going to have to accept.” He wants all Americans to “painfully” isolate. First, not just no. But “HELL NO.” This is America. This is a free country. If we want to celebrate Christmas, we will. If we want to go to church, we will. If we want to spend the holidays with our children. we will. We’re adults. We make our own decisions. This isn’t a Nanny State. It’s not the old Soviet Union. It’s not Nazi Germany. We don’t need government bureaucrats telling us what to do, how to live our lifes, or how to spend the holidays. Second, Fauci is a typical Ivy League egghead. Too smart for your own good. You have IQ, but clearly no common sense. The thing that would be proper is that the governments should advise the public about the health thread and suggest ways to keep safe. But the clerks have no business in closing firms and imposing lockdowns. It makes me miss simpler times, Like, back in the day I was boxing hard in this police club in a city in the west of Poland, and I would show up beaten up after Friday’s evening fights and my wife would say -“you look like shit.” “You should see the other guys.” I worked for at least two remarkable men and I don’t know if they picked me or I picked them.
I have the talent to pay attention to people who have original things to say that stay with me for life. These two talents actually overlap. For my first important job I was hired in a firm in the south of Ontario. The city was Guelph, and as the story went it was where the mafia bosses retired back in the day. Also, it had very good restaurants and the town was kept very peaceful. I was hired by a Polish guy who came from the Tatra Mountains in the south of Poland. The town he came from is called Zakopane, and it’s as beautiful as you can possibly imagine. I also knew a woman from there, way older then me, she died a while ago in Toronto, I was there at the funeral mass, I liked her a lot so I went. She liked to stop at my office years ago to talk. She told me that she had guns from her father from world war 2, and I asked her what she did with them. “I buried them with him. The casket was very heavy.” So this man, my first boss, came to Canada way before me and I don’t know where he is now, sadly. I wish I knew. I don’t even know what his real first name is, like you don’t know what is mine. You couldn’t pronounce his last name, so I spare you the trouble. The company was later sold to GE and he got a bundle of money in a big payout. He was one of the people who have the engine going inside them that never stops. Always on the hunt. During the job interview he asked me one question and I answered it right, and he said “you got the job”. The question was – “can you be creative?” Not just talking, but doing. By now I wrote a book and about 150 weekly essays on various topics, so I’d say he got a good feeling about me. Back then the company in Ontario was really happening – we were the supplier of choice to Intel in the Tech Valley at the hight of the Internet bubble. That, and IBM in upstate New York, and whoever was making microchips in Malaysia or Taiwan. Israel was a big client too. There was noting better in the business world back then and I was the guy handling these accounts. Like, getting 40 e-mails during the lunchtime when I was out but I was doing it. I had a guy working for me and he came from Cairo, Egypt. His family had a business manufacturing car parts, about 100 people employed. Then his father had some love affairs, the money was lost and everyone emigrated somewhere. Things happen, and the man now runs a gas station in Milton, Ontario and I get a free car wash every time I show up. The other boss thought me that in life you give and you get, meaning things need to balance. I lived through the biggest expansion of pharma business in Toronto and then in the South-East US, where we built a plant. I will remember him from this statement - "I can't be more serious without a gun in my hand". I still like it. I don’t scare easily, which is why the covid scandal hardly makes an impression on me. I miss the old times; when we actually could see expressions on people’s faces and don’t avoid each other in the stores, keeping distance. That, plus I hate when the airport is full of dogs. My region, which is called York, is closing businesses by Monday midnight. Like, all of them. I have prepared and planned ahead, so I got a haircut, and then I got a second haircut to fix the first one. Now I'm looking forward to the Christmas vacation, I will go down to the Caribbean and stay there for a couple of weeks. The wife bought some nice bikinis. I told her - if you’re trying to make an impression, now is the time. Health Canada just approved covid vaccine that will be rolled out by mid December to a great fanfare. And this is a Pfizer product, rushed through the approval process at a lighting speed.
HC and FDA have been very accommodative here. I guess some people don’t have a good feeling about the way it went, so Pfizer is planning three post-authorization surveillance studies. This is like a car company bringing a new model to the market and announcing that it will complete crash studies later. This is likely the biggest money grab...., sorry, medical advancement in history. I was always of the opinion – protect the fragile and let other people’s immune system handle it. Immune systems evolve because they’re created to handle viruses that evolve. Especially in children and young people. Canada just secured supplies of the new vaccine, so prepare to write cheques with lots of zeros Mr. Trudeau. The good thing is that the grim daily messages will likely end. But some of it was actually fun. Like, Justin Trudeau in a daily communiqué from the front of his headquarters said: “I don’t want to be here this morning, you don’t want me to be here this morning, but here we go again.” Did we just have a one-night stand with the prime minister? Truth is – the more people get tested, the more cases are discovered, which doesn’t necessary mean that they all are harmful to anyone. We’re barking the wrong tree. There is a lot of money in it for testing and vaccination; there is also a lot of political weight. I haven’t seen any figures and likely never will, but its taxpayer’s money. So, the case for the pandemic is weak and the costs are huge, which means somebody is getting shafted. Take a wild guess who. The covid protocols are as clear as mud. For example – restaurants in Toronto are closed for sitting in, but they’re open in Niagara Falls (1.5hr drive). Imagine the traffic from Toronto to the Falls on a Saturday afternoon for a dinner. I’ve been there and I know, and try to explain it to your kid, who is too bright for his own good. My favorite one is this – how can you specify the distancing without specifying the mask? The whole spectacle puts in question the government’s competency, and is a part of a bigger issue because public’s trust is being shaken, be it in political, healthcare or monetary policy. Slow process, but a process. And these are the institutions that traditionally keep the nation together. There is a breakdown that troubles me and it’s a lot to undo and make better. To be clear, I never believed in conspiracy theories, which would imply that there is bunch of ladies and men just hatching vicious schemes that persist through time. Completely impossible. Two things I believe in are these – if there is a potential event that will benefit several big stakeholders, it will happen. The rest you leave to the crowd behavior and peer pressure for reaction. Add intensive media coverage and it is happening. Sad, but true. That’s Latin for “always faithful”.
Faithful to the basic rules, meaning simple and clear way of living, and lately things are getting in the way of that. This past year the public is being bombarded with lessons in power and control that have been forgotten for years. Here is the first lesson of power: societies can be influenced with delusions that the bad times are here, and that governments will keep them safe. The second lesson of power is that people seeking power only need to create the illusion of mass consent. Control is usually achieved passively without force. So, where are we now? It seems that the goal of the Great Reset involves reducing US power and moving the center of western power back to Europe. The US strategic play from the beginning was to curtail the UN and disengage the U.S. from all of the post-WWII institutions. On the other side of the barricade, to achieve supremacy the EU needs to have a budget and mechanism in place where the Commission has tax/spend and debt issuance capability. They don’t have it yet and it has been a major flaw of the system, so something had to be done. The USA have it from the beginning, meaning that issuance of money can only be backed by federal debt, so finances of the states don’t really matter – it’s their own affair. The USA doesn’t need to argue with the single states. That’s a huge difference. The EU constantly gets into arguments with member states over debt issuance, meaning budget deficit, and this is not a way to run a business, I’m sorry – a Union. Brexit signaled to the rest of Europe that no longer do you have to take the diktats of unelected technocrats if you don’t want to. This is why the fiction of the Second Wave of the Coronapocalypse persists all across the continent. Germany, France, Spain and other countries are implementing the worst kind of draconian lockdowns on people hanging on by a thread while the clerks in Brussels scheme as to how best continue advancing their plans for a future of the EU corporatocracy. These lockdowns have little to do with public health. They have everything to do with maintaining the political health of the current ruling bureaucrats. Here in Canada, the propaganda machine is aligned with the rest of the world to the extend that scares me. It’s impossible that everybody in the media is of the same opinion, but they seem to be. On a lighter note - our previous prime minister couldn’t smile for the life of him and now we have one that just can’t stop. And he talks about the “great reset” too. To be fair - it’s not necessarily a bad thing depending what this means exactly. He likely doesn’t know himself yet. Ottawa, where the government is, spreads between Ontario and Quebec, which is the only place to post minimum speed on the highway, that I know of. "No matter the weather, rain, snow or ice you keep your car over 60." Switching pace, working from home I pay more attention to little things, like for example - isn’t it kind of strange that all the men’s underwear has another man name on it? Tommy Hilfiger, Joe Boxer, Ralph Lauren? Personally I am a Calvin Klein guy. I also learned to never interrupt my wife, because if I do, she will start all over again and it will just prolong the argument. On a second thought, that’s okay, we have all the time in the world. The days are rainy and dark, but this feels natural to me, which proves that I’m a man from the North.
North-East of Europe precisely, with my heavy accent that I will never loose – you know, like in: “my English better today…” Strangely, with time I like the winter more and more, although I can’t ski for the life of me and I used to be really good at that - like double black diamond ski slopes fast good. Now, you don’t want to watch me try it anymore - after a trip to Zermatt with my boys I decided to put the skiing equipment away for good. Moving forward. Living by myself in Suisse for a long time I wouldn’t turn on the TV for weeks. In Canada quite often I’m forced to (its called wife in the room) and in the process I have gathered better understanding how the media machine works. Forget the news, they’re focused on criminal affairs, covid and politics, so nothing really impacting the viewers in the immediate future. Important part is that the people delivering the news are perceived as having the prestige, be it success in business, rewards for whatever and they look good. Then you have the talk shows, which are really the opinion makers; this is where the wood hits the ball. This is where the message to the watching public is sent. Not that I care, I always thought that to understand what is going on in the world you need to read books, not watch TV. I make one exception – the South American women weather forecasters on TV, starting from Mexico down, make me not to notice the temperature numbers on the screen behind. What did you just say, lady? Rain or sunshine tomorrow? Got distracted by the looks. And there is the ridiculous news coming in, that makes life fun, like – John Kerry, the Davos climate czar, is a guy with six houses, 12 cars, 2 yachts and a private jet and he is lecturing people to take a bus to stop pollution. Good news is, according to NASA the CO2 levels in the atmosphere haven’t changed since the measurements historically began, so we’re likely okay and the whole emission debacle is pointless. The planet will take care of itself, we’re only passing by, don’t think too much of yourself. One word about the elections in the US at the end. I’m starting to think I got it wrong all along. What if the “deep state” (government administration, who are in their jobs 30 – 35 years, versus the president a fraction of it) supported the election of president Trump to his surprise. I think he was shocked to be elected. He was just marketing himself, like in the TV show of his. You need to have a fall guy for the great reset in the society and they got one just in time. A story about Elon Musk is making rounds, him being tested for covid four times during the day, same testing kits, same personnel, and two of these tests came positive and two negative. It would take a lot to unpack this story, but I will focus on one aspect only – how could Pfizer recently announce positive results from phase 3 clinical trial for the vaccine if its impossible to say who is sick and who is not.
Naturally, Pfizer’s stock jumped up on the news and the CEO unloaded his shares immediately. Guess his trust in the product had some limitations. Now, bear with me for a moment as I go scientific - positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the better part of 2020. This, despite the fact that PCR tests cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones. Hear that? Restaurant owners, hotel guys, airlines, cruise ship companies? The inventor of the PCR test, the late Kary Mullis, stressed that this test should not be used as a diagnostic tool for the reason that it’s incapable of diagnosing disease. A person is only infectious if the virus is replicating, as long as the virus is inactive, it’s completely harmless both to the host and others. So, a number of scientists are saying that what we have is not a COVID-19 pandemic but a PCR test pandemic. Which brings up the logical question – why do we need a test that doesn’t tell us anything important, really. But that’s an engineer speaking. Fact is, we have a huge drop in flu cases, so we’re likely confusing these two. Government payments for anything covid sure help the charade. Let’s keep it simple. Health authorities recommend that you wash your hands often and vigorously, like after chopping jalapeños, and they don’t want to discourage sex, but they want to remind you that the safest sex partner is always yourself. Happy winter, everybody. On a more serious note, gun sales are through the roof, did you know that? And ammo is on back orders. What does it say about people’s trust in the government to keep order in the society? And there are solid reasons for the distrust, like the action of the Swiss health economist Willy Oggier, who proposed to register the names of Covid-19 skeptics and if they are infected with the virus not to grant them a bed in hospital. Just one example what idiots walk the earth. News TV are not consistent and the message is not clear. I’ve been through this spectacle before, back when the communism was folding. You simply didn’t know what is coming next. It is impossible to trust the news, because they make little sense. It's as clear as day - that is why a man walks into a gun store and buys a Desert Eagle, he needs to protect family from the craziness. I think I’m about done commenting on the world affairs. Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, said - when you get to my age, and if you do, you will realize that life is not over, but the story is. |
AuthorTom Kubiak is the author of The Traveler Archives
January 2021
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