They manage our diseases. Cures are up to us. Plans B, C and D involve Spanish

20240416

The people who have taken over management of this world’s infectious diseases (viz, Bill Gates, the WEF) keep telling us that there will be another deadly respiratory bug coming sometime. How do they know? I suspect it is sitting in somebody's laboratory already.

While our family still has a bunch of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin left over, it would probably be prudent to buy even more while we can.  Another measure, proposed by Dr. Mercola, sounds a little bit off the wall.  He writes that inhaling a mist of highly dilute hydrogen peroxide from a nebulizer will ward off respiratory viruses of any sort by oxidizing the virus before it can multiply. The idea is not totally without precedent. Many doctors, including Peter McCullough, have recommended rinsing your nose with diluted Betadine for the same purpose. I had respiratory diseases off on throughout last winter. Whether to protect myself from the next plandemic or just seasonal colds it probably makes sense to invest $40 in a nebulizer and a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

In horse dewormer news, fenbendazole is getting a lot of press as a cancer fighting agent.  Sadly for the pharmaceutical industry, like ivermectin it is dirt cheap as a veterinary medicine.  However, the geniuses at Pfizer and all at work finding ways to create closely related, very expensive drugs that have the same effect.  Researchers  are also having quite a bit of success fighting cancer with monoclonal antibodies.  Unlike traditional cancer therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy, these seem to enjoy a high success rate. 

My approach to cancer is not to tempt fate. I eat right and exercise.  However there is a chance that my past sins – alcohol until two years ago, tobacco until I figured out in 1963, six months before the Surgeon General, that it was killing me  – or simply bad luck could catch up with me.  If they do, my contempt for big pharma is such that it would give me pleasure to use a veterinary medication if it is not yet being sold for human consumption.

Big-city, East Coast, gay Andrew Sullivan writes very perceptively about life in the United States.  In this piece he laments that big pharma is working to convince people who are just plain gay that they are actually transsexual.  Why?  The money!  A transsexual is a lifelong (however short said life may be) meal ticket for big pharma, plastic surgeons and others in on the game.  I can't imagine anything more evil.  In my opinion, perhaps not shared by Sullivan, such people might have responded to societal inducements even in deciding they were gay.  In a related note, Michael Nehls and others hypothesize that vaccine injured people are more likely to make that decision.  It all works together.  In any case, it looks like big pharma is taking advantage of the gays once again, like they did with AIDS.  Read Celia Farber and Randy Shilts for that story.

The war is grinding on slowly. Without adequate support from the West, Ukraine is gradually giving up ground all along the front lines. It is grudgingly conceded, and Ukraine exacts a high price on Russia in terms of lost personnel and equipment. It remains incomprehensible to me how Russia rationalizes these losses. Whatever territory they win will be substantially useless. All of the buildings are destroyed and the agricultural land full of unexploded ordnance. Russia is sacrificing an entire generation of young men. It appears that Slavic majority (about 80% by head count, far less by geography) which had been quite willing to sacrifice non-Slavic lives earlier in the war is having to put more of their own men on the line.

Unless the tempo of the war changes dramatically, it will be a long time before Kyiv itself is threatened. On the other hand, Russia's recent wave of attacks against our power generation infrastructure appear to have been effective. We simply do not have the patriot missiles we would need to shoot down ballistic missiles attacking the infrastructure. There are already predictions that it will be another cold winter.  Our family has time enough to prepare. We need to get some more bottled gas and buy the heating element that goes with it. We should also buy another uninterrupted power supply, this time with a battery that will support the Internet for several hours.

We have of course given some thought to where we would go if forced to leave Ukraine.  Many factors would be involved: education for the children,  physical safety, freedom from the dictates of the new world order (vaccine passports, freedom of speech, etc.), climate, cost of living, quality of marriage partners for the children… The most obvious would be a neighboring country in Eastern Europe.  They are, however, already overrun with Ukrainian refugees.  Being in the EU, things are expensive relative to Ukraine, and there are language barriers to overcome – relatively small with Polish, much more with Hungarian, for instance.  An Internet search does not reveal any top-rated universities in Eastern Europe.  On the other hand, taking into account my disdain for those expensive, woke disasters that do place close to the top, such as my own UC Berkeley, I can ask, "So what?”

Latin America has long fascinated me. My former family vacationed several times in Costa Rica. I worked in Argentina for six months in 1980 and traveled through its northeastern provinces in 2006 for a graduate course anthropology course entitled The Jewish History of Argentina.  That was an interesting experience in two ways. The previous link is to the account I kept of our travels, the only written work that the course required. Its focus was Jews and Argentina. The second, and perhaps most fascinating aspect of the trip was interacting with my fellow students, all of whom were college-age women. I recently gave this Toastmasters speech about their attitudes toward me and men in general. It validated everything I read in books such as No Campus for White Men. This trip gave me assurance that getting divorced later that year was the right move, and that putting a lot of distance between me and the United States was also a good move.

Costa Rica is the most beautiful country I have ever visited, with spectacular beaches, amazing wildlife, volcanoes, waterfalls, orchid filled jungles and such. The population is mostly mestizo, though with a significantly larger European admixture than neighboring Panama and Nicaragua. The country is safe and peaceful, with no standing army and relatively little crime. There are a lot of American retirees, as a consequence of which housing prices are relatively high. With its tropical location the temperatures often get into the 90s. Considering that Ukrainians complain about the heat when it gets over 75°, that could be a problem. So, whereas Costa Rica is a great place to vacation, and a place we could certainly live, for now it is plan D. Plan C is Uruguay.   

I loved Montevideo when I visited for a weekend in 1980 when I was working in Buenos Aires. It has a very European feel. The country was already at peace, the leftists Tupamaro guerrillas having been put down in the 1970s. It has enjoyed 45 years of tranquility since then, earning a reputation as the Switzerland of South America. It has lovely beaches. However, as with Costa Rica it is a retirement destination for Americans. It doesn't have any outstanding universities. Again, like Costa Rica, the people speak Spanish and only Spanish. Though Spanish is an easy language to learn, my kids would have no real advantage. Which brings me to plan B – Misiones Province, Costa Rica.

My 2006 anthropology course took us north from Buenos Aires along the Parana River separating Argentina from Paraguay, up to the spectacular Iguazu Falls, and down along the Uruguay River separating Misiones province from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. We spent a night at a community called Baja Alicia, in an oxbow of the Uruguay River. It was a German settlement, whose inhabitants had settled in Brazil in the 1920s and migrated across the river in the 1960s or so. They were a peaceful bunch just wanted to be left alone to farm, far away from governments of any form.

We were lucky to be there for a Saturday night dance. Our professor, Argentina-born Judith Freydenberg, is an outstanding dancer. I have always enjoyed dancing, and with me she must've considered she did better than pot luck. The two of us waltzed and tangoed while the young American women could do more than sit and watch. Ukraine is mentioned in this long description of our overnight stay there that I included in my journal.

Alicia

We first met with Luis, Rosa and their kids, Gisela, Adriana and  Mario.  About 17, 15 and 9.  Luis and Rosa live down the hill from Luis’ father, who moved into Alicia 42 years ago as a bachelor with just about nothing.  The land was empty and cheap.  Why he moved from Brazil is not clear.  Not enough land available (JF) It may have been merely the opportunity to occupy virgin land, but I had a sense that the German migration out of Brazil may have been done under some pressure. 

Alicia is a peninsula, by their reckoning, an oxbow of the Uruguay river with Brazil to the east, south and west. 

In any case, Luis’ father worked long enough to acquire a plot and sent for his bride.  They had five children and were able to give each of them their own “chacra,” or plot.  Luis started in 1998 with nothing but his plot (?? Earlier – his oldest child is 17.  Maybe 1988).  He now owns four “chacras,” a car and a truck.  His land is extensive.  What we saw of it must have run 100 acres or more.  Much of it was fallow.  That which was under cultivation was growing grapes, corn and tobacco.  Quite a bit was in pine.  The return on planting pine is quite good, but it takes twenty years or so before the harvest.  Luis is using the planting of pine as a kind of investment.  Many of his crops feed the family.  Tobacco is his cash crop, and pine is his money in the bank.  He had several fruit trees, among them avocado, pear and peach, around the house for their own consumption.  Other such trees we saw in the neighborhood included banana, papaya/mamon, mango, quince, asiego(?) palm, coconut and plum (?). 

The community of Alicia is quite close.  Almost all families own their own land.  They are family farms.  When asked, they said some families had hired hands, two at the most, and employed only for harvesting and maybe seeding. 

The people we met surprisingly often did not know where their German ancestors had come from.  Those that did cited Frankfurt and the Volga regions most often.  Most had emigrated to Brazil during the early 20^th century and to Argentina after the second War. 

The families were very similar to the  “Landwirts” I knew in Germany in the 1970s.  Careful with the management of the land, keeping enough diversity in their crops that they were not totally in hands of the caprices of markets and weather.  Foresighted, like Luis in planting pine now for future gains.  Good managers of time, in that they planted crops and managed livestock in such a way that there was productive work to be done at any time of day or year.  Good managers of their lives, in that they have no more children (2-4) than they can successfully raise and provide with a reasonable start in life.  Flexible and opportunistic, as were the Volga Germans when invited to take advantage of underutilized lands east of Germany. 

At lunch we met Luisa, the grande dame of the community, and her daughter Lucia.  Though both are married, their husbands were not as outgoing as the wives.  Luisa managed the kitchen in which they prepared chicken and spaghetti – rather more like egg noodles, actually – for us.  It was a simple and filling lunch, after which came the desserts.  These were really impressive.  Coco bread, quince bread, and some small white cakes with some kind of fruit.  I couldn’t figure out the composition.  Dried fruits?  Meringue?  Powdered sugar?  Those are all store-bought and don’t seem to quite match the item in question. 

Luisa and her husband “Schmidt” were glad for the opportunity to speak German.  They are concerned, rightly so, that the language is dying within their community.  Lucia, for example, doesn’t speak it.  Many more understand than will speak.  The Schmidts found to their surprise and horror that when they visited Germany and Switzerland as a group a few years ago that they were really missing a lot.  In our conversation we found our accents to be mutually understandable but we were each missing elements of  vocabulary that would have been immediately available to someone who used the language every day.  They are teaching a very quick grandson, Wilhelm/Guillermo some German, but he wasn’t confident enough to use it speaking to me.

The community lived, individually rather than corporately, in Brazil for two to four decades or more before re-emigrating to Argentina.  They are said to speak “Portuñol”, a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish.  To my ear there was much more of the Spanish.  Though many understand Portuguese, they have chosen one of their number, the community bachelor whose  name I don’t recall (Franco – JF), as their Portuguese teacher.  I attempted to engage him in Portuguese and felt that he was more comfortable in Spanish.  The problem could, of course, be with my Portuguese. 

Language is an important factor in cultural transmission, but my overall impression is that this community is more successful in passing their culture down to the children than the language.  In Alicia I didn’t see much evidence of marriage outside of  the German community, though elsewhere in Misiones it appears to be very widespread.  Maria Ana Kramer (daughter of Ana Gorosito) is studying the Basque language because she treasures her heritage.  I observed that at 6’ she is taller and blonder than, say, the average citizen of San Sebastian.  She said, well, there were some Germans, Ukrainians and others I don’t recall in the mixture.  Getting back to Alicia, I would guess that intermarriage is a matter of proximity and choosing somebody of similar values.  I would bet that the families would accept somebody from outside the German community, but they had better be hard working farmers.

Alicia is part of a broader community in central Misiones.  They host an annual music fest, attended last year by 1300 people.  Gisela took 3^rd prize in one adult category as an instrumentalist, Adriana 2^nd in singing(?) as an adolescent.  They dance at these big get-togethers, and also on Saturday nights in their own community.  They had a dance as we were there.  They danced quite a bit of corrido, a fast two-step.  There was a lively walz or two.  There was one that Carolina, our anthropologist, tried hard but with limited success to teach me, a kind of salsa: rock back and step to the side, then the other way.  Easy to describe, but internalizing the rhythm takes time.

The role of the dance in courtship seemed clear from a couple of things we saw.  There were some broom dances.  All pairs except one who starts with a broom as a partner.  Throw the broom in the air, and there is a scramble as everybody changes partners.  Young and old.  Great for getting the shy guys off the sidelines.  Second, a couple of men danced together, one with a shirt wrapped around his waist like a skirt, in a kind of burlesque.  He did a pretty good job with the burlesque.  It seemed to me (white space for anthropological comments follows) that this only reinforces sex roles and expectations.  The guys are clearly male, two of the more accomplished dancers we see that evening. 

I can imagine a young man’s excitement as he sees a cute girl from another community at one of the larger get-togethers, and how he invents excuses to get to other dances where he’ll see her again.  The opposite too, of course.  And I can imagine how one’s reputation precedes one in a community like this.   If you want to marry well, come from an established family and show your own talents for work, dance, singing and other culturally valued activities.

Church did not appear to be as central to their lives as I would have expected.  Nobody I heard spoke using terms of strong faith as would, say, American evangelicals.  They had a very popular pfarrer, sent from Germany (?) with his family a couple of years back.  His children, upon arrival, spoke only German.  Leaving for another posting after two years, Herr Schmidt relates, he had to ask them how they were three times before getting a hesitant answer in German.  They had become Argentine in that short time.

There is a new pfarrer, from Brazil, about whom they seem lukewarm.  The other guy was better.  We don’t know where the church is, physically (next to the meeting hall where we danced – JF), or how large a geography or congregation it serves (next one is 7km away, in El Soberbio, JF).  The graveyard we saw was a few miles from Alicia.  Church too?  JF adds that they are in talks to received 3 missionaries.

One member of the community,  Natalio, speaks good English.  He was educated by Englishmen in a private school in Buenos Aires.  His accent is quite English, indicating an early start and probable immersion at an early age.  He lives about 7 miles from Alicia.  Happy to join the gathering for  the evening.  I sense he is still a bit of an odd duck in the community, but valued nonetheless.  Recently widowed at 60, he spoke lovingly about his wife and his two daughters.  He was among the older guys at the dance who was more than happy that we had brought so many young women.  Natalio’s affected, somewhat effete manner aroused some comment among the girls.  One wonders.  We know about English boarding schools.  Is he a man who might have chosen the company of men had he been more free to do so?  Would he or society be better off if he had?  It’s an interesting traditional values question.  My private opinion is that he’s better off probably not having been put to the choice.  To my surprise, with no prompting from me I heard the same kind of sentiment from Ashley in a conversation earlier in the week.  I was surprised both that she would feel that way and that she would state it openly.  My own daughter, definitely hetero, is a member of the Gay-Lesbian-Bi-Trans group at high school and quite militant about people’s freedom to avoid being forced into sex roles. 

Natalio, Herr Schmidt and I talked about the poisons used in tobacco farming.  What they said echoed Gurillmo so closely that I wonder if, having been written, it hasn’t become kind of a community script.  They didn’t mention anybody that they knew personally being affected.  This community in particular has many options other than tobacco for cash income.  Pineapple apparently pays well, as do some citrus crops, and of course the pine.  We know that Alicia is atypical in that the people own their own land.  We know they consider their land to be rich.  It is quite plausible that these are problems that affect other groups more than this.

A little research shows that 9% of Misiones Province is of Ukrainian descent. They appear to be Western Ukrainians. The Greek Catholic Church, the episcopal seat of which is in Buenos Aires, has more parishes in small Misiones Province than any other. The center of Ukrainian settlement appears to be the second largest town, Obera, between the rivers and about 60 km from Baja Alicia, where we stayed.

So why is this elevated to plan B? Living in a place like Misiones would give the kids some roots. Given the enthusiasm with which I was greeted as a German speaker in Baja Alicia, my guess is that they would be welcomed into the Ukrainian community for their knowledge of the language. Oksana, as a teacher of Ukrainian songs and culture, would surely be welcomed. My guess is we would find a home in one of the parish churches, where I could converse in Spanish and they in Ukrainian as they learn Spanish.

Life there would certainly be cheap enough. There will always be enough to eat – it is a rich agricultural country. I can imagine that the children would be as likely to find suitable marriage partners there as any place. The downside would be education. The schools cannot be very outstanding. The kids would wind up with a mixture of public and home schooling. They would have to go away for university. There are good ones in Buenos Aires. Surprisingly, almost all of the top-rated South American universities are in Brazil, several in Rio Grande do Sul, right across the river, the most European of the Brazilian states. That would mean yet another language! However, Brazilian is structurally similar to Spanish and by virtue of the proximity to Brazil would be pretty easy to learn.

I am quite sure nothing will come of these pipedreams, but one should always have a Plan B. Researching it has been an interesting task.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the kids are well situated with regard to school, friends and society. This would be a hard place to give up.

Graham