TBR News March 8, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. March 8, 2020:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for March 8 2020 :”Here we have a selection of the rigged hysteria of the media concerning the hopped-up coronavirus
• U.S. airport screeners, health workers plagued by fear and anger as coronavirus spreads
• U.S. death toll from coronavirus hits 19, New York declares emergency
• U.S. says it is tracking ship that may have shared crew with coronavirus-hit cruise liner. Ship may be sunk without notice
• Italy orders lockdown of rich north
• Number of UK coronavirus cases rises to 18
• Florida officials announce two deaths, the first on the east coast
• US has at least 400 confirmed cases of coronavirus; 60 already shot
• Coronavirus: quarter of Italy’s population put in quarantine as virus reaches Washington DC
• Giuseppe Conte signs decree early on Sunday after 1,200 cases confirmed in 24 hours
• Leaked coronavirus plan to quarantine or imprison 16m sparks chaos in Italy
• Thousands tried to flee south in Texas after Trump decree to confine people until 3 April was revealed
• Coronavirus spreads to pigeons; tens of thousands of dead birds cover New York streets, in places five feet deep
• Two coronavirus deaths in Michagan begin reign of terror as Health Police gun down children in schools across the state
• One coronavirus death in Argentina leads to race war and thousands of deaths
• Greece depopulated as entire country flees to Malta because of coronavirus
• On Trump’s order, US Coast Guard sinks cruise ship off Miami with 5,000 passegers because coronavirus suspected among crew.

Comment: Do we need to say more? No…. But we need to ask two questions: (1) Who started this virus outbreak and who is behind the bullshit hysteria everywhere, all over the world? and (2) What exactly, or what range of effects, do they hope to achieve?
That the coronavirus is a light-weight type of flu is beyond a doubt and that the death tolls are remarkably low is also beyond doubt. An American governmental study, highly classified, on the subject under date of March 5, states that this entire scare scenario is a ploy on the part of the PRC to teach Trump an object lesson.
Trump slapped sanctions and tariffs on China, threatened them and often changed his mind.
The Chinese, who now manufacture many vital parts for the world’s electronic, aircraft and other industries, simply took a normal “bird flu” type of disease and used it as a believable excuse for shutting down her factories and stopping the production of vitally important products, the absence of which is now causing havoc in the world’s manufacturing businesses.
When these entities realize that this slow-down in their business is solely due to Trump’s irrational bombast, threats and disruptions, he will receive enormous pressure to behave himself.
Trump’s emotional makeup is such that he will fly into a rage if anyone dares to question him and will then return to his intial errors and increase them.
The Chinese are very subtle but Trump is not.
Eventually, the world’s power brokers will decide that Trump needs to depart the White House one way or the other and when, not if, this happens, peace will reign again in the world’s marketplace

The Table of Contents
• COVID-19 Coronavirus: A Fake Pandemic? Who’s Behind It? Global Economic, Social and Geopolitical Destabilization
• How to stop your smart home spying on you
• Who Controls the American Media?
• US to support new Israeli Temple
• We shouldn’t have to pay for Jack Dorsey’s $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea
• The Season of Evil
• Encyclopedia of American Loons

COVID-19 Coronavirus: A Fake Pandemic? Who’s Behind It? Global Economic, Social and Geopolitical Destabilization
March 1, 2020
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research,
The media hype and disinformation campaign regarding the spread of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus have created a Worldwide atmosphere of fear and uncertainty following the launching of a global public health emergency by the WHO on January 30th.
The fear campaign is ongoing. Panic and uncertainty. National governments and the WHO are misleading the public.
“About 84,000 people in at least 56 countries have been infected, and about 2,900 have died” says the New York Times. What they fail to mention is that 98% of those cases of infection are in Mainland China. There are less than 5000 confirmed cases outside China. (WHO, February 28, 2020)
While COVID-19 is a matter of Public Health concern, at the moment, there is no real pandemic outside Mainland China. Look at the figures.
At the time of writing, the number of “confirmed cases” in the US was 64.
A low number and the media is spreading panic.
Meanwhile, there are 15 Million Cases of Influenza in the USA.
The latest FluView surveillance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that as of January 18, 2020, there have been 15 million cases of flu, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8200 deaths in the US this influenza season. (emphasis added)
Data on the COVID-19 pandemic:
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on February 28, 2020 83,652 confirmed cases of COV-19 of which 78,961 are in Mainland China. Outside China, there are 4691 “confirmed cases” (WHO, February 28, 2020, See table on right).
The WHO has also reported 2,791 deaths of which only 67 have occurred outside Mainland China.
These figures confirm that the pandemic is largely limited to Mainland China.
Moreover, recent data suggests that the epidemic in China is firmly under control. On February 21, 2020, China’s National Health Commission reported that 36.157 patients were designated as cured and discharged from hospital. (see graph below).
Chinese reports confirm that people have received treatment and are recovering from the virus infection. Concurrently, the number of infected patients is declining.
According to the National Medical Products Administration of China, hospitals are using Favilavir, an anti-viral drug, “as a treatment for coronavirus with minimal side effects”.
Lets Crunch the Numbers
The World Population is of the order of 7.8 billion.
The population of China is of the order of 1.4 billion.
The World population minus China is of the order of 6.4 billion.
4691 confirmed cases and 67 reported deaths (outside China) out of a population of 6.4 billion does not constitute a pandemic. 4691/6,4oo,ooo,ooo =0.00000073 = 0.000073 %
64 cases in the US which has a population of approximately 330 million is not a pandemic. (Feb 28 data): 64/330,000,000 = 0.00000019 = 0.000019 %

How to stop your smart home spying on you
Everything in your smart home, from the lightbulbs to the thermostat, could be recording you or collecting data about you. What can you do to curb this intrusion?
March 8, 2020
by Davey Winder
The Guardian
During an interview with the BBC last year, Google’s senior vice-president for devices and services, Rick Osterloh, pondered whether a homeowner should disclose the presence of smart home devices to guests. “I would, and do, when someone enters into my home,” he said.
When your central heating thermostat asks for your phone number, your TV knows what you like to watch and hackers can install spyware in your home through a lightbulb security flaw, perhaps it’s time we all started taking smart home privacy issues more seriously. Just this week the National Cyber Security Centre issued a warning to owners of smart cameras and baby monitors to review their security settings.
You can get a quick overview of privacy options for many smart home devices using the Mozilla “*privacy not included” guide; however if you’ve already invested in particular technology, all is not lost. A few configuration tweaks could help put you back in control when it comes to balancing device performance with data privacy (and they don’t involve wearing anything like the ludicrous-looking “bracelet of silence”, which jams smart device microphones, as recently demonstrated by a team from Chicago University).
Is your smart TV watching as you watch telly?
When the FBI, no less, warns users that their televisions could be listening to and watching them, maybe it’s time to reflect upon how dumb we are when it comes to smart TVs. Let’s face it, most of us buy a big TV with all the internet streaming and programme guide functionality we can afford and kick back in front of it. Beyond the initial tuning in of stations and maybe adjusting the colour to our taste, there’s not much configuration tweaking that goes on – which is a mistake when both privacy and security issues are in the picture. TVs nowadays connect to the internet, have web browsers, run apps, and can be controlled by your voice; automatic content recognition (ACR) watches what you see, from TV programmes to games, and the resulting data can target you for personalised advertising and produce viewing recommendations – often across various platforms. You probably agreed to ACR being used when you were setting up your new telly. To disable it – although this varies from TV to TV – head for the general or advanced settings and look for a “viewing information” or “viewing data” option. This will stop some “smart” things like recommendations, and even some voice activation functions, from working properly, so bear in mind that ACR data is anonymised before heading for the off button.
Reduce the smart speaker ‘threat surface’
Smart speakers and digital assistants come in many guises; what they all have in common is that, by necessity, they are always listening. Recent research suggests that 59% of smart speaker users have privacy concerns, with unwanted listening and data collection being front and centre.
Of course, only you can determine whether having a voice-controlled “Star Trek computer” in your home outweighs those privacy concerns. It is possible, however, to retain the smart performance while minimising the privacy “threat surface”. To prevent the Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant account holder from being able to view any requests you’ve made or questions you’ve asked, you can tell Alexa to “delete what I just said” and Google Assistant to “delete my last conversation”. This does require the account holder to have enabled the “delete by voice” option in their settings, though. If you are the account holder, you can use the “voice match” function for Google Assistant to prevent your results from being available to anyone who simply asks for them. You can manage how Amazon uses your data by opening the Alexa app and heading for Settings | Alexa Privacy and toggling the “help improve Amazon services” option off along with the “use messages to improve transcriptions” setting. Google Assistant users can use the Home app via Settings | More Settings | Your Data to pause collection of any more voice recordings. However, Google warns that this can “limit or disable” more personalised experiences across Google as a result.
Ring the changes for your smart doorbell
A home security surveillance system requires video cameras to record what’s going on. When those security cameras are connected to, and accessible from, the internet, questions about who is watching the watcher come to the fore. When those connected cameras can be found in everything from your doorbell to the baby monitor in the nursery, privacy issues cannot be ignored. Amazon-owned Ring is perhaps most famous for its video doorbells and in the US Congress, Amazon is facing questions about the sharing of Ring data (including video footage) with more than 900 police departments.
Moreover, following investigations that found Ring had shared information with the likes of Facebook and Google, the company has said it doesn’t sell personal information to anyone and has suspended the use of most third-party analytics services in Ring apps while it works to provide greater ability to opt out in its new Control Center. This already lets users manage privacy and security options such as two-factor authentication, sharing information with third parties for personalised advertising, and managing any shared users. Clicking on the authorised client devices option will show all the devices that can access your Ring account, and therefore your videos. This will show the device and whether it’s logged into your account. To remove any you don’t recognise, remove all authorised client devices as one and then re-enrol them individually.
Is your central heating a threat to your privacy?
That we are even talking about privacy concerning your thermostat is, frankly, pretty nuts. But fears around central heating technology and privacy are a reality. In the case of the Google-owned Nest thermostat, however, those fears are ill founded. Despite some news reports to the contrary, your Nest thermostat has neither a camera nor a microphone inside. On the other hand, thermostats such as the Alexa-supporting ecobee4, do have microphones. The latter also has a privacy mode that can be activated once the thermostat is installed: tap the microphone icon at the bottom right of the thermostat screen and select voice control off. You won’t then be able to use Alexa to control the thermostat, but nor will it listen continuously for wake words or send recorded messages to Amazon. Both ecobee4 and Nest users can have all their personal information removed upon request, but this deletes their account and disables the remote access and “smart” connected functionality you bought the device for. A Nest thermostat will collect data such as your setup information, environmental data from its sensors, heating and cooling usage.
Shedding light on smart bulb security
Earlier this year, security researchers confirmed that a vulnerability could enable a hacker to launch an attack on your home computer network, and therefore your data, by way of a Philips Hue smart lightbulb. The vulnerability, without getting too technical, was actually in a low-power wireless protocol used to control many different Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices. Philips was quick to issue a new firmware update that fixed the problem before it was publicly disclosed. You can make sure your lightbulbs are protected by opening the Philips Hue app and heading to Settings | Software Update. This will alert you if an update is needed, but to prevent any further checking, you can enable the “automatic update” option on the same page.

Who Controls the American Media?
by Germar Rudolf
There is no greater power in the world today than that wielded by the manipulators of public opinion in America. No king or pope of old, no conquering general or high priest ever disposed of a power even remotely approaching that of the few dozen men who control America’s mass media of news and entertainment.
Their power is not distant and impersonal; it reaches into every home in America, and it works its will during nearly every waking hour. It is the power that shapes and molds the mind of virtually every citizen, young or old, rich or poor, simple or sophisticated.
The mass media form for us our image of the world and then tell us what to think about that image. Essentially everything we know — or think we know — about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television.
It is not just the heavy-handed suppression of certain news stories from our newspapers or the blatant propagandizing of history-distorting TV “docudramas” that characterizes the opinion-manipulating techniques of the media masters. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of the news and the entertainment that they present to us.
For example, the way in which the news is covered: which items are emphasized and which are played down; the reporter’s choice of words, tone of voice, and facial expressions; the wording of headlines; the choice of illustrations — all of these things subliminally and yet profoundly affect the way in which we interpret what we see or hear.
On top of this, of course, the columnists and editors remove any remaining doubt from our minds as to just what we are to think about it all. Employing carefully developed psychological techniques, they guide our thought and opinion so that we can be in tune with the “in” crowd, the “beautiful people,” the “smart money.” They let us know exactly what our attitudes should be toward various types of people and behavior by placing those people or that behavior in the context of a TV drama or situation comedy and having the other TV characters react in the Politically Correct way.
Molding American Minds
For example, a racially mixed couple will be respected, liked, and socially sought after by other characters, as will a “take charge” Black scholar or businessman, or a sensitive and talented homosexual, or a poor but honest and hardworking illegal alien from Mexico. On the other hand, a White racist — that is, any racially conscious White person who looks askance at miscegenation or at the rapidly darkening racial situation in America — is portrayed, at best, as a despicable bigot who is reviled by the other characters, or, at worst, as a dangerous psychopath who is fascinated by firearms and is a menace to all law-abiding citizens. The White racist “gun nut,” in fact, has become a familiar stereotype on TV shows.
The average American, of whose daily life TV-watching takes such an unhealthy portion, distinguishes between these fictional situations and reality only with difficulty, if at all. He responds to the televised actions, statements, and attitudes of TV actors much as he does to his own peers in real life. For all too many Americans the real world has been replaced by the false reality of the TV environment, and it is to this false reality that his urge to conform responds. Thus, when a TV scriptwriter expresses approval of some ideas and actions through the TV characters for whom he is writing, and disapproval of others, he exerts a powerful pressure on millions of viewers toward conformity with his own views.
And as it is with TV entertainment, so it is also with the news, whether televised or printed. The insidious thing about this form of thought control is that even when we realize that entertainment or news is biased, the media masters still are able to manipulate most of us. This is because they not only slant what they present, but they establish tacit boundaries and ground rules for the permissible spectrum of opinion.
As an example, consider the media treatment of Middle East news. Some editors or commentators are slavishly pro-Israel in their every utterance, while others seem nearly neutral. No one, however, dares suggest that the U.S. government is backing the wrong side in the Arab-Jewish conflict and that it served Jewish interests, rather than American interests, to send U.S. forces to cripple Iraq, Israel’s principal rival in the Middle East. Thus, a spectrum of permissible opinion, from pro-Israel to nearly neutral, is established.
Another example is the media treatment of racial issues in the United States. Some commentators seem almost dispassionate in reporting news of racial strife, while others are emotionally partisan — with the partisanship always on the non-White side. All of the media spokesmen without exception, however, take the position that “multiculturalism” and racial mixing are here to stay, and that they are good things.
Because there are differences in degree, however, most Americans fail to realize that they are being manipulated. Even the citizen who complains about “managed news” falls into the trap of thinking that because he is presented with an apparent spectrum of opinion he can escape the thought controllers’ influence by believing the editor or commentator of his choice. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation. Every point on the permissible spectrum of public opinion is acceptable to the media masters — and no impermissible fact or viewpoint is allowed any exposure at all, if they can prevent it.
The control of the opinion-molding media is nearly monolithic. All of the controlled media — television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures — speak with a single voice, each reinforcing the other. Despite the appearance of variety, there is no real dissent, no alternative source of facts or ideas accessible to the great mass of people that might allow them to form opinions at odds with those of the media masters. They are presented with a single view of the world — a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish “Holocaust” tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders, the danger of permitting citizens to keep and bear arms, the moral equivalence of all sexual orientations, and the desirability of a “pluralistic,” cosmopolitan society rather than a homogeneous, White one. It is a view of the world designed by the media masters to suit their own ends — and the pressure to conform to that view is overwhelming. People adapt their opinions to it, vote in accord with it, and shape their lives to fit it.
And who are these all-powerful masters of the media? As we shall see, to a very large extent they are Jews. It isn’t simply a matter of the media being controlled by profit-hungry capitalists, some of whom happen to be Jews. If that were the case, the ethnicity of the media masters would reflect, at least approximately, the ratio of rich gentiles to rich Jews. Despite a few prominent exceptions, the preponderance of Jews in the media is so overwhelming that we are obliged to assume that it is due to more than mere happenstance.
Electronic News & Entertainment Media
Continuing government deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted, not in the touted increased competition, but rather in an accelerating wave of corporate mergers and acquisitions that have produced a handful of multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates. The largest of these conglomerates are rapidly growing even bigger by consuming their competition, almost tripling in size during the 1990s. Whenever you watch television, whether from a local broadcasting station or via cable or a satellite dish; whenever you see a feature film in a theater or at home; whenever you listen to the radio or to recorded music; whenever you read a newspaper, book, or magazine — it is very likely that the information or entertainment you receive was produced and/or distributed by one of these megamedia companies.

US to support new Israeli Temple
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – American officials confirmed on Monday that American President Donld Trump has very strongly indicated that he “fully supported” the projected rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem
The first Temple, built by King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians and the second, by Herod Agrippa, was destroyed by the Romans after the collapse of the revolt of 67 AD.
“The Temple Mount will first have to be cleared off to make way for the new construction,” Jakob Weissberg of the Temple Commission said earlier today, “and the beginning of the new edifice can then commence.”
Plans for the new Temple have already been approved and construction is expected as soon as all the existing buildings on the site of the former Temples have been demolished and the site prepared.
Geological reports on the condition of the underlying stone have long been completed and all that was remaining for work to commence was the right political atmosphere and the moral support of the United States.
President Trump has personally expressed his satisfaction with this culturally and religiously significant project and indicated that he would be “deeply honored” to attend services when the new Temple was completed.
Mr.Trump has long been seen as a strong and active supporter of Israel and a firm friend of Mr. Netanaha
Weissberg has stated that construction is expected not to exceed seven months.
The surplus “existing” buildings that are mentioned in this article include the Dome of the Rock mosque and other historically and religiously important Arab constructions.

We shouldn’t have to pay for Jack Dorsey’s $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea
By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners
March 8, 2020
by Adrian Daub
The Guardian
Even by the standards of overpriced San Francisco, the Sea Cliff neighborhood is astronomically expensive. Nestled between two gorgeous parks and with what a realtor might describe as commanding views of the Golden Gate, it could hardly be different. Homes in the area routinely go for more than $10m. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and the payment service Square, recently bought a place here for $21.5m – next door to his $18m present home. The 0.62 acre compound is recessed from the street and perched on a cliff overlooking the beach.
And that’s where things get interesting, because cliffside living has become an increasingly risky proposition in California. Warming ocean temperatures are whipping up stronger surfs and more brutal winter storms, causing cliffs to crumble ever faster into the sea. The consequences for thousands of cliff-top houses such as Dorsey’s could be catastrophic. Still, @Jack’s bet isn’t a bad one: depending on when the house goes over the edge, it might well be the rest of us that gets stuck with the bill.
That’s because most of the cost of protecting California properties from coastal erosion, wildfires and other effects of the climate crisis will be met by the state, with public money. This means those costs won’t fall on the disproportionately white and wealthy people who own property. Rather, they’ll be increasingly borne by the working- and middle-class Hispanic, black and brown Californians that make up the majority of the state, many of whom don’t own real estate. Without really grappling with this reality, the state is slipping step by step towards a massive wealth transfer from the general public to the owners of private property. It’s one more way in which the climate crisis is also a crisis of racism and inequality.
What Sea Cliff could look like in a few years’ time can be glimpsed in the town of Pacifica, 14 miles to the south. Parts of the town, which is much more middle-class than Sea Cliff, sit directly on beautiful bluffs that overlook – and are tumbling into – the Pacific Ocean. When the town’s mayor proposed a “managed retreat” from the coast, home owners and local realtors revolted: the proposal would have effectively taken their homes off the market, cutting them off from potential profits. (Owners does not mean residents: about a third of Pacifica’s housing stock, including many of the most threatened buildings, consists of rental units.) So instead of a managed retreat, the city is taking money from the public coffers and using it to protect property investments by building sea walls and replenishing eroding beaches with trucked-in sand, among other measures.
This is a dynamic we’ve seen throughout the late capitalist economy. The sociologist Ulrich Beck described it as a change from “a logic of wealth distribution” to one of “risk distribution”. Profits are privatized, but risk is made public. The banks made a bunch of bad bets on crappy mortgage debts? Bail them out with public money and give the executives multimillion-dollar bonuses. Someone half bakes a fundamentally unprofitable tech business? Let them IPO it so they can liquidate hundreds of millions of dollars of stock options while transferring the ultimately worthless company into the hands of public pension funds and workers’ 401ks.
That’s the same thing that is now happening in California, where the land is uniquely threatened and at the same time uniquely valuable. There is a concerted political effort not to manage the risk, but rather to keep it from impacting value by making the public bear the costs of the climate crisis through things such as the sorts of publicly funded disaster relief programs and state-subsidized insurance payouts that Jack Dorsey could theoretically benefit from. This is, in fact, what many of the owners of capital and real estate think the government is for: protecting the value of private property at all costs. It’s one of the reasons we have a climate crisis – instead of a robust, rapid transition away from fossil fuels – in the first place.
The sheer immensity of the climate crisis, and of California, ensures that more and more of the costs will be borne by the public. The LA Times estimates that $150bn in California property might be impacted by coastal flooding and erosion by 2100. That’s $150bn in private wealth which the government has made it a public priority to preserve. But those costs are dwarfed by the risks created by the region’s intensifying wildfires, which threaten millions of properties around the state. The financial response to wildfires so far shows how these risks will inevitably be collectivized.
It will go something like this: as houses become astronomically expensive, insurance payouts become astronomically large. In response, in threatened areas, private insurers will cancel coverage, or multiply rates to the point of unaffordability. The state will be forced to step in to stabilize the rates, and keep the land valuable, which will likely involve something like the National Flood Insurance Program, which subsidizes flood insurance provided by private insurers and underwrites the full extent of their losses.
The racist dimension to this wealth transfer must not be overlooked. Fewer than 55% of California households own their dwelling and only 42% of Latino households and 33% of black ones do. Non-urban space, open space, and at-risk space in California is today particularly white, or at least white-owned.
Especially in the sorts of rural areas threatened by wildfire, that disparity is highly dependent on California’s history of racial violence and exclusion. The genocide of California’s first peoples; restrictions on the citizenship status of Asian immigrants; the seizure of Japanese American land during the second world war; the arrogation of land for infrastructure projects in the postwar period; discriminatory lending practices, racial covenants and other racist real estate policies, perpetuated by de facto segregation – all worked to ensure that non-white property ownership in rural California has remained low and concentrated in dense cities.
All of this creates an unjust mismatch: the collective that is underwriting the risk of climate catastrophe is not the same as the group that is incurring it. As a result, the siphoning off of public wealth to protect private property favors white Californians.
Of course, that’s one of the reasons it’s been politically acceptable. It would be difficult to imagine the government sanctioning a massive wealth transfer in the other direction, for example by relieving the mortgage debts of the black and brown Americans who were the primary victims of the subprime crisis. But when fire and other types of home insurance markets fail, as they are already beginning to do and inevitably will, the state will have to step in to shore up the largely white property market with black, brown, working and middle-class public money.
As the incalculably large price tag of climate change comes due, those excluded from the property market will increasingly foot the bill for California’s cult of the homeowner. It remains to be seen whether that cult will endure, or whether the state can rethink its relationship to real estate.

The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas

Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccuratre.

Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019

Chapter 110

Chuck had spent so many years in the wilderness that readjusting to the world his grandfather had painstakingly created was very difficult for him. He was not an outgoing person although with friends he could be affectionate, concerned and helpful. With the guests he could see down the long table, eating, drinking and engaging in idle conversation, he felt quite distant and was generally disinterested in their trivial minds. He had the manners and the understanding of protocol to know what to say or do and when to say or do it but it bored him. He would far rather be up in his rooms listening to music, reading or very occasionally playing the piano or singing. Life in Minnesota was more to his taste. He enjoyed cooking and running his private world firmly but with some benevolence and a good deal of humor. He viewed his earlier financial rampages as a form of entertainment and that they often had ended in the enrichment of himself and his circle of friends did nothing to diminish his pleasure in causing monumental disruptions.
Now that he was the head of a powerful financial empire, his desire to disrupt, disparage and damage the establishment had vanished. He was, after all, the establishment and he had no inclination to injure himself.
He had watched Alex throughout the evening, initially with astonishment and later with a sort of parental pride. Alex was what Chuck was not. He was very polished, outgoing, aggressive, manipulative and apparently very successful. There was no envy in Chuck but a great deal of strong affection as he watched Alex’s incredible progress amongst the power elite.
The episode of the Vice Presidential departure had been reported to him by a number of guests, including Lupin, and it eventually achieved epic proportions.That Alex would, or could, do such things and in such a way was unbelievable, given his new son’s terrible cynicism, verbal provocativeness and general fierce independence.
Chuck could understand the Nuncio’s interest in Alex. After all, he thought, these people seemed to want the Polish loan to be granted and by adroit manipulation of a fifteen-year-old inexperienced boy, they had succeeded. This annoyed him and it was only later when he learned that it was Alex, not other more experienced people, that initiated and executed the financial rescue that he gave serious thought to the future of the house of Rush.
He liked the wealth and the power it bestowed and what it could provide but he detested the immense amount of detail work that he knew attended the cultivation and preservation of such wealth.
His grandfather had always spent his mornings at work in his office, pouring over reports, newspaper articles and stock market reports and listening to dozens of telephone calls from all over the world. Never before lunch was Arthur Rush available for conversation and company and as a child, Chuck had learned to amuse himself until lunch.
Now, he was expected to follow the same routines if his empire was to be kept intact. Plans had to be made or changed, immediate decisions called for, orders issued and results monitored. Chuck was reflective and creative but he did not have his grandfather’s intense drive and fierce determination to take what he could and keep it.
Alex, on the other hand, seemed to have at least some of the drive and fierce determination of Arthur Rush and certainly had proven in a terrifying way that he was capable of committing ferocious acts if he thought it proved necessary.
His grandfather would never have personally shot someone like Charles Rush for standing in his way, with the President of the United States thrown in as a casual afterthought, but he certainly was more than capable of ordering it done. If he was still alive, Chuck had the distinct feeling that Arthur Rush would have seen in Alex a logical successor to himself and would have treated him accordingly.
Chuck had appealed to his grandfather’s cultural side but Alex would also have appealed very strongly to the other side. And while Chuck kept his grandfather’s attention with his singing, Alex was a far better musician than he was and far more determined. Chuck practiced when he felt like it and Alex practiced hours a day because he wanted to.
He remembered Alex boiling the bear’s head and how he put up with the terrible stench in order to have a gleaming trophy of his hunt. That sort of determination, coupled with Alex’s unquestionable personal charm and a terrifying amorality was an immense asset not only to Alex but eventually, to himself as well.

The dinner lasted for over two hours and shortly before midnight, the company began to clear the dining room, leaving the servants to cart away the evidence of very conspicuous consumption. The conductor of the Chicago Symphony, Dr. Cisek, had been spoken with and waited behind so that Alex could display his musical skills. The musician dreaded these episodes, having listened to screeching young women whose proud family were convinced were great divas, and terrible mechanical assaults on pianos, violins, glockenspiel, drums and even tubas by the offspring of what were obviously tone deaf but proud and hopeful parents.
The Rush family had been great patrons of the arts, at least as long as the old one had been alive, and Cisek was as much a politician as a conductor so he smiled and nodded when asked to listen to the latest juvenile performing baboon.
By midnight, the first of a long line of limousines had begun the drive towards the gatehouse. Lupin had learned from the Nuncio that the loan was now viable thanks entirely to the efforts of the spoiled brat and as he left, he gave Alex a very warm handshake.
The Nuncio, who had drunk more wine than he liked, made a successful effort at self control and gave Alex an even warmer handshake as he prepared to get into the rear of his limousine. As pleased as he was with the course of the evening, he had even warmer thoughts of the superb gift of wine now reposing in the trunk.
As his car moved slowly towards the gate, he began to dictate to his secretary.
“Eminence,” said the secretary, “ you have had such a wonderful success! Mr. Rush has changed his mind?”
“Young man, the Mr. Rush I have been dealing with is not someone to change his mind.”
He looked out the window at the ghostly statuary sliding past the window.
“No, not that one. Alex Rush is most a most unique person, Rinaldo, most unique. We will of course cultivate him. Small seeds make huge trees sometimes. And he has excellent taste in wine. Now…take this down if you will…”

The guests had paid their respects to their hosts and the doors closed behind the last of them shortly after midnight. The French President was slightly drunk and continued to shower praises on Chuck, mainly concerning the quality of the wine, and the only guest remaining was Dr. Cisek. The bus with his musicians had left an hour ago and he agreed to spend the night in the guesthouse. Having fortified himself with alcohol, he was now prepared to audition his host’s son in the music room.
Unlike the other rooms which were ablaze with light, the music room had only a modest lamp on a side table and the room was in semi-darkness.
Alex was smiling as usual but nervous and Chuck was very tired as he gestured towards an armchair.
“Do sit down, Dr. Cisek, and we can let Alex do what he does best.”
There were scrapings and shifting noises and Alex lifted the cover, flipped back the tails of his coat as Chuck had taught him and sat down on the bench.
He flexed his fingers, looked quickly at the two men sitting in the darkness and began on Bach’s Italian Concerto.
Chuck watched Cisek who in turn was leaning forward, watching Alex’s hands on the keyboard. He had started his musical career as a young pianist and knew the piece well.
Finally, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Chuck thought he had gone to sleep but the director’s fingers were keeping time on the chair arms as Alex finally finished the last movement.
He looked at Cisek who suddenly opened his eyes and slowly stood up.
“That was an unforgettable performance, young man, unforgettable! I expected nothing worthwhile and I have been very pleasantly surprised.”
He walked over to Alex and shook his hand.
Cisek turned to Chuck who was also standing.
“Your son, Mr. Rush, is a great artist. I have played that piece many times and heard it done by others but I think I can say it was the best performance I have ever heard. Techniques, style and feeling are all there. It was both a technical tour de force but an artistic one as well. Can he play in public? Mr. Rush, I know you are a wealthy and influential man but I want your son to play with the Chicago Symphony on his terms and mine. Your position has nothing to do with it and his incredible talent, everything.” He turned to Alex who was listening with his mouth open. ”And what do you want to play with us? You have an idea?”
“Yes, sir. I want to do the Bach D minor work and maybe the last piece. What do you think?”
“If the D minor, which is a splendid showcase, is your choice, I think it would be magnificent. Bach, unfortunately, is not for the masses but I do not care.”
“Neither do I. I have your recording of the B Minor Mass and I think it’s the best one I have ever heard. I have a question, sir. Let me just play a passage for you from the D minor work that I’m fighting with…”
He played several bars and Cisek listened intently. Then he sat down on the bench and motioned to Alex to slide over. The white-haired man played the same few bars but with different emphasis.
“You like that?”
“Yes, but how about this?”
“I think you took a little from me and a little from yourself.”
“And a lot from Bach. I didn’t know you played…never mind, sir. And then there is this transposition…”
And so it went for nearly an hour.
Cisek got up.
“I am very tired, young man, but it has been a pleasure. Who is your teacher?”
“I taught myself.”
What? No schooling? No teacher? Impossible! You play better than Glen Gould ever did and he was probably the best. I do not believe you!”
“It’s quite true,” Chuck said with a broad smile, “he did teach himself.”
“My God, think what he could do with a teacher! Mr. Rush, I know money is no object to you so I will have Elena Prussakova teach him. She is the best, you know, the best. Retired and very expensive but the best. Well?”
Alex had a dozen of her recordings and merely gasped. For once, he had nothing to say.
“If you think it would be a good idea, Doctor, why not? Alex? Comments?”
“Well…well…why…yes, Jesus Christ, yes!”
“Then that’s settled. Work with Elena and let her talk with me. When we feel you are ready, we can schedule a concert. Unfortunately, our seasons are poured in concrete for two years but we will see.”
Chuck looked at Alex.
“Doctor, when you feel he is ready, I will rent the house for the evening and I guarantee we will fill it to the last row of the top balcony.”
Cisek pursed his lips.
“If you choose, Mr. Rush, everything is possible with this young man here” And he put an arm around Alex’s shoulders.
Alex looked up at him and grinned.
“Doctor Cisek?”
“Yes?”
“Could you listen to just one more thing for me? Please?”
“Yes, I think I would like to hear another piece but please, not the entire Goldbergs!”
“No, sir. Doctor, my father has done more for me than anyone alive. I owe him everything I have and I want to do something for him. The only thing I can do is to have you listen to him sing…”
“Alex!” Chuck shouted, “that’s enough of that!”
“Do you sing, Mr. Rush?”
“Alex, go to bed!”
“I repeat, do you sing?”
“Chuck, you sang for me once and that’s when things changed for me. Do this for both of us. Please?”
“Yes. Mr. Rush. If you have a fraction of your son’s talent, I would insist on hearing you.”
“No…”
“Yes, Chuck, sing. There’s no one around and we’re all musicians here. Just one song. Sing the one about the lady in hell. Or the tree song.”
Chuck gave in.
“Whatever. Do you know the score?”
“The lady from hell, Mr. Rush?” Cisek asked with a smile.
“Che farò… and the other one is Ombra ma fu.”
“Oh yes, I know them well. Can you accompany, Alex?”
“I don’t have the score but I could fake it if you want…”
“No,” Cisek said, sitting at the piano, “no, I know the score and I will play, Mr. Rush, while you sing. Which first?”
“The Gluck.”
He recalled the impromptu concert in Canada and smiled.
His voice filled the room and Cisek kept looking over at him as he played accompaniment. The second piece was much shorter and then it was over.
The conductor got up slowly and walked over to Chuck.
“Well, Mr. Rush, I am afraid I have to tell you…that was a magnificent performance!”
And he gave the startled Chuck a tremendous bear hug and then kissed him on both cheeks.
“Such talent in this family. Finer than Hvorostovsky at his very best! Now you must sing for us too! Oh yes, you cannot hide your voice behind your money. God gave you both talent and you are obligated to give others the pleasure of enjoying it. I am very serious, sir. Your money has nothing to do with this and you know it. I think this has been the most interesting and worthwhile evening I have ever spent anywhere. Diamonds in the cabbage! You will both perform with me, both of you. Now that’s decided, would you like to contribute to our special fund? We are raising money to buy two Strads for the violin section and you can afford it.”
“Why not? I’ll wait until you get as much as you can squeeze from others and make up the difference.”
Alex touched Cisek on his sleeve.
“Please, sir, I have money of my own and you can put me down for something too.”
“Easy come, Alexander, easy go but in a good cause. Doctor, I am a man of some social and business position in this country. It might look stupid for me to get up on a stage. People would only think an amateur was buying attention. Don’t you agree?”
“No, I do not. You are not, neither of you, amateurs. And no one listening to you Mr. Cyril Rush, would ever think you an amateur. That’s all settled. Now I might like to go to bed and have pleasant dreams. Thank you so much for inviting me and letting me have the honor and pleasure of your performances.”
Alex followed him to the door, discussing the Telemann music played during the grand entrance and then the conductor went off to his room, accompanied by a liveried footman carrying a bottle of the Lafitte that Alex had thoughtfully presented to him.
Chuck had come out into the rotunda and when Alex returned, he looked sadly at him.
“Alex, why did you do that? I hate…”
“Chuck, shut the fuck up for once, why not? I owe you and I pay you. You sing and I play and we can do it together. We had a good time tonight so let’s go outside and get some nice, funky hot air before we go to bed. Come on, don’t just stand there, let’s go outside.”

Continued…..
This is also an e-book, available from Amazon:

Encyclopedia of American Loons
Refael Szmerla

Rabbi Refael Szmerla (Rafael/Rephoel Schmerla) is a Dayan in Lakewood, New Jersey, unhingedly deranged fundamentalist and advocate for various types of quackery, including, perhaps most obviously, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. And given his position, his views on quackery and vaccines have to some extent been met with recognition in certain circles in which it is considered uncouth to criticize an authority figure like him, a situation that reflects what is, of course, a familiar recipe for disaster.
His views on medicine – Szmerla doesn’t have the faintest trace of expertise or qualifications in science or medicine, of course – are laid out in his book Ki Ani Hashem Rof’echa, in Hebrew, which goes through auras, chi, reiki, energy healing, distance healing, meridians, acupuncture, applied kinesiology, emotional freedom techniques, dowsing, homeopathy, radionics, crystal healing, geopathic stress, feng shui, iridology, reflexology, and other forms of quackery. And Szmerla endorses them all (except feng shui) by finding sources in the Gemara or Rishonim that, with a liberal dose of motivated reasoning and shoehorning, might be interpreted as discussing them. And (imaginary) support from religious texts is, of course, all he needs: the practices mentioned can therefore neither be religiously misguided nor ineffective. (He also backs up his conclusions with some quotation from various quacks and conspiracy theorists.) Meanwhile, those who argue against such practices, claims Szmerla, have been influenced by “Greek philosophy” and will end up as heretics – of course, scientific evidence for whether or not the practices in fact work is very far from Szmerla’s radar – and accepting the quackery is, as he sees it, an essential part of Jewish identity – indeed, using radionics instead of real medicine helps cement our faith in the Sages, who were ostensibly scientifically far beyond modern medicine.
And like many books of quackery, Szmerla’s ends with a direct attack on modern medicine: sickness is important since it turns man toward God in prayer, whereas modern medicine’s “arrogant doctors” turn people away from God with a philosophy that “stands in complete contradiction to Torah values” – as opposed to alternative medicine, which is largely based on mystical energies and spirituality. At least he recognizes that the practices he recommends are not science-based – indeed, he explicitly states that requiring double-blind testing and rejecting anecdotal evidence due to the placebo effect stands in direct contradiction to Chazal, who ostensibly only required that a treatment appear to work on three occasions to declare it effective [no idea] – so he can, in fact, not be accused of pseudoscience. But for Szmerla contradicting science is a good thing. (Of course, it also means that the defense he provides might not be quite what more mainstream promoters of quackery really would have wished for.)
The antirationalist position (young-earth creationism, dinosaur-denialism, global warming denialism etc.) Szmerla espouses is relatively common in charedi communities, which is surely part of the reason for the low vaccination rates in some of them – even someone considered among these groups to be “moderate”, Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky, has endorsed antivaccine conspiracy theories, stated that “the best doctors go to Hell” because of their arrogance, and written that we have to silence those who insist upon empirical evidence whereas altmed quacks are divinely-placed forces that should be recruited to heal people. And Szmerla himself is of course firmly antivaccine. He is part of The Vaccine Coalition, a Coalition of Non-Vaccinating Parents in Lakewood, New Jersey, founded by Szmerla, Malkiel Kotler and Shmuel Meir Katz, and supported e.g. by Elya Ber Wachtfogel of South Fallsberg, who is apparently something of a powerful figure in local charedi communities. We haven’t even bothered to check what kind of information these unhinged kooks promote to people in their communities. Given his comments on doctors and medicine in general (the “sickness brings you closer to God through prayer” part), it seems not too far-fetched to suspect that Szmerla wants children in his community to suffer from vaccine-preventable and potentially deadly diseases.
Diagnosis: So, ok. You may be inclined to just point and laugh at this silly fundie character. The problem, though, is that Szmerla, as mentioned, wields some authority in certain communities, and his recommendations have real, bad consequences for real people. Dangerous.

Curtis Knapp

Curtis Knapp is the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, and he thinks the government should kill homosexuals. Quoting Scripture, Knapp said in 2012 that homosexuals “should be put to death. That’s what happened in Israel. That’s why homosexuality wouldn’t have grown in Israel. It tends to limit conversations. It tends to limit people coming out of the closet.” Being a sensible man, however, Knapp didn’t think you should just start going around killing gays: “‘So, you’re saying we should go out and start killing them?’ No. I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.” When confronted with his claims, Knapp pointed out that “We punish pedophilia. We punish incest, we punish polygamy and various things. It’s only homosexuality that is lifted out as an exemption.” Ah, distinctions. How the f*** do they work?
Diagnosis: No, Fred Phelps isn’t alone. Curtis Knapp has all of Phelps’s charisma and reasoning skills – and probably not much less impact.

Charles Klotsche

Color therapy was, by 1993, apparently “a new dimension in holistic healing,” which “provides a powerful technique for treating specific imbalances and strengthening the immune system.” Most people who are not medically illiterate will of course know that “strengthening the immune system” is code for “nonsense” (for obvious reasons), but color medicine was probably never intended for the medically literate (medicine it isn’t) – or, in general, the minimally literate. So, for instance, in Charles Klotsche’s 1993 book Color Medicine: The Secrets of Color Vibrational Healing, by “combining aura-attuned chromatherapy with harmonious sounds, tissue salts, and hydrochromatherapy, the 49th vibrational technique was developed. It is safe, simple, economical, and highly effective.” Yeah, as a description it might just be too inane to even count as technobabble; “word salad” seems more apt. An interesting detail about Klotsche’s description is his desire to describe the technique as simultaneously new and revolutionary, and ancient as rocks (too tempting a fallacy for most altmed promoters). So, color therapy is “[a] breakthrough, yet as old as recorded medicine.”
How does it work (apart from not)? “Color Medicine utilizes the subtle energy vibrations similar to those found in the visible spectrum – the 49th octave. Light energy is processed through color filters and irradiated into the aura. By matching corresponding wavelengths to the organs and systems of the body, it strengthens or sedates energy in the distressed areas, creating a support system for the healing process.” Critics may point out that there are some crucial details missing here (“matching corresponding wavelengths” [my emphasis]; the difference between “strengthen[ing]” and “sedat[ing]” energy that by the author’s own descriptions cannot be measured, and so on). Nevertheless, Klotsche’s book is a “textbook and how-to handbook, it encompasses an encyclopedia of vital, fascinating information, charts, diagrams, and tables, as well as methods of treatment and technical advice.” Wanna bet on whether Klotsche’s “information, charts, diagrams, and tables” address the worries just raised anywhere?
In more detail, the information in the book covers the following topics:
– Explore the electromagnetic effects on physical/etheric bodies.
– Recognizing the aura: color meanings and tonal equivalents.
– Adjusting the body’s oscillations by sound [how does your body oscillate? Ever thought about that?]
– Effects of monochord/color and rhythm on the body.
– Interplay between music and the chakra system. [Ah, yes: There we are.]
– Biochemical system’s [sic] dependency on light.
– Materials and practical techniques.
– 123 major illnesses and their treatments.
Oh, well. We struggle to locate much more information about Klotsche, apart from the title of a later book, Journeys: Self-Discovery Through Travel – assuming it’s the same guy.
Diagnosis: It’s always hard to determine the extent to which promoters of this kind of bullshit actually believe the drivel they’re spewing. Assuming he does, Klotsche is an extreme religious fanatic and should probably be avoided unless you think you can help.