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Ian Major shares his experience of falling prey to Covid-19.

Hi, dear friends. A report on what's been going on since I last posted before Christmas:

Christmas Day my daughter lost her sense of smell. Boxing Day all the rest of us, bar my grandsons, manifested some symptoms of Covid infection. All small – a slight cough, and/or a bit of fatigue, or runny nose, loss of smell, bad taste. 

That's the way it stayed for all – except for me and my married daughter. From Boxing Day till I was admitted to hospital on Wednesday 6th January I had an unrelenting headache and unrelenting nausea. And super-sensitivity of my face and head – even a sheet brushing against my face was jarringly painful. Lying down on the pillow was painful, but exhaustion demanded it.

Hard to emphasize enough the depth of the nausea – I managed maybe a small carton of custard a day. Tea, coffee, milk tasted bad and I could not face them. Later on even water was an effort.

We all tested positive by January 2nd. All doing well except me, but I thought I could stick it out as I was already eight days infected. But by Wednesday 6th morning I realized that if I didn't get to hospital I was going to die, struggling to get enough oxygen from my breathing. No ambulances available, so my daughter and Susan brought me to Craigavon Area Hospital A&E.

I did not notice, as I had not been looking in a mirror for a while, but Susan tells me my face was taking on a purple shade, and my lips blue.

The doctors put me on IV fluid immediately and listed me for admission to a Covid ward when one became available. The nausea remained, but the headache went within an hour. Blessed relief!

The consultant came to see me next day, when I was on the Covid ward. He had started me on heavy duty steroids, antibiotics and Remdesivir. Maybe something else too, but I can't remember.

I had been on 1200 Ibuprofen daily for my arthritis, and he said he just hates to hear any Covid patient being on anti-inflammatories. So I stopped them. Now that I'm home, I can review my needs with my GP.

I started treatment on 10ltrs of oxygen. That gradually reduced to 6, 4, 3, 2 and zero by the day before my release. Let me emphasize this for any who think the dangers from Covid-19 are exaggerated. The mortality figures are in the context of having everyone who needs hospitalization for Covid-19 getting it. But what if so many are so quickly infected that the hospitals are overrun? When you ring for an ambulance or even get driven to the A&E, they can't admit you or treat you?

I am certain that had I not got oxygen and IV fluids on that Wednesday morning, I would have lay on my couch as my oxygen levels steadily dropped – until my heart stopped with the struggle. That applies to everyone who had to be admitted to hospital for their Covid infection. No oxygen treatment available – they die.

My last two chest x-rays showed some Covid pneumonia remaining, but no increase. So the Dr was happy to release me last night, and I was delighted to be going home to my wife and daughter.

He told me it will take a few months to recover. And that it is important neither to overdo it, or do too little. The danger of Covid clots remains, so gentle exercise that keeps up blood circulation, and steadily improve lung function. Had my first stroll just now, about 50 metres. Lovely to breath the fresh air and feel the circulation working!

My married daughter was admitted to same hospital a couple of weeks ago, with suspected Covid clot in her leg. Scanning showed no clot, but small clusters of small clots in her lungs. Despite testing negative for Covid, they treated her with the same drugs as me. And she was released home last Monday – still testing negative. They suspect a Covid-caused inflamation in her leg, that was so light that it left only the effects, with no Covid remaining.

I had many thoughts as I lay or sat on my Covid bed over these two weeks. Maybe I will share some of them later. All I wish to say now is my deepest appreciation to All the staff – the nurses and doctors, catering and cleaning staff, physio’s, etc. They are working short-staffed and are over-worked, all day in fitted PPE that is warm even on the colder days and hot the rest of the time. Fatigue would normally tend to short tempers and disputes, but not one did I see in my fortnight among them. Working diligence 100%. And the care on top of that. Remarkable.

I give thanks to our heavenly Father for His provision through them, and pray for them that they and their families will be protected from infection. Quite a number have caught it and are recovered, but the dangers to their families means extra levels of precautions when they go home from shift.

Thank you to all who sent their good wishes and prayers by Messenger and to Susan directly. 

Psalm107:1 Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.

⏭Ian Major grew up a heathen Protestant, was converted at 17, and lives out his Evangelical faith as a Baptist. He was a pastor to prisoners from 1980, full-time from 1991 till 1998 when most of his flock were released by the Belfast Agreement. He is now 70 and glad of the free time to read and interact with many on social media.

Surviving Covid

BloodySundayMarch.Org ✒ It's Never Too Late For Truth.



Bloody Sunday Remembered 2021

Christopher Owens ✒ Now, shit is getting real.

Moving from the developing countries of the first volume, we see Eve return from duty to the broken hub that is Britain in the year 2000.

A place where the inner cities are burnt out slums, but have been reclaimed by various gangs like the D.M’s (racist skinheads), the Dockland Dragnet (armed Etonians on scooters) and the Black African Defence Squad (B.A.D.S) who have taken over Brixton and renamed it New Azania (a name with historical links to Africa and Greece). Meanwhile, the aristocracy (including Eve’s father) carries on unabated and the security forces turn their eyes to B.A.D.S. especially when it emerges that Eve’s boyfriend (Rohan) is a member.

The key trope in this volume is seeing the development of Eve from a right on fence sitter, into an active participant in what is going on around her via consuming history lessons about the African people as well as being surrounded by matriarchal rule in New Azania. It is certainly interesting to see her develop this mindset in a warzone that will not abide anyone who stands in the middle and acts as a parallel to a tale in the middle of this volume which involves Belfast native Michael.

Talking about growing up in Ardoyne, and seeing his Protestant friend killed by loyalists, he lambasts Eve for questioning if things have gotten worse in the North:

You English kill me sometimes. You always talk about “over there”. Anywhere but “here”. You always think you’re safe, no matter what the rest of the world is up to. But problems don’t stop at the water’s edge of other lands…you’d think we have a monopoly on violence. Life “over there” can be just as normal as anywhere else. 

This leads to an argument with the character of Paul (aka Finn, the eco-terrorist), who had served as a Brit in the North. He concludes that:

You’ve been in Freeaid…can’t you see? Central America…Brixton…Northern Ireland…Underneath, it’s all the same symphony of splintered wood…The tactics used…snatch squads, stop and search, roadblocks, plastic bullets…were developed and used by the Army “over there".

Not surprisingly, the eco-warrior refuses to see the colonialist element within the recent conflict but is happy to do so for similar struggles around the world!

Once again, the artwork from the likes of Carlos Ezquerra, John Hicklenton and Sean Phillips capture the gritty and unrelenting feelings of tension and hostility that arise from urban decay. It has the ability to blend the classic, the scummy and the cartoonish into the same frames. Some feat, I’m sure you’ll agree.

In terms of the writing, we have the same problems as before in that the storytelling can veer towards the didactic. Indeed, Pat Mills has insinuated that the reason the strip did not last as long as it did was because of implicit racism on the part of the readers who were unable to accept a comic with a black lead and a pro-black stance.

While I’m sure there were maybe one or two who avoided Crisis for that reason, it’s an all-encompassing phrase which conveniently ignores the fact that Eve is a difficult character to get behind due to her brattishness, her self-righteousness and her willingness to play off two males at the same time while getting annoyed when one doesn’t want to be with her anymore.

Of course, there have been litanies of tales where the main protagonist is an unlikeable character, so Eve is certainly not unusual in this respect. And with her finally making a decision to get involved with BADS, she follows the hero trajectory which makes it easier to overlook her flaws.

All in all, another testing but worthwhile volume from a time when comics could provoke.

Pat Mills, Malachy Coney (writing), Carlos Ezquerra, John Hicklenton (art) 2021, Third World War: Book Two: Back to Babylon. Rebellion. ISBN-13: 978-1781089293 

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

Third World War Vol. 2 ➖ Back To Babylon

 



A Morning Thought @ 958

Matt Treacy ✒ The controversial – some would say deeply suspicious – World Economic Forum which readers may be familiar with as the promoter of the “Great Reset” which would entail the radical overhauling of the global economic system, continues to pump up the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. 


The BRI is a massive programme of investment which was estimated by the Institute of International Finance to have been worth $690 billion in projects in 105 different countries by the middle of 2020.
 

Ireland, as we have seen, is one of those targeted states. Supporters of the BRI like the Ireland China Institute wax lyrically about “Mr. Xi Jinping’s great $7 trillion achievement.”

Likewise, Sinn Féin seems to have a soft spot for the Communist Party of China. One wonders why. On January 16, MEP Matt Carthy released a statement calling on the Irish government to heed the latest warnings from the World Economic Forum on climate change. In it he refers to the “scale of the [economic] slowdown in China.”

Yes, in relative terms the Chinese economy experienced lower growth in 2020, but it grew by 6.3% in the last quarter of the year, compared to negative growth for the year across the vast majority of the world. Indeed, far from being in crisis as some of its more duplicitous allies would like to spin, Oxford Economics is forecasting “robust investment growth” going forward.

Which begs the question why Carthy, a member of the most pro-Beijing political group in the European Parliament, is so anxious to portray the deal agreed with the EU – which the left have been pushing for since 2012 – as a sort of a favour to the poor Chinese billionaire Marxists, rather than what it is; another chance to strengthen and advance their foothold in the EU.

One suspects that the expansion of the Chinese state overseas and the “Great Reset” are not unconnected. This is not normal foreign investment. It is either directly funded, by over half, through Chinese state enterprises with the remainder being from public private partnerships or individual enterprises. Exactly how the WEF mission to “improve the state of the world” is enhanced by furthering the interests of the most perfectly totalitarian state in history is unclear.


The World Economic Forum is regarded by China as a key to building influence among western political and economic elites and there are a myriad of connections between it and the Communist Party of China as documented by researchers such as Hamilton and Ohlberg. The founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab was awarded the China Reform Friendship Medal by the CCP in 2018 for assisting in “China’s efforts to re-engineer the global economic order.”

The WEF public approach to China is eerily reminiscent of people like Lord Darlington in Kazou Ishiguzo’s Remains of the Day who will declaim that “Oh, Hitler/Xi is a devilish old chap in some ways, but he is no threat to anyone, and his achievements must be admired.”

Thus on the one hand, the WEF publications have stated that China has been impacted greatly by the virus, but on the other cannot help itself in extolling at great length the future prospects of what it forecasts and clearly hopes will be the main global economic force of the century.

There are still some critics, who manage to sneak past the gate keepers. Among them are the signatories of an impressive document sent to the intelligence services of the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, dated January 11. The document is signed by among others retired United States General Robert Spalding who was forced out of the National Security Council, Attorney Michael Senger, and Sanjeev Sabhlok who resigned from the Victorian state treasury in September over what he described as the creation of a “police state” in Australia to enforce virus restrictions.

The document, entitled ‘The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud’, is available online. It’s basic contention is that the entire notion of national lockdowns “was brought into human history on the order of General Secretary Xi,” and that “the imposition of lockdowns in Wuhan and other areas of China — a nation unconstrained by concern for civil liberties and constitutional norms — started a domino effect where one country, and state, after another imposed draconian and hitherto untried measures on their citizens”.

Whatever the health rationale, and the authors like many question the official view, its consequences are apparent.

Among them potentially are economic and geopolitical changes that may be the most profound since the Black Death of the 1340s which reduced the population of Europe to the same level it had been 250 years previously. While the scale of death is nowhere near to being on that scale, there are those who regard the “Pandemic” as a lever to promote just as radical a “reset” as followed on the devastation of the Plagues, except this time that reset will be engineered not organic.

And who will benefit from that? Qui Bono? According to the authors of the report and other observers it will first and foremost be the Chinese Communist Party, and secondly its collaborators among the economic and political elites across the globe.

To put it crudely, it has clearly been in China’s interests to encourage the lockdown consensus, even to the sinister extent, as evidenced in the report, of supplying drones to 22 American states to monitor its citizens. The company concerned, DJI, was later blacklisted by the Trump administration for being complicit in Communist use of its technology for the collection of genetic information and the electronic surveillance of Chinese citizens and their overseas client states.

The report also examines the large loss of life which occurred among patients given mechanical respiration at the start of the panic.

In early March 2020, the WHO released COVID-19 provider guidance documents to healthcare workers. The guidance recommended escalating quickly to mechanical ventilation as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients, a departure from past experience during respiratory-virus epidemics. In doing so, they cited the guidance being presented by Chinese journal articles, which published papers in January and February claiming that “Chinese expert consensus” called for “invasive mechanical ventilation” as the “first choice” for people with moderate to severe respiratory distress, in part to protect medical staff,” the report notes.

“By May 2020, it was common knowledge in the medical community that early ventilator use was hurting, not helping, COVID-19 patients, and that less invasive measures were in fact very effective in assisting recoveries. A New York City study found a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who received mechanical ventilation. The “early action” ventilator guidance that the WHO distributed to the world killed thousands of innocent patients; the WHO obtained that guidance from China,” it states.

It is astonishing to see the extent of the links between those who dominate American media; Warner Brothers who own CNN, Amazon, NBC, the New York Times, Washington Post and others, and the Chinese state through shareholdings and investment. These of course were the main promoters of the lockdown in the US, and the vanguard of the four year campaign to depose Trump.

The intent of the Chinese manipulation of the virus is clear: It is to utilise the mechanisms supplied by modern technology “to control every aspect of citizens’ lives, binding them to the state by breaking all pre-existing social bonds.”

You only have to listen to our own deracinated Woke to understand the commonality of interest between them and the monster in Beijing. It is no coincidence that the serial protesters of the far left are among the most avid supporters of state restrictions. Their only quarrel with The Man is that they want to be him. Well, they are if it’s any comfort to them.

The report concludes not with some dystopian Cormac McCarthy vision of the future but with a snapshot of the horrific devastation that has already been wrought across the planet in the past year. Not by Covid deaths, but by the lockdown. And from the rubble of the destruction if all this continues will crawl the cockroaches and whatever parasites those ultimate feeders of human misery host.

Including those in Ireland who are happy to be the smiley face of Chinese gangland capitalism and the social media leftist advocates of closing down Epoch Times and other exposers of the reality of Chinese Communism.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He is currently working on a number of other books; His latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available online as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.

New Report Claims China’s Lockdown Was ‘Fraud’ We All Fell For

Suzanne Breen - Let it go into the history books in all its damning detail. 


The reality of life for thousands of women and infants in Ireland - so far removed from the image of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, and all the children of the nation being cherished equally.

This wasn't something that the British inflicted on us. This is something that powerful Irish people did to the powerless. Now that it's too late, Ireland is up in arms at the mother and baby homes. But when it mattered, when lives could have been saved and torment prevented, who spoke out or took a stand?

A so-called Christian country devoid of compassion and charity, where successive blind eyes were turned to the most heinous acts. The Catholic Church is first and foremost to blame for the unspeakable evils inflicted on women and girls as young as 12 - not over a handful of years, but over half a century.

Next in the dock stands the state which funded, inspected and licensed these abusive institutions.

It's guilty of collusion and cover-up of colossal proportions. Last week's mother and baby homes report revealed that 15% of children incarcerated in these clerical concentration camps - 9,000 precious girls and boys - died.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Catholic Church Hid Its Dirty Secrets In Unmarked Graves Just Like The IRA And Vile Deeds Went Unchallenged

Information Clearing House ✒ Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix.

Caitlin Johnstone

January 08, 2021 "I" - - Stop trivializing the term "coup". It's a real thing the US government really inflicts on other countries in a way that actually does topple governments and cause immense destruction. You cannot take over the US government with a small squadron of wingnuts. That's not a thing.

A coup attempt doesn't have to be successful for that term to be legitimate, but it does have to have some possibility of success. Trump has no more likelihood of being in office after January 20th than I do; he's got nothing resembling the kind of support from the military, political establishment, oligarchs and other backing he'd need to accomplish such a thing.

I hereby declare the US election invalid and I, Caitlin Johnstone, am the new President of the United States.

Have I just instituted a "coup"? Or does my complete inability to put such a claim into effect make the use of that term silly?

And now Trump has conceded. My what a funny looking coup.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

Stop Trivializing The Term 'Coup'

Atlantic ✒ Three particular failures secure Trump’s status as the worst chief executive ever to hold the office. 

Tim Naftali 

President Donald Trump has long exulted in superlatives. The first. The best. The most. The greatest. “No president has ever done what I’ve done,” he boasts. “No president has ever even come close,” he says. But as his four years in office draw to an end, there’s only one title to which he can lay claim: Donald Trump is the worst president America has ever had.


In December 2019, he became the third president to be impeached. Last week, Trump entered a category all his own, becoming the first president to be impeached twice. But impeachment, which depends in part on the makeup of Congress, is not the most objective standard. What does being the worst president actually mean? And is there even any value, at the bitter end of a bad presidency, in spending energy on judging a pageant of failed presidencies?

 ... Trump was a serial violator of his oath—as evidenced by his continual use of his office for personal financial gain—but focusing on three crucial ways in which he betrayed it helps clarify his singular historical status.

Continue reading @ Atlantic.

The Worst President In History

Washington Post ✒ Before a mob of Trump supporters staged a riot in the U.S. Capitol and thousands of Americans became amateur detectives working to identify the culprits, a loosely connected group of seasoned online sleuths were ringing alarm bells and picking off extremists online, one by one.

Robert Klemko
 
For a nationwide network of left-wing activists who seek out and publish the identities of those they believe to be violent “fascists,” some investigations can take months, years even.

Or it can take 10 minutes.

That’s how much time Molly Conger spent on her laptop last month searching for the man who used the right-wing social media site Parler to share that he was a police officer and pledge support to a member of the Proud Boys extremist group, advocating violence against Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Turns out the man was a Prince William County sheriff’s deputy. Fifteen-year law enforcement veteran Aaron Hoffman acknowledged he was behind the profile picture of a sheep holding a machine gun, though he maintained in an interview with The Washington Post that his account had been hacked.

Continue reading @ Washington Post.

A Small Group Of Sleuths Had Been Identifying Right-Wing Extremists Long Before The Attack On The Capitol

 



A Morning Thought @ 957

Davy Clinton remembers two comrades on the 34th anniversary of their deaths.

Another anniversary comes around - they come quicker each year. On the 20th January 1987 Vols Ta Power and John O Reilly were killed in Drogheda. Now both dead longer than they lived. 

Two great friends and comrades but very different people. I remember walking the yard of the Crum with Ta engaged in philosophical debate on Republicanism. Where it has come from. Where it should go to. And Ta laid out in detail where he thought it has gone wrong. He later put these thoughts on paper in a seminal document for the Movement he thought so much about. 

But it wasn't all politics. We discussed families. His sister had left Belfast as my own had just a short time before. We agreed that it was good they got away if even for a short time. As clear as if it were yesterday I can still hear him say but this is our life as his eyes panned around the dismal grey walls of A Wing yard: this ... or the grave. My oul friend got both.

John was different. Younger than both Ta and myself, John was a "doer" rather than a theoretician. He was a whirlwind on the go day and night. I'm not doing a Boston Tapes here so there's not a lot I can tell. But when I think of John I think of a wee off street café in Dundalk where he was living. Three or four times a week we would meet up there for a full Irish breakfast. Not a chance of us doing an Ulster fry. It's over 35 years since those days but when I close my eyes and let my mind drift back I can almost smell the Free State sausages and the cracking bacon. We'd chew the fat, literally at times, and put the world to rights. As you can see from the state of it today we were as unsuccessful at that as at many other things.

Those were hard times but they were times filled with a sense of purpose and a sense of having the best people in the world around you. Many things we got wrong but our hopes and aspirations were never wrong.

I was in jail when they were killed. It was devastating but certainly much less for me than their families. Often I think of how life would have worked out for them ... families, grandchildren - John already had children. 

I imagine Ta and I could still have the long rambling discussions and John and I - and my diabetes - could stuff our faces, maybe in a Belfast café minus the Free State sausages.

Still thought of, boys. Still missed. Up the Rebels.

⏩Davy Clinton is a former republican prisoner. 

Still Thought Of & Still Missed

Evening Standard ✒ The worst evening I spent in Downing Street? 

George Osborne

Easy: September 18, 2014, sitting in the small wood-panelled dining room in Number 11 with David Cameron; eating a tepid curry; waiting for the results of the Scottish referendum. 

We thought: are we the people who have lost Scotland? History allows for no recovery from a disaster like that. Ask Lord North, the prime minister condemned for all time for the loss of America. The mistake he made — and with Irish calls for home rule a century later — had been to assume that doing nothing was an option. Our referendum was a proactive plan to keep the United Kingdom together — and it looked like it had put Scottish nationalism back in its box for a generation.

Not any more. By unleashing English nationalism, Brexit has made the future of the UK the central political issue of the coming decade. Northern Ireland is already heading for the exit door. By remaining in the EU single market, it is for all economic intents and purposes now slowly becoming part of a united Ireland. Its prosperity now depends on its relationship with Dublin (and Brussels), not London. The politics will follow.
 
Continue reading @ Evening Standard.

Unleashing Nationalism Has Made The Future Of The UK The Central Issue

Enda Craig ✒ Some years ago as chairman of my local gun-club I received a phone call from a solicitor's office enquiring if the club would have any interest in a substantial amount of sporting rights being offered for sale by the representatives of the Shaftesbury Estates. 


A meeting of the members ( 100+ ) was called to discuss.

I was instructed to respond that the club was not interested in paying for rights that had been stolen from our locality in the first instance and in fact it would make more sense for the Shaftesbury Estates to forward rent to the local landowners for the confiscation and use of the said mentioned rights over this past three hundred and fifty years.

A fortnight later the same solicitor made contact again stating that the Shaftsbury Estates would prefer that the rights should return to the locality but in any event there were three other sporting groups now interested.

If the local gun club did not buy them then they would go elsewhere.

It was decided to obtain a copy of the Charter/Deed and seek legal opinion as to their legality.

The feeling was the Brits were long gone, we had gained our independence, declared ourselves a Republic and the 350 year old Charter had to be worthless at this stage.

To this end, and to be sure, I made arrangements to have them assessed by a very highly regarded SC in Dublin.

At a subsequent meeting in Dublin I was informed that the Charter/Deed was indeed legitimate and would withstand any challenge at any level in any court in the land.

I was given a letter to this effect.

When I enquired how this could be and mentioning the points above the SC stated these arrangements were agreed in the Treaty negotiations of 1922.

I am also aware that Lough Foyle, (dividing counties Derry and Donegal) with its fisheries, sea-bed, soil and waters all belong to the Crown Estates as a consequence of a Royal Charter.

The question arises: What exactly did the Irish people Really get/achieve as a result of the 1922 treaty negotiations?

Royal Charters, ground rents, turbary rights and all in a small area of East Inishowen. 

If this is replicated the length and breadth of the country it paints a strange picture.

Looks like a significant commercial agreement was assembled by the elites on both sides with the country being held in safekeeping for the departing coloniser with the local elites being well taken care of and the rest of us plebs left to squabble over the loose change.

In point of fact Ireland could be classed as a Suzerain state.

➽ Enda Craig is spokesperson for Lough Foyle group, Community For A Clean Estuary.

Are English Royal Charters Still Legitimate In Ireland?

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