Chagal4's Blog

I always thought that the Third World War would be precipitated by the same stew of politics, economical adventurism, a megalomaniac leader or some desperate poverty exploitation. It was always going to be big money power versus no money power until somebody saw an opportunity to help the no money power and turn the whole mess into a much bigger game. Whenever historians talk about the first and second world wars they either offer simplistic cause and effect scenarios or come with convoluted explanations of multifaceted conjunctions and end with “it’s complicated” meaning that ordinary human probably wouldn’t understand without years of deep meditation. In fact it seemed to me that there was only one world war with an intermission between part one and part two and all preceded by a stupidity so colossal that it had to be buried in our cultural gene memory in case anyone watching from elsewhere in the universe conclude that humans are so fundamentally stupid that it will be only a matter of time until chickens or geese or duck billed platypuses takes over.

This morning the EU announced that it would move to control the exports of Covid 19 vaccines from production facilities inside the EU until they were guaranteed that their member country needs were met and that the preexisting contracts agreed with pharmaceutical companies were honoured regardless of an other preexisting contracts with countries outside the EU. There are plenty of exceptions noted…primarily on humanitarian grounds and for other non-member states on the continent.

Of course there was always the possibility that vaccine supply would be too slow to catch the speed of the pandemic at least for the first year or so. The vaccines had to be made from scratch and in quantities in the billions of doses. Perhaps the announcements that vaccines were possible and would soon be available were premature…offered too much hope, too soon. The news that the major supplier would need to shut down its main production in order to expand its capacity meant that delivery deadlines were thrown out the window in countries that had already started inoculations. That main production facility is in Belgium. Deliveries throughout Europe and the world are effected with only slightly less effect in the U.S. due to the company having a major facility in Michigan which because of Trumpian policies is shipping mainly within the U.S.

Another large producer based in the U.K. has also announced a slowdown in their production, Astra Zeneca also has their production in Belgium and it was this slowdown which triggered the third world war. A.Z. failed in communicating the issue at their plant and the EU bureaucrats wanted explanations on behalf of their member states . A.Z. was unable to provide either adequate explanations or projections for when the juice would flow again in the volumes promised by contract with the EU. Since the EU had invested millions in the development of the vaccine and more millions in the pre-contract for supplies…they were understandably pissed and this is where those species standing around the outer universe watching human endeavour to emerge fully from the primordial ooze… found themselves shaking their heads and agreeing that stupidity must be a fundamental human characteristic. The EU leapt into action, first moving toward an export monitoring system that would compel the big Pharma companies to reveal all exports of vaccines out of EU member States to third party countries. O.K. in the interest of transparency they want to know if other countries are getting supplies of vaccines while the EU is getting shorted on their agreed amounts. But once you open the box marked “me first” merely monitoring was never going to be enough. All exports from anywhere to anywhere have to pass through some sort of customs export control process… and individual countries have the authority to question, investigate and stop exports. SOOOO…today the EU took the next step and said that they will “control” exports. The Pharma will have to apply for exports permits for vaccines shipped anywhere outside the EU (where they were produced) and the approved list of exceptions noted above. Since I’m Canadian, I’m hoping we’re exceptions on that list but I’m guessing that we’re not and that our expectations of when we might get needled has just drifted further into the future.

Over the next few days and weeks we’ll see whether the EU actually blocks some shipments but already since this morning one could hear the same kind of collective deep grunt of rage that a herd of raging bulls make when somebody takes away their cookies and milk.

For my part, I think if this war is starting we need to get ready . First we need to set up the same mechanism of monitoring and export controls here in Canada on maple syrup. maple candy etc. then , because it’s winter Canada Goose clothing should be on the list. That should be a good start but…we need to be prepared to control our biggest export…people. We send millions of people to Europe loaded with money that they drop on streets and alleys all over Europe…tourists. Yep we need to think about that. Even after we get a vaccine here in Canada, whenever that might be.

This pandemic has been running for more than a year now. Millions of people around the world have been infected and hundreds of thousands have died. Vaccines are seen as the best option for bringing it under control and perhaps restoring our societies. It is certain though, that millions more will be infected and thousands will die even with a vaccine available. Anything that slows or impedes the production and distribution of those vaccines will be counter productive and elevate the risk of infection and all of the associated anxieties. Regardless of how you see history, whether in simplistic, or more complex nuanced perspectives…world wars can be precipitated with much less cause than this. History may eventually record this as a vaccine war or a pandemic war or something else but it will unquestionably be a war involving the world.

Slow down, take a breath, wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your distance, look in on lonely friends, stay alert, and don’t expect this mess to be over any time soon.

Oh yes…and stock up on maple syrup…might have to trade that stuff for vaccine.

It’s like that echo that hangs in the air after big fireworks…when your ears are still shocked by the blasts and silence hasn’t quite recovered. Adrenaline pumps as if your hearing has something to do with your breathing, your heartbeat . Your chest thumps, my chest thumps, from those big blasts and we hear it with our whole body and suddenly…it’s gone and no sound wants to rush in to fill the vacuum. So it seems like an echo…fading…fading…all the way to fucking Florida, where it whispers through palm trees and over sun filled fairways to the weeds where alligators wait for pampered pets with Rhinestone collars. Rich white dragons sip gin and botox cocktails wearing scarlet sequinned MAGA caps (so cute ).

A stuffed Elvis impersonator , unzipped to the waist , sweaty in a white, fake leather, jumpsuit, snarls, mumbles and shimmies on a small stage trimmed in bunting, lip syncing to a raggedy assed tape of the king. Platinum ladies fresh from the body shop or the neck spa, sanded and filled and buffed and repainted like vintage Cadillacs, sail into the club house, eager for a peek at you know who…”that poor man who did so much and tried so hard for his country…only to have it stolen at the last minute…by honest to god motherfuckers”…and they’re waving kevlar chequebooks and wondering…where did it all go wrong?

Back in the bar, under humming ceiling fans that windmill clouds of Cohiba smoke, the husbands, ripe with perspiration and that Aqua di Parma that all the secretaries love, are drinking bourbon in crystal glasses, sitting at high tables, wrinkling their pants and staring stupid at the mirror on the wall . Their mistresses are bingeing Netflix in apartments all over town. Smoking weed and waiting for the cool priest to appear , they know the score , they know the clock is ticking down .

Bottles , cans, plastic cups and scraps of pizza boxes, trampled signs and trampled flags and trampled rags, crumpled clumps of stolen notes from desks inside the capitol, littered, scattered and blown like drifts of debris from a storm. The peppery burn of tear gas whisps linger on the lawn. Ten thousand soldiers shiver in the parking lot, arriving just in time to find the circus had all gone.

Nero and the entourage march like royal refugees from the chopper to the plane, well upholstered women and their weasel tailored men, clutching bags of artifacts and souvenirs and the precious family jewels. “We’ll be back” the dark lord said…”See ya later then” the audience replied.

A new and roaring silence slips over Washington as the twitter shriek dies down and the clown cars have chased the big black pickup trucks back to Tennessee or Georgia or Nebraska, back to some dismal swamp where the the KKK are chopping wood for bonfires because…by god… just as soon as the barbecue is over and the beer starts running low…they’ll all get down to planning for the next great minstrel show…just as soon as the boss wakes up from his daily nap and gets his hair just right and calls them all to go looking for a fight .

Reporters stand in clusters on corners, corridors and parks sharing masks and cigarettes dreaming up new sound bites and remembering…what’s his name? And all we want to do is go to sleep and wake up in the morning and try to turn the page…and to turn the T.V. on and not to see his face.

It’s cold here in the north and there’s a pandemic in the land…forgive us but we’re tired and this bullshit makes it worse.

January was a bitch…but it got a little better.

By now millions of words have been published and hundreds of pundits around the world have spoken and collected their first cheques of what is supposed to be a new year. For me it doesn’t feel like a new year. It feels like the old year is continuing. It’s the tenth of January and a toxic president still sits in the White House until January twentieth. The ghastly onslaught of Covid continues in spite of the arrival of vaccines. As one of my pals pointed out last week, the opioid crisis hasn’t gone anywhere. In short the problems that plagued 2020 are still very much with us. If there’s a light at the end of the tunnel we need to hope that it’s not the flick of a Bic with a crackhead taking a hit.

Most of us have lived through a year of fluctuating fear fuelled by warnings and cautions, rules, regulations, lockdowns and closures, distancing, masks, missing friends and family, Zoom calls and FaceTime , empty streets and weird humour on the internet to help us cope, bad t.v. and old black and white movies to marvel at…late night bingeing and books stacked and forgotten recalled and remembered . We got busy indoors, polished the skin off floors, dusted every nook and cranny, considered painting, ordered new sheets online, worked from home in neckties and gym shorts, turned pets into memes and insta-stars and tried hard not to be idiots. Alas…it was too hard for many. The almost daily evidence of ass-holes flouting common sense was disheartening , frustrating, even though it’s understandable that young people have energy, feel invulnerable and can’t bear being trapped in a house with parents or a small apartment with video games for days, it’s harder to understand fools who claim the pandemic is a hoax and refuse to wear masks or distance. The anti-vaxers who fear that micro bots can be injected with the vaccine in order to track their movements…as if anybody gives a damn where these trolls go on Saturday night.

And all of these things have changed us in ways we don’t fully realize yet. The way she see the world and each other has shifted. The ways we relate and communicate are different. There’s a lot of talk about how things will get back to “normal” when this is all over. “Normal’ depends on the circumstances. What we’re experiencing right now is “normal” for these circumstances and when the circumstances change there will be another “normal”. It will not be a “return to normal” .

In a way we have been trained for this. In the past sixty or seventy years we have seen and experienced huge changes at a speed never seen before. We had to learn to adapt to cultural, economic, social and political changes and perhaps the biggest surge in technological change ever known. These are no small adjustments and yet we endured, survived, learned, and kept on going.

Yes the pandemic is catastrophic , yes the events of last week in Washington are shameful, yes there is more to come on both fronts but perhaps no other generations in history have been better schooled to hang in and hang on.

Be smart, be safe, be well.

Blues, Jan. 10 2021