End of an Era for GTI

And perhaps the suicide of a region.

Austria’s Kronen Zeitung reports on the dearth of tourist bookings at a time when GTI Treffen were a pre-season primer for the local tourist industry around the Wörthersee.

GTI Meeting at the Wörthersee in Austria has been killed by regional administration. And the region’s prosperity may be collateral damage.

Instead of policing the excesses of a few, the clampdowns and denial of event permits seem to have dissuaded the vast majority of the more than 200,000 meeting visitors typical of such meetings in less-recent years.

Tourism service providers are feeling the pinch, with pre-season activity a flop. Some accommodation providers have chosen to delay opening fully from hibernation. In-season accommodation costs will have to increase to offset the loss of income; fewer bookings and worse are on the horizon.

Perhaps local administration didn’t consider the indirect income from the GTI Meetings to its own coffers. Of course administration will be the last to cut costs. They’ll compensate by increases elsewhere. Resulting in higher costs for (locals and) tourist accommodation resulting in higher prices and fewer bookings. … Rinse. Repeat.

It’s been 25 years since I went but the unwelcome to GTI Meeting attendees on the part of local government will never be forgotten: A couple of days before the official meeting date, the local roads had been ripped open and seemingly hundreds of Police ensured that the new “construction zone” speed limit of 30 was being observed at every corner and bend in the approach roads.

The GTI legend continues this year with the first Fanfest to be in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Tomorrow is Tomorrow

Sophocles, ca 440BC

“Tomorrow is tomorrow. Future cares have future cures, And we must mind today.”

Focus on the problems of today and leave the problems of the future to be solved by the people of the future, using means available to them.

Save Freedom, not the Future

Václav Klaus, 19th International Vienna Congress com.sult 2022, House of Industry, Vienna, January 30, 2022.

Read the full article at Václav Klaus’ site

Precious excerpts:

Let’s accept that we are responsible for what we are doing now and, eventually, for what we will leave behind us.We can’t be, however, responsible for the future. We do not have any way to influence the behaviour of people in the future.

Our thinking should be also based on the reasonable assumption that future generations will be richer and – due to this and due to the never-ending technical progress – will be much better able to cope with what we today consider to be unsolvable problems. Therefore, the worst thing we could do for future generations would be to artificially undercut our current economic growth and development, and thus reduce their future wealth.

Freedom remains – at least for some of us – a fundamental principle. Let’s not try to mastermind the future – all undemocratic systems aspired to do that, all of them failed and their efforts led to disasters. We should try to hand over to our successors a free world, a democracy. We should allow them to make their own decisions, let them be “free to choose”.

Klaus concludes:

People should remain free to make decisions. There is no one who knows better. There is no “philosopher-king”. Neither Greta Thunberg, nor Klaus Schwab, nor Franz Timmermans, nor Madame Lagarde. In the spirit of Hayek, we should fight against their arrogant, but unjustified pretence of knowledge. We shouldn’t capitulate to them or to the aggressive pressure groups they create and support. This year’s Vienna Congress should express this message very strongly. We shouldn’t disregard our convictions. And the truth.

More Peace to Come in our Time

Do not feed the tyrants within and they won’t grow to attempt tyranny over others.

Another Klausterswab in the making?

Tyranny is the natural order of things.

Never sacrifice your freedom for security or peace. It is a priceless treasure. That’s the summation by historian Neil Oliver.

Showing weakness in the face of tyranny is surrender. And so it was when Germany’s new Foreign Minister Baerbock flew to Moscow for a photoshoot tet-a-tet with Putin; challenging his skills to interpret whatever she was saying. Meanwhile, Germany’s Bundeswehr has been weakened by forced participation in medical experiments, taking many out of active service, while objectors are being fined and threatened with imprisonment.

In the USA, President Biden displays, if anything, acquiescence and tries to brush the adverse reactions withing Defense in the same pharmacological adventure under the carpet.

Close neighbour Canada’s Trudeau, former part-time drama teacher and itinerant ski instructor, is too busy demonstrating his aptitude at tyranny in the pursuit of the people who dare to stand up and demand their freedoms back.

If Putin were to act in the Ukraine, this was an unmissable opportunity.

Putin already has less-volatile levers on Central and Western Europe via energy supplies and “green” policies abandoning energy sovereignty, have moved the fulcrum closer to those people, with a little movement at Putin’s end exerting a lot of force at the consumer end.

I have no appetite to live in interesting times.

What We Know

Milton Joseph Rosenau, M.D.

We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.

MILTON J. ROSENAU, M.D.
in JAMA, Aug 2, 1919

A little over a century ago, Doctor Rosenau published his findings in the Journal A.M.A. in an article titled EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE MODE OF SPREAD OF INFLUENZA; in particular the devastating “Spanish Flu”.

Milton Joseph Rosenau, M.D.

We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.

MILTON J. ROSENAU, M.D.
in JAMA, Aug 2, 1919

A little over a century ago, Doctor Rosenau published his findings in the Journal A.M.A. in an article titled EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE MODE OF SPREAD OF INFLUENZA; in particular the devastating “Spanish Flu”.

Spiteful Models

Acceptable Supermarine Spiteful

One of the most spiteful and most unhealing properties of scientific models is their capability to strike down truth and take its place.

And often, these models serve as blinkers, by limiting attention to an excessively narrow area. The exaggerated trust in models has contributed much to the affected and ingenuine character of larger parts of current natural research.

Erwin Chargaff

Informed Consent

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

An excerpt.

Article 6 – Consent

1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

2. Scientific research should only be carried out with the prior, free, express and informed consent of the person concerned. The information should be adequate, provided in a comprehensible form and should include modalities for withdrawal of consent. Consent may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without any disadvantage or prejudice. Exceptions to this principle should be made only in accordance with ethical and legal standards adopted by States, consistent with the principles and provisions set out in this Declaration, in particular in Article 27, and international human rights law.

3. In appropriate cases of research carried out on a group of persons or a community, additional agreement of the legal representatives of the group or community concerned may be sought. In no case should a collective community agreement or the consent of a community leader or other authority substitute for an individual’s informed consent.

Alchemy of Our Time

From Wikipedia

This is not a book review. I tried doing one and it wasn’t of use to anybody. What follows is very much my own thoughts as a consequence of exposure. Perhaps one could tell that by the introductory definition. Worry not; you should see the relevance soon enough.

Nevertheless, the ISBN is 3752629789; enough to find the book in a library (a what?) or online.

The book “Virus Mania” was originally written by European authors Engelbrecht, Köhnlein and Scoglio; recently joined by Kiwi Doctor Samantha Bailey in the latest edition. That edition has a whole new chapter addressing the current global calamity in the context of the ideas presented earlier in the book.

I “cheated” and first skipped straight to that chapter. At the end, I had the following to say:

The authors explain the nature of infection and what is necessary to establish causal links between a purported pathogen, testing for that pathogen and associating an illness with a suspected pathogen. Readers ought to be surprised to discover that causality has not been established; lacking in all three aspects. Foremost for the individual is that no unique set of symptoms has been associated with the virus in question.

I found the book to be readable; all the big words are explained along the way. Language is engaging and the subject appears to be well researched, referenced to hundreds of sources (over a thousand) identified in the book’s Literature section. You might miss your stop if you’re reading it on the bus.

You could buy the book based on just that chapter.

Farewell to Phil the Greek

When the days are lonely, cold and dark, remember the warmth of brighter days in good fellowship.

Picture Released by HM on Twitter
»The Queen wishes to share this private photograph taken with The Duke of Edinburgh at the top of the Coyles of Muick, Scotland in 2003«

Best chap for the job of supporting the Monarch for more than 70 years.

Suppressing “Bad Ideas” is a Toehold of Tyranny

The recent ban by a bookseller of Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos highlights the propensity to try to shut down ideas that one doesn’t understand or those ideas that challenge one’s position. Using any tragedy as justification, no matter how disconnected. [Do I smell a Reichstag fire?]

Suppression of “bad ideas” is a toehold of tyranny.