Many thanks CJ. and more old aquaintances recalled - Sue C… Do you ever see Margo nowadays? Still notwithstanding problems with the scamdemic block, it’s good to see these old colleagues still active. I also detect a certain shift in Media Lens towards the light…
(and thanks for tip on the Kmenitsky blast and radiation cloud… when will they have to talk about it? )
I’m coming to this news late. It was such a shock to read that Rhis is no longer with us. I’m a very occasional contributor, but I really valued his insightful wisdom, knowledge and humour… going back to the days of the Lifeboat. We need more like him for the days ahead. Thanks for letting us know, and for including the photo of him.
I’ve received a couple messages from RG’s family. Passing them on here:
If anyone would like to donate something for Richard, he was a great supporter of AnimalsAsia. He cared deeply about the bile farm bears. If you go to their website there is a link to donate. Perhaps you could let your forum people know about this.
And
Please tell the group that Richard was not deluded! The NHS staff were amazing and couldn’t have looked after him with more love and care. One day those guys might end up in hospital and then they will know. X
Peace xx
“tip on the Kmenitsky blast and radiation cloud” What’s this about guys? I’m doing almost daily updates on Twitter concerning the nuclear component of the Ukrainian conflict so will be grateful for any links…
“it’s why I like to get up in the middle of the night and look at the constellations” Antipodeans are (mostly I suspect), privileged to be able to see them!
Thanks CJ - and GKH - your previous post all about Zaporizhye NPP makes the point - because the whole story of that, and fabrication of reality about it, has been the only nuclear story we have heard from W media. And must say that despite Grossi visiting the plant several times, and each time being shown around and shown the shell damage from Ukrainian attacks, he never manages to say that Kiev is responsible and it is Kiev that must stop the dangerous attacks. The best explanation for this is that were he to say this, he mightn’t get out of Ukraine in one piece, as he has to go through Kiev controlled territory.
And BTW - you’re dead right about Antipodeans ( and suppose it’s the same in NZ), because a) the sky is often clear at night and b) the sky is always super clear compared with the Northern Hemisphere, except on the odd occasion of bushfires. We also have zero light pollution. I could say too that on a clear night like tonight, with no moon to speak of, I can see to walk around by mere starlight, with the Milky Way more or less overhead in the evening, once my eyes get used to the dark.
Sensible commentary GK - which is to say I pretty much agree with you! I think it is quite possible to be seriously affected by the SARS-2 virus, which was - as you say, genetically engineered and launched onto society by some very nasty people. My issue is often with those who make the idiotic claim that viruses somehow don’t exist, and the whole thing was fabricated. If you look at the detailed genetics and mode of operation of both the virus and the mRNA treatments, it is impossible to say this is just all made up!
I have to say something, because I don’t like the way that some people are holding up Rhis’s ‘recantation’ as verifying their own viewpoint on the dangers of the Virus and acceptance of all the crazy things that were done on the basis of its alleged threat, particularly to young people who were under no threat whatsoever from it.
But I can also see what it is like to actually be ill in hospital, and dependent on nurses and equipment and drugs to keep you alive; you may well feel the need to accept things you previously resisted. Even Paxlovid, or Remdesevir… sadly.
My tuppenceworth.
One of the covid crimes was to scramble the testing and resulting data for political reasons.
That there was dishonesty around most things covid-related does not mean covid wasn’t dangerous - the numbers were rendered vague to the point of meaningless by the deliberately skewed tests.
If you did have the virus you would probably test positive; but in the PCR tests the number of cycles was set to such a high level that there could be no confidence that someone testing positive had anything resembling a disease.
Crucially, this time the official ‘diagnosis’ of the covid disease did not necessitate symptoms.
This polticization of medicine wrought havoc with perceptions of how dangerous the disease is; fooling both the skeptics and the faithful, and making accuracy very difficult.
Many diagnosed don’t have it - but then again, this means it is more dangerous for the people who do actually have it along with symptoms.
This might make it particularly dangerous for vulnerable groups that are a bit sceptical.
Rhis was armed with his early treatment (large dose Vitamin C) plan - but you can get ill and not realize it is actually covid, especially with variants changing the symptoms.
Assuming he wouldn’t have got tested, he would not have been able to implement his early treatment plan.
Something very similar happened to a neighbour. Slightly older than Rhis but very spritely, out every day on the bus - looked like never getting covid. No jab.
Eventually (late 2021) she took ill for more than a week, didn’t seem like covid. Was seen two or three times by healthcare inclusing Drs. Didn’t seem like covid. Was forced into hospital by neighbour pressure. Ambulance staff tested her (naturally!). Covid. Pneumonia, blood clot, Oops. It looked ominously bad.
Like Rhis they took good care of her - no ventilator or midazolam - though she had signed a do-not-resuscitate order (why?). Improved and released with some new ailments including very limited capacity for exercise due to shortness of breath. Still not fully recovered, main compaint is the breathlessness returns if she walks more than about 50m. Functional apart from that.
When first released she needed a fair bit of look-in care. Without this she wouldn’t have been able to be released.
I think it’s ironic that despite the zillions of tests forced on healthy people with no symptoms, many vulnerable people did not get tested when they had covid.
In healthy people the tests (implemented so as to maximize the number of covid diagnoses) might be a criminal fraud and large scale crime - but the chances are they will still flag up covid if it’s there, which is/was the normal use of a diagnostic test. Before covid, it was.
I wouldn’t say poor Rhis has been proven wrong but ironically looks like he may have been a victim of the bad messaging (certainly the case with my neighbour). Had there been a trustworthy, health-based use of testing, the alarm and mystique of covid would have been removed and the perhaps unusual category of vulnerable sceptics would have learned that the time to fear Covid is when you’ve actually got it, and there would have been a test that they could have a bit of faith in to verify the suspicion.
Cheers
My 86 y.o. father has done the same because he’s had a good life and doesn’t want it extended by extraordinary measures. He’s ready to go when the time comes, and making the most of life while he’s here.
Thanks Jackie. [Edit: You are qute right to query my query 
] Your father clearly knew what he was doing. In the case of my neighbour she didn’t know “why”, she was just asked to sign it. She presumed they knew best and probably reckoned it was to be obeyed only in the most extreme situations. And maybe in Canada, it is. And maybe it was not applied to my neighbour due to judgement, common humanity or sense.
Before covid, I had ‘the talk’ three times when a relative had gone in after respiratory failure, where (without a DNR having being given) the doctors implied recovery would likely mean a low quality of life, and nudging (not firmly, but might have swayed me if I’d had more faith in this part of the process) towards a switchoff. I declined; each time they came out of it as well as they were before it. I’d also say though that the hospital doctors did well apart from that. My main objection to the DNR use is that in the UK at least, it is managed by hospital or trust bosses for more than one purpose.
Cheers
Rhis was a poet (a typical bloody Welshman).
Maz and I were two of the most prolific poets in the early 2000s, and I can guarantee that no one here will have ever heard of us (it’s a bitch being a poet). Maz died a very sad death; but I won’t go into that here. She wrote this poem for me, but it’s also applicable for Rhis…
Drips from Psyche’s Lamp
Tell me you’re blind at night and I’ll believe you.
Tell me they raise the sky on ten thousand turquoise poles
and I won’t quibble. I’ll point out the flapping canopy,
and the places in the T-shirt clouds where their points stand out
like nipples. I don’t care about lies, about tall tales,
only about the tourniquet musk of you, the bowstring tight
around my aorta so my brain pulses harder than my heart,
all thoughts turned to sparkles.
Wind me in your elastic time
so I’ll live forever before breakfast, so I’ll fall apart
and curl in a yolk, then break out all gold and new
like a Paschal chick on a daffodil cake. Launch me
on a crocus sea. I don’t care if you’re blind at night,
if the sky collapses on me like a marquee in a squall.
I’ll be ova, ovine, big sheep’s eyes,
I’ll be nova, novacodeine, noddy as a noodle,
I’ll be tangy, tangerine, mango, mandarin,
tango, tanga, bingo bongo bang.
I should perhaps add that like me, Maz could bash out sonnets as easily as most people breathe. The above piece is not free verse stuff. It’s someone supremely confident in using the English language.
Yeah I can…I’m glad I didn’t earlier this year when I contracted terrible flu (I have COPD, felt like I’d been hit by a “semi”), and thanks for your support re: AIDS etc…too many dead I fear.
Reads Like Tracey Emin might write!
My mother didn’t want any heroic measures and died just before they would have been necessary. #EileenYoungRIP P.S DON’T use Glyphosate…
Such sad news
Rest in peace Rhis
Thanks Rob - suits Rhisiart very well I think; there’s always a place for poetry in my mind, if it can just breakthrough the burden of rational thinking… sorry I never got to hear of you… !
Rhis sometimes spoke about the war (WW2). My Mother (about the same age) was evacuated to Lyme Regis, and remembers playing on the beach while it was all kicking off on the other side of the Channel (D-Day, 1944), with the sound of missiles and shells and huge numbers of people being slaughtered.
A different generation. And now we’ve got Drag Queen Story Time, and all the rest of this nonsense…
I need a break from all the madness that’s going on at the moment. So, Gwenno Saunders was born in Cardiff in 1981. Her father is a noted Cornish poet and her mother is a Welsh activist. As a result Gwenno is fluent in both the Cornish and Welsh languages. Now. you can’t beat that, can you (or maybe you can).
How much time do you give to these people; although I have to say that Gwenno was very good…
Progtastic. PSB do come up with some good stuff.
Were those shots of David Niven from A Matter Of Life And Death? If so they were filmed in a mock-up of the cockpit of a Lancaster Bomber. Before I get my coat and exit through the Pedants Only gift shop here’s a fab bit from the film. Not just the most magnificent propaganda film ever (though Leni Riefenstahl would have differed) but an all-time great full-stop.
