Hedgehogs in the fog
The madness will end one day
Getting a flu with heavy cough just as I was preparing to travel from Italy to Spain, I bought a pot of delicious “linden honey from the tuscan hills” to sooth my throat, but it was confiscated at the Amerigo Vespucci airport on Uncle Sam's orders.
Apparently, even solid-type honey counts as a “liquid” and cannot be transported. I offered to taste it in front of the agents to prove that it was not any kind of explosive device, but it was useless. Rules are rules, even when they are completely nonsensical.
The “no liquids” rule on flights was created in 2006, following the discovery by British authorities of a supposed “Al Qaeda” plot to blow up planes using hydrogen peroxide (which reminds me, I also had pharmaceutical hydrogen peroxide in my bag, which was also confiscated, perhaps with more reason) and other flammable liquids hidden in soft drink bottles.
Of course, now we know that “Al Qaeda” was mostly an invented boogeyman, Bin Laden was a CIA agent who was not responsible for 9/11 and who was not killed and “buried at the sea” by U.S. Navy Seals, and that a lot of of those “terrorist plots” were actually created or at least promoted by the same authorities that were supposed to combat them. Besides, in any case today there's already a technology that allows for scanning and identifying all kinds of liquids, but no matter. The nonsensical rule continues to be enforced in most airports. (I wonder if it's just something pushed to make passengers only buy stuff at the more expensive Duty Free shops).
At least they mercifully stopped with the masks and vaccine passes. The “war on terror”, just as the “war on viruses", which are really both ways of “war on normal life", must go on.
In the meantime, Uncle Sam spent last year one million dollars in a study trying to turn monkeys transgender. Apparently, it's not enough for the U.S. to turn every child in the world into a transsexual, they have to do it to the long-suffering Rhesus monkeys too. Of course, that's just pocket change compared to the billions sent to the Ukraine or to Israel to help them bomb Palestinian children and shoot Christians.
If America contained its madness into itself it would be already bad enough, but they want to export it worldwide, and spare no effort or newly printed money in the process. Critical Race Theory, George Floyd Riots, school shootings, transgender-mania, mass migration, radical feminism, “woke casting”, every bad idea seems to start in America and then is pushed to everyone everywhere, from Egypt to Uganda. No one is safe.
Sure, we cannot just blame America. The whole West, lulled by its relative prosperity, is willing participant in the madness. People in the West are so apathetic they even forget to reproduce themselves, and many countries are having negative population growth (no matter, they can be replaced by hordes of Asians and Africans, we're just numbers). In Canada, however, population replacement by migration is now considered too slow a genocide, so they are pushing euthanasia too, for anyone over the age of 18 suffering from depression, anorexia or drug addiction.
What cannot go on forever, probably won't. At some point the madness will end, but who knows how many people will have been killed, hurt or psychologically damaged before it happens.
But hey, it's Christmas. It's a time for hope and joy, so let's celebrate what we can. (I'm a bit grumpy because of my flu, but I love Christmas).
As I left Siena early in the morning, it was so foggy you could barely see ten steps ahead, which reminded me of the beautiful animated short movie by Yuri Norstein, “Hedgehog in the Fog". It is a deceptively simple story about a hedgehog who, on the way to visit his bear friend, gets lost in the thick fog of the forest. As he tries to find his way through the unknown, like all of us, he wavers between fear, surprise and occasional wonder. (Spoiler: in the end, he finds his way. We will find it too.)
Merry Christmas to all.
H2O2 is not flammable. In high concentrations it is a strong oxidizing agent and can cause other compounds to combust. Gallium would be another interesting compound ro take on an aluminium plane.