An easy explanation as to why American medical doctors, drug and insurance companies don't like Obamacare

Ten years ago I got an ear infection while swimming in water contaminated by human waste in Puerto Rico. I finally had to visit a hospital to get a prescription drug. Even though I managed to unobserved slip through a back door ajar -- thus avoiding to pay the US $150 the hospital wanted for having a medical trainee peek into my ear -- I still had to come up with US $120 at the local Pharmacy to get the drugs in order to treat my infection. Eventually it went away. Puerto Rico, though also a Caribbean nation in its own right, guarantees all its legal citizens American Citizenship. Their medical system, consequently, is ruled by US standards.

Cut. Ten years later. I arrive in Nicaragua with a similar ailment. I go straight to the Pharmacy and ask for some antibiotics. They give me a small bottle with drops to pour into the ear twice a day. The swelling subsides. Cost? 46 Cordobas, the equivalent of $ 1 dollar and 57 cents. 

Conclusion. If you can get away with charging 270 dollars for something that doesn't need to cost more than 2 -- and mind you, the Pharmacy and the manufacturer of the drug are still making money from it -- what does that tell you? 

What it tells me is that someone makes profits so huge that they're almost unimaginable. No wonder law firms can also get away with suing medical companies for millions and millions of dollars, on behalf of clients who happened to perhaps suffer a side effect from taking a prescription drug. 

I believe the American medical system, unfortunately, to be corrupt beyond redemption, and this state of affairs is not something the president elect is going to significantly change. In addition to the hospitals, insurance and drug companies being in cahoots, there are also loads of senators and congress men on their payrolls. And then I haven't even mentioned the arms industry and its subsidiaries in the US (in a public speech delivered just one day before the ominous 11th of September 2001, Secretary of Defense, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, announced that there were 2,3 trillion -- 2 300 000 000 000! -- dollars missing in the Pentagon budget, that is: money that simply was unaccounted for and of course remained unaccounted for after the alleged attack on the Pentagon compound...) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpSBUgbxBU

Unless medical companies and hospitals are thus forced to only seek reasonable dividends from their activities, and stop bribing politicians to carry out their devious designs, this swindle will continue until the whole system one day hopefully collapses.

Donald Rumsfeld announces 2.3 Trillion missing from the Pentagon on September 10th 2001

On September 10th 2001, Sec. Defence Donald Rumseld announced that 2.3 Trillion Dollars in…

YOUTUBE.COM

Astronomical sensation in the microcosm: How a black whole is created!

 

And as Niels Bohr said: "If you're not entirely bewildered by the quantum leap, you haven't properly studied it." 

One of the interesting things about living in France is that one, even involuntarily but nonetheless inevitably, has to become a do-it-yourself handy and maintenance man. It is in the very essence of things produced in France that they will often break, but just as often not completely, e.g. things are indeed fixable, but you have to fix them. Even so, your solutions and repair results will remain in the spirit of the original product, that is: liable to fail. 

Today it wasn't a lock that wouldn't turn, a screw in the refrigerator door hinge that needed to be replaced, or the fixture for the tube inside the vacuum cleaner to be glued back on to the rim. It wasn't even a French product, strictly speaking, but something manufactured by a Dutch owned company.

I'm talking about my trash bin: Brabantia. Not that I would ever have considered buying it new, considering its whopping almost 300 Euro price tag. A friend of mine found one abandoned in a neighbour's garden and managed to buy it for 10 Euros from the owner. He then cleaned and polished it up for me. It now looks and works fine - in principal.

But there is a slight downside to it. As the bin graciously entered my house, during my absence, there was one tiny part missing in the locking mechanism. Consequently, the lid would not stay down but pop back up again every time I tried to close it. Now, this turned out to be no big problem since Brabantia is engaged to provide such spare part for free to its customers. So the parts were sent for and duly arrived. And they worked. For a while...

The problem was that the little plastic clamp that has been introduced in a tiny slot under the lid for the locking device to work, is likely to get loose and even fall off if one is not very attentive and cautious when closing and opening the lid. Consequently, the first plastic clamp just disappeared somewhere in connection with, precisely, my opening or closing of the lid, and I didn't even bother to try to find it, since I knew I had two more of those devices. Today, however, when the same thing happened, I decided not to be so lazy...

It goes without saying that the plastic 30 litre bag inside the dustbin was full to the brim with everything from coffee ground, potato peel to a chicken carcass. It also goes without saying that the 5 mm plastic knob, like a neutron star relentlessly moving in towards the centre of our sun by inexorable gravitational force, had worked itself down to the very bottom of the bag. It wasn't until I spilled the last remains of coffee and potato into the drain, to make sure the neutron star wouldn't escape beyond the event horizon, that it finally turned up. It was intact and the locking mechanism now works again.

But here's my question: why is that when one can make an object that doesn't work in a given context where it's supposed to work, why can't one just as well make something that actually does work in the first place? Well, you'd say. Why don't you just glue the piece inside the small frame holding it?

I Suppose I could, and even I thought about it, considering it a brilliant idea. But then, on second thought, I realised that if the locking device breaks inside the slot, it would be near impossible to get the scraps out of there without destroying the frame itself, and the bin would never, ever lock again.

Considering Murphy's Law, this is one day bound to happen, and it certainly doesn't need another reason to do so than that I have glued the piece back on to make sure it doesn't come off any longer. Thus, the best solution so far is to continue to be careful and not allow the locking mechanism to get loose again. Only this is not always so easy, but then again life never promised such a thing as to make things easy for us. 

The Owls of Afrasiab. Excerpt from the book.

 

    

Mehmet II.  Painting by Paolo Veronese

                                         

The battle between Islam and Christianity precipitating the fall of Constantinople was an event that for ever changed the course of history. Breathtakingly rendering the internal struggle of the Byzantine capital under deadly constriction, and the occult high-stake political game surrounding it, The Owls of Afrasiab also tells the story of the dangerous passion uniting the Genoese commander leading the city's defence with Hadije, one of the wives of the late Sultan Murad, determined to avenge herself for the murder of her baby boy ordered by the young and lethally ambitious Sultan Mehmet II.

 

"One man who had made it his special duty to regularly attend the
funeral masses was the learned monk Gennadi, a man renowned for
the purity and zeal of his conviction. A sworn enemy to the union
of the churches, he nonetheless rendered the Emperor, and thereby
the city, a service of sorts by constantly setting the example of a Godloving
man possessed by unwavering faith. To Gennadi miracles were
not only possible but positively attainable, but only under the condition
that all precepts of orthodoxy were strictly observed. He was
practically indefatigable in carrying out prostrations. Somewhat more
alarmingly, Gennadi had also let himself be convinced that the greatest
of all possible miracles to visit mankind would be God’s imminent
decision to bring about its demise. In short, he did not hesitate to propound
the message that the Sultan’s siege was a tell-tale sign that the
Apocalypse of John was about to become reality, and that the reason
for this to happen was that God, precisely in the year 1453 AD, had
grown tired of the wicked race he had once sired.

Constantine had been alerted to the potentially devastating effects
of this fatalistic message – one dangerous implication of which was the
idea that Mehmet had been chosen by providence to carry out God’s
last will –months before Mehmet had actually turned up outside
the walls. In truth, Gennadi’s declaration that the defection of the
Orthodox Christians from the one and only true faith, as well as their
willingness to allow Catholic ritual to desecrate the holiest of churches,
Hagia Sophia, had unleashed riots in the streets threatening Italians
in general, and their spiritual leaders, such as the Pope’s special envoy
Isidore of Kiev and his right hand, Bishop Leonard of Chios, in particular.
Understandably, the Emperor, fearing far reaching complications,
was hesitant to impose penalties on the ring leaders, although
his Roman guests, who had in fact brought indispensable bowmen
and supplies to the city, demanded that they be forcefully suppressed.
Attendance in unionist church services was consequently symbolic at
best.

As the siege wore on, however, Gennadi, considered by the faithful
as the rightful successor to Patriarch Gregory – who had left
Constantinople for Rome two years earlier exasperated at the suicidal
stubbornness of its population – had broken his voluntary isolation.
He could now be seen actively participating both in the city’s defence
and in the services held under oil lamps as numerous and glimmering
as the stars of heaven. Whether he had changed his mind about the
inevitability of the city’s fall was not to be deduced from his public
appearances, but it did give Leonard and Isidore an opportunity to try
to converse with him. Consequently, and much to the astonishment
of pious Greeks from all walks of life, Leonard and Isidore were on
several occasions seen participating in the Orthodox masses for the
fallen, humbly adhering to ceremonial minutiae.

It was well into the night when the two of them discreetly caught up
with Gennadi making for his monastery in the presence of two monks.
The Greek sage at first refused to have anything to do with them, making
no secret of that he held them personally responsible for the corruption
of his people. It seemed as though that would conclude the
matter, since he refused to salute them, turned away and was about to
disappear into a dark alley when Isidore, a Greek by birth, suddenly
had a bright idea. He ran after him while exclaiming,

– Brother Gennadi! We’re aware that you loathe our presence and
thus shun our company, but let me tell you this: the church of Rome
does not wish to see its brothers in faith fall prey to the caprices of
Allah over a matter of preposition. Please, don’t let the matter of Jesus’
substances obscure the reality of the fact, that to the infidels Jesus is not
even the Son of God, but a prophet subordinated to the authority of
Mohammed, a common camel driver who eight centuries ago claimed
to have received visions from the archangel Gabriel instructing him to
disregard the Bible as the ultimate dispenser of truth. In view of the
resistance which the laetantur coeli has met with among your flock,
the Pope has declared himself willing to reconsider his stance on the
question of independence and will issue an invitation suggesting a
new council of the churches in view of obtaining, once and for all, a
convivial solution to problems raised by local variations in theological
interpretation.

It was diplomatic nonsense and the promise little more than a pious
lie as the Pope’s conviction in this regard was known to be more solid
than the rock of Gibraltar; but it was also, considering the precariousness
of the situation, a license taken with regard to the fact that if
Constantinople ever fell to the Turks, the Pope’s position on the matter
of union between the churches would matter very little anyway.
Surprisingly, Gennadi seemed willing to accept this pretext for a chat,
but it wasn’t until they had reached the monastery, and the three of
them were installed in the refectory for a bowl of soup – the monk’s
only meal for the day – that he told them his real reasons for allowing
this unprecedented meeting to take place."



Buy the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Owls-Afrasiab-Secret-Story-Constantinople-ebook/dp/B007YSZ1CS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467197723&sr=8-4&keywords=Lars+Holger+Holm#navbar


In the midst of the siege Hadije manages to get inside the city walls. The subsequent encounter with Commander Longo results in love at first sight and a conjuration of spirits dedicated to kill Mehmet before he takes the city. The plan, of course, turns out to be impracticable. The enemy is now not only outside the gates, but also actively conspiring from within. It seems an honest man and warrior can do nothing but stand by his word and sword until he falls. Meanwhile, a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do... A dazzling drama enacted at a pivotal point in European history, when the luminous ideas of the Renaissance begin to gain ascendancy over medieval darkness. Churchmen still squabble over the use of prepositions in dogma, humanists look for answers to new questions in arcane sciences, while eager merchants of Italian republics seek ways to hold on to their dominions, rapidly dwindling under the mounting threat of an enemy growing more menacing by the minute: the Ottoman, Islamic Turk.

Tomorrow's Quote - Anticipated!

"Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet."

 

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975)

Particularly known for his magnum opus on the phenomenology of civilisation called:

A Study of History

 

Today's Quote

"A people doesn't have any other right 

than to be governed wisely."

       
 
 Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)

Below a link to a brief animated introduction to his most famous work:

Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West. The title perhaps not quite as impressive in English as in German - still...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsaieZt5vjk

High Plateau of Valensole, Provence, right now:

Blooming lavender fields, full of bees, making honey...

"Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes." 
(Thus you bees not only produce honey for yourselves)

And of course: a pristine lake for my daily swim!

Hiding in Broad Daylight, by Lars Holger Holm. Excerpt from the book.

 

 Hiding in Broad Daylight. Here on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

The political truth of Europe at this time was that democracy, faint and

pale, panted for its life on the fringes of the continent. Meanwhile, two tyrannosaurs

conjured by a common revolutionary spirit that had recently destroyed

and discarded entire empires, had been set against each other in the

historical arena. In this extraordinary situation the even more extraordinary

happens: Art, hitherto blowing petrol on every existing revolutionary fire in

Europe and elsewhere, ecstatically watching every vestige of old Europe going

up in flames, suddenly declares itself innocent. And as though that weren’t

even enough, it is now: The Victim!

 

The paintings of German expressionists — which to Thomas Mann had

seemed such dark foreboding of a fascism on the march — were now interpreted

as being mere internal landscapes, the objectified agony as it were of

the artist having to face the reality, as opposed to the fantasy, of revolution

and war. In no way should they be regarded as the very stimulus to the same.

Among futurists it was not acknowledged that the adulation of the machine

as the incarnation of the zeitgeist was in itself a declaration of war, paving

the way for men of action with precisely this in mind. Nowhere was there a

sense among artists of having been in the least unfair in their visceral criticism

of the bourgeois society. Nor were their unabashed provocations and

openly expressed rebuttal of capitalism and liberal republican values seen as

instrumental in the rise of European totalitarianism. No, the artists up to this

point had remained true to the calling of art by involuntarily turning into the

human seismographs registering the subterranean tremors announcing the

full-scale arrival of state sponsored political, social, and cultural terror.

 

Luckily for them, Germanic expressionists — whether an Emil Nolde, an

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, or a James Ensor — were exonerated from the task of

carrying on their work in the service of either Nazis or Bolsheviks. Their work

was famously dubbed ‘formalist’ by Soviet commissaries of art, and ‘degenerate’

by Nazi experts on eugenics. Likewise the Italian futurists were considered

too crazy even by Mussolini to be seriously considered for propagandist

purposes. Interestingly, Mussolini held the sound opinion that art and politics

were and should be two separate things, never to be combined, and that the

state therefore ought not to meddle in the business of art, as art should refrain

from getting involved in politics. This might be an important reason why the

frozen postures of social realism and propaganda art never became quite the

same hit in fascist Italy as in Germany and Russia, where the revolutionary

actors were incessantly idolised in this manner. Russian futurists in the Stalin

era had little choice but to conform to the nationalistic pathos and its predefined

aesthetic standards.

 

Since both Nazism and Soviet communism have since gone defunct,

contemporary democratic consensus takes for granted that there cannot be

a grain of historical truth in the critique of art these two systems generated

internally. Since fascism and communism obviously didn’t work out, everything

found within them must be considered an error and only be interesting

insofar as it maps out an historical dead end. It is, on the other hand, assumed

that there is no higher truth to be discovered in the realm of aesthetics than

the one guaranteeing the artist absolute freedom to do whatever pleases him.

More: That only the artist enjoying the highest degree of freedom is capable of

producing eternally modern and yet, paradoxically, timeless art. It has thereby

also been taken for granted that the artist himself is not going to abuse this

unconditional freedom by behaving irresponsibly in his art — as opposed to

in his personal life were transgression of bourgeois decorum is almost considered

de rigueur.

 

...

 

John D Rockefeller Jr., founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New

York, began to systematically buy up avant-garde art in the 1920s. Over time

this resulted in a vast collection of contemporary works, at the time still waiting

to acquire political maturity. By the end of the Second World War it was

clear that Nazism had been permanently defeated while no more than an uneasy

truce had been obtained with Marxist Russia. The fate of precious modernism

again seemed uncertain. European modernism certainly had made

its mark on the general public. With a once again free and liberal Paris there

were hopes of a return of modernism to its most fertile soil. But since the

1920s things had changed. The United States, during its own phase of state

autocracy, personified by presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, had seemed to lag

behind in artistic awareness, having little more than its own brand of social

realism and middle class sentimentality to offer a discerning art world, eager

for the new, shocking and surprising. However, with America’s second intervention

in European affairs, which decidedly tipped the balance in favour of

the Allies, the time had come for the United States to not only demonstrate its

political and economic hegemony in the world, but also to become the cutting

edge in artistic modernism.

Artistic modernism. To most of us it would seem a separate universe with its own esoteric intention and logic. What Lars Holger Holm shows in this essay, however, is how intimately the development of various modern artistic idioms, and their theoretical underpinnings, have been linked to concomitant social revolutions and to the highly politicised, theoretical, even racial agendas, entertained by people in the highest places. He also demonstrates how big money has thoroughly perverted art and artists, turning the latter into simple con men performing their charades to a whole world of spectators, manipulated by financial institutions, press, politicians and the media alike into believing that the contemporary art scene really ought to have some kind of meaning... And it does. Only, it's not artistic but exclusively financial and political.

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Hiding-Broad-Daylight-Radicalisation-Commercialisation-ebook/dp/B00VITFM7I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467106029&sr=8-1&keywords=holm+hiding+in+broad+daylight#nav-subnav

The Future of Democrazy

Since the British people obviously made the wrong decision when for once asked about their opinion, holding referendums might in the future turn out to be a slippery slope for politicians of all democratic nations to tread. Notwithstanding that referendums may constitutionally be regarded as of consultative rather than of legislative character, it is possible that national, democratically elected governments, will begin to avoid consulting its constituencies in regard to specific issues of major importance to the nation's future. In other words: politicians across democratic Europe will soon begin sawing at the very branch they're perched on.

Suggestions regarding how to curtail the growing demand among the citizens of Europe to be able to hold elected politicians responsible for their actions, and non-actions, have been proposed by press, media and politicians alike. Above all, there is a growing conviction that every single democratic election that doesn't favour the consensus of the establishment - hitherto a self-appointed, auto-procreating elite which over time has come to resemble some communist nomenclature, shrouded in self-righteousness and full of zeal in forcing the people to listen and learn to repeat, parrot-like, all the right opinions - should be ruled out as something anti-democratic and illegal.

There is a near total agreement within the establishment to label every political attempt to give the citizens of Europe a chance to decide for themselves what political course they might prefer or dislike as "populism". Although the word seems to thrive in the semantic vicinity of perfectly innocuous terms such as "popular", "pop-culture", "population", yes, even in association with the political pet phrase "ordinary people", it has been affiliated with a very strong derogatory connotation, reducing anyone who would even lend an ear to a "populist" speaker to a simple, unwitting victim of demagoguery of the vilest kind imaginable.

The common man, otherwise hailed as the everyday hero, has thereby suddenly become a serious threat to society. All efforts are from now on deployed to render him and his elected representatives as politically inefficient as possible, if necessary by refusing to even let them participate in the parliamentary process, or by the political establishment forming uncouth coalitions in between their normally rivaling factions in the sole aim of keeping together in the face of what is perceived, not only as the common man, but more specifically as the common enemy.

Referendums might turn out to be treacherous indeed. Still today it isn't easy to swallow that Hitler not only came to power by democratic elections, but that he also held four different referendums on separate occasions in order to clearly and unequivocally confirm the German people's willingness to invest him with extra-ordinary executive powers. Thus, if referendums keep going wrong for our political elite, they might have to avoid them altogether, thereby showing the electorate that it has no other way to influence politics than through regular parliamentary elections. But this too is very double-edged. Because not only have people begun to go astray in referendums. They also promote the wrong political parties in parliaments across Europe.

This is such a serious threat to the establishment that as the day comes when they can no longer stick together like thieves in the final elections and would have to hand over power to a so-called populist party, attempts will surely be made to abolish the old democratic system altogether in favour of a new system of "reformed", "responsible", "sustainable" democracy, where individuals can be formally punished for speaking their minds in the wrong way.

Actually, when it comes to the public discussion of the so-called Holocaust, the punishments of citizens with the wrong opinions have long since been implemented in the European judicial system. Nobody, except a marginalised gang of social nutballs, seems to find anything strange in the fact that individuals all over Europe still go to jail for having questioned technical and historical details in the official narrative of the Holocaust. If we could only bring the accusations of hate speech to the same frantic pitch, and link it to the same kinds of punishments, we might still be able to save our Europe.

Thus spake the Juncker.  

  

            

Beware of China

One of the most pertinent, albeit benevolent, descriptions of the United States scurrying to the rescue of other nations and spreading the values of democracy across the globe, comes from the late Arnold J. Toynbee. His A Study of History, a work of truly epic dimensions (luckily available in an abridged version), is a must read for anyone who is not content to just accept, without some gainsay, Oswald Spengler as the towering philosophical authority on the phenomenology of civilisations. I’m not sure if the quote appears within the above mentioned opus or somewhere else, and I don’t recall its exact wording. Its point, however, is to compare American foreign policy to letting a Saint Bernard dog loose within the perimeter of a porcelain shop. The dog doesn’t intend to wreak havoc in his path, but that is what inevitably happens as he happily wags his tail while bumping into every other corner.

Moral lesson: Don’t mess with China!      

Strength in numbers: A thought experiment

-2 + -2 = -4

But:

-2 x -2 = 4

This is utterly incomprehensible but the mathematicians have decided that it is so self-evident that it doesn't even need an explanation. And of course, there is no such word as "why" in Angel tongue.

Now, how can we humans use that to our advantage? Below a suggestion as to how we could make sense of it:

You know I'm wrong as I know you're wrong.
Mathematically that makes us two minuses, right?
But it only takes an x (times) some other minus number, for example -1 to make -2 positive!
And then being in the wrong can actually turn out to be quite alright! 

Today's Word of Wisdom

To avoid confusing innocent souls (our friends, for example, from the red planet Marx) I take the precaution to state here, now, and for the future, that it is precisely because I'm for human responsibility and freedom, with their collateral of civic rights and obligations, that I'm against Muslim immigration to Europe and the spreading of Islam that inevitably follows in its wake. Islam (literally meaning "submission") was born in the desert. Let it stay where it belongs.

The Elephant in the Room

The Brits have voted themselves out of a partnership with the European Union that they were only half-heartedly supporting in the first place. And everyone who feels this was a bad idea on their part pretends to be shocked, or at least much surprised. The established media, of course, now try to come up with explanations for the apparent stupidity of the British people. But there really is only one overwhelming cause to the result of the referendum, and that is the EU's disastrous handling of the so-called “refugee crisis” that has plagued Europe over the last few years. Without this predominating feature in the overall picture of discontent, there would have been considerably less support for the exit side; it is even unlikely that the British would have considered their own local politicians to be so much better than the ones in Brussels.   

So let's take a closer look at the elephant in the room. Everyone knows that only a fraction of the people seeking asylum in European countries are actual refugees from war zones. Yet, there has up to quite recently been absolutely no limit to the quantities of fanaticised Islamic peoples on the move which Western Europe is supposed to assimilate and digest within their social-liberal societies and economies.

This is a tremendous and wholly unnecessary burden on all European countries, and it could and should have been mitigated by meeting the real needs (as opposed to the alleged needs of three youth delinquents from Freetown, Sierra Leone) exactly where they occurred, that is, close to the borders of the countries currently torn apart by war. Some of the billions of Euros hitherto spent on asylum applications and lavish subsidies, could, and perhaps should, have been spent on creating refugee centres in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, offering a decent standard of living and adequate healthcare in the immediate vicinity of these wartime victims. But this did not happen. Instead, it was considered necessary to incite all these people on the move to actually invade Europe. And the Brits finally had enough of it. It really is as simple as that. At least as far as the result of the referendum is concerned.    

In preparation of this lethal political cocktail, the US and Israel, under the auspices of the catastrophic Bush administration, made everything they could to destabilise the entire Middle-East region and thus trigger the massive demographic changes we are witnessing today. Meanwhile, instead of simply wiping ISIS and other terror organisations off the face of the Earth by means of a land based invasion, both the US and Israel, and even Russia, have remained content to uphold some kind of status quo in the region where neither side ever seems to have a chance to win. Why?

Because there must have been an original plan to destabilise Europe too. Up to a point it proved successful and even seemed to work its way into the very heart of the old and tired democracies of the West. But the recent elections in Austria, the opinion polls in Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France and Poland (no to mention Hungary and Slovakia), speak a different language. Not only England, but Europe by and large has had enough. It is now up to the EU to take immediate and draconic measures to stop the tide of Muslims into Europe. If this is not made, and made within the next months to a year, the whole Brussels House of Cards runs a very real danger of coming down in the same perfect foot prints as the Twin Towers of 9/11, thereby not only bringing along Juncker and Merkel, but the whole European political establishment, in the fall.

Lars Holger Holm   

Daily exercise!

During my recent month long visit to the tiny Caribbean island of Old Providence I enjoyed the privilege of swimming nearly a kilometer a day along this enchanted beach... And yes: the perfectly temperate waters, seen through a diving mask, were crystal clear! Fish? You name it!

Incidents of Travel in Latin America, Chapter 1, Part 3.

Going up the coast from Miami Beach towards Fort Lauderdale ending with the exploration, before take-off, of down town Las Olas Boulevard.

Back on the Beach, the city, north-bound, stretches into again Jewish dominated Surfside, Bal Harbour and thereafter reaches the strait over which a bridge carries pedestrians and motorists to the Utopian sounding Sunny Isles, fittingly beginning with a mile long nudist beach hidden behind a line of dense vegetation. Sunny Isles is also home to the City of Aventura, rife with huge condominium high-rises and a gigantic shopping centre. This futuristic looking part of the coast in turn comes to an end at the Golden Beach, where greater Miami’s most expensive and privately owned seaside (as opposed to lagoon-side) mansions are located – name says it all.

             

 

To the north of these luxury villas, many of which have been bought by industrial Venezuelan money, discreet Hallandale makes its entry – a silent and nostalgic memory of once roaring 1970s Hollywood, with its huge traffic circle and adjacent night life, and Dania Beach, even more secretive than Hallandale, and lost further into the shadows of time, provide the last landmarks on this coastal road, since at Dania it comes to an abrupt end. Before the inlet for heavy commercial maritime traffic and cruise ships to Fort Lauderdale, overlooked by the Hollywood International Airport, there is the Wilderness Beach, once the private property of a Mr. John U. Lloyd, who in his will bequeathed it to the state on the condition that nothing must ever be built or otherwise constructed on this stretch of virgin territory, protecting a narrow lagoon lined with huge industrial cranes on its opposite shores. It’s the only stretch of original beach in this part of Florida, and whenever I walk its dunes I find myself watching out for the Aleph, hidden under a mangrove tree.^[1]

             

 

All these facets of south Florida – as well as many others here unmentioned – had begun to sparkle in my mind as I was finally released by the infamous – sometimes downright obnoxious – Homeland Security and allowed to leave the airport. As soon as I found myself comfortably installed behind the wheel, I pressed the pedal of my Mercury Grand Marquis and was catapulted down the dusky I-95 in grand American style to become one with my experience. A week later, after having immersed myself to satiation in slow-flowing rivers of vehicles, I had to take leave of this rolling fortress only to again be assailed by outside reality.

When the local city bus began to move I was surrounded by returning day shift Haitian airport workers chatting exotically in their French-Creole vernacular. I was indeed on my way to the Las Olas Boulevard, but at only 4 PM, decorum suggested it was a fraction too early to start having drinks, so I stopped at Starbucks, which for once had a staff able to interpret ‘a double espresso’ without having to resort to the menu board naively asking if, per chance, I wanted a doppio? The initial ‘Can I help you?’ I couldn’t get around. But I did put the clerk to the test by asking him what kind of help he had in mind. A tired smile semi-lit up his face as he pontificated: ‘And what can I get for you, Sir?’

But you can only stretch a coffee for so long. Though I managed to bring a newspaper together with a cigarette outside, I discovered little in it worth glancing at, not to mention reading. Incidentally, southern Florida was just suffering its first cold spell for the winter. Newspapers and presumably (you would only witness their comments via the text machine on the TV screen) high-pitched news anchors warned owners that shivering crew cut rats on diamond leashes could catch cold if allowed outdoors after sunset. Dressed for the tropics I soon found myself in the street throwing apprehensive glances into warm and festively lit restaurants, where armies of waiters in black shirts swirled around the tables preparing the set for the night’s performance. 

But something in me vaguely objected to the idea of being tied to the attention of six ostentatiously aftershaved men, all introducing themselves by first names, giving me odd compliments for my excellent choice of pizza toppings only to in the end expect huge tips for their trite jokes – it’s a very common idea in the US that relieving you of your plate before you even finished eating while simultaneously throwing the bill on the table, is synonymous with excellent service, as though every second that half-empty plate is staring back at you would be an eyesore to you and a testimony to the laziness of the staff. Typically, if a couple dines out, and one of the two finishes before the other, the waiter will promptly remove the empty plate, as if indicating to the person taking his time that he’d better hurry up.

             

What finally drew me in to an establishment named Caffe Europa was the appearance around a high bar table, close to the window, of three immaculately manicured, and expensively enhanced Latina beauties. Routinely I gazed in their direction as I entered the premises; apparently they couldn’t care less. So I modestly took a seat at the bar from where I could at least enjoy observing three women dressed to kill, pretending to converse with one another. Here I also met with Paul, a gentleman from New York about my own age, having dinner. He introduced me to the bartender, describing her as a friend of outstanding talents.

Now, you don’t necessarily fancy your bartender to have a facial expression betraying a hundred years of boredom with human affairs. But there is also the other extreme: the female bartender who is your cheerful, ever so attentive, eye-blinking gal from the word go: ‘What can I get for you – Honey?’ ‘We have the best pizzas in town’, freely alternating with gossip, a little hutch-hutch, blink-blink, ‘see what I mean’, and ‘would you like another glass of wine Love?’ presented with such candid enthusiasm that you’d have to have a heart of stone to refuse such an offer at your own expense. To be both honest and kind, she actually was a pleasantly spontaneous, entertaining lady who in solidarity with her husband had spent part of her life locked up in what had been, by then, a US owned Venezuelan oil or mining town – one of those corporate islands guaranteeing the commodities of corned beef, watered down American beer and chewing gum, even in the midst of a Congolese jungle.

And what about Paul? A New York expat teaching journalism and mass communication at Miami University. He looked slightly haggard and pale, but it might just have been the habitual complexion and state of mind of an East Coast Jewish university professor in cultural, if not (God forbid!) ethnic exile. It transpired he was in a rather intricate parental situation. Apart from having fathered a now adult woman living in California, he had also more recently spread wild oats in South Africa, the consequence of which was a 14-year old girl living with her mother in Johannesburg. I believe he also mentioned having a relationship with another woman at present. He recommended the fish – steamed with fresh vegetables in aluminium foil – finished his glass of white wine and ended his meal with a dessert. It occurred to me that I might finally have met the other person in South Florida who ever reads anything beyond newspapers, fashion magazines, the TV Guide and this year’s best sellers. He handed me his business card and encouraged me to get in touch whenever I’d be in town next. 

With Paul gone, the two seats next to me were occupied by men of a quite different order, the older of them a teary-eyed crocodile dividing its hunting hours equally between business and business. He proudly flaunted his ring, a huge diamond in its midst, which he had allegedly obtained for twenty bucks at an auction many years ago while no one besides him had realised that the stone really was a genuine diamond.

             
The other man – from the interminable plains of an equally interminable Midwest – could just as well, and rather, have been a used car salesman, covering up any knowing dishonesty with a laughter a bit too loud and too long. It so happened that he was the local art dealer – we’re talking Picasso and Warhol originals (not that I would know the difference between a genuine Warhol and a fake one, or be able to even see the relevance of such definition). His gallery was situated next door.

             

 











Mr. Diamond jested that he’d just bought a piece of art which would prevent him from buying another one over the next couple of weeks. He then switched the subject to real estate, wondering if the art dealer could help him find a two bedroom condo in Lauderdale with beach access. The art dealer assured me that both he and Ron – along with their presumably well-to-do mutual friends – were just a bunch of (and these were his exact words): ‘nice, ordinary, hard-working people’. The two of them had a couple of glasses of red wine. They were paid for by the art dealer, apparently owing his client before going back to his store that would close at 10 o’clock. He invited me to pop in for a look. I said I would, but then the next guest in the hot seat kept me posted.

             
My new neighbour was yet another distinct character. A Brazilian businessman from Sao Paolo, of the type that you would easily identify as the typical Latin playboy, though no longer one in his absolute prime: still mainly dark, wavy and curly hair; expensive accessories (including an impressive Patek Philippe wrist watch), clear, if a little roughly cut facial features. Matrimonial ties to a woman and two young sons in no way deterred him from throwing curious glances at all women in sight. ‘I like poossi’ he spelled with virile emphasis in my ear while eagerly searching the attention of two newly arrived gringas (the Latina models were gone by now), taking seats around the semi-circular bar.

             
He had ordered an entire bottle of Californian Riesling with his food but drank very little. Instead he offered me most of it. Time flew. Don Pedro, while giving the project a fair chance, seemed unable to lastingly catch the interest of the gringas, although I saw them eyeing him up and down whenever he looked the other way. ‘American woman very different than Brazil’, he frustratedly concluded, and left me alone with them as well as with the remains of the bottle.

             
I on the other hand knew better than trying to make an impression. Besides I too soon had to leave. Shirley, the bar maid, volunteered to get me a taxi but I told her I’d manage on my own. After having paid my dues (making it a point of honour not to exaggerate the tip, in fact keeping it ever so slightly under the suggested minimum) I entered the street, took a deep breath in the crisp air, hailed down a cab and set off to the airport.^[2] A couple of hours later I again hit ground. This time in a coastal Colombia where the night – if nothing else – was a good deal warmer than the one I had just left behind.

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^[1] A first reference in passing to Jorge Luis Borges ́ short story El aleph, entailing the quest for a point (el aleph) that contains all other points.

^[2It seems this kind of European stinginess has since been effectively counteracted by the management. On a recent revisit to the establishment I was surprised to learn that the cheque, without warning, included an added service charge amounting to 20% of the grand total. As if this seemingly compulsory charge was not enough, even greater tip percentages were suggested in print. I was in the company of a lady whom I had invited for dinner and so would have embarrassed everybody had I protested against this outrage and asked to speak to the manager. But that's what I really wanted, because it wasn't mentioned anywhere on the menu that forcing the customer to tip was now standard practice. My first thought was: is this legal? The second one was: bastards! I know: Americans usually consider Europeans lousy tippers. Be that as it may. Please bear in mind, though, that it never occurred to us that the customer, as opposed to the employer, is responsible for hiring and paying the staff. Read me rightly. I certainly don't mind rewarding truly good service with a couple of extra bucks, but I don't want to be forced to do it. I find a 15 dollar extra fee – on top of the advertised price plus taxes – for being served exactly, and in order of appearance, a glass of wine, an ice tea, a chicken pasta, a pizza, and a Tiramisu a rip off. Besides that, I now have enough evidence to proclaim  Caffe Europa the financial maelstrom of the entire city, the background being the following. I was at said Caffe Europa also some days before the event described above and managed to have my car ticketed although I was sitting six feet from it and only went inside to pay an espresso for 3.50 at the bar. During that brief absence ´someone´ managed to paste a parking ticket to the amount of 32 dollars onto my windshield and disappear in the blink of an eye. Now, if that is not ominous, I don't know what would be. You'd probably say: Why on Earth do you keep returning to that damned place? My only answer is: The moth is attracted to the ever luring flame even if it will devour him and beautiful women seldom seem to mind all this bull since in the end somebody else is paying for their expenditures. To conclude: it's a nasty game, but someone's gotta play it!