STRANGE CONTINENT
ULRICH MAGIN scours the papers for the weirdest news stories from a corinavirus-ravaged Europe...
IN THE GRIP OF DISINFO
There is a lapse in time between my writing this and you reading it. As of now, social distancing is still in place here in Germany, although the country is slowly opening up again.
Like most of the continent, we have not only had to endure the virus, but outbreaks of conspiracy theories and fake news; these have now become topics for mainstream discussion. In Germany, the news spread on social media that the virus had been produced by either Bill Gates, Israel, or China; that it was caused by radiation from the new 5G phone network; and that it does not even exist but is a plot by Angela Merkel to distract people from witnessing a mass immigration of Muslims who she plans to use to replace ethnic Germans (on the orders of George Soros, naturally).
Others believe coronavirus is a stunt to impose vaccination laws on the population, and vaccination does horrible things to your body. These German ‘anti-vaxxers’ (see FT377:16-17, 380:26) have grown in number and increased in loudness; they demonstrate in every major German city, shouting “fake news journalists” – essentially any that do not believe in a conspiracy of some kind.
You name it, some “dissenter” believes it and tweets about it. German soul singer Xavier Naidoo now advocates that the coronavirus pandemic is a fake event being used to smuggle millions of abducted children from the underground factories where they were tortured to harvest adrenochrome for Hilary Clinton, only to face a still grimmer life, the details of which are not specified. And prominent German vegan chef Attila Hildmann has announced that he will arm himself and go underground to fight the powers who spread the virus, who are led by chief Satanist Bill Gates.
Gates is implicated because he founded an NGO to spread vaccination; several protesters believe this is simply a means by which each of us will be
injected with microchips. Hildmann predicted the official start of dictatorship in Germany as 15 May, but was still leading rallies against Gates three days later. And while many declare coronavirus is an outright invention, there are also claims that it was produced for Soros in Wuhan to harm the American economy so that Trump will not be re-elected.
There have also been other odd allegations. One was that helicopters are being used to spray anti-viral disinfectants. People receive WhatsApp warnings not to go outside at certain times when the dangerous mixture will be released from the air. However, such a mass spraying would be inefficient and a waste of money, and has never taken place, according to authorities. Examples of such postings were recorded in Bavaria and in Vienna, Austria, and in Britain too. correctiv.org, web.de, 24 Mar; Deutschlandfunk, 16 Apr; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 May; Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 May 2020.
VILLAGE OF THE SAVED
At the same time as this flood of disinformation was spreading across Germany, newspapers reported that one small village in Lombardy, the Italian region most badly affected by the disease, was completely free of infections. The people of Ferrera Erbognone, 50 km (30 miles) from Milan, were the only ones in Pavia Province without a single person who had tested positive for the virus – and this despite the fact that most villagers are elderly. Mayor Giovanni Fassina said it was perhaps due to citizens’ strict obedience to the government’s measures, or perhaps to some unusual genetic, and suggested scientific tests be carried out by the institute Fondazione Mondino, in Pavia. Public health authorities ruled out such a study, however. Most German newspapers covered this story at the end of March and early in April, but I haven’t found anything on the town after that date – did they stay safe, as is to be hoped? web.de, 1
April 2020.
VIRUS PREDICTED?
Then there is the interesting “prediction” of corona in the 2017 episode of the Asterix series. In book 37, Asterix and the Chariot Race, Julius Caesar takes part in an Italian race disguised as a charioteer named Coronavirus. In the German edition, Caesar is called Caligarius instead. Nordkurier, 9 Mar 2020.
SAINT CORONA
And finally, there is St Corona, a patron saint against pestilence. Her feast day is 14 May, and she was born in modern Syria in the first century AD. She was martyred by the Romans who bound her to two palm trees bowed down which, when released, split her in two. Her remains were transferred to Aachen from Rome by Emperor Otto III in 997. She is still buried in Aachen’s wonderful eighthcentury cathedral. Birgitta Falk, head of the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, explains that St Corona was originally invoked only by treasure seekers and butchers, but that one small community in Lower Austria, St Corona near Kirchberg am Wechsel, used to venerate her and plead for her help with thunderstorms, crop failure and livestock epidemics. From there, her fame as a protector against disease spread throughout Central Europe. Her main pilgrimage centre is St Corona am Schöpfl in Austria. Allgemeine Zeitung [Namibia], 13 May 2020.
MORE SKY TRUMPETS
The sound of trumpets announcing the last days are part of Christian as well as Muslim tradition, and pestilence is mentioned in Revelation. The trumpet sounds heard over the Netherlands (FT391:25) have not been an isolated occurrence – celestial trumpets blow all over Europe, and, indeed, the world.
Paul Seaburn, on his Mysterious Universe blog,
lists instances of “Strange Noises in the Sky Heard in Argentina, Slovakia, the U.S. and Brazil”. On 3 April, several videos were shot in the Slovak capital Bratislava in which “trumpet sounds” can be heard; as Seaburn points out, they sounded more like “Darth Vader breathing”. Scientists explained the sounds as tectonic stress noise from the plates below the Adriatic Sea, but this would not apply to the earlier Dutch trumpets.
Starting in the middle of March in the Valtenesi in Upper Italy, and continuing well into April, people reported strange ‘vibrations’ in the night sky. In April, the strange sound was heard all over the western banks of Lake Garda, Italy, “from Toscolano Maderno to the hinterland of Gargnano… Almost everyone agrees on the ‘vibrating’ noise that comes and goes at different intensities. From Maderno to Navazzo di Gargnano, on the night of Easter Sunday/Monday, many said they heard the sound.” Originally, aircraft heading to Verona were blamed, but the Italian lockdown ruled out this explanation. Also, there were far fewer cars on the roads. Although the incidents were widely discussed on social media, “nobody has been able to provide an explanation”. BresciaOggi, 14 Apr 2020.
Four days later, “blood rain” fell in Germany, but as usual
this was explained by red Sahara sand blown northward by storms. mysteriousuniverse. org, 7 Apr; BresciaOggi, 14 Apr; web.de, 18 Apr 2020.
MASS BIRD DEATHS
Something else has been brewing in European skies. In April, thousands of migratory birds died in Greece due to cold winds. Or strong winds, or low rainfall, or too much rain – all reasons that have been given. So, due to a combination of many different factors, as ornithologists explained, many birds were found dead in the streets and on the balconies of Athens, in northern Greece, close to Nafplio on the Peloponnese, and on many Aegean islands.
At the same time in Germany, blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) were dying en masse. Germany’s environment protection agency Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) asked people to report casualties from their gardens. The first cases were on 11 March on the middle Rhine, in Hesse and Thuringia; by 8 April, 150 dead tits had been noted. NABU hoped that a bird autopsy would reveal the cause of the deaths. By Easter, they had received over 11,000 reports concerning sick or dead birds. NABU explained a week later that the tits had all died from pneumonia due to an infection by Suttonella ornithocola. The bacterium was first discovered in 1966, in England and Wales, and caused the first mass death of tits in 2018 in North RhineWestphalia. nabu.de, 10 April; Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 11+18 Apr; web.de, 23 Apr 2020.
BLACK MASS MISS
On a lighter note, on 7 March Italian Police mistook a music video shoot on the shores of Lake Como for a black mass, which they tried to stop. Neighbours, whose fear of dark Satanic rituals was probably exacerbated by the coronavirus, raised the alarm when they observed a burning cross and figures in red cloaks on one of the lake’s beaches in the middle of the night: were these people Satanists, summoning up the Prince of Darkness? Police investigated and Commander Massimo Castelli clarified the situation within a few seconds: it was just a film crew shooting a music video, and the 2m cross had been illuminated by spotlights, not set on fire. La Provincia di Como, 8 Mar 2020.
BLEAK PROSPECTS
Bulgarian prophet Baba Wanga who died in 1996 (see FT93:8, 351:20-21, 382:17) had this to say about the year 2020: There will be an attempt on the life of Vladimir Putin by someone from his inner circle; the prophet was unsure whether or not Putin would survive; President Trump will suffer from a mysterious disease which leaves him deaf and which will be diagnosed as a brain tumour; and Europe’s economy will suffer a severe economic crisis (this, at least, has come true). Muslim hordes will attack, and Europe will be depopulated by the end of the year. In December, a meteorite will hit Russia, with catastrophic results.
It should be noted that many of the same prophecies had previously been trotted out for 2018; but, in retrospect, it seems Baba Wanga knew nothing about Covid-19. Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, 13 Jan 2020.