Ukraine & Russia share a common history. They largely share a common language. Both derive from Old Church Slavonic and the Kievan Rus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus’
Kievan Rus’ (Old East Slavic: Роусь, romanized: Rusĭ, or роусьскаѧ землѧ, romanized: rusĭskaę zemlę, “Rus’ land”) or Kyivan Rus’, was a loose federation of East Slavic, Baltic and Finnic peoples in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century, under the reign of the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestors, with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it. The Rurik dynasty would continue to rule parts of Rus’ until the 16th century with the Tsardom of Russia. At its greatest extent, in the mid-11th century, it stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south and from the headwaters of the Vistula in the west to the Taman Peninsula in the east, uniting the majority of East Slavic tribes.
So what is now Ukraine was the same “country” as what is now Russia starting in about 900 AD. Then, a few hundred years later, got run over by the Mongol Hoards..
The state finally fell to the Mongol invasion of the 1240s.
Eventually they got rid of the Mongols and re-assembled the old gang as the Tsardom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsardom_of_Russia
The Tsardom of Russia or Tsardom of Rus’ (Russian: Русское царство, romanized: Russkoye tsarstvo, later changed to: Российское царство, Rossiyskoye tsarstvo), also externally referenced as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of Tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter I in 1721.
Note that in 1547, we were already on Ivan the IV… In between the two was a protracted reassembly and freeing of the Slavs from the Mongols:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start-date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus’ state in the north in 862, ruled by Varangians. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became the first major cities of the new union of immigrants from Scandinavia with the Slavs and Finns. In 882 Prince Oleg of Novgorod seized Kiev, thereby uniting the northern and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under one authority. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus’ ultimately disintegrated as a state due to the Mongol invasions in 1237–1240 along with the resulting deaths of significant numbers of the population.
After the 13th century, Moscow became a political and cultural center. Moscow has become a center for the unification of Russian lands. By the end of the 15th century, Moscow united the northeastern and northwestern Russian principalities, in 1480 finally overthrew the Mongol yoke. The territories of the Grand Duchy of Moscow became the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. In 1721, Tsar Peter the Great renamed his state as the Russian Empire, hoping to associate it with historical and cultural achievements of ancient Rus’ – in contrast to his policies oriented towards Western Europe. The state now extended from the eastern borders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Pacific Ocean. Russia became a great power and dominated Europe after the victory over Napoleon. Peasant revolts were common, and all were fiercely suppressed. The Emperor Alexander II abolished Russian serfdom in 1861, but the peasants fared poorly and revolutionary pressures grew. In the following decades, reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms of 1906–1914, the constitution of 1906, and the State Duma (1906–1917) attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the emperor refused to relinquish autocratic rule and resisted sharing his power.
So once again, from about 1480 to and through the Russian Empire, Ukraine was a part of Russia. Then the Empire fell apart in revolution and there was briefly a Soviet Of Ukraine…
A combination of economic breakdown, war-weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government triggered the Russian Revolution in 1917. The overthrow of the monarchy initially brought into office a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists, but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the communist Bolsheviks on 25 October 1917 (7 November New Style). In 1922, Soviet Russia, along with Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, and the Transcaucasian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, officially merging all four republics to form the Soviet Union as a country.
This held until quite recently when the breakup of the USSR spat out separate Nations of Ukraine & Belarus. (& Russia).
There were various periods when Ukraine was occupied by various other empires and armies, but throughout it, they were essentially the same Slavic Peoples as the Russians, with minor variations in language and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine
After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) and the Russian conquest of the Crimean Khanate, the Russian Empire and Habsburg Austria were in control of all the territories that constitute present day Ukraine for a hundred years.
A chaotic period of warfare ensued after the Russian Revolutions of 1917. The partially-recognised Ukrainian People’s Republic emerged from its own civil war of 1917–1921. The Ukrainian–Soviet War (1917–1921) followed, in which the Bolshevik Red Army established control in late 1919. The Ukrainian Bolsheviks, who had defeated the national government in Kiev, established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which on 30 December 1922 became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. Initial Soviet policy on Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture made Ukrainian the official language of administration and schools. Policy in the 1930s turned to Russification. In 1932 and 1933, millions of people, mostly peasants, in Ukraine starved to death in a devastating famine, known as Holodomor. It is estimated by Encyclopædia Britannica that 6 to 8 million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, of whom 4 to 5 million were Ukrainians. Nikita Khrushchev was appointed the head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1938.
After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, the Ukrainian SSR’s territory expanded westward. Axis armies occupied Ukraine from 1941 to 1944. During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for Ukrainian independence against both Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1945 the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations. After the death of Stalin (1953), the Ukrainian Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party of Soviet Union enabled a Ukrainian revival, and in 1954 the republic expanded to the south with the transfer of Crimea from Russia. Nevertheless, political repressions against poets, historians and other intellectuals continued, as in all other parts of the USSR.
Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This started a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year recession.[16] Subsequently, however, the economy experienced a high increase in GDP growth. Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and the economy plunged. GDP fell 20% from spring 2008 to spring 2009, then leveled off.
Note that Khrushchev by fiat transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. This required approval by the Duma to be official, but no such vote was ever taken. It was, in large part, an illegal act. So, IMHO, for Russia to take it back by an equally un-approved action is just “tit for tat”.
In short, for most of the last 1000 years, Ukraine was just another part of Russia and part of the Greater Russian Empire / Soviet. In large part, fighting between Ukraine and Russia is just a “Family Fight”. They are from the same root, have the same history in many ways, share huge parts of their culture and language.
In fact, Ukrainian is mostly distinguished by preserving some older forms from Old Eastern Slavic while Russian has more modernizations in it. By way of analogy: Ukrainian is to Russian rather like Old English is to American English. Different, but largely mutually intelligible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_language
Ukrainian (native name: украї́нська мо́ва, romanized: ukrainska mova, IPA: [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ˈmɔwɐ]), previously also called Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch. It is the native language of Ukrainians and the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script (see Ukrainian alphabet).
Historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kyivan Rus. After the fall of the Kyivan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Ruthenia, the language developed into a form called the Ruthenian language. Along with Ruthenian, in the territory of modern Ukraine, the Kyiv version (izvod) of Church Slavonic was also used in liturgical services. The Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate.
[…]
The Ukrainian language retains a degree of mutual intelligibility with Belarusian.
Note how small this following list is, and how it is relative to all other Slavic languages:
Differences between Ukrainian and other Slavic languages
The Ukrainian language has the following similarities and differences with other Slavic languages:Like all Slavic languages with the exception of Russian, Belarusian, standard written Slovak[note 3] and Slovene, the Ukrainian language has preserved the Common Slavic vocative case. When addressing one’s sister (sestra) she is referred to as sestro. In the Russian language the vocative case has been almost entirely replaced by the nominative (except for a handful of vestigial forms, e.g. Bozhe “God!” and Gospodi “Lord!”).
The Ukrainian language, in common with all Slavic languages other than Russian, Slovak and Slovene, has retained the Common Slavic second palatalization of the velars *k, *g and *x in front of the secondary vowel *ě of the dative and locative ending in the female declension, resulting in the final sequences -cě, -zě, and -sě. For example, ruka (hand) becomes ruci in Ukrainian. In Russian, the dative and locative of ruka is ruke.
The Ukrainian language, in common with Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, has developed the ending -mo for first-person plurals in verbs (khodymo for “we walk”). In all cases, it resulted from lengthening of the Common Slavic -mŭ.
The Ukrainian language, along with Russian and Belarusian, has changed the Common Slavic word-initial ye- into o, such as in the words ozero (lake) and odyn (one).[88]
The Ukrainian language, in common with Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Belarusian and southern Russian dialects, has changed the Common Slavic “g” into an “h” sound (for example, noha – leg).[88]
The Ukrainian language, in common with some northern Russian and Croatian dialects, has transformed the Common Slavic yě into i (for example, lis – forest).[88]
The Ukrainian language, in common with Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene and Serbian, has simplified the Common Slavic tl and dl into l (for example, mela – she swept”).
The Ukrainian language, in common with all modern Slavic languages other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not use articles.
Other Slavic o, in closed syllables, that is, ending in a consonant, in many cases corresponds to a Ukrainian i, as in pod > pid (під, ‘under’). This also includes place names such as Lviv (Львів in Ukrainian) – Lwów in Polish and Львов (Lvov) in Russian.
Unlike all other Slavic languages, Ukrainian has a synthetic future (also termed inflectional future) tense which developed through the erosion and cliticization of the verb ‘to have’ (or possibly ‘to take’): pysa-ty-mu (infinitive-future-1st sg.) I will write. Although the inflectional future (based on the verb ‘to have’) is characteristic of Romance languages, Ukrainian linguist A. Danylenko argues that Ukrainian differs from Romance in the choice of auxiliary, which should be interpreted as ‘to take’ and not ‘to have.’ He states that Late Common Slavic (LCS) had three verbs with the same Proto-Indo-European root *h₁em-:a determined imperfective LCS *jęti: *jĭmǫ ‘to take’ (later superseded by numerous prefixed perfectives)
an indetermined imperfective LCS *jĭmati: jemljǫ ‘to take’ (which would not take any prefixes)
an imperfective LCS *jĭměti: *jĭmamĭ ‘to hold, own, have’
The three verbs became conflated in East Slavic due to morphological overlap, in particular of *iměti ‘to have’ and *jati ‘to take’ as exemplified in the Middle Ukrainian homonymic imut’ from both iměti (< *jĭměti) and jati (< *jęti).
So mostly preserved some older forms that Russian did not, but also has some changes that are also in Russian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language
Classification
Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family. It is a descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus’, a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid 13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn, the other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. In the 19th century (in Russia until 1917), the language was often called “Great Russian” to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called “White Russian” and Ukrainian, then called “Little Russian”.
Note that “Белый” (Byele, roughly) is Russian for White so White Russian is just a direct translation of Belarusian.
In may ways, the differences between Old English, Modern British English, Australian English, American English, and Indian English are as strong as those between the varieties of East Slavic. (I still remember the first time I heard a Texan speaking Texan in about 1960, and asked my Dad “what language is is speaking?”… After a few days of him in the restaurant, and me carefully listening, I finally started to follow what he was saying. Ditto my first run-in with a Scotsman and an Australian… and don’t get me started on Indian English and Ebonics…)
In short:
ANY potential war in the East Slavic area between Ukraine and Russia is a Family Fight that I do NOT want to get in the middle of. It is over land that has mostly been part of various Russian Empires for 1000 years, and between people who can understand each other’s language after a bit of practice.
This is just not our fight.
Then there’s also that small matter of a treaty signed at the break-up of the USSR that said in no uncertain terms NATO would stay a good long ways away from Russia and NEVER be on the border of Russia. We, NATO Nations, are violating that agreement. I watched Putin explain his reasons for recognition of the Eastern Ukrainian new republics and a large part of his discussion was on NATO, their missiles, time to target in Moscow, and what NATO in Ukraine would mean to Russian vulnerability.
All in all, when I look at what Putin is doing, from the point of view of Russian History, Broken NATO Nations treaties, illegal transfer of Ethnic Russians and their lands to Ukraine under Khrushchev, and the current Globalist Evil Bastards (GEBs) trying to take over the world: His positions and actions seem much more rational to me than the positions and actions of any one in the EU or USA.
He’s waited something like 6 to 8 years for the regular shelling of Ethnic Russians in the Donbas to end. At some point you give up on “negotiation”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas
Note how similar the Russian and Ukrainian names for the region are; in this quote:
The Donbas or Donbass (UK: /dɒnˈbɑːs/, US: /ˈdɑːnbɑːs, dʌnˈbæs/; Ukrainian: Донба́с [donˈbɑs]; Russian: Донба́сс) is a historical, cultural, and economic region in south-eastern Ukraine, some of whose territory is occupied by two separatist groups in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War calling themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. The word Donbas is a portmanteau formed from Donets Basin, an abbreviation of “Donets Coal Basin” (Ukrainian: Донецький вугільний басейн, romanized: Donetskyi vuhilnyi basein; Russian: Донецкий угольный бассейн, romanized: Donetskii ugolnyi bassein). The name of the coal basin is a reference to the Donets Ridge; the latter is associated with the river Donets. Numerous definitions of the region’s extent exist.
The most common definition in use today refers to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, whilst the historical coal mining region excluded parts of these oblasts, and included areas in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Southern Russia. A Euroregion of the same name is composed of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine and Rostov Oblast in Russia. Donbas formed the historical border between the Zaporizhian Sich and the Don Cossack Host. It has been an important coal mining area since the late 19th century, when it became a heavily industrialised territory.
These folks have spent 1000 years solving their own problems with their cousins in their own ways. They share a huge common history and have strongly similar languages. For us to go in there would be like having Russia or China show up to “mediate with tanks and guns” between Canada and the USA were we bickering over the 48th parallel… (as we once did).
Count me out of it.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Thanks EM. I have been frustrated trying to get the basic history of the region.
Are the GEBs pissed at Russia for being “nationalist” and independent of their global plans?
Russian GDP has increased tremendously under Putin. ( oil and gas production as well)
Does Europe need Russian energy more then Russia needs to sell it. ?
Chiefio …. good article but I think u mean 49th not 48?
Me too. I’ve been getting the stink of bum’s rush in the scary warnings from the intelligence agencies and the unanimity of the media in reporting it all as true. I remember the Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the WOMD and many so-called evil dictator bogeymen. I’m assuming it’s all lies until proven otherwise.
E.M. – The reason the U.S. is messing with Ukraine is because it’s a money laundering country for U.S. politicians.
Billions of USD are sent to Ukraine in *ahem* aid and much is kicked back to Senators and a TLA or two. You know, “10% for the Big Guy.” and there are a lot of U.S. ‘big guys’ getting some of that aid money. And of course, loads of that cash stick to the fingers of the locals.
The current President of Ukraine is not playing ball with the U.S. corruptocrats, so he must go. Putin has no interest in invading Ukraine when the Eastern portions consider themselves ‘Rus’, as you point to in your post above. As you say, it’s a family fight. Putin just has to wait a bit for them to decide to come back to Russia all on their own. That is much better than a forced solution by invading. The people will be on board and not grumbling about (or fighting!) invaders.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department and CIA are trying for a threefer: get rid of Zelenskyy, blame their policy failures and subsequent economic disaster on the manufactured from whole cloth Russia-Ukraine crisis, and give Biden a ‘win’.
From our good old ’60s and ’70s days, “Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?”
And there is, “Never let a crisis go to waste”… even if you have to make up the crisis.
@Stewartpid:
That’s a bit of cheek on my part. See, we agreed on 49th Parallel at one time, so you would be fighting over some other parallel, no? So Canada Attacks!!! Demanding the 48 th.! After all, at one time it was the 45 th, so just reclaiming “Greater Canada!”.
I could have gone with 54° 40’ or fight… but that brings up some history where the USA “surrenders” to Canada (in a way…).
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-49th-parallel.html
So at first the USA wanted ALL of Canada. But settled on the 45th parallel…
Then there was that time the British / Canada burned the US Capitol:
So the border wobbled during that, ahem, defeat of the USA… but then folks out west were just not really paying a lot of attention to “crap” back east… (rather a lot like now too, really…) BUT the PTB decided they needed a border, so:
So it was a “border” but nobody really cared who went which way across it. Until:
So which is it we would be fighting over now? 54° 40’? The 45th? Or maybe just a tiny bit more slightly warmer space for Canada? (There was some song or slogan or some such where Canada invades the USA, but I’ve lost the pointer to it… that was the muse…)
Probably a snark; too far…
@David A:
IMHO, the reason for the denigration of Russia is just that the Western GEBs do not have functional control of it. After the collapse of the USSR, they expected to absorb the ex-USSR states into their web of control and exploitation. Remember the rise of the “Oligarchs”? They were to be the new GEBs of the East. Instead, Putin came along and restored a “Russia for the People”…
So they have been pissed at him (and Russia by proxy) ever since. But the Russian People love him. (Despite the demonization by the biased / controlled western press).
Is he ruthless? Absolutely. If he were not, both he, and Russia, would be dead or enslaved by now. The GEBs do not play nice. (And “Epstein didn’t kill himself”… nor did the Clintoncide list…)
Right Now they, the GEBs, have turned their attention to eliminating the Democratic Republics of the Anglo-sphere. Hoping to create a combine between the New Roman Empire (EU), and a reconstituted Socialist British Empire Of Ex-Anglosphere… but then Britain escaped the trap of the EU and now Canada is balking at being pwnd by Little Hitler Trudoh. Trump had the USA almost escaped, but by a well executed (if sloppy in the cover up) election steal, they got their puppet installed. Outcome in the end still TBD. (It’s tough being a GEB with a world domination agenda.. folks just want to resist you at every turn. Good thing the Jackboot Cops & Armies are not prone to thinking… /snark;)
But it is not by accident that we had 4 years of “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and that at every turn Putin and Russia are cast in the role of “Bad Guy”. It’s part of the propaganda landscape. Just like the smears of Trump. Resist the Globalist Agenda and work for the people of your nation: You will be slandered, long and hard.
20 years ago, I believed the crap about Putin. Then I started watching his press conferences in Russia to Russian press. Looked into his history. What he really has done. The man thinks very clearly, and in fine detail. He takes “opposition questions” from his press and responds with well reasoned answers. His logic is clean and he does not resort to denigration or insult or other emotional dreck. He’s restored the Russian Orthodox Church (his Mother was religious) and works to protect Ethnic Russians wherever they are being abused. I’ve found that I can’t fault him for his words or actions, other than that his Secret Service conducts assassinations (but doesn’t ours do that too?… Ask Epstein.. oh, wait, you can’t. Well, ask the folks who effectively criticized the Clintons… Oh, wait, you can’t….)
What I find fascinating is that the Varangian guard were elite protectors of the Emperor of Byzantium from the 10th to 14th century. This guard included Vikings. So we have the fascinating spectacle of Vikings helping to defend what was essentially The Roman Empire and that empire lasted until 1453, a bare generation before America was discovered in 1492.
So empires last a long time, the territories in them also change and independent and sovereign countries rise and fall. The Map of the world looks vastly different to what it did before the First Word war. Here we come to the twiddly bits
Russia invaded sovereign Georgia just a few years ago and split it into smaller parts. They then took over Crimea-a part of sovereign Ukraine then carved 2 new enclaves out of the Ukraine..
The Russians have the enclave of Kalingrad sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania where Putins’ wife was born. It is no secret that he has his eyes set on bringing other parts of the former Russian empire back under his control, all of which were sovereign countries. So do we let him move in on the Baltic States.The Balkans? Poland? Hungary? Rumania?
I mentioned the Vikings and initially they were bought off by the Anglo Saxons in a system known as Danegeld. In essence giving them silver or land to avoid attacks.
By doing nothing the West is offering Danegeld To Russia and an invitation to continue his campaigns. As King Alfred found, eventually you have to stand up to the aggressor and stop buying them off.
Russia is threatening numerous sovereign countries and I for one don’t think we should continue to offer him Danegeld as that encourages his ambitions to recreate the Russian Empire.
ClimateReason – I have a son and I have to ask myself, do I want my son to lose his life to save Ukraine from some oligarchs? It’s not like the Ukraine is a bastion of the best of Western values.
So, I say, no. Let Putin have it. It’s not worth the US getting involved.
That should have been “save Ukraine FOR some oligarchs.”
jim2
you know your history. Biden let America run from Afghanistan and that has changed world dynamics.
A newly emboldened Putin with lots of money from energy seeking to recreate the glory days of Russia will do several things. That includes getting back in bed with Cuba and Venezuela.
China must be looking at how this turns out before deciding whether to invade Taiwan-the largest manufacturer in the world of silicon chips. North Korea might fancy their chances with South Korea. Iran with Saudi Arabia. .
The thing is surely to stand up to dictators BEFORE they get too emboldened?
.
America is not an island, you have too many interests to stand aside and think you can watch from the sidelines
As far as I know, Putin never got out of bed with Cuba and Venezuela. I’m still not convinced. Do you have any idea how many calls I get for money for our disabled veterans and military widows? Hint: A lot.
Another look
“Russia, the Ukraine, and US interests – the reality”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/02/russia-ukraine-and-us-interests-reality.html
49th parallel hell … 54 40 or fight.
or not … we’ll settle for the 49th.
@ClimateReason:
Vikings sailed down the rivers of Eastern Europe and Asia just as they did down the Atlantic Coast. They set up trading posts and “mingled” with the locals. One of those posts eventually became the root of Russia. It was later that some of them became the Varangian Guard. Essentially paid mercenaries for the Eastern Roman Empire. I find it an odd quirk that both the UK and Russia are nations made from a blend of locals and Vikings. Celts & Vikings vs Slavs & Vikings. To some extent the USA too as UK + (mix including Swedes, Danes, etc. and Celts and Germans). Those Vikings do seem to get around ;-)
My point about Ukraine is that it is NOT “just another sovereign nation”, but has been a part of Russia for about 800+ out of 1000 years and an independent nation about 200 maybe (and that in a few chunks often during wars / revolutions). So this is very much a “fight inside the family”.
I have zero interest in getting into the middle of that, so no, not interested in having the USA be World Cop. Let the EU take care of it. It’s a European issue
That we were stupid enough to move almost all high end chip manufacture to Taiwan IS our problem. The proper solution is not war with China. It is to move that manufacture back to the USA (or perhaps to several other countries). We know how to make those chips (lots of the machinery is designed here) and it is just a matter of some money and time (and not that much of either).
Worst Case, you make chips “one generation back”. Guess what: We had pretty good chips in 2010 and we were able to make all sorts of very good devices using them… But I’m pretty sure we would not have to do that.
Would I defend Taiwan? Probably. In the short term we don’t have much choice as we made ourselves utterly dependent on them to make even the simplest things (cars, toaster ovens, phones). But that’s Globalism for you.
Frankly, I’d rather do without new phones and cars for a couple of years while we geared up replacement manufacturing and let the GEBs choke on the loss of all that bribo and lucre. Do remember that one (or at most 2 spaced east and west) modest nukes set off in the ionosphere over North America and we are back living in about 1890 for the indefinite future. China knows this. Russia knows this. The EMP would take down the entire power grid and blow any electronics plugged in at the time (i.e. all data centers and home computers / TVs / “smart home” devices). It MIGHT only blow the UPS systems at the entry to the data centers, but we don’t know for sure; and just replacing the power transformers and UPS gear would take years.
But I’d not send in any ground troops to either Asia or Ukraine. (Poland I can see, given their history, similarly Czech Republic and Austria / Hungary. They were not essentially “Other Russians for most of their history”). Then there is that small matter of the treaty we signed saying “never will NATO be on the Russian border”, where we are essentially violating it with Ukraine.
Yes, Russia is the Guy With Attitude, and Ukraine is the battered wife. But who is to be the cop that gets between them? In THE most dangerous place to be, middle of a family fight. Let the EU work it out, it’s their back yard. New Western Roman Empire vs New Eastern Roman Empire.
Sidebar: BOTH the western European nations and the Russian Federation see themselves as the heirs to the Roman Empire. Both have some validity in seeing themselves as preserving culture and law and civilization as their respective empire-parents declined. Both are fond of the double headed eagle, etc. Let the New Roman Empires reach their agreements. I’m happy being the New World and not a party to it.
@DonM:
I’d be thrilled to have Republicans win in 2024, and Trudoh! continuing to be a Petty Tyrant driving Canada to ruin, then just let the British / Anglo Provinces join the USA in freedom. Quebec will be happy to be independent anyway. If Justin breaks Canada, I’m sure the good folks out in the provinces can “fix it” either by going it alone, or by joining in the US Republic. (Though before that last bit would be attractive we’ve got to fix our “steal me” election system and replace OUR “Idiot In Charge” POTUSino…)
No need to fight over the 49th or 54th… just take down the border markers and call it done.
Oh, and I probably ought to mention that the parts of Oregon, Washington and California that exclude the major coastal cities would love to join Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and a few other Western States in a new nation of “Jefferson” (or whatever…) that shares the values of Alberta et al in the Inland Canadian West. Most of BC I think too (but you might need to give Vancouver to Rump Washington… I’m not sure how “woke” “progressive” they are these days)
Heck, toss in Alaska and the Northwest Territories and you start to have a pretty darned big nation. I’m also pretty sure the Plains States (Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, etc) and even Texas would be happy to join up. I.e. I think the entire Blue Heartland would be FINE with dumping both North East and Western Urban coastal idiots to make up a New Nation, stretching from Alaska to Florida.
But what to name it? Freeland? TexaCana? Whatever…
Might be very interesting to pole all the conservative farmland Provinces and States and find out who’s in and who’s out. I know the “Jefferson” folks would be in (as they have been trying to make there corner free for many decades) and I’m pretty sure Texas to Florida would be fine with the deal. Less clear about the Plains States and Canadian farming provinces.
h/t Another Ian, here:
Link:https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/canadian-police-deny-anyone-trampled-but-i-saw-this-happen-live-stream/#comment-154768
Gave a link to Putin explaining his position on Ukraine.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828
I’d seen most of this live (with English subtitles) but had missed the intro where Putin said:
Which reflects the points I was making in the article. These are not 2 disjoint isolated Separate Countries. They are largely the same people with almost 1000 years of common history and language so close it is like comparing the KJV to the American Standard Bible language. One uses The and Thy and Whom the other not so much.
The rest of it is rather in the Russian Novel form of incredible (almost painful…) detail on the history of Russia and the USSR, then he gets to modernity… Worth the read, but have coffee at hand and be prepared to think…
“A newly emboldened Putin with lots of money from energy seeking to recreate the glory days of Russia will do several things”
This I think is incorrect. Putin comments that EM references above, like most every time I actually listen to him, do not condone and praise the “glory days of Communist Russia”. He has even warned America about the siren song of the mythological idealism of communism. He is pro energy production, pro family, pro religion.
Also NATO, upon the fall of Russia, essentially promised to not expand into the former Russian nations. In two words, they lied. By paranoid working against Russia, NATO has driven them to work with China, and other unattractive nations. Gee, who else is working with China? ( Most of the US government! )
The left appeared desperate to keep Trump and Putin apart, as the US and Russia ( now the 5th largest economy in the world) in conjunction with Trumps multi lateral trade deals with many nations like Japan, Mexico, India, many eastern European nations, south Korea, etc… would have broken the back of their “rule the world dreams” IMV, The globalists and China were desperate to stop this. Why did US leftist commonly defend the Soviet Union, and now they condemn it?
The world has changed greatly in 40 years.
“Putin’s Predictabilities”
E M Smith your 3.17
Russia does have ambitions to restore the ‘glory days.’
The Ex deputy supreme commander of NATO says that Russia is intent on restoring the old Soviet Union with the inclusion of 15 republics plus Parts of eastern Europe. Putin has threatened Poland and that would drag 30 NATO nations into a confrontation
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10546503/Retired-Generals-chilling-warning-Britain-soon-war-Russia.html
A glance at Putin’s speeches over the last few weeks seem to show he has become unhinged. He is a dangerous man. He saw the US debacle in Afghanistan and see this as his moment. With Pax Americana potentially at an end he will be emboldened to move back into Cuba and Venezuela and foment trouble in South America. Whilst China, North Korea and Iran will feel able to do so in their own perceived spheres of influence
If we don’t take action this will herald the final decline of the West that has provided us with an increasing standard of living as first Pax Britannica, then Pax Americana imposed a rules based system which has given the West hegemony for some 400 years
We can’t continue to pay our Danegeld to the man as that has emboldened him for some years, plus other dictators eager to pick over the remains of the West.
As for your point about Empires. Those continually changed throughout history, otherwise much of the World would still be under the Roman Empire, the British Empire , the Austro Hungarian and Ottoman empires. America is not part of the former British empire as circumstances-like with Ukraine/Russia- change
You make good points about bringing manufacturing back. The west has exported its jobs and technology for too long. Who cares if our chips technology is a year behind? I for one bought a slightly older car that wasn’t top of its spec precisely so it wouldn’t be filled with pointless hi tech gadgets.
Incidentally do you see any realistic realignment of Areas within States who might be more comfortable elsewhere? You cite some but presumably that will remain wishful thinking on their part?
One last point, as you say the Vikings sailed down the rivers of Eastern Europe and those of western Europe, including England. They could do that because rivers were substantially higher as it was a warmer world, similarly in Roman times when Wharves to some of our towns were substantially higher up rivers that today aren’t navigable. Funny how the IPCC never seem to mention these things
As everyone will know by now Putin has carried out a full scale invasion. This is after he has been saying for weeks that he has no intention of ding so. The man can not be trusted. He is unhinged. The Baltic States next or perhaps Poland unless we stand up to him
I’m for letting Ukraine go to Russia if it means the gravy train is over for Biden and his ilk.
I’m not buying the old domino theory, either. We take things case by case. Ukraine going to Russia is a net gain.
jim2
Biden? A gravy Train? So 44 million people in Ukraine can be turned over to Russia in order to inflict some negligible harm on Biden?
a ‘net gain’ in what way? As I write this the Foreign Minister Of Estonia is speaking on the BBC from her car on her way to Poland after having fled Kiev as the bombs fell . She had been there to show solidarity as had the Ministers of the other Baltic states. They are seriously worried that they will ALL be next. Please look at the geographical location of the Russian Enclave of Kalingrad.
Jim
Thought you might enjoy this;
on Twitter this morning:
– US elect a senile President
– We close down our economies for two years at huge expense
– We try to generate our energy supplies from windmills
And a tyrannical despot takes advantage.
Well, well, well….
Climatereason
I know only a bit about the region. Our trust for the West, including our own US government is broken. ( In many ways my United States is gone or certainly failing)
The western leadership is arrogant, evil, and broken.
This comment by another poster stated this,
“ Several days ago Putin said that those who burned people alive in Odessa will be held responsible. He was not bluffing. Today he said that those who interfere in this conflict will suffer a disaster on the scale they never experienced in their history. He is not bluffing.”
What was he referring to?
Climatereason
I think the West is broken. I think it’s leadership is evil, tyrannical and power mad.
I only know a little about Ukraine. I know they participated in the corruption of the west.
This comment appeared on another blog…
“ Several days ago Putin said that those who burned people alive in Odessa will be held responsible. He was not bluffing. Today he said that those who interfere in this conflict will suffer a disaster on the scale they never experienced in their history. He is not bluffing.”
What happened at Odessa? We’re Russian interests threatened. Did NATO move into areas it should not have. Who formed the present Ukrainian government? Are they noble?
Sorry about the double post. The first got lost and I thought I lost it
This is also a claim…
“ The Ukrainian military has killed 17k ppl in Eastern Ukraine since 2014. They killed a child with a us provided drone. This is not ok. Ukraine is Not a democracy. Us sponsored this division in 2014 when orchestrating a “revolution” and spent 5 billion of tax payer money by the odumbo administration. Us started this in 2014 and demanded that all ppl speak Ukrainian and not Russian in Russian areas. This is the tyrannical “democracy”
Any truth?
My nephew was listening to Putin’s speech live (not via US state-controlled media). He was speaking in Russian and the interpreter was having some trouble. There was some internet audio trouble, too. I did NOT hear any anger or paranoia in his Russian (true, mine is very rusty from decades of limited use). I DID hear him give Russian point of view of the history of the region. It matched much of what I studied all those years ago, cold war tainted that it was, yet folk did try to be as neutral as they could. The West’s GGEB oligarchs have been the aggressor here. NATO in the Ukraine is as provocative to Russia as nukes in Cuba was to us. If the referendum in Donetsk and Luhansk were reasonably clean, and we have no grounds to fuss much given the awfulness of our own 2020 election, then we should recognize that reality as well.
Tony – Putin is not unhinged nor mad. He is a very cool and calculating despot. Nothing he does is out of emotional response. It is all calculated and planned. Do not underestimate him. The idiots in charge of the EU and the US have for a long time, and Putin has been laughing at them.
Phil
I certainly do not underestimate Putin but only a madman invades a sovereign country that has done him no harm, using numerous pretexts, whilst lying to the world community-some of who appeared to swallow his deceit.
This is the start of his ambitions when he realises that the West are too feeble to prevent him from basically doing what he wants. Those ambitions are-as the ex Deputy commander of Nato confirms- to recreate the old Soviet Union and bring Eastern Europe back under his control.
Even now he must be looking towards Cuba and Venezuela whilst other dictators will be emboldened.
If the assertions I stated / copied are true, harm was definitely done.
I do not know.
If losing Ukraine to Russia thwarts a lucrative money firehose for lefties, I’m all for it.
A classified US State Department email from 2016 shows a leading diplomat warning that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company “undercut” American efforts to fight corruption in the Eastern European country.
The existence of the email was never acknowledged during several court battles over Freedom of Information Act requests that sought records related to business dealings involving the first son and his father, President Biden, said the Just the News website, which published the email in its report Tuesday.
The report came one day after the New York Times sued the State Department for allegedly withholding emails and memos involving Hunter Biden and his former business associates that were sent to or received by officials at the US Embassy in Romania.
In the Nov. 22, 2016, email, former State Department official George Kent, then the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Ukraine, recounted a discussion in which he detailed the “saga” surrounding the graft case against Mykola Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian natural resources minister and founder of Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter Biden $1 million a year to sit on its board.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/us-diplomat-warned-about-hunter-biden-ukraine-deals-in-2016/
Jim2
so the 44 million Ukraine citizens not operating the ‘firehose’ should be sacrificed because of a couple of dozen that have shoved money Bidens way? Thousands of Ukrainians will die, they will be enslaved and in the meantime we have dictators al over the world emboldened.
To punish those operating the firehose you are content that all the other peace threating things will likely and the West will be brought to its knees.?
@ClimateReason:
The “44 Million” will not be “sacrificed” to anything. Even if Ukraine enters a war with Mother Russia, it will only be a limited number of soldiers and those civilian casualties that can not be avoided. (Unless, of course, NATO decides to get into it… then many will be “sacrificed” on both sides).
You have refused to accept the simple fact that Ukraine WAS for most of it’s existence “Russia”. Under the Tsars. Under the original Rus’. Under the Russian Empire. There was a brief occupation by The Golden Hoard (but that didn’t change who they were) and they were broken out of Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution for internal CCCP Politics (Putin goes into great depth on that bit of history in the link above, BTW). So while technically not part of Russia, they were all in the same CCCP until 1991 so same counrty. Putin and most Russians see Ukrainians as their family, friends, cousins. Very much like America and Britain or Australia and Britain. Putin is not lusting for their blood.
What Putin does want to do is secure Ukraine from exploitation by the Lying West, assure NATO is not stationing troops and missiles on his border, and stop the plunder of Ukraine by the GGEBs. (He also threw them out of Russia, BTW, so has “up close and personal” understanding of the Globalist Designs on countries and how that works.)
Frankly, I trust Putin one hell of a lot more than I trust Biden (and any of his supporting cast), Truedoh!, ANY of the EU “leadership”, anyone from the WEF, and anyone backed by Soros. All I’ve ever seen Putin actually do, is toss out the corruption and improve Russia for the Russian People. I don’t say this from lack of exposure. I’ve listened to his speeches and then watched his actions. He doesn’t lie to his own people, but explains in careful detail the process of his decisions. He defends his decisions by dialog and discourse with his audience. Almost professorial at times. I remember one where he ticked off bullet points with “Is it a fact? Is a fact!” on key facts, and similarly pointed out assumptions and estimates. I have never seen him emotional during press conferences (or really any time I’ve seen him that I can remember).
IMHO, we must make a distinction between “Historical RUSSIA” and “Historical CCCP”. I do think Putin would like to restore historical Russia in places where there are Ethnic Russians and likely Ethnic Ukrainians (as they are essentially Russian in history, language, culture). Most especially where they have been corrupted by the Western Globalist Greedy Evil Bastards (as in Ukraine), and certainly where NATO has discarded the “no weapons or troops on your border” treaty.
Will he go for Historical CCCP? Nope. Not going to take East Germany back. The Baltic States & Poland would be a very heavy lift with lots of dead Russians, and his personal history (Father in war) shows him very careful with Russian Soldiers lives. (It is an interesting bit of personal history on him that I read some years back, but have lost the pointer to source). Hungary will not have him either (unless the EU decides to kick them out…). Czech Republic and Slovakia? Probably not. They are Slavic, but very different languages and cultures. Belarus? Likely, IMHO. They have already aligned themselves more with Mother Russia than with the West. But it will not be via war. It will be by their own choice. Why do I say this? The C.I.S. shows their “natural affiliations”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States
Note that under Western Influence operations (and likely a put up job Color Revolution) Ukraine exited:
No reason to invade someone who has already said they want reunification with Mother Russia.
Note that when you look into the Invasions by Putin, you will typically find shenanigans in the government on the Other Side, often with Western Help and / or NGO trouble making. Putin just refuses to let that crap happen on his doorstep.
So The West decided ALL the Ethnic Russians throughout the Crimea and Donbas would be turned into Ukrainians by FORBIDDING EDUCATION IN RUSSIAN. Their government was overthrown with “help” from the Western GEBs & Governments. And eventually NATO would be in the Crimean and Donbas… And Putin just said “No”. (We have a treaty that says so after all).
You want to frame that as some kind of power lust by Putin? An emotional tirade driven ambition? When all the facts on the ground say No! to it? Sorry, but no. Putin is protecting Russians from lying NATO states and their cousin Ukrainians from Western Corruption and exploitation. Это факт.
(Is Fact).
So now I’m going off to find out what the current “facts on the ground” are about Russian military activity in Rump Ukraine (after 6 to 8 years of Donbas being shelled by them, I’d not be surprised at a bit of “pay back”…)
A CNN spectacular
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2022/02/24/your-moral-and-intellectual-superiors-316/
“The Ukraine war: “The mistakes that have been committed in foreign policy are not, as a rule, apparent to the public until a generation afterwards” ”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-ukraine-war-mistakes-that-have-been.html
Jonathan Turley on the Collapse of the Liberalist West.
“White House Defines Strategic Success Against Russia As the Value of Their Story, Who Is More Attractive to the World
February 24, 2022 | Sundance | 161 Comments
THIS video from the White House briefing today, you absolutely must watch to gain a fulsome understanding of how the modern political left views the world of geopolitical contests in 2022.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/24/white-house-defines-strategic-success-against-russia-as-the-value-of-their-story-who-is-more-attractive-to-the-world/
So, what does this looking glass of a Russian incursion show us?
Perhaps:
– the weakness of Western leadership in the vacuum of an actual leader?
– the peril of a Green Revolution?
– the intentional lack of political foresight across the board?
– the ignorance of the new age influencers on applicable government policies?
– the need for a substitute attention getter for a fading pandemic on a global stage for an agenda?
– the WEF implementing an agenda from a different side of the equation due to ongoing resistance?
– the continuation of an ongoing millennial scale transition of boarder lines in that area?
– global power change (watch China soon)
My take,,,, all of the above +
Watch for the internet to kick off the NATO switch.
No doubt the value of the story to be decided on Dominion voting machines?
And
“Biden: “Get me Putin on the secure line we are going to straighten this out now!!
Putin: Hello Joe what’s up?
Biden: You better get your forces out of Ukraine or I’ll get really angry and apply more sanctions!
Putin: Joe, I’m so glad you called. There is something that has been on my mind?
Biden: What’s that?
Putin: Well you know Joe Alaska is historically part of Russia.
Biden hangs up.”
Via CTH
https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d0282e14617d0200b
Via https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/02/joe-tzu-is-at-it-again.html
Ya think?
Chickens coming to Roost>
“Tucker: How will this conflict affect you?”
An alternative ending to that Biden – Putin joke via Jo Nova
“Biden: What’s that?
Putin: Well you know those millions your family has been pulling out of Ukraine. That’s gonna stop and I’m sorry to say the Ukraine prosecutor you had fired survived our initial bombing and so did the case documents.
Biden hangs up.”
Well if the US policy is based on”The value if their story” they should understand, and the statists do NOT understand, that “ the value of any story” is greatly aided by it adherence to truth. And they, as pathological liars, are of no value.
“There is no biological sex.”
“ White men are helplessly racist”
“ Government has the right to force you to a “medical treatment” or take your means of making a living”
“ All cultures, except white culture, are good.”
“The US never did anything to be proud of until Obama was elected “
“Traditional family values must be broken”
“Importing millions that hate the US, educated to think as negatively about the United States as the Statist left, is what America needs.”
“Importing millions that ideologically hate America as “the great satan” and adhere to a dark age interpretation of radical Islam, is just fine and enabled. “
“Totalitarian central government is admirable.”
“ All truth is subjective”
“ People have no responsibility and the government is the parent”
“peaceful white protest is insurrection and violent destructive Black protest is peaceful.”
“CO2 is evil”
“Energy is evil”
“ Rules and laws are for the common folk”
“ Individual liberty ideals are antiquated and irrelevant”
Their story has no value, and causes great harm.
@Tony – Understood about Putin being a madman.
In this country we have a court verdict of NGI – Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. It applies to people who commit murder or attempt it – probably the most famous winner of that title is John Hinkley.
I have always maintained that all murderers (not killers as self defense is a valid defense) are insane. So yes, any person that would intentionally, for no reason, start a war is a madman.
“Is this peak moonbat stupidity over Ukraine?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/02/is-this-peak-moonbat-stupidity-over.html
The peak is probably much higher unfortunately
Sadly agree
Best explainer I’ve seen (except for the ads) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
Also explains why our pig politician’s kids are over there.
Best explainer I’ve seen (except for the ads) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
Also explains why our pig politician’s kids are over there.
My short version: This is fight between cousins over an oil inheritance.
Nooooooo…..you didn’t give Crimea away now that we’ve found oil and gas!
Earlier:
Ukraine was a dick for stealing Russian gas and engaging in naval base shakedowns.
Russia likes to invade much, and sees no problem with being the Indian giver.
Taiwan take note. The world has changed.
Your island should be absolutely saturated with government supported world class rifle ranges so extreme they’ll become tourist attractions.
EVERY Taiwanese citizen should be gifted a superior scoped rifle, and over time ANY Taiwanese home gun safe should make Americans cry.
Near infinite stocks of smart weapons should be on-hand for easy independent access by Taiwanese citizens. Cut the red tape. Start thinking “militia” instead of “conscripted army”. Use the “discipline of the dice” like the Grozny resistance to target invaders. Requires no communications and cannot be jammed.
Taiwan should keep three years worth of food and water on-hand at all times. Three years is a long time. Enough to break ANY siege.
The best of your best should train constantly as assassins. Ready to decapitate the CCP at a moment’s notice.
You can bet the CCP is now watching Ukraine with growing apprehension. Well trained citizens are the new Swiss pikers. They’ll lay waste to dictators. Centralization is a curse. Use it against them.
Note how the timid Europeans are now releasing their lethal weapons stockpiles for Ukrainian use. It will be the same if you are invaded. Also possible Chinese citizens will string up and dismember the CCP themselves should China start losing to Taiwan. Think big.
Osama Bin Laden was right. People choose the strong horse and they don’t fear losers. Especially bully losers.
Terrific vid Tas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE Defence is the first concern in Real politic, buffers rule.
Ukraine used to have many Russian nuclear missiles. IF they still had them, at what point do you think they would have used them against Russia? IF they still had them, would Russia have invaded? Several countries have or want to have nukes. Being a bit generous, let’s say these countries have no intention to use them offensively. As a defensive weapon, is just having them enough, or do you also have to have some credibility to your threat that you would actually use them?
Hey, if world wide nuclear war breaks out tomorrow, it’s been nice knowing you.
@YMMV:
Had Ukraine not given up the nukes, Russia likely would not have agreed to fold the USSR and become the CIS. They saw, even then, the European GEBs desire to take Ukraine. Similarly, The West was not looking for a new nuclear State, so also would have stopped the deal. So it is a hypothetical without a possible… IMHO.
Per deterrent:
Well, part of the problem with a “Nuclear Deterrent” is that you have to be credible and able to both protect and launch them before “incoming” takes them out. THE main reason Putin is not going to let Ukraine go to The West is just that. Nukes on advanced missiles from Ukraine can take out Moscow in about 5 minutes. Faster than the military can respond.
The essential corollary to that is that Russia could take out every important command & control and missile site in about 5 minutes and before the nukes could be prepped for launch. Heck, likely before the Decider In Chief (whoever that is) could even issue a “Go” order.
So my interpretation is that: Had Ukraine kept nukes and then was trying to join NATO, it would now be a “Glow In The Dark” Ukraine and no longer a threat…
“VISA Suspends All Operations in Russia, We Are One Step Closer to Losing the Dollar As Global Trade Currency
March 5, 2022 | sundance | 124 Comments”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/05/visa-suspends-all-operations-in-russia-we-are-one-step-closer-to-losing-the-dollar-as-global-trade-currency/
“Neil Oliver, Sorry Ukraine, but We’re Not Going To Stop Asking Questions
March 5, 2022 | sundance | 92 Comments”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/05/neil-oliver-sorry-ukraine-but-were-not-going-to-stop-asking-questions/
@Another Ian:
I must admit that the INCESSANT Virtue Cramming going on vis a vis Ukraine is becoming comically tedious. Example?
The Special Olympics, you know, where disabled and near crippled children get to have a bit of fun for the day and “everyone is a winner for trying”… THEY decided to BAN Russian Disabled Children.
Just Oh My God the level of insane cruelty in these V.S. Bastards (“virtue signaling” B…).
How, on God’s Earth, can you figure a kid who has trouble walking or doesn’t know their alphabet has any clue what Putin is doing, and forget about trying to reason out if it is good or bad. So you chose to punish this innocent soul?
IF there were ever anything that confirmed to me that the PC & VS Lunatic Left Progressive Socialists were BASTARDS, this is it. It’s like kicking dogs and lighting cats on fire. People who would dash the hopes and lives of disabled children just to piss on Russians is flat out evil. Through and through.
After that, things like Visa or MC deciding to screw over regular day to day Russian Citizens for what their government is doing? Does that mean when Trump is re-elected Visa and MC will stop services in the USA? Are they a 100% unreliable company at doing the only job they have, processing valid and legal purchases? It isn’t like some Russian buying a Latte at Starbucks Moscow is endorsing Putin via the purchase. Nor is a housewife in Vladivostok buying a daily grocery list exactly Tyrant Central… All this crap just leads me to think that Western Culture and Western Values have reached the end of the line Stupid. We are in terminal decline.
I think I need to write a letter to Dan Bogjino and ask him if he would like help building out his Parallel Economy globally. Hey, it may only be 1/2 the World Market that gets captured, but the profit on “Only half a world” would be pretty nice ;-) I’m pretty sure that right now, if they had the Freedom Card, it would be getting a few hundred million new applications from Russia & adjacent.
I also know that I’m NOT going to expect VISA or MC to work whenever I’m on vacation anywhere, as that country might make some “unacceptable” political statement and my ability to buy dinner or a ticket home would suddenly end. “The Stupid, it BURNS!”.
How hard is it to understand:
Putin IS NOT Russia.
Russia IS NOT Russian Citizens.
Russian Citizens are just people like us, too, subject to the whim of Stupid Governance. (Vis Nancy “Double Gin” Pillousy, Chucky “Where’s the camera?” Schumer, Jerry “The Hut” Nadler, China Joe “show me the money” Biden, etc. etc.)
There are no ‘Good Guys’ running any western country anymore.
In a war, each country or side must convince its populace that ‘we are the good guys’ and the other side is the bad guys. I say again, there are no ‘Good guys’ anymore. Certainly not Putin, but I can understand his motives and agenda. To my eyes, everyone else is trying to hide their agendas. Putin is an honest bad guy. The rest are all lying bad guys.
The YSM propaganda machine is selling Russia as the sole bad guy and pushing all the good guy jingoism they can muster, trying to get the West to rally ’round and unite against muuuh… Russia. They are selling us sh!t and telling us it’s Shinola.
I have noted that the one blessing to come from the YSM going all in on all propaganda lies all of the time has opened far more eyes than they intended. In particular, the covid lies opened the eyes of a lot of people who suspected but were finally convinced by the *ahem* Covid Crisis®.
So, we’re supposed to forget that the YSM has lied about everything, explicitly or by omission, for the past 50+ years and now they are telling the truth about Russia and Ukraine?
“Umm I don’t think so, Tim.”
~Al Boreland
I am not certain how bad Putin is.
When all the assertions of Ukrainian / US connected corruption and murder are considered, when all the assertions ( and thus is well supported) if Obama deep state overthrow of a democratically Elected Ukrainian government being overthrown by the deep state are considered, when the current assertions of those same government supported Ukrainian mass murderers also blowing up a building of 200 of their own citizens are considered, when the US sponsored bio labs in the Ukraine are considered, when the evil of current western leadership is considered, then one MUST answer the validity of those assertions, before declaring Putin an evil monster.
Nevertheless, even answering all those questions, and assuming they were I answered in support of Putin, the Russian decision to take over part of Ukraine ( Russia insists there goal is this, and they will end all hostility and free ALL captured soldiers when this is gained) it may have been a wrong decision to invade, as the world is already at a VERY vulnerable point of time, as the results of Covid response and over large government have currently devastated global supply lines. The cut off of Ukrainian food and global fertilizer supplies, the ladder already a very damaged supply line, could easily lead to uncontrollable, unpredictable reactions.
I no longer have the Will to properly research all the divergent assertions. I am however convinced that our own western governments are pro “one world GOVERNMENT”, pro tyranny, and fundamentally immoral. Those that endlessly argue, Putin evil, Russia bad. yet consistently REFUSE to address or debate the assertions against the Ukraine, are simply ignored going forward.
There is so much obfuscated that it’s hard to be certain of anything in this war. I was only certain of what happened on that January 6th “insurrection” because EM was there and gave us an eyewitness report (and because I trust EM to tell the truth, which may not apply to eyewitnesses I don’t know). On that day, there was also live coverage and I saw what appeared to be the “protestors” invited in past the barriers and up the steps, so while I might also have some trust issues with “live reporting” since it could be previously-canned footage, in this case I also had confirmation.
I don’t have a lot of doubt that Russia is in fact invading Ukraine. What’s been pretty-well unsaid though is that for at least the last 8 years Ukraine has been bombarding the Donetsk and Lubansk areas and killing thousands of East Ukrainians who wanted to rejoin Russia. That should surely have been able to be resolved peacefully, without all the deaths (ISTR around 13,000 over that time) and of course the damage to infrastructure in an area that really should have been prosperous because they have good resources. In comparison with Scotland wanting to secede from the UK, or Catalonia from Spain, or the Basque region from France and Spain, would we be considering shelling the relevant areas to make sure they didn’t leave the larger country? In all of these areas, family ties go across the border anyway, as they do in Ukraine. Basically it’s an un-civil war.
Given that the eastern edge of Ukraine wanted to rejoin Russia, I’m surprised that Putin didn’t just move soldiers there to defend it and leave Kyiv alone. Seems he wouldn’t need to take over all Ukraine to impose the new border, but maybe the reason he wants the whole of Ukraine is as a buffer state where he knows missiles aimed at Moscow will not be positioned. Not that many months ago there was talk of Ukraine both joining NATO and getting nukes, so that was maybe the trigger-point to for Putin to decide on a takeover. The preparations appear to go back quite a few years with Russia storing Gold and getting its debt down, so it seems the intention to “do something about Ukraine” has been around for a decade and the question was when and precisely what.
With the development (and proving) of hypersonic missiles, I’d suspect that the “buffer state” idea is no longer valid. 5 minutes to Moscow is now a much longer ground distance, and likely to get even longer as technology improves. I’d also expect some things put in orbit that could be directed down to give less than a minute warning. It’s been discussed that an EMP-generating weapon could disable a whole country extremely rapidly and that there’s currently little defence against that installed except for some military bunkers. Could be thus that Putin is thinking in terms of older capabilities in war, and maybe hasn’t realised that new technology is a lot more damaging to the economic viability of a modern country. Yep, boots on the ground will still subdue a populace, but that army can’t do the job if they can’t communicate and there’s no power.
Thus I’d have expected Putin to have declared that the Donetsk and Lubansk regions were now part of Russia again. I’m big, you’re small, I’m strong, you’re weak, and there’s nothing you can do about it…. Easy to paint this as protecting Russian natives against their larger Ukrainian neighbours who were oppressing them, especially as the wages in those regions are below even Russian or Ukrainian average and, as I said, they should be prosperous. Organise a referendum in the areas to get a plebiscite for the change of “ownership” of the area, and then agree a boundary. I recall that in the news a while back was that such a referendum had been run, though of course it wasn’t recognised as valid. Changing boundaries is always going to be a bit of a pain to go through, but can be done. Still, it seems to me that Putin had a possible path that would have made him look good, whereas bombing women and children definitely doesn’t. As such, there’s probably some information we don’t know that made him take the Blitzkrieg route to try to take over Ukraine. Doesn’t seem to be quite as fast as expected, either, and his soldiers aren’t being welcomed as liberators, so possibly he’s been fooled by his own propaganda. Bummer when that happens…. Incidentally, also looks to me that he’s been taken in by the AGW and Covid propaganda too. When you are faced with what seems to be unanimity in professional circles of some proposition, unless you have specialised knowledge it’s hard to argue against it.
The question for me is whether Putin has made an error in his calculations, based on bad information from his advisors because no-one wants to bring bad news to the boss. I’d suspect cancel culture runs better in Russia, with the cancellation involving a funeral (or Siberian prison camp) for those who disagree with the official line rather than just being unpersoned.
Jimmy Dore finds the same facts I found (8 years of bombing Donbass by Ukraine killing Russians, NATO violating treaty / agreements to NOT put NATO in Ukraine, Ukraine a corrupt money laundry and more for the GEBs, etc.) Basically Putin has good reasons for the invasion. (That is not saying I like the invasion, just that I understand the motivations).
Then there’s also the way Western News is being spun hard to War Mongering Now!!!!
Even Fox. Saw a news snip that had drone footage of a “Residential Area” being “destroyed” with “nothing military”, ONLY Residential. With a load of tsk tisks and sad faces. Yet the video shows a convoy of trucks (a few of them tank trucks and at least one with a mil style trailer, some looking a bit like troop carriers with the fabric burned off.) What it looked like to me is just Dumb Artillery isn’t as precise as our “Smart Bombs”, and they took out a military convoy but with a few shells hitting adjacent High Rise Buildings. But are those residential or business offices? A bit hard to tell.
So ARE the Ukrainians conducting military operations inside their cities? Almost certainly. Some of it in Residential Areas? Probably hard to avoid it, or you have left open avenues for Russian entry. So is Putin targeting residential areas, or is this collateral damage from taking out military presence in those areas? (No, I can’t answer it either…) But that convoy sure looked military to me.
So if FOX is showing a burned out convoy of military vehicles with some adjacent damage and saying unequivocally that there was NO military target and 100% residential, what do you think CNN / MSNBC / ABC / CBS, etc are saying / spinning?
War is hell, on both sides. But sitting there for decades while your Ethnic Brothers are killed and your major threat breaks treaties / agreements to stay a good distance away AND funds and expedites a “Color Revolution” to toss out an elected friendly government and replaces it with a government of their choosing is slow death by 1000 cuts. It’s bad either way, so “might as well please yourself”…
Fog of war – I’ve no idea as to whether what GBNews says is actually true, but this article says that the Russian leaders are being told what they want to hear rather than the truth, and that the Russian invasion is actually a fustercluck.
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/russian-spy-claims-ukraine-war-will-be-total-failure-and-predicts-collapse-like-fall-of-nazi-germany/241770
This other article https://www.gbnews.uk/gb-views/mark-dolan-putin-is-an-evil-monster-but-one-of-our-making/241571 contains the sentence “The West rejected Russia’s desire to enter NATO in the early 2000s at the start of Putin’s reign and we sent Russia running into the arms of China.” which I was somewhat aware of and had wondered why Russia was rejected. Allies in the past, look to be natural allies now, and the real risk is China wanting to impose their rule on the world. Russia of course wants a big say, but if they don’t feel threatened then wouldn’t be a risk. They’d just get rich from selling oil and gas and rich people don’t in general start a war where they risk losing that wealth, unless they see that not starting that war is a much bigger risk.
Meantime, looks like our laws are being tossed away and anyone connected with Russia is at risk of losing all money and property that the West can get hold of and confiscate. Yachts are being seized. This is being cheered on, too, in the YSM. Seems to me there’s no legal grounds to do this, and they haven’t committed any obvious crimes except being rich and Russian, and therefore must have links to Putin. This has also been applied to all Russian citizens whose (Western-controlled) cards will no longer work to withdraw cash or to buy things, and to Russian banks who can’t transfer money. Similar sort of thing applied to anyone who contributed to the Canadian truckers, who suddenly found that their accounts were frozen. The iron fist within the velvet glove is exposed, and digital currencies are not immune to that. Bitcoin funds are after all public, even if it may be not as easy to find who they belong to. Any currency that is controlled by the net can be instantly removed and can be stopped at will by either governments or Big Tech so its value as a currency depends upon your social credit (which can also be instantly stopped at will). Yep, it’s convenient to pay for things with a card and to not have to carry around actual currency, but that convenience carries with it a risk of being unpersoned and suddenly having zero assets. Comply or be paupered.
There was an idea floated about having a tax-strike, where no-one pays their taxes and that would show the government what’s what by stopping their income. The government can of course generate as many dollars as it wants by a few keystrokes, so it wouldn’t have the desired effect. If your money is “safely in the bank”, then a few more keystrokes can remove either a desired amount or zero the account totally (this was done to Cyprus banks a while back). If you’ve got that money as (fiat) currency under the bed or in a safe, then the extra money being magicked into existence will reduce the value of that stash in real terms just as effectively as a tax. See Venezuela’s problems with how big a bag of paper currency was needed to buy a loaf of bread.
Maybe owning some precious metal will provide some cushion against currency devaluation, but more because people think it has value rather than it having an actual value. I wouldn’t sell you my last bit of food for a lump of Gold, after all.
@EM – it is not only Fox. Half the fools that call themselves conservative commentators are now parroting the fake news – which they have been lampooning and lambasting for the past 5 years! There is no critical thinking it seems left in the world, except from a few folks on the right. The rest might as well just paint a sign on their forehead – “Joined the Swamp. Out to lunch”
EM says, “ So if FOX is showing a burned out convoy of military vehicles with some adjacent damage and saying unequivocally that there was NO military target and 100% residential, what do you think CNN / MSNBC / ABC / CBS, etc are saying / spinning?“
As there are only a reported 500 civilians causalities, in a military operation against a population of 43 million, I would say that a lot of “spinning” is required to make it look like class civilian murder. I am quite certain we do not know the details of who or how most of the civilian casualties occurred.
If the Russian offense was failing as badly as some say, I hardly think Putin would be offering terms, ( the same ones he has spoken of for a long time) or that Ukraine would be considering them, yet they are.
I am guessing the GEBs will not let Ukraine accept those terms. Poland just made the YS look foolish, very foolish. The US wanted Poland to use their MIGS against Ukraine. Poland said sure, we will give them to you and you can use them. The Biden administration quickly backpedaled.
How is it any different putting a pilot in a borrowed MIG, and someone on the trigger of a Stinger, or behind the joystick of a drone?
Just sayiin,,,,,,, look out>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers mentions Zelensky by name. Of course there’s also a pushback saying that even market traders in Ukraine have offshore accounts. Still, that itself paints a picture of widespread corrupt practice. Maybe with so much corruption even those market traders want to keep money where the government can’t make it suddenly disappear. Leaves the question open of just how rich Zelensky has become since becoming president, and what corruption he’s been personally involved in.
Overall, though, it looks to me that the Ukrainian people are caught up in the money affairs of people outside the country, and those people don’t want to lose their capabilities for money-laundering and profits. Relative to what happened in Syria, and what’s happening in Yemen, it does however seem that the civilian deaths are a lot fewer, and thus that Putin’s army is showing quite a lot of restraint when shooting at their relatives rather than people they have no cultural ties with.
I think there was likely a feeling in Russia that because of the corruption in Ukraine that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russian army as liberators, and the reality was somewhat different. Maybe a problem of believing your own propaganda, therefore. Might have been better if the Russians had done some propaganda in Ukraine first, and also made sure that the questions they wanted answers to had been answered truthfully. Might have true in Eastern Ukraine, but not overall.
Chiefio: Ukraine (including Crimea) voted to leave the disintegrating USSR in 1991. Afterwards, Russia signed an agreement to respect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty in return for dismantling Ukrainian nukes. Two decades later, Russia has violated that agreement and now is fighting to annex all most of Ukrainian. You seem to have accepted Putin’s rational without giving it much thought. Let’s consider some analogies.
Suppose Scotland or Wales voted to separate from the UK and join the EU. These regions are at least as much historically “British” as Ukraine is “Russian”. The EU allows a foreign power into England’s home island. What would you say to a British Putin invading Scotland and leveling its cities to forcibly return their Scottish brothers to the United Kingdom after three decades of Scottish independence? What if a British Putin invaded Ireland to return it the United Kingdom?
If you apply Putin’s arguments to Taiwan, aren’t you approving of China’s forcible annexation of this island?
Would you approve of a Czech Putin someday invading Slovakia and recreating Czechoslovakia? These people share very similar languages and a long history.
Should Austria and the Sudetenland be forcibly annexed by Germany because the German Putin (ie Hilter) believed these areas belonged to Germany? These areas have a common language and history that goes back even further than Kievan Russia to Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire. If you visit the German National History Museum in Berlin, you’ll see that – even today – German history and “German territory” go back to these roots and that other countries are now occupying what was historically German land..
Two decades ago, Putin sent the Russian army into Chechnya. Why? The Chechens and other Caucasian peoples had battled the larger surrounding Persian, Ottoman and Russian Empires for their independence for centuries, until Russia finally subdued them in the 19th century by a combination genocide and expulsion. (See Circassian genocide, for example.) When constructing the USSR after WWI, the Chechens (and other minorities) were pacified only by being granted an autonomous zones (and republics) within the Russian SSR (and USSR). The Chechens were not the Russian’s “brothers” who shared a millennium of history and language. They were reconquered to restore greatness to the Russian empire. Likewise, the attack on Ukraine is motivated by a desire to restore Russian greatness, not a desire to re-unite with their Ukrainian brothers by killing them and destroying their cities. You don’t kill your Ukrainian brothers to protect yourself from an attack by NATO.
Admittedly, none of these analogies are perfect. IMO, the age of empires and spheres of influence has ended. After WWII, the modern world recognized that there are no perfect borders that can fairly separate one culturally unique group of people from another. Wars to address the current perceived inequities of history are an enormous waste that makes everyone poorer. Inside today’s Ukraine, there is a gradual increase from Almost pure Ukrainian speaking in the west to mostly Russian speaking in the east, with no sensible place to draw a boundary. IT SHOULD BE UP TO THE PEOPLE WHO CURRENTLY LIVE IN UKRAINE TO DEMOCRATICALLY DECIDE HOW BEST TO DEAL WITH THIS PROBLEM, not an ex-KGB dictator in Moscow who admires Stalin as a great leader. Right?
In the 30 years of its current existence, the people of Ukraine have repeatedly proven one thing: they don’t want to be part of a corrupt, authoritarian kleptocracy like Russia. The Eastern European countries in the EU are imperfect models for how they want to be governed. Twice they have peacefully and continuously occupied the Euromaidan for THREE MONTHS IN WINTER when their government deviated from this vision. Occasionally up to 1 million of Kyiv’s 3 million demonstrated. (The second time ended in violence, prompting Yanukovitch to flee because he had no supporters left willing to defend him. The next day, he was removed by a unanimous vote of the Duma, including his own party, albeit with a few too many members missing that day.) Until Zelensky, Ukrainian elections had been a close choice between a corrupt pro-Russian oligarch from the Donbas and a corrupt pro-Western oligarch from Kyiv, but now 77% of the people have voted for an outsider, the Russian-speaking actor Zelensky. Since 2014, the Ukrainians have embraced change and have become united BECAUSE of Putin’s aggression. This war is proving that both Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine have no desire to be ruled by Putin’s kleptocracy – even in Russian-dominated cities on the border such as Kharkiv. None of this means that American or NATO soldiers should be fighting to preserve Ukrainian independence.
Now, although I initially thought the expansion of NATO was unnecessarily provocative, it is positively laughable that Putin felt threatened by a squabbling underfunded European military that was increasing its dependence on Russian gas and oil and shutting down its nuclear power. The US was rapidly retreating from over-commitment made during the war on terror and the rise of China. Trump was treating to withdraw from NATO. NATO was a potential threat to Putin’s dream of recreating a Russian empire that included Ukraine, but not a military threat to the Russian homeland. Prosperous democracies are a threat to Putin’s rule.
@Frank; Good dissertation on the political situation in Ukraine. The bottom line is that the Putin attack on Ukraine is little different from Hussein’s attack on Kuwait. That can not be allowed to stand or no weak nation next to a more powerful one will be safe from invasion and the world be safe from war. Leadership of aggressive nations MUST be put to grave personal risk to undertake such adventures or we all will be at risk of the ravages of war.
Prophecies for this time include ” The Brothers of the North will Unite, establish a PAX that out-laws War as a political solution to international disputes.”
Time for NATO to step up and tell the Russian Oligarchs you will be treated as International War Criminals if you allow Putin to continue his activities.. A Bullies threats to use Atomic weapons is not of value if you ignore them and offer back grave personal risk.
@P.G.:
Down that path lies W.W.III with thermonuclear weapons….
Russia is under existential threat from the Globalist GEBs of the EU & USA. We have expanded NATO (despite agreements to the contrary) up to the doorstep of Russia. We (Soros) have created a Color Revolution in Ukraine to replace a neutral government with one GEB Ready. Placed chemical / biological warfare labs on his doorstep, and prepared to induct Ukraine into NATO (placing our short range nukes – oh, yeah, we abrogated and left the short range nuke ban treaty with Russia…) on a 5 minute flight time to Moscow.
Russia ether says NO! now to this GEB / Globalist expansion and attempts at a Color Revolution in Russia, too, or it ceases to exist in any meaningful form (one way or the other. Satrap to GEBs or “glow in the dark world” for all of us). Russia (NOT just Putin) will not accept subjugation.
The only 2 outcomes are:
1) Ukraine is a Real Neutral State (and the mostly Russian parts are returned to Russia – as they were originally hived off of Russia via an illegal act of Khrushchev – a Ukrainian) and NATO is kept out of Ukraine.
2) W.W.III. Russia will not be bashful about using the first nukes. Their Civil Defense is adequate and their military doctrine includes use of Tactical Nukes when needed. Pick a fight with a Slav and prepare for a fight to the death. That’s their culture, pretty much. (See Napoleon & Hitler as the most recent examples, but not the only ones…)
Remember to look at a problem with your opponents POV if you would understand what they will do.
An easy solution is for The West to honor the agreements for a Neutral Ukraine, no nukes near Russia, and remove NATO a fair distance from their border. Win-win (except for the GEBs desire for Global Domination takes a hit…)
@Frank:
Russia violated that agreement after the West (EU / USA) tore it to shreds and burned it. The other side of the agreement was NATO not on the border of Russia (it is now) and Ukraine to remain neutral (they are on the docket for admission into NATO…).
You can’t demand one side agree to the terms when the other side is violating them… and has been for decades.
I’ve given it a great deal of thought. Apparently a lot more than you have. (Tit, meet tat. Don’t insult lest you get insulted.)
Analogies are cute, but useless. Here, let me give you one:
How about if Russia wanted to induct Mexico into the CIS / CSTO and, BTW, put a bunch of short range hypervelocity nuclear missiles along the border with the USA. 5 minutes to Glow In The Dark DC. Think the USA would be just fine with that? (check the history of CUBA and JFK for existence proof to the contrary, toss in invasion of Grenada for seasoning.)
Do note that Kiev is the historical CAPITAL OF RUSSIA. That’s kinda Russian. Also note that Ukraine is THE Ukraine district of Russia for about 800 out of the last 1000 years of history. Note too, that Ukrainian Language is basically “old Russian” while the historic languages of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were not English. Your analogy fails miserably.
BTW, it was up to the people of Ukraine to settle it, and they did. Then The West fomented a Color Revolution to toss out their choice and install a “Western GEB Friendly” choice. WE started this war when The West did that.
You simply can not take a Emotionally Colored Lens to look at this. It is necessary to look at it from the POV of the self defense of Russia in the face of an ever growing NATO run by insane people who are destroying Western Democracy with crap. (From Global Warming to CRT to NATO expansion to Color Revolutions to COVID- VaxPasses & Medical tyranny to…)
Were I in Putin’s shoes, I think I’d be doing exactly what he is doing in the face of CONSTANT breaking of treaties by The West and a hostile NATO. There isn’t any other rational choice that works for Russia.
Now look from the other side of the problem: ALL The West needs to do is honor the original agreements. No Nuclear Ukraine. NO NATO toe-to-toe with Russia. Ukraine a neutral country (and oh, BTW, shelling / bombing Ethnic Russians for 9 years was kind of a bad look for Ukraine…) and NATO countries to stop all the threats and attacks (economic, political, media, etc. etc.)
What makes that such a hard lift, eh? “Do what you promised” isn’t exactly a Big Ask.
Chiefio: Analogies are exceedingly useful, but they allow us to step away from our current biases and prejudices and analyze situations from a new situation. Imperfect or false analogies, of course, can mislead us, so I could learn a lot if you pointed out the flaws in mine. So I will explain why your Cuba/Mexico analogy is misleading.
We aren’t in an ideological struggle with Putin’s Russia like we were during the Communist USSR during the Cold War. If Mexico wants to be stupid and give up their trade relationship with the US for a far less lucrative relationship with Russia, that is their choice. Many (but not me) would love a good excuse to cut off trade with Mexico in the hopes of returning manufacturing jobs to the US. The Ukrainian people did take to the streets in 2013 when Yanukovych cancelled a long-awaited trade deal with the EU for a more lucrative deal with Russia. The people clearly preferred the EU deal because it included help dealing with their biggest problem, corruption.
Now, if Mexico wants to allow Russia to install hypersonic nukes on our border and threaten to disrupt the stability that some argue is provided by mutually-assured destruction, that is a completely different matter. So was Cuba. Castro subverted the Cuban revolution and betrayed many who fought alongside him by setting up a Communist dictatorship that most were not fighting for. Castro’s regime and his domestic opponents became part of a world-wide ideological struggle including insurrections and coups. The USSR had used military force to squash most potential-Castros near their borders (East Germany in 1952, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979) and fully expected Kennedy to do the same. Khrushchev chose to try to install intermediate-range ICBMs in Cuba to protect Castro WHILE REPEATEDLY AND PUBLICLY PROMISING his aid to Cuba was purely defensive. In theory, Khrushchev had every right to publicly attempt to install IRBMs in Cuba to protect Castro or use that threat as a bargaining chip to get our obsolete IRBMs out of Turkey (although Khrushchev knew we already intended to withdraw them). Both sides would then need to negotiate a compromise they could live with. Negotiations with someone who has publicly lied to you aren’t practical unless the lie has been corrected.
The situation in Ukraine today has nothing to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today we have an agreement with Russia about the stationing of IRBMs in Europe that was negotiated under Reagan that prevents the US from installing IRBMs anywhere in Europe (and certainly not on Russia’s borders. Russia apparently has been violating that treaty and damaging the security offered by this treaty. The current dispute has never been about the threat posed by IRBMs – that is a totally bogus – and Putin is not demanding negotiations on this subject. He wants to restore the Russian empire and has clearly said so.
You have been deceived by Russian disinformation. Since there is lots of such disinformation that originates in Russia, a responsible blog host should look for a reliable link to support his allegations against the US. However, Russia did sign the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 forbidding “the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan” in return for their decommissioning Soviet-era nuclear missiles.
NATO does not admit new members without the unanimous agreement of all current members. There is no possibility of that happening in the foreseeable future. The threat of Russian aggression is what creates a need to admit Ukraine to NATO.
The US doesn’t have the power to create “color revolutions”, but the people in other countries may be inspired to start them by our example and we may choose to support some of them. If you look the history of how the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity began in 2013, you will find that people began protesting the SAME DAY that Yanukovych surprisingly announced he would not be going to Poland in three days to sign a long-awaited agreement with the EU negotiated over five years and which had overwhelmingly been approved by Parliament six months earlier. The demonstrations quickly grew (up to 500,000). Putin personally witnessed the power of such an uprising in Berlin in 1989 and the fall of the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR. His indoctrination as a Communist and KGB agent explain why he blames the CIA for “color revolutions”, but Westerners familiar with demonstrations have no excuse for being taken in by such conspiracy theories. In the end, the US and EU sold out the demonstrators and negotiated a deal that would allow Yanukowych to remain in power until a new election could be held. That deal that was spontaneous rejected by the demonstrators after a large number had been killed a few days earlier. Knowing that no security forces remained loyal after so many deaths, Yanukowych (with Russian assistance) fled the same night the demonstrators in the Euromaidan rejected the deal.
I’m sure the Ukrainian people would love to be neutral, keep their thriving democracy, end their corruption and grow their economy. However, since Putin invaded, annexed Crimea and sent mercenaries and military equipment to support the uprising in Eastern Ukraine, it has become clear to the Ukrainian people that they can’t trust Putin to leave Ukraine alone. His stated goal is to re-unite the Russian empire and restore Russian greatness.
The theft of Crimea from Russia is bogus. Like Chechnya, Dagestan and numerous other areas, Crimea was officially an autonomous area in the USSR; supervised until 1954 by the Russian SSR and after by the Ukrainian SSR. The Soviets changed their constitution to permit this change. When the USSR began to disintegrate, the people of the Ukrainian SSR voted for independence and a majority of the people in Crimea also voted for independence at that time. If Crimeans didn’t want to leave the Russian SSR, they wouldn’t have supported Ukrainian independence! When the Russian Federation signed the Budapest Memorandum, it acknowledge that Crimea was part of Ukraine and Ukraine allowed the Russian fleet to continue to use Sevastopol as a base for the Russian Black See Fleet. Now, you can argue that large autonomous areas like Crimea and Chechnya should have been allowed to vote whether to be independent or join one of the successor states of the USSR, If there was injustice done, the injustice was done to the Crimean and Chechen people who weren’t allowed the decide their own destiny.
History is full of injustices, especially in the Russian Empire, which was put together by genocide, explusions, ethnic cleansing of minorities and forced resettlement of Russians into newly acquired territories. Things were equally bad under the Communists. 4-7 Million Ukrainians died in the Holodomor. Today, Russian speakers are the largest ethnic group of people in Crimea, but the majority population originally were “Crimean Tatars”, the descendants of the Golden Horde and being part of the Ottoman Empire. The last of these Tatars were deported to central Asia by Stalin after the recapture of Crimea in WWII, because some had been collaborators. History is full of such crimes and national populist leaders such as Hitler and Putin exploit them for political gain. Wars don’t create justice, just death, waste and new injustices. The idea that the dominant Russians – not their weaker neighbors – are the biggest victims of history is laughable. It is sad to see so many fooled by Putin’s disinformation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars
Unfortunately, the breakup of the USSR and the Russian Empire has left Putin with a massive inferiority complex. Why should anyone care today whether the dawn of Russian culture in Kievan Russia is located today in Ukraine rather than Russia. Three languages have developed from the early Eastern Slav that was spoken in Kyivan Russia and today they are spoken in three different countries. That’s a normal state of affairs: Country boundaries tend to follow language boundaries. French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian evolved from Latin and are spoken in four different countries. A couple of centuries before Kyivan Run, Charlemagne was a Frank (a people who became the French), but his capital (Aachen) is today in Germany. Both countries claim him as a founder, the French as Charlemagne and the Germans as Charles the Great.
Frank, you should watch this in regards to the 2014 color revolution.
https://www.goyimtv.tv/v/3313276856/Color-Revolution—Ukraine-on-Fire–2016—2014-Maidan-Massacre–Documentary-You%E2%80%99ll-Likely-Never-See
‘– and Putin is not demanding negotiations on this subject. He wants to restore the Russian empire and has clearly said so.’
Not that I’ve heard. You have some sort of source for that?
“The US doesn’t have the power to create ‘color revolutions.’’ That would be nice.
It’s not an all-or-nothing thing, it’s a matter of changing the probabilities. Further, so-called ‘color revolutions’ are just one modality in regime change operations. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” and all that.
The U.S. does heavily fund various imperial-aligned “civil society” groups and they also have quite a few politicians and military officers under their control. This puts them in a good position to potentially heavily influence a change of government at the right opportunity.
So, for example, in Bolivia 2019 the U.S. got the Organization of American States (OAS) to issue a false election fraud report that in turn triggered a military-backed coup d’etat.
And then there’s: https://unlimitedhangout.com/epstein/
Blackmail, pedophilia, Mafia (Jewish *and* Italian), FBI, CIA, Mossad. Big time, dig here.
Putin has said and written many times that he wants to restore the Russian empire
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/vlad-the-invader-putin-is-trying-to-recreate-the-tsarist-russian-empire
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/vlad-the-invader-putin-is-trying-to-recreate-the-tsarist-russian-empire
John K: Oliver Stone is a great film maker, but he is also a conspiracy theorist and completely unreliable as a historian He has a preconceived story he wants to tell, regardless of whether it fits with the facts. See JFK, for example. I believe I watched all or part of Ukraine on Fire, but didn’t trust any of it. I’ve read a number of other sources on Ukraine. The best source of information on the Revolution of Dignity is a free e-book on Amazon – “Ukraine: Witness to Revolution: How Kyiv Post journalists saw EuroMaidan” – written by reporters who lived through and reported the story. The Kyiv Post is an English language newspaper and could be biased, but several factors convinced me to trust their story: their brutal cynicism about whether the Revolution would really change anything important, especially corruption; their discussion of the failure of the new government to investigate the crimes that were committed at time, particularly which side or sides were responsible for the sniper fire that lead to about 70 deaths on the bloodiest day that sealed Yanukowych’s fate; their candid discussion of the role of various Neo-Nazi factions, who were a minority of the demonstrators but a major factor in the violence (and whose popularity has declined to the point that they aren’t represented in Parliament today); the differing viewpoints of the authors, including one from Moscow. The reporter’s story is one of a revolution mostly composed of ordinary people fed up with corruption and willing to make sacrifices for something better, who couldn’t be controlled by the politicians. Conspiracy theories involving the CIA or Soros are an insult to these people. Corruption was the reason why the revolution took place, Poroshenko’s failure to deal with corruption was the reason for Biden’s infamous visit and for the election of a non-politician, Zelensky, with 77% of the vote. It’s not surprisingly to me that the same determined people portrayed by these reporters – who twice occupied the Euromaidan for three months in winter – are giving the Russian military such trouble today. Don’t be surprised if Zelensky to sell the compromises needed to end the fighting to his people.
All: FWIW, below is an link to an article by real scholars who actually know something about NATO expansion and provide links to sources, including an NYT editorial by Gorbachev complaining about NATO expansion. They may be biased, but at least do care about the facts.
“To claim that the United States and NATO enlargement are to blame for Russian revanchism suggests an ignorance of post-communist Russia’s political history and the role imperial nostalgia and revanchism have played in it. It also denies Russian leaders agency, treating them as automatons. NATO, after all, is a defensive alliance driven by consensus, and it is unimaginable that its members would agree to invade Russia. To concede the legitimacy of Russian fears of NATO’s possible aggression is tantamount to treating them [the Russians] as stupid.”
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-problem-with-blame-nato-first/
Addendum: The quote above says “it is unimaginable that its members would agree to invade Russia”. Today, after two decades of interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere prompted by 9/11, invading Russia is inconceivable. Some of the things the neo-cons promoted after 9/11 were pretty “inconceivable” too. However, we couldn’t drag most European countries into supporting the invasion of Iraq. What is conceivable for one powerful nation at a time of crisis is much less conceivable for a defensive alliance that operates on the basis of consensus. Which is a good reason for entangling ourselves in a defensive alliance.
@Frank – Thanks for providing contra point (Shades of Bach and all those Baroque bastards!). It is indeed complicated.
There is realpolitik, history, the publicly declared positions, the private incentives (bribes) and deals, the psychopaths and politicians (what’s the difference?) and the GEBs.
There is absolutely NO righteous player or position in this whole mess, which is to say…
… business as usual since we came down out of the trees.
But I really appreciate your input. It is necessary and important if we want to know who is trying to kill all of us serfs.
Pulling my punches, they are ALL narcissistic sociopaths. You don’t get near to or reach the top otherwise. (That’s me being polite. 😁)
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That said, Trump is a narcissistic sociopath with a faulty “Therefore I must rule the World” gene. I think he mistakenly got a “Mr. Fixit” gene. Bad for him, good for Joe and Jane Average. YMMV.
@HR; you pretty much hit the nail on it’s head…………….8-) pg
Thanks, p.g., and your thumbs up gave me a chuckle. You’ve seen a bit more than me and probably reached that same conclusion a few years before I grasped it.
The chuckle? It’s like when we were kids in the car, and when we were about to cross a State line, we’d all put our legs or arms as far forward in the car as possible so we could yell, “I was first!”
You’re older. You were first. 😁👍
Philemon asked if I had a source for my claim that Putin is trying to recreate the Russian Empire and restore Russian greatness. Climatereason provided links to two articles by Niall Ferguson that allege Putin is trying the recreate the Russian Empire and you can find many such articles, I hoped to provide some primary source, preferably Putin’s own words, but that is proving harder than I expected.
I can document that Putin has called the breakup of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century”. The main reason is that the breakup left millions of Russian outside of the Russian Federation: 8.3 million in Ukraine, 3.5 in Kazakhstan, 0.7 million in Belarus, , 0.5 million in Latvia, 0.3 million in Estonia and 0.2 million in Estonia. These are Wikipedia’s numbers from censuses, the ones Putin cites are higher – 17 million in Ukraine. In Ukrainian, many people who self-identify as Ukrainian, grown up speaking Russian, especially in big cities, because Russian was the language of the elite. So far more people are native Russian speakers than self-identify as Russian. All of Ukraine’s leaders have been a native Russian speakers, including Zelensky – he spoke Russian as a TV actor.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/06/john-bolton/did-vladimir-putin-call-breakup-ussr-greatest-geop/
Lenin had an extremely difficult task of ending the Russian Civil War and fragmentation of the Russia that followed the end of WWI. Kiev changed hands four different times in a few years. There were non-Communists and Communists who no longer wanted to be part of Russia, In the end, the USSR was put together from 20 “Republics” which were free to leave at any time led by local Communist parties that were controlled from Moscow. Those boundaries were drawn to make the 19 other Republics happy and not cram as many Russians as possible into the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (Russian SSR). After Gorbachev’s reforms weakened the Communist Party, various SSR’s, various SSRs began to exercise their legal right to leave the USSR. Yeltsin was Gorbachev’s rival and President of the Russian SSR. When he left (leaving Gorbachev without a job), all the rest voted for independence too, including the Ukrainian SSR. Putin is extremely bitter that the Russian Federation was cheated a century ago from being the homeland of millions more Russians by Bolshevik incompetency, and today is taking the position that the Ukraine never really existed as nation. Putin has written the long history essay about the absence of a distinct Ukrainian national identity linked below and ordered all of his soldiers to read it. Ukraine does have a limited history as an independent entity long ago, but they sure do today. Putin’s own actions and the rebellion in the Donbas that Putin has been supporting with Russian equipment and mercenaries have united almost all UkrainiansKharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine, 65% ethnic Russian and 25 miles from the border but the Russians haven’t taken it and are bombarding it as if it contained infidels, not fellow Russians.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
After after the famine caused by collectivization and Communist mismanagement, 4-7 million Ukraines died, When the Germans invaded during WWII, many Ukrainians looked at the Germans as liberators and some fought against the Soviet army until 1952. Their leader, Steven Bandar, is view by many as a hero and Neo-Nazi parties are a legacy of their insurrection. For this reason, Putin views every Ukrainian who is not pro-Russian as a Nazi and claims to be invading Ukraine to deNazify it and protect ethnic Russians who are being abused by them. In reality, both the Neo-Nazi and pro-Russian parties have lost much of their support and the former isn’t even represented in Parliament anymore.
However, Russia views itself as the “protector” of all of the successor states of the USSR (not just those with large number of ethnic Russians) and arbiter of their disputes. Russia reconquered Chechnya, which had few ethnic Russian, after 4 years of independence. Russians in Estonia and Latvia are not allowed to be citizens unless they can speak the national language, an extremely sore subject for Putin. Many of them live only a few miles from the border and could be “rescued” by Russian soldiers from a phony incident. Russian soldiers are protecting two breakaway regions from Georgia, a breakaway region from Moldova, as well as Donetsk and Luhansk. Leschenkol, the leader of Belarus, allegedly won re-election with the assistance of fraud and is now increasing dependent on Putin.
The Russian Federation is not first among equals after the breakup of the USSR. Russians dominated the old Russian Empire and with few exceptions dominate the old USSR today, with exception of Ukraine and the Baltic Republics (protected by NATO).
Frank
Some of the treaties that Putin broke that have got us in this position are enumerated here
https://cepa.org/putin-is-determined-to-rebuild-the-russian-empire/
If I were a neighbour of Russia I would want to be in Nato. Putin is systematically destroying Ukraine cities, although some still seem to be believe the fallacy of surgical strikes. The 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Empire is coming up so expect more of the same.
Moldova, Georgia and other former states should be worried and Putin has designs on parts of Poland although presumably will be deterred by Nato and the hatred of the millions of Ukrainian refugees that have fled there. Part of the 6 million that have been displaced.
We also seem to have forgotten the destruction he wrought in Chechnya and Syria with the virtual demolition of Aleppo. The man is a dangerous thug although no one is saying he is’nt smart-or was until recently
Frank – thanks for the extra information. I’m still more in accordance with H.R. though who said “There is absolutely NO righteous player or position in this whole mess”. AFAICT Ukraine has been treated for a long time as a money-pot for people in power, with 4 scions of US senators “employed” by Burisma despite having no obvious qualifications in energy supply apart from having relatives in high positions in the USA. Obviously graft and corruption to me, though I don’t see many of the people I know being aware of that or concerned if they are. Ukraine ought to be a rich country, given the natural resources, but the average wage is around 1/3rd of even the Russians. Bribes and coercion are so prevalent that Joe Biden was proud of the fact that he forced the sacking on the Ukrainian investigator into corruption associated with Hunter Biden.
Something rotten in the state of Denmark….
I can see why Putin wouldn’t want Ukraine as a NATO member, and why he would want to protect the Russian areas within Ukraine. I don’t however see what he gains by demolishing cites in Ukraine, though the civilian casualty numbers are surprisingly small for the number of houses demolished. I suspect that Putin expected that his troops would be welcomed as liberators rather than invaders, so maybe his minions told him what he wanted to hear rather than the truth.
Providing that the Ukrainians are kept supplied with modern weapons, and can keep knocking out the Russian tanks and aircraft, it looks like this will reach a state somewhat like Afghanistan where there’s enough resistance to make the invasion very expensive. No real way of winning a war like that. Even without the modern weapons, Afghanistan produced a steady attrition of the occupying forces whether those were Russian or American (or British), and didn’t accept that the war was lost. Ukraine will probably do much the same. I expect that Donbass and Luhansk (also written Lugansk) will be able to remove themselves from Ukraine and become part of Russia because they mostly wish that to happen, but the rest of Ukraine will resist and be basically ungovernable. Soldiers will be needed, and they will likely get picked off if they aren’t careful, so repression will be redoubled causing increased resistance. Figure on something like Northern Ireland used to be, and is of course always at risk of happening again.
I’m seeing the invasion of Ukraine as being based on bad intelligence, much like the “WMD in Iraq” was a casus belli there. I also didn’t understand the war in Syria, where Bashar al Assad appeared to be wanting to destroy the Islamic terrorists that were causing problems and it seems the West backed the insurgents instead. Looks to me that that was unnecessary, and it would have been better to have left him to clear up his own country where AFAICT most of his citizens thought he was doing the right thing. Yep, his methods didn’t match Geneva Conventions, but were standard for his culture. As with the Russians, far less concern for the sanctity of life, but pretty standard for the Arab world.
Odd really that there is such a thing as a “war crime”. War is itself a crime, being an imposition of one country’s will over another, where people die or are impoverished. Looks like Zelenskyy has just introduced laws that will force people to be vaccinated against Covid in order to be able to buy food – not exactly the actions of someone wedded to Democracy, but instead the thin end of the wedge that is totalitarianism. Do what we tell you to do or die. Not someone I’d want to support, despite the love that’s being poured on him by the West in general.
Overall, I get the feeling I’m being gaslighted on a lot of things these days. Who are the good people here, and who are the bad ones? Are there any good people in power?
To all; I really get upset by the refrain of “there were no WMDs in Iraq.” Thousands of of my fellow veterans are slowly dieing from the effects of supervising location and the burning of those “never existed” munitions. Just what the #&*#LL do you think was being burned in those pits? city garbage? hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel?
I have to agree with p.g. here. There were WMDs in Iraq. There were large underground bunkers, empty when we found them, too. What was in those? The mistake made, to me, was overemphasis on WMD versus repeated violation of the cease fire terms; which could not be tolerated after 9/11/2001. Our politicians and media failed there, too.
I don’t have time to delve into the legitimacy of things I read on Twitter, but here are 2 things I’ve seen:
1. Rothschild has a major vault underground in Ukraine.
2. I’ve seen a video of a member of the Ukrainian parliament saying on camera they are “fighting for the New World Order for democracy”.
There are lots of tweets about the high-profile persons who are currently claiming to test positive for the Vid. Off the top of my head, Obummer and Killary and Psaki are among that number.
Another little tidbit I just saw is that WEF is telling their minions to tone it down. Apparently, resistance is too strong now. They’ll lay low and come back again later.
Israel solved the problem of an unruly and hostile population by forcing the population to refugee out and not letting refugees return, and then repopulated the area with a loyal population.
The Dnipr divides Ukraine by east and west and is a major barrier to movement. It would be easy to interdict movement across this major river. If the war continues, this would be a good stop line for the Russian main advance.
Russia’s main offense is in the east and south. Currently, the major part of the Ukraine regular army in the east is trapped in encircled pockets and fast running out of supply. Reports have the cities in eastern Ukraine now listing food stocks in days. This is a war of maneuver and siege, not hasty assault.
Forcing the population to refugee out and final repatriation to the west of the Dnipr and sending the surrendered military and military aged males ( all drafted by Ukraine by decree ) to prisoner of war camps deep in Russia puts extreme pressure on Ukraine to come to terms favorable to Russia.
Come to terms or lose control of half of Ukraine and most of your population. Brutal, but effective.
Simon Derricutt : “Overall, I get the feeling I’m being gaslighted on a lot of things these days.”
That is because you are.
“Who are the good people here, and who are the bad ones?”
Beats the heck out of me, but the ones doing the gaslighting are not your friends.
“Are there any good people in power?”
No.
@Frank – re: including an NYT editorial by Gorbachev complaining about NATO expansion. They may be biased, but at least do care about the facts.
Your “They” is an ambiguous reference. Are you referring the the NYT? or the Article you linked to? If the former, your last statement is patently and provably false.
Russia’s main offensive is in the south and the east. Look at the map. Here’s Bill Roggio interview…
II think Putin does want a buffer from NATO.Nato https://unherd.com/thepost/bill-roggio-who-is-really-winning-the-war-in-ukraine/
pg – I’d figured that if there was actual evidence of the WMDs being there, it would have been shouted out as justification. The talk was after all about nukes being there. IIRC, there were instead some caches of Chlorine found, which is pretty nasty stuff but not high-tech. You can kill a lot of people with Chlorine, so it would count as WMD, but not as dramatic as a nuclear bomb which was what was claimed to be there. The term WMD was pretty new and meant what they wanted it to mean, but in truth it would apply to a tanker full of diesel or naptha that could kill multiple people if set afire in the right place.
Rather than using the term WMD (which was what was in the news at the time) I should have said nuclear weapons (which was claimed in the news at the time too, along with talk of bioweapons). The nuclear weapons never turned up, and I’d suspect that Saddam Hussein claimed he had them (or fooled the spies by setting up false evidence) in order to make the West think twice before attacking him. He probably made a mistake there, and instead of providing protection that claim made the West decide to attack.
In the news over here, I didn’t notice any talk of empty bunkers that needed to be cleared either. Though Tony Blair said that despite the lack of nuclear weapons found, the invasion was “the right thing to do”, he didn’t point at the empty bunkers as being an alternative justification.
Standard problem here is that with any war the truth takes a long time to get out, so until you mentioned it I didn’t know about the vets who cleared those bunkers having health problems.
Today, there’s somewhat of a fog over those biological research stations in Ukraine. Were they producing bioweapons or working on solutions to bioweapons, or just safe bioresearch? Why were they in Ukraine rather than in the USA where they were funded from? Might be benign, and only done in Ukraine because it would be a lot cheaper because wages are very much lower, but could be because it was stuff that was illegal to do in the USA (like the stuff that was being done in the Wuhan Institute of Virology).
Simon D.: “Might be benign, and only done in Ukraine because it would be a lot cheaper because wages are very much lower, but could be because it was stuff that was illegal to do in the USA (like the stuff that was being done in the Wuhan Institute of Virology).”
Door number 2, Simon.
Since when did our government ever care about the cost of anything, like $200 dollar hammers and $800 dollar toilet seats?
@Simon:
Fauxi said that Gain Of Function research was worth a little pandemic now and then. The USA then banned it. Fauxi then started funding bio-labs all over the planet to do Gain Of Function research (i.e. how to weaponize a bad bug into a lethal highly contagious one…). Connect the dots? ALL the labs funded by the USA out of the USA are there for doing things illegal in the USA. That is a short list of “Gain Of Function” and “Bioweapons” (and the two of them are almost identical only differing in “How do I get this great new engineered bug into a deliverable canister?”…
The stink on Fauxi and the Bio-Labs Funding is palpable even a continent away.
Oh, and then there’s that delicious bit where they simultaneously claimed:
1) “There is NO Bio-Weapons research at the Ukrainian labs!!!” and…
2) “Do NOT let the Russians take the labs or they will use the pathogens to attack us!!!”.
So which is it? No bioweapons, or keep the bioweapons out of Russian hands? Eh?
I’m voting for #2 to be the accurate statement…
@Simon,
Well, at the time, it was; but the left decided to alter the narrative such that the evidence found wasn’t what they meant by WMD. There is stuff I can’t talk about now that was discussed as a ‘crowd sourced’ effort into certain programs. The programs existed. Small munitions caches, relatively, were found and these were mostly old munitions. What wasn’t found was large caches of munitions. Plus, if I am remembering correctly, Libya’s government hinted that Saddam had approached them for yellowcake. Bush talked about Africa, the continent. The ‘MSM’ concentrated on one country in Africa, Niger. They never mentioned the others. Lies by omission, in other words.
And the $200 hammers and $800 toilet seat things were media misdirection efforts. How much does a porta-potty cost? That’s what the DoD was after, with the ability to work in harsher environments. How much does the airline semi-contained or RV semi-contained sewage systems cost? Today, a water line tap and sewage connection can easily cost $1000 each.
Looks like both EM and H.R. are choosing number 2 to describe Fauci’s foreign research. Apt.
Does seem that the ordure is hitting the whirly thing, since those mutually-exclusive official statements struck me as odd, too. I assume that not all officials know all the details.
With the obvious certainty that Fauci lied to Congress about his funding the Wuhan labs, and the absence of any legal action about it, I don’t expect anyone in power will simply accept the official statement that the Ukraine labs are benign. Unless maybe they have the choice of keeping quiet or committing suicide with two shots to the head.
@Simon:
The COMPLETE lack of any Bad Thing happening to The Clintons, Fauxi, The Bidens Inc (Hunter & Dad Corp…) et. al. shouts at me “Top Cover”, and the agency who can grant that kind of Top Cover? The TLA that starts with Central… Now add in all the “Clintoncide” folks with zero penalty and the erasure of anyone getting close to the Epstein truth… what TLA is tasked with targeted assassinations and that kind of “Clean Up On Isle Sleven?” Um, that TLA starting with C…
Oh, and don’t forget how quickly it became a crime to mention Eric ChiarlyMellow and his C… connections… in that whole Framing Trump business…
So, for my guess, I’d say what we have here is all the government that is approved by the C… TLA and protected and funded (as needed) by them.
As to when this Secret Coup took place, I can only guess. It would be before Billy Clinton (as it was already running then), but likely after Nixon / Ford as they clearly were not in on the game. Yet there’s good evidence that the C.. employed the Mafia to take out JFK. So the effort seems to get started there, but after him is Johnson (in on the plot), Nixon & Ford (already mentioned as outside the game), then useless Carter who was mostly a screw up, and then Reagan (who was nobodies tool and DC was not fond of him… oddly he had an assassination attempt… hmmm…. ). Which leads us to George H.W. Bush as the transition between Clearly Clean Reagan and Clearly Top Cover Billy Clinton. I”m sure it is just coincidence that Bush was head of the C… No, nothing to see here, move along, move along…
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Absolutely nothing but a hair brained conspiracy theory mostly for entertainment purposes only (though it might make a good fiction novel…) and clearly not actually what happened. (Is that enough Butt Cover to not discover myself suicided by multiple gun shot wounds after a fist fight with myself?… /sarc;?)
This may require some popcorn!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-sues-hillary-clinton-says-she-maliciously-conspired-weave-collusion-conspiracy
E.M.Smith: “Absolutely nothing but a hair brained conspiracy theory mostly for entertainment purposes only (though it might make a good fiction novel…) and clearly not actually what happened. (Is that enough Butt Cover to not discover myself suicided by multiple gun shot wounds after a fist fight with myself?… /sarc;?)”
Where is Robert Ludlum when you need him?
Yes, I know, but he does have an interesting take on China: https://dailystormer.name/what-about-china-then/
Simon Derricutt: “I’d figured that if there was actual evidence of the WMDs being there, it would have been shouted out as justification. The talk was after all about nukes being there.”
Yep, we don’t want that there smoking gun being a mushroom cloud. Where is Condoleezza Rice nowadays?
Simon wrote: “Overall, I get the feeling I’m being gaslighted on a lot of things these days. Who are the good people here, and who are the bad ones? Are there any good people in power?”
Good thinking. Several years ago I was being gaslighted about the Revolution of Dignity, so I did my own research, which I have shared here. Of course, I could have gotten some things wrong too, but I did my best.
Much of my suspicion about Ukraine originates with the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) and similar organizations that are undoubtably present in China, Iran and elsewhere. The IRA reputedly had about 1000 employees. At one point, about 1/3 of Twitter accounts were identified and purged as bots or being directed from Russia. The same for Facebook. I’ve personally only once encountered propaganda that I’m reasonable confident came from Russia – a website claiming to be a small local newspaper with a story about Representative Trey Gowdy reporting the siezure of cell phones, servers, etc during a raid on the Clinton home in Chappaqua. The story seemed so realistic that I initially wondered if I missed that news. A Google search showed about 60 other websites and 5 Youtube videos (one claiming 100,000 views IIRC) with articles with exactly the same title. In the videos, the article was read by a computer voice. (I saw this back in 2017 and I doubt they are still this crude. I wish I had saved it, but it has disappeared.) That doesn’t mean that disinformation doesn’t arise from both left-wing and right-wing sources in the West (George Soros, if he is your favorite boogyman).
The owner of Burisma was a Minister of the Interior before the Revolution of Dignity and responsible for leasing land for oil and gas exploration to the company he controlled. It grew in value from almost nothing to $10B in about a decade. After the Revolution of Dignity, the owner of Burisma was a prime target for investigation. Assuming he would be indicted, the Brits had already seized his assets. In addition to the people you mentioned, Burisma also hired a former President of Poland and the former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center under Bush (Cofer Black) to serve as the public face of the company while it was under investigation. The owner lived in Cyprus during the investigation, beyond the reach of extradition. WIth a $10B company at risk, spending a few million on Western board members and lobbying firms with some credibility was a sensible investment – whether or not they could be prevailed upon to illegally influence others. Unfortunately it can be perfectly legal. Credible faces don’t come cheap, because working for a company like Burisma makes it harder to work for respectable companies. Biden was in Ukraine to force the sacking of the Chief prosecutor because of the billions corruptly accumulated by Burisma, not to prevent him from indicting his son for a few millions that were – to the best of my knowledge – perfectly legal. If they weren’t, the Trump DoJ could have investigated and indicted Hunter, and we now know an investigation was begun under Trump (mostly about taxes). Biden isn’t the sharpest politician, but even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to publicly brag in a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations about how he got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, if that prosecutor was pursuing son over a few million. A little common-sense goes a long way dealing with some conspiracy theories.
Jonathan Rauch has written a useful book about finding truth in today’s polarized internet era: “A Constitution of Knowledge. In Defense of Truth”. He asserts that knowledge is the result of a ongoing conservation among all viewpoints, especial experts – a ongoing process rather than a destination. No one person is an absolute authority. One model is a jury, which is presented evidence from eyewitnesses and experts and then locked into a room to talk until they reach a unanimous verdict. Scientific knowledge is the result of discussions and debates about evidence among experts, who often reach a consensus – but not, for me, in climate change. (The consensus refuses to engage with skeptical experts and hides behind a few self-perpetuating insiders who control the IPCC’s SPMs, omitting the caveats that are essential ethical science.) Newspapers that occasional publish corrections (and occasionally fire those who distort stories) are more likely to care about the truth than those that don’t, even if their employees are biased. Listening to Rush Limbaugh may be entertaining, but he warns his audience about the “four corners of deceit”: Academia, science, government and the MSM. He tells his listeners that they can only trust conservative media. Rauch advises that no one person can be trusted as the arbiter of truth. Rauch claims to be a conservative, albeit a Never-Trumper, who now works at Brookings.
National Constitution Center podcasts are another reliable source of information about constitutional and free speech issues. They usually consist of one expert from the Federalist Society and another from the liberal Constitutional Society and let YOU make up YOUR MIND who to believe. While I have my general prejudices, I find that the experts often agree upon a lot more than I expect, and I have little confidence in my ability to pick the winning argument when the experts disagree.
A third group I trust is the FDA. They usually follow the recommendations of an outside panel of experts who both conduct research and personally see patients (and have family members) who will be taking the drugs and vaccines they approve. (Some of them do consult for drug companies, because those companies’s futures depend on delivering new drugs influential doctors will want to use. Molnupiravir, a new drug with significant liabilities and with very limited ability to reduce hospitalization of COVID patients, was only approved by the advisory committee by a vote of 13-11. Furthermore, the professional staff of the FDA (with civil service protection) views themselves as the protectors of the public and they have families taking drugs too. (Russia and China on the other hand benefit from encouraging vaccine skepticism in the West..)
More than a decade ago, I avidly read every new post at ClimateAudit and cheered the revelations of the Climategate emails and I’m best described as a lukewarmer. However, the rapid increase in other conspiracy theories (often favored by climate skeptics) have left me worried, especially in an era where many follow Steve Bannon’s recommendation to “flood the zone with sh1t”, so that it is too much work for the public to determine the truth. A public that no longer believes there is a truth that can be discerned is a pubic that can be controlled by appeals to passion, not facts or reason. And when people lose their trust in critical institutions – the FBI, the police, elections, the press, the free market, experts of all types; they often turn to a populist strongman from the left or right.
Good luck.
@Frank, not sure I have much confidence in a 13-11 vote on something like that. You don’t see that few % margin in many, if any, of their previous decisions. Most folks don’t realize the Vax, to the best of my knowledge, has never received formal approval. Still emergency use stats, correct?
You seem to have some very well organized, well written, and deeply researched opinion posts. Did I ever see those elsewhere? I can’t remember.
Frank: “A third group I trust is the FDA.”
Whoa… you lost me there. Red dye number ‘whatever’? Saccharine? What’s the pink packet that causes cancer if you eat a pound a day? Vitamins? Reefer madness? Navel lint?
It’s a federal bureaucracy, fer cryin’ out loud, and bureaucracies after only a few years, become pluted bloatocracies and are no longer fit for purpose (“We gotta protect our phony-baloney jobs!”. ~ Blazing Saddles).
Bureaucracies follow an immutable toxic path and have done so since the Sumerians had the Department of Grain and Taxes. Ask the Romans. They know. Oh… wait…
Bureaucracies are not to be relied on or trusted with 2nd graders’ milk money, ever. That’s not to say they have never ever done anything good. Accidents happen and sometimes they get something right.
I’m just giving you crap over that point as it jumped right out at me, m’kay?. I gotta reread the rest of what you wrote.
@Frank:
Not to get on your case, but more an FYI… Some of your verbiage is tickling my “Troll Detector”…
Things like:
“George Soros, if he is your favorite boogyman”. Um, Mr. Soros is an ultimate Evil Bastard type. There’s decades of evidence for his complete lack of morals and his evil designs on entire countries. From ruining their currencies to enrich himself to fomenting “Color Revolutions” (not to mention his turning in fellow Jews to the actual Nazi of W.W. II for fun and profit…/snark;)
So yes, he’s a clear cut Evil Bastard Par Excellence….
Then there’s your use of “Revolution Of Dignity” for Euromaiden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
A “color revolution” driven to some degree by Soros and the GEBs to oust a Russia Friendly legitimate government and install one that is corrupt to the core and plays well with EU GEBs…
Um, ever consider that maybe overthrowing legitimate governments is not exactly “Dignity”?… /sarc;
Then there’s this:
Uh, yeah, perfectly legal using a Public Office to assure your idiot son gets $BUCKETS and you get your 10% Vigorish via blackmail… When 2 criminals are fighting over which of them is in the right, the correct answer is “Neither one of them”, not “this one”…
Then there’s this:
Um, no. Biden IS just that stupid and unaware. He’s a senile old idiot who can’t remember when he last peed, let alone what corrupt deals he has embraced…
He did, in fact, and on camera, brag about how “he got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired” for investigating his son (and his kick back vigorish). That he is not in prison for that clear and loud statement of his speaks to a much much larger governmental corruption in the USA.
We’ll skip over using Jonathan Rauch as a source of honor… as that’s a bucket load in itself…
But on to: “A third group I trust is the FDA.”. Never heard of “Institutional Capture” then, eh? It is a fundamental of Economics that any government regulatory agency eventually ends up “captured” by the industry it regulates. The FDA is about as trustworthy as Pfizer…
Then, just OMG…
The FBI? Really? You think you can trust them? J. Edgar used them as a personal blackmail operation. Lately they have been shown to be a Crime R Us operation creating criminals via their overwhelming participation in some nutty groups. “Entrapment” writ large anyone? Putting them next to “police” is a nice attempt to hide their sins via averaging in with the local Sheriff et. al. but frankly is weak tea. The FBI are largely political police sucking whatever dick the POTUS shoves at them, near as I can tell; but with a strong Left Wing Bias overall (given recent history).l
Elections? After a clear Massive Steal operation using buggered voting machines and stuffed at 2 AM ballot boxes? OMG what kind of silly is that… But then the topper:
“THE PRESS”?!?!?! Have you paid no attention at all to 3 or 4 years of “Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA!!!!” hysteria based on fraud? (And the other couple of dozen bits of crapola…)
There’s a reason CNN is under 1 Million viewers prime time and it isn’t their honesty and trustworthiness…. but rather the lack of it.
I’m sorry, but if you are a Troll, your paymasters are not getting their money’s worth. IF those are really things you believe, you are not paying enough attention to reality; ’cause clearly that’s not what is going on.
IF you really believe those things and take offence at my illumination of some of the silly in them, please forgive my bluntness. It’s been a very long day, wine was involved, and I’m just not in the mood to swallow such “stuff” whole…
I’m not sure where I got the link to this video. Here? I’ve finally started to watch it. I’ve only just started. But right away there is a real eye-opener. Everybody knows about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Turns out it wasn’t that much of a crisis. JFK simply agreed to remove missiles from Turkey. It had even already been promised, but the Pentagon was slow to get around to it. A little “expedite” and JFK is a hero. But JFK had to lie about what really happened. That bit starts at 7:27.
I find it useful to see alternative explanations to things such as the sequence of events in Ukraine. A general principle I apply is that the people doing things that turn out to be evil do not in general think that they are evil, but instead have some set of beliefs that it’s for The Greater Good (either for people in general or for the tribe that person belongs to). I do keep banging on about beliefs as opposed to true knowledge, because it’s pretty obvious that when someone believes something then they ignore the evidence that shows those beliefs are wrong and accept flimsy evidence that implies that the beliefs are true. CAGW is an obvious example here, where it’s obvious from the actual data from the last few thousand years that more CO2 in the atmosphere is a positive thing and the very slight warming that may provide is also a positive thing. Though it is believed that mathematics can’t lie, it’s also obvious that if you torture the data enough then it will deliver the result you aimed for and provide a confirmation of the belief you started with. Thus mathematics can effectively lie.
I’ve also found this in physics, where things I was taught were absolutely true turn out to only be true in the majority of cases. If we understand why they are generally true rather than simply belief they are always true, then we should be able to engineer situations where those traditional rules don’t apply, and make things possible that were believed to be impossible. So far it seems only a few people are really working along these lines, but it only needs one person to succeed for there to be a massive change in energy cost and security as well as a lot of sci-fi becoming reality. The political changes that will produce are also pretty massive, of course.
One of those beliefs seems to be that what humans do is unnatural and is destroying the Earth, and that there are too many people. Experimentally, a while back someone produced enough food for a family of 4 for the year on 8 square metres of soil, using multiple plants in the same area that were sequentially harvested. This sort of intensive farming is needed for long space missions where volume and mass are limited, and you can’t carry all the food you’ll need on the trip. Still, even when it’s not quite that intensive, indoor farming can provide way more food than we currently produce and can produce that anywhere on the Earth. I haven’t worked out just what the limiting capacity for the Earth is, but it’s an amazingly large number a few orders of magnitude above the current number providing we can produce enough energy cheaply enough. Add in asteroid mining for materials, which can be done using current technology (and is planned) and I see no problem with a large population, and of course the more people we have and the better they are educated, the faster the technology will advance.
Going back to Hitler (and thus losing the internet argument…) his reason for war was “lebensraum”. He wanted more land for his tribe. Back to food security, really, and more resources to exploit. However, as our technology improves we get more efficient on using those resources, so even with more people we don’t actually need more resources. Once mined, stuff doesn’t disappear (unless we send it into space), but needs energy to put it back into a state we can use again. Though fossil fuels are most likely a limited resource that will run out, given the rate of advance of technology I reckon we’ll have better energy sources long before we run out of fossil fuels. In any case, with a cheap and plentiful energy source, we can manufacture those fuels (and this is currently done on US nuclear-powered warships to produce the jet fuel that their planes require, saving the need for that fuel to be tankered in).
Thus one of the underlying beliefs is the “limits to growth” idea put forward by Paul Ehrlich a few decades ago. That belief is mistaken. The Earth can support a lot more people, and those people don’t need to be serfs on the verge of starvation. However, I think that that belief is strong in most politicians and is driving a lot of the policies. I could be wrong….
The other thing that’s driving this is peoples’ belief that they are right. On other sites, I see people who are convinced that solar and wind can provide enough energy to power our civilisation, and that we don’t need nuclear or fossil fuels. A back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the lie to that idea, but it remains an unshakeable belief. The cost of our energy depends on how many person-hours go into each kWh you consume, and if it needs more people for the same number of kWh then you have fewer people available to make the other things our civilisation needs. Everyone ends up poorer. Simple economics. If you have to liquefy natural gas and send it in a ship, it’s going to cost more per kWh than sending it down a pipeline under a lower compression.
Soros seems to be behind a lot of destruction of previously-stable systems. Seems to be funding Antifa and BLM, and a fair number of destabilising revolutions.The aim appear to me to be to push countries towards a communist ideal, and of course the communist ideal where everyone works for the common good and receives according to their needs is appealing. Humans, however, don’t work any harder than they need to unless driven by an ideal, and need rewards for excellence and a negative result if they don’t perform well. Also, the GEBs have a field-day in a communist system and get into positions of power easily. Thus a communist system always fails, and there’s no way you can get it right next time unless you also implement some sort of mind control. Of course, that mind-control is not only possible but also in operation, with a fairly tight control of what people can hear and what can be said, and even science being largely consensus-driven (again see CAGW). It’s also easy to see that consensus-driven science in the Covid problem, with most public scientists believing that the vaccines are the only cure and ignoring the evidence that it isn’t.
I’m still trying to make sense of the Ukraine problem. Putin’s demands for the war to stop seem pretty simple and limited. Zelenskyy seems to want WWIII and a nuclear exchange. The promises that NATO wouldn’t expand have been broken. Confiscation of the property and funds of people just because they are Russian seems to me to be unlawful, and those people have not been accused and convicted in a court of law. Similarly, freezing the assets of people who contributed to the Canadian truckers seems to me to be totally unlawful. It also appears to be against the law to compel people to be vaccinated with a vaccine that is currently under emergency authorisation, and AFAICT Zelenskyy has brought in a law that combines social credit, UBI, and vaccination certificates so that an unvaccinated person has no income and cannot buy food. One way of ensuring compliance with authority…. I’m not sure where he’s going to get the funds to finance the UBI in a country that is currently under attack and having its cities destroyed, and where all males (even trans) between 18 and 60 are now in the Army and thus may not be able to produce stuff to sell.
It’s not making sense, and more information would be useful. The impression I’m getting is that there’s a drive to implement the Georgia Guidestones, and that things are at risk of going severely pear-shaped because what people believe isn’t true.
@YMMV:
Well, IMHO, it was a pretty big bit of a crisis. Russia was ready willing and able to put nuclear missiles in Cuba and was in the process of doing it. We instituted a blockade (an official act of war) and were “toe to toe” with Russia over the whole thing. Minutes from a nuclear exchange had anyone done the Big Stupid.
Yes, the “solution” was simple (remove our nuclear missiles from Turkey as promised). But that was only agreed AFTER we were on the verge of the Big Stupid.
Yes, they sort of hid the fact of the “fix”; but it was known at the time. (I was aware enough, even as a kid, to be following the news on this as it happened. The Turkey connection was mentioned, just not front page above the fold…)
IMHO the most important point from this is just that Russia has had a very very long experience of The West making promises, breaking them, and doing things that directly and strongly threaten Russia; then needing to take some degree of military action to get The West to uphold their end of agreements. We see that happening now with Ukraine and the agreement of no NATO on Russia’s border…
Yes, just like the Cuban Missiles, we in the west will be told it was all Nasty Russians doing Nasty Things; and our politicians will try to hide the fact that it was OUR breaking of agreements that raised the ante and forced the conflict. But pretty much every time, when you dig in a little bit, you find that The West was pushing the boundaries and breaking agreements to find out just where Russia said “Enough!”. Then we paint it in the media as a horrible aggression by Russia.
We put short range nukes in Turkey to threaten Moscow. Russia responds with Cuban Missiles since we set the rules (by our actions) that that was OK. Crisis results and we had to honor our agreement. We promise no NATO on the border of Russia and then proceed to move, incrementally over 30 years, and now NATO is on the border of Russia with a very non-neutral Ukraine ready to take short range nuclear missiles to threaten Moscow. (AFTER we sponsored a “Color Revolution” to throw out a legitimate government in Ukraine…) Is it really any surprise that then Russia responds with a military move to prevent NATO and nukes on their border and “encourage” us to honor our agreements?
It seems very few folks know their history anymore. Anyone with 1/2 a clue about the Russian culture and history could see this coming a mile away. From Rome to Napoleon to The Axis to The Cold War. About 1000 years of invasions and threats of invasion from The West. So “we” expect them to not be worried about invasion from The West? 1000 years of The West lying to them, so we expect them to “trust us”? The European Plain being highly indefensible unless you are up close to the mountains on the other side of Ukraine (the reason why Russia had to relocate their arms industry behind the Ural mountains in W.W.II during the Axis invasion) so we want Russia to not act in accordance with that reality? To allow NATO to flood that area with armament aimed only at them? Instead of honoring our agreement of neutral Buffer Nations between them and The West…
The only way to stop an invading army is to be close to the Carpathian Mountains. Close enough to rush forward tanks and such so as to stop the invasion in a narrow part of the plain. Otherwise you have a 2000 mile front to defend. Even with 2000 tanks, they are 1 mile apart each. Just not workable. This is a simple reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains
The grey area is the European Plain. It is narrow where the Carpathian Mountains make a defensible barrier, then widens out to the Urals on the right. It is this reality that Russia must work with to be defensible, not some lines on a map declaring political boundaries.
The “news” is full of emotional clap trap about the “brave Ukrainians” and the evil Russians and how much it is all “war crimes” of various sorts by the horrible Russian Bogeymen. Not one bit of that matters. What matters is the existential threat perceived by Russians in light of their history, from a hostile Western military alliance on their border; and the fact that The West has once again lied, broken agreements, and is posturing for their destruction.
You can not solve this conflict until you recognize those facts about Russian history and needs. All you can do is start W.W. III since Russia can not accept the alternative.
What we ought to have done was accept Russia into NATO when the USSR collapsed. Embrace it as a part of Europe. But instead they were rebuffed and left out in the cold. Now The West is busy painting Russia as the Evil Empire yet again. Then we wonder why Russians do not trust us. Ask the private Russian Citizens what they think of Western Trustworthiness; those who’s property is being confiscated for the “sin” of being a Russian Citizen… Ask them what they think of every bit of Western Media constantly painting them as evil and untrustable.
Who’s leadership is most corrupt? Biden & Son’s $Ukraine Money Laundry or Putin’s Mansion? I can’t see much difference as both are looting. There is no moral high ground on either side. Both sets of citizens are stuck with the same corruption crap. So are we not just as responsible for the corruption in The West as the Russians are for the corruption in their government? Ought Russia start to confiscate “Western Oligarchs” stuff? ( I suggest starting with Soros & Gates, BTW…)
So once again we are on the Wheel. Repeating the history of before. Turkey / Cuba is now Ukraine & NATO short range missiles vs Russian direct invasion. Same “threaten Russia with short range nukes coming too close to tolerate” and “Russia responds”. When all we need to do is recognize that Russia needs a defensible border and removal of threats from The West (i.e. NATO).
All as the Citizens on both sides would be better served with a more moral class of leaders…
A knock-on effect of Russia’s war on Ukraine … I believe this is a good thing.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has essentially brought into play a new downside scenario for Western holders of Chinese bonds, whereby sanctions and debanking, and the reciprocal use of capital controls, pose a non-negligible yet catastrophic risk,” Grant Wilson, Exante’s head of Asia Pacific, said in an email interview Friday.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-25/china-bond-market-exodus-shows-signs-of-gathering-pace-in-march
China has a couple of stock-related issues. First, Chinese companies are shy about disclosing the sorts of company stats we enjoy here in the US. This causes pressure to not list or delist them (ADRs) in US markets. A second problem is arbitrary and stiff regulation “storms” in China. The latest storm sunk a lot of Chinese listings.
Chinese tech stocks slumped Friday amid continued concern about the sector’s earnings and the risk of local firms being kicked off American exchanges.
…
Meituan’s results, which came after the market close, showed revenue slowed for the third straight quarter after weakening Chinese consumer spending and regulatory pressures constrained its online food and travel businesses.
In the meantime, Europe is facing the music of the Green Energy Extremist policies there that quashed fossil fuel exploration and development, degraded nuclear energy, but favored unreliable energy sources, wind and solar. This could mean a permanent throttling of fossil fuel imports from Russia and that might cripple Russia’s economy and ability to wage conventional war.
The upshot of the research, written by nine academics and with several assumptions regarding how easily substitute sources of energy can be tapped, is that the cost of Germany banning imports of Russian oil and gas would range from 0.5% to 3% of gross domestic product, the equivalent to 120 to 1,200 euros per head.
Keeping the bill in that range would still require fiscal and monetary policies to offset some of the hit, especially to poorer households, the authors say. But they advise if Germany is to act it should do so sooner rather than later to adjust behavior before the winter.
Guriev and Itskhoki say failure to impose a ban would eventually mean even higher economic costs for Europe as an extended conflict fans the refugee crisis and creates more disruptions to trade and food supplies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-03-25/what-s-happening-in-the-world-economy-the-cost-of-banning-russian-oil
@Simon:
Yup.
I’ve been banging on about “no shortage” of energy and “stuff” since about 1974 or so. IIRC, you can put all the people in the world in Texas with a typical American suburban home / yard, and grow enough food to feed them all in their yard. (It would require redirection of some of the Mississippi River water, but not a hard lift technically).
Think about that. The ENTIRE rest of the world devoid of people. (well, except for a few doing mining where the minerals are not in Texas…)
Link: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
Link: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
BTW, it IS possible to run the whole world on solar and wind. There is quite enough energy available to do that. The problem with it is the cost. You would need massive batteries to make it work, and electricity would end up at horrific rates (like $1+ / kW-hr instead of 10¢ ). My boat has solar panels and a wind generator, along with sails. It is self sufficient (including a “water maker” and fridge / freezer and big batteries) as a kind of existence proof. It just isn’t cheap (at all…)
Per food: Look at people growing “micro-greens” in hydroponics indoors. Incredible production in a given space. You can stack the layers about 1 foot apart (thin LED panels) so a warehouse with 20 foot ceilings can have 20 acres of crop per acre of footprint. IIRC Holland has some Pig High Rises growing many acres of pigs per acre of land covered.
IMHO, there’s something evil at the core of the political structures of The West (in particular, the EU and UN, but now infesting the USA under Biden / Pillousy / Nader / etc.) There is a very evil desire to destroy in evidence. Is it just to herd us rabble into a control structure? Or something worse?
Then there’s:
Soros’ big win was the take down of the British Pound. This was via pushing them (in the direction they were already going fast…) into a Socialist Spending Spree. He shorted the pound and made his first $Billions. He just loves shorting national currencies while encouraging them to their own destruction… NEVER forget that about Soros.
He has always wanted to reprise that, but on a larger scale, with a take down of the USA and the $US. Things crash far far faster than they can be created, so you make an order of magnitude more money an order of magnitude faster if you short things in collapse. LOTS of folks know this. A LOT of very rich folks got that way by knowing this. Expecting them to not create a crisis to exploit (“never let a crisis go to waste” is a short step from “make a crisis as needed to exploit it”) when needed or desired is silly.
IMHO, he doesn’t care at all about making anything better for anyone. His interest is in destabilizing countries to short their currencies (and potentially other asset classes).
Essentially, it is all about “Looters vs Makers” and the looters are now running the show in pretty much every government (other than a couple of Eastern European ones I think…). China, Most of the EU, USA, Canada, Australia, South America, etc. etc. Russia has a fair amount of Looters In Charge, but Putin does seem to actually care a lot about the Russian People (per his words and deeds) despite his willingness to pocket a fat share for himself. Then various minor countries all over Africa and the Pacific Islands where China is busy buying governments…
A big part of why I’ve not been doing a lot of posting about stock and bond investing is just that I’m seeing the Game Is Rigged in pretty much every market of merit. How to choose a stock when you know the Politics matter a lot more than the Fundamentals of the company? So I can try to find a decent company with good growth; but it is one “rule making” away from poverty (coal mining anyone?); or I can think “that’s a lousy product at too high a price” but it is one “rule making” away from market dominance (LED lights that are bad for your health and cost 10x as much anyone?). In that context, all that matters is being close to the Political Machine – and I’m not. Biden is not my friend and I don’t have McConnell on speed dial…
@Jim2:
“Russian Oil” is fungible with any other oil (more or less… modulo light vs heavy sour tuned refineries needing a tune up if you swap feed stocks). The key word is “fungible”.
Just how is Germany going to stop using Russian Oil? (and gas…) Likely by using oil and gas from someone else (like, oh, Saudi Arabia). What happens then? The folks that were buying Saudi Oil have to find some other source. “Oh, look! Russian oil is available and affordable!” happens.
The Big Net of all that will be Russian oil and gas going to China, and less Saudi oil going to China, but more going to Germany. EU & USA € & $ going to Russia via Chinese Goods paying for their oil.
That’s why bans on buying fungible commodities are just stupid. All that changes is the shipping costs to a different destination and a little bit of the landed cost at the buyer.
Would there be short term disruptions? Certainly. It takes time to build a gas pipeline to China. But so what? IF they are not already building one, I’d place a bet that Russia and China are already designing route and laying out the schedule…
Were Germany to go all-in on solar and wind, their major exports – such as cars – would become even more highly priced, likely to the point of not being viable. I’m a great Mercedes fan, but I’m never going to buy a new one, and I’m actively planning to swap what I’ve got into Subaru and Ford products as things wear out. Why? Repair parts are crazy expensive as are the labor hours. Subaru and Ford are much easier to fix (less complicated) and parts are about 1/10 the price.
So unless they have a big tech surprise on the energy cost front, Germany is just going to have a “going out of business” sale…
Per LNG: IIRC, it takes about 1/3 of the energy in the natural gas to liquefy it. It’s vastly cheaper to run it through a pipeline than to run it through LNG tankers. IF Germany swaps to LNG tankers, things go up by about 1/3 at a minimum… IMHO.
Yup, the EU has got itself into a self imposed addiction, and the only way out is through a painful withdrawal process and a lot of sweating and shakes. But I’m willing to bet they will just swap a Russian Oil addiction for a bit of Solar & Wind Fentanyl…
Parallel discussion happening here: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/03/18/happy-st-pattys-day-w-o-o-d-17-february-2022/#comment-155463
EMS – well, yes, I entered that comment knowing oil is a fungible commodity. However, if enough “free” and/or “democratic” (loosely defined) nations shun Russian oil, that represents less demand and therefore a lower price. That is actually happening now. It is easier these days what with all the overt snooping going on to trace oil. So, avoiding Russian oil could potentially still have a negative impact on their economy.
At home, Canada and the US have plenty of oil and gas and we should develop and use those. Europe needs to get fracking! The US can do a full-on development of nuclear, and this option is getting a lot more favorable attention. Nuclear + natural gas makes for a great electricity supply. Unreliable energy sources just make the whole system inefficient and unnecessarily expensive.
On the unreliables front, the Ukraine war also set off a nickel squeeze that shut down that market at the LME for a while. It’s still bouncing around. Nickel is used in some EV Li batteries. I’m still waiting to hear the other shoe drop, that is a rise in EV battery prices.
And then we see headlines like this one….
“Oil Jumps As Massive Fire Engulfs Saudi Aramco Facility In Jeddah Following Houthi Missile Strike”
EM – “BTW, it IS possible to run the whole world on solar and wind.”
I’m not sure it is, given that offshore wind turbines need replacing every 7-12 years, onshore wind turbines maybe last 20 years, and solar panels currently last a maximum of 25 years, so you need to refine the materials to make new ones as well as powering the rest of society. Yep, the sunlight falling on the Earth can provide around 100 times the total energy we use, but then solar panels are only around 20% efficient at converting it to electricity and there will be losses too in the battery charging (and of course the batteries will need replacing at intervals, too). I can’t see anyone using solar power to manufacture their solar panels or smelt Iron today, and if it was cheaper they’d be doing just that. As things are, you need that oil to make the wind-turbine blades (and they can’t currently be recycled at any reasonable cost) and coal to refine the Silicon and Iron/steel that is needed.
If you cover the land with enough wind turbines and solar panels (and batteries) to run the world, you really need to do the indoor farming on the land that’s left (and that will thus need more electrical energy to be produced). You’ll also need to have a lot of people employed making the new solar panels and wind turbines to replace the old ones, and large numbers of people on maintaining them. This will take a much larger proportion of the nation working on getting those kWh delivered, leaving fewer to make products using it. Everyone will have a cut in living standards, and need to work more hours per day to just survive.
Thus I’m seeing wind and solar as solutions in specific circumstances where it can pay off (like your boat) and not as cheap power in all circumstances. It’s anything but cheap, and will of course have its own effects on the climate that we can’t predict – might be benign, but might not be.
New technology that has previously been labelled as “impossible” looks to me to be the optimum way out of this (Gordian) knotty problem. LENR is one of those, and to me that looks like it’s close to commercial viability even though no-one is yet sure why it works. Belleza’s thermoelectrical generator may also be somewhat of a solution if I can get the right people to actually look at it. Some successes in the reactionless space drives, too, though largely ignored as being impossible in principle. Still, as Feynman said, if the theory doesn’t predict the experimental results, then the theory is wrong, and needs fixing so that the experimental results are possible. It’s not that believing something is possible will make it so, but the problem is believing something is impossible so you don’t test it. Reality just is, whether or not you believe it (and it’s weirder than we thought).
I’m pretty sure that Soros self-justifies his actions as being for The Greater Good. That also applies to the people joining BLM, Antifa (where they believe it’s anti-fascist, even though the actions are fascist), XR, Greenpeace, and probably all the organisations that have tried to overthrow the current system and install a better one. Maybe there also a misunderstanding of Nature, since it’s not all sweetness and light and lions laying down with the lamb, but instead a system where those not adequate to survive will die and where even for those who are adequate there remains a significant risk of a nasty death. The lion will lay down with the lamb in its stomach. As humans, we try to impose a fairness that isn’t naturally there, which it why it cocks up so often. We cooperate because that improves our chances of a good outcome when things go wrong, but that fails when people don’t do what they have promised to do. Once that trust is gone that people will do what they say, it’s hard to regain trust and cooperation, which is probably where Putin is sitting at the moment. Russians have a way of not forgetting such failures of trust, which is why they poisoned Scripal and Litvinenko (and offed quite a few other spies and traitors, of course).
The normal people of Ukraine, who have had their lives upended or simply ended, are pawns sacrificed in the struggle for power. Maybe some would think that it’s their fault for electing the leaders they did, or for letting the corruption that Ukraine was famous for to continue, but the average person in the street can’t have a lot of input on that or really affect the power structure. A bit like the various forms of Mafia around the world, where putting your head above the parapet risks getting it knocked off. They may know about it, but can’t do anything until a sizeable proportion of people all put their heads up at the same time and revolt. France managed that in 1789 and largely ended up with the same structure but different people at the top. The general ethos remained the same. The USA did a somewhat better job of it when throwing off Britain, but does seem to have lost its way a bit. Despite that, the general ethos in the USA may give us that advance in technology to beat the energy problem, because Americans are more willing to risk wild ideas that look like they may work.
If the West continues to supply Ukraine with new weapons and ammunition, and they fight Russia to a standstill, will Putin accept that or double down and up the stakes? I think he’ll up the stakes,and the EU won’t have a choice as to whether they are able to reduce their dependence on Russian energy slowly. Supplies will be cut by Russia. Though Russia’s foreign exchange is mostly earned from the energy sector, they’ll probably have a much better deal with China anyway. China tends to play the long game, so they may not take back Taiwan soon, but wait for them to decide to rejoin themselves when the effect of social media propaganda has matured. When a lie is repeated often enough…. Bit like the way Britain joined the EU, where the original referendum was for joining the EEA and gradually more influence of the EU was (illegally) allowed. Getting out again was a close-run thing, and if it had been seen as a real possibility then more effort would have been put into the “remain” propaganda.
More questions than answers here. Ukraine may not have been a nation some time back, but it is now. Not sure the Eastern Ukraine feel Ukrainian in general, though, and would likely vote to join Russia if given a vote. I’m not seeing an easy way out of the invasion, unless Putin achieves his aims, yet Zelenskyy and NATO are making noises that that won’t happen. I’ll make sure I have a large stock of wood for next Winter, and build up some stores too. Could be some hungry times coming.
@Simon:
Possible does not mean in any way desirable… and it certainly would not be very smart.
As for coking coal: One can replace it with charcoal as was done in the old days when Europe was clear cut to make iron. It would take a huge plantation, but at about 56 tons / acre, eucalyptus and poplar could do it. (Note that cost of steel would “necessarily skyrocket”…)
Pretty much any “petrochemical” can be made from plants and plant wastes. So your turbine epoxy can be grown (with only modest increases in costs…). The amount of land needed for the solar farm is actually quite small and it prefers the non-arable desert lands. IIRC, less than the Sahara to power the world. (Again, not a great idea as you would need massive power lines to carry the power all over the place. Just an example of scale.) Turns out we actually don’t farm very much of the global land area… Something like 10% to 15% IIRC. Lots of forests, swamps, deserts and mountains all over the place…
Do note that I made the same disclaimers about not being a good idea and being expensive in my original statement too. “The problem with it is the cost. You would need massive batteries to make it work, and electricity would end up at horrific rates”… So “possible” is just that, it could be done… IFF you were a bit daft and didn’t mind paying $$$ per kW-hr…
Just like I could drink a quart of coke with an eye dropper… but would much rather just use a cup…
Ah, from the no shortage of energy link:
So figure for Europe, Africa, Asia, South America similar sided bits: 5 x 100 x 100 miles. Call it 6 x 100 x 100 just to be on the safe side. That’s a 245 mile on a side chunk of land for the world. It would disappear in the Sahara… The land use is just not an issue given the size of global deserts.
Again: Note I am NOT saying this is a good idea nor that it is economical. It isn’t. It IS possible. Just stupidly expensive for no good reason as long as we have fossil fuels, nuclear, and especially so if “New” “Novel” LENR like energy supply devices come to be.
And again, the existence proof of boats and live aboard RVs running off their solar panels shows that they can supply the needed electricity and at acceptable costs (IFF you can’t get a cheaper alternative… i.e. shore power). Takes about 3 or 4 square meters to run an RV lifestyle. Easily fits on the roof with lots of area left over – the majority of the roof is left pristine.
But I’d rather the world made small modular nukes than acres of solar panels…
Oh, and per Putin vs The EU:
Putin will be quite happy to shut off the gas / oil / coal if it is necessary to assure his success.
Right now he’s going slow and trying to get what he wants without a lot of excess deaths and damage. He’s been “in talks” with the Ukrainian Government since about day 3-ish. All it would take is for the Ukrainian Government so agree to be a “buffer state” and it will stop. Until that happens, he will slowly escalate the damage and deaths. Should the EU “get into it” in too big a way, then the escalation will come to them, too. Easiest way to do that is just stop pumping…
Then he can just turn it back on as a reward when compliance is achieved. BUT, depending on how brutal one wishes to be: It would also be possible to park a tank next to the gas pipeline in The Ukraine, and blow it up with a US anti-tank missile. No pipeline, no gas. Then advertize that it was not Russia that stopped the gas… but a Ukrainian attack on their tank… and that it will take weeks to repair… Just don’t know if they want to be that devious or want the “Hand on the valve” message more.
Putin is calculating, not emotional. He has no desire to “damage the relationship with the EU” unless and until that’s the most valuable path to take. So only when the EU “support” for the Ukraine causes him enough grief. (That the EU seems unaware of this and is busy trying to cause him as much grief as possible causes me to doubt the sanity of those running the EU / France / Germany… Can you say “Asking for trouble”?)
Oh Well. It will be interesting to watch in any case. Euro-GEBs vs Putin, the cage match… /snark;
@HR – Cyclamates. I remember that one as my mother came home with a case of Frosted flakes with strawberries for about 10 cents a box (because of that). We ate high on the hog for a few weeks, but all good things come to an end.
EM – OK, I’ll accept that it’s possible but stupidly expensive. I was figuring on the problem with needing to replace all those units at intervals, and the energy needed to make them that will have to be produced by what is already installed, and seeing a limit at which all your capacity is going towards replacements, but if you add enough new factories it would be technically possible. Given that the total yearly battery output of a gigafactory would run the USA for around 3 minutes, you’d need a whole lot of such factories and a lot of new mines too. The majority of the non-government population would be building and installing wind turbines and solar panels, or mining the stuff to make them. Of course, you can always choose to curtail demand when there’s no supply (which seems to be where the politicians are heading with smart meters).
Thus I’m seeing either nuclear or new physics as the only practical ways of powering things if we wish to keep a reasonable standard of living.
Latest news about Ukraine is that Russia is now saying they’re going to concentrate on the East. If they’d done that in the first place, I think few people in the West would have complained. After all, Ukraine was shelling the East for the last 8 years or so and that needed to be stopped.
Ossqss replied: “not sure I have much confidence in a 13-11 vote on something like that.”
IMO, Molnupiravir almost certainly is mutagenic, but the definitive studies in animals normally required to detect and quantify that problem take two years to complete and presumably weren’t done before emergency approval. Many cancer drugs are also mutagens; mutagenicity isn’t an absolute bar. When there are better approaches to finding a new drug that will treat COVID (like Paxlovid), I abhor the idea of treating COVID with a drug that appears to be a mutagen. However, I’m old enough to be considered vulnerable to dying from COVID and might be willing to take Molnupiravir if I tested positive and nothing else (Paxlovid and antibodies) were available. A 13-11 vote by the FDA advisory exactly reflects my dilemma: Am I vulnerable enough to dying from COVID to make it worthwhile to risk mutations from a drug with poor efficacy? The FDA is supposed to decide for which patient populations the risks of a drug are worth the benefits, and this was a really close call. (Molnupiravir also has activity against other RNA viruses.) Usually advisory committee recommendations are unanimous or nearly unanimous, so I find them more credible when they split over a really difficult decision.
Ossqss replied: “Most folks don’t realize the Vax, to the best of my knowledge, has never received formal approval. Still emergency use stats, correct?”
Your information is out of date. Both mRNA vaccines and J&J’s have now received “full approval”. Under normal circumstances, the FDA requires two large Phase III clinical studies proving safety and efficacy before they will approve a new drug, but when there is no effective treatment available, they will grant emergency (conditional) approval for sale while a second large Phase III clinical trial is being run. Those trials for vaccines were complete last fall and full approval was granted then. (That is when the Biden administration began trying to make vaccination mandatory for the army, medical personnel and via OSHA the workforce of larger companies. The Supreme Court ruled OSHA’s power didn’t extend to vaccination.)
IIRC, the policy of granting emergency approval after one large Phase III clinical trial was complete when no effective treatment was prompted by Fauci when there were no good drugs for treating HIV. HIV activists hated Fauci because he insisted that rigorous trials be run when no effective treatment was available. They loved him half a decade later when no one was dying of AIDs anymore because really effective drugs had been identified and approved.
Our host seems to believe that a Russian nation has existed since the days of Kievan Russia. The English trace their origins back to a King Arthur. Both ideas are bogus. Historians and political scientists date the origins of nationalism to around 1800 the Napoleonic Wars. Before then, Italy, Germany, and India, weren’t nations and Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman were. Charlemagne’s ruled the center of Europe about the time of Kievan Russia. A French noble (the descendant of Vikings) conquered an England composed of invading Anglos, Saxons, and Vikings who had mostly displace those ruled by Rome a few centuries early. French was spoken by British royalty for the next few centuries before today’s English language took final shape. For several centuries, the King of England ruled more territory in what we call France today that the “King of France” who controlled only a small fraction of what we call France today. The English imported Scottish, Dutch and German nobility to rule their country; Catherine the Great of Russia was German. Today the German-speaking people have re-united to form the country with the largest population in Europe except Russian – except for those speaking German in Austria and Switzerland of course. Language isn’t destiny. In the US, thirteen separate states fought for independence and most were Virginians and Pennsylvanians first and Americans second until the Civil War. When the Democrats are in power, the same might even be said of Texans today (:)).
So the idea that the Russian nation has it exists since Kievan Rus is as much nonsense as tracing England back to King Arthur. These are historic myths used to support a sense of national identity mostly in the last two centuries. What is true is that the Ukrainian (and Belorussian languages diverged from Eastern Russian and have persisted despite these areas being ruled by Russian speakers. Other branches of Slavic languages diverged somewhat earlier and are the national languages of Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. That suggests to me that a Ukrainian nationality exists, though it is deeply entangled with Russian-speaking people in Ukraine – a common problem in many places. The USSR was only put together when its components were promised the right to secede. The people of Ukraine (and Crimea) voted to secede in 1991 when the Communist Party no longer had the credibility to hold the USSR together. Since then, the Ukrainian people have repeatedly demonstrated their desire to be independent of Russia: the non-violent Orange Revolution, the nearly non-violent Revolution of Dignity (until Putin became involved) and now their fierce resistance to Putin. While the CIA and George Soros hypothetically can influence the leaders of a country, they can’t create the sense of Ukrainian national identity that the Ukrainian PEOPLE have exhibited over the past thirty years. Our host has been deceived by Russian propaganda.
In fact, Chief tells us: “Frankly, I trust Putin one hell of a lot more than I trust Biden (and any of his supporting cast), Truedoh!, ANY of the EU “leadership”, anyone from the WEF, and anyone backed by Soros. All I’ve ever seen Putin actually do, is toss out the corruption and improve Russia for the Russian People. I don’t say this from lack of exposure. I’ve listened to his speeches and then watched his actions. He doesn’t lie to his own people, but explains in careful detail the process of his decisions.”
Putin didn’t end corruption in Russia – he convinced the oligarchs to give him a 50% share in their enterprises and political support in return for not putting them in jail! He allegedly is not the richest man in the world. He has gradually shut down the free press in Russia and jailed or assassinated his political opponents. After is first two terms, Medvedev ruled for him (while he served as Prime Minister) and now he has changed the Constitution so he can remain in power for a total of six terms. Decades of reckless and exaggerated partisan attacks from both the left and right on our crucial government and national institutions (elections, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the police, the FDA, the CDC, the IRS, capitalism, the free market, free trade, science, journalism/the free press) to the point where our host trust Putin more than a Biden constrained by a 5 vote majority in the House, one vote in the Senate with filibuster and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. If these trends continue, we will soon be governed by a Putin from the left or the right. Trump certainly would volunteer to fill Putin’s role in this country.
@Franktoo – where in the hell do you get the impression that grandpa gropes is constrained by congress at all? You must be snorting something because your tirade makes as much sense as any of the Russia Hoaxes (Collusion or laptop). Biden says he cannot do something because it is not legal, and then does it! He gets smacked down more than Obumbles did by a 9-0 SCOTUS! And when the courts tell him not to do something, he still does it! Or not do it (oil leases – court ordered over a year ago to renew the sales, and so far nothing).
Putin is not Mr, Nice Guy. But he is who he is. Biden is a criminal, charlatan, and senile old fool! Russia is no worse off than any country in the west. Seriously, Herr Turdoh basically made himself dictator for life because some truckers were honking their horns. Oz opened concentration camps. The UK jails you if you note that chicks with dicks are not real chicks. And the US? They jail you for years with no indictment, no trial, not charges – in direct violation of the Constitution!
And oh our great “law enforcement”, the FBI. They bury a child molestation case for years! But send 20 cars and helicopters to serve a search warrant on an unarmed, no flight risk guy. But they cannot find a laptop now that apparently has top secret navy crypt keys on it! Give me a break with your pathetic protestations! There is no “free” nation. There is a bunch of mouthpieces doing what tin pot dictators have done for hundreds of years. Talk the talk, and never walk the walk.
There are NO reckless partisan attacks on the press, FBI, government, SCOTUS, CDC, IRS, etc from the right. There are valid attacks from the right on government gone wild (and note that there are no attacks from the right on SCOTUS – another of your false equivalencies). The new definition of a “conspiracy theory” is a story in the right wing media that will be proven accurate in 6-12 months. Name one that has not been.
Begone troll! Your monotonous lying bores me.
@philjourdan; Hear, hear !
In Ukraine, I’m still suspicious that the reputedly proRussian sentiment in its east is the result of a successful Russification program.
Consider the successful Russification program that has flipped the original demographics of the Soviet-absorbed/conquered Baltic states, so that ethnic Russians have become the majority. Ethnic Baltics (Latvians & Lithuanians) and Finns (Estonians) have become the minorities–each in their own countries.
But back to Ukraine, if the prevailing response to suspicions about Russification is “we’ve seen no evidence of that”, well! Separating fact from fiction has been perhaps the biggest problem for outsiders trying to follow and understand it, hasn’t it now?
Frank#2, it would be recommended to be more subtle in your presentation of opinion.
First, use some/any citations to validate what you state.
2nd, it is probably a good idea to not attack the host. Persuasion may be a better approach, as opposed to full frontal assault ~too
It seems I see significant portions of your postings contained elsewhere under alternate handles..
Originality counts too, Franktoo.
Side note> so the Phizer FDA approved Vax, approved under a different name, is the same as that applied to the US citizens? Why would they need to segregate such?
Has any US citizen actually received Comirnaty? I really don’t know…
Ossqss: “the Phizer FDA approved Vax, approved under a different name, is the same as that applied to the US citizens?”
If memory serves, it is exactly the same. The name change was for legal reasons. Forgotten and beyond me anyway, something to do with liability. You can probably do a search for the details.
Maybe. The exact legal details are pretty hush-hush. Some were leaked. And most interesting, India rejected those vaccines because they rejected those liability demands. Bloggers who have stated this, on good sources, have been censored.
What is actually used? I don’t know, but I remember something about using up the old stocks first.
Franktoo seems to think Putin has the upper hand on the oligarchs. In the rest of the world, it’s the other way around. The GEBs control the politicians. Pick whatever dictator you want, the same GEBs will still be the ones in power.
Frank
The English trace an identifiable English Nation back to 871 under King Alfred who united the country against the Vikings. So there was most certainly nationalism at that time
our present Queen is a direct descendant of King Alfred as his 32nd great granddaughter
https://idswater.com/2021/01/06/is-elizabeth-the-first-related-to-elizabeth-the-second/#:~:text=The%20current%20queen%20of%20England%2C%20Queen%20Elizabeth%20II%2C,King%20Alfred%20the%20Great%20ruled%20England%20from%20871-899.
The fact that we are part of the Anglosphere perhaps suggests that the Anglo Saxons had the most profound and lasting effect on our nation. As you say, many other countries are surprisingly young, for example Italy.
I read that some 2 million illegals entered the US Southern Border in the past six months alone and as many are thought to have evaded notice. Biden has agreed to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and I think as many Afghans.
So is America about to disintegrate as a coherent identifiable country, either into its component states or more likely larger groups of States with similar attitudes but will cease to be the “United States of America?”
“will cease to be the “United States of America?””
The greatest mistake the USofA ever made was the Civil War. Not because of slavery, that was something that we would now call a trigger cause. Rather, it was a question of states rights, and they failed the test. They kept the country together by force instead of agreement, and it has never been the same since. I never saw the “before”, but I know some of the bad and lingering effects of the “after”.
We are at another such moment. I can’t say what will happen, but it won’t be the same afterwards.
It is safe to say that the old times are gone now and the future will be different. The Democratic Socialists, “Communists” have carried out a coup with the assistance of the CCP, They greatly fear a counter coup be carried out by American Patriots, hence the “Domestic Terrorists” lurk behind every tree and bush. There is a great Revival taking place out in this country. Most of those “border jumping aliens” want to be Americans and are trying to escape the Communists whom they have had first hand experience living under. We will need to build a revitalized American Republic out of the Socialist Democratic wreckage we are being saddled with by the Washington DC Elite.
Phil wrote: “Putin is not Mr, Nice Guy. But he is who he is. Biden is a criminal, charlatan, and senile old fool! Russia is no worse off than any country in the west. Seriously, Herr Turdoh basically made himself dictator for life because some truckers were honking their horns. Oz opened concentration camps. The UK jails you if you note that chicks with dicks are not real chicks. And the US? They jail you for years with no indictment, no trial, not charges – in direct violation of the Constitution!
Here we have the Big Lie: Western leaders are just as bad as Putin. The FBI is just as corrupt as the Russian FSB. Our courts are a crooked as Russian courts. Biden treats women as badly as Trump. Every branch of our government is part of a Deep State that is working for special interests, including the FDA that has allowed thousands to be killed by Pfizer’s vaccine so that the company can make billions. Democrats are stealing elections. We may as well let Donny, Jr., and Eric protect us forever from the intolerably evil liberals, just like Putin, Xi and Kim protect their people. The liberals (with their LGBTQI, BLM, and Antifa foot soldiers) are far more dangerous than a Trump Dynasty. They are destroying what it means to be an American and what we stand for. Compromising with evil is unthinkable; winning is essential.
Of course, the far left is equally bad. The police are systematically and unnecessarily killing minorities. Whites are irredeemably racist, reparations essential. Our Founders rebelled against the British to preserve slavery and were hypocrites when they wrote that “All men are created equal” (not visionaries who inspired the first steps toward abolishing slavery in the New World). Republicans are disenfranchising minority voters and returning to Jim Crow. If given the opportunity by an outraged and dispirited citizenry, the left will install a Venezuelan Chavez.
Phil wrote: “Where in the hell do you get the impression that grandpa gropes is constrained by congress at all? You must be snorting something because your tirade makes as much sense as any of the Russia Hoaxes (Collusion or laptop).”
According to fact-checkers, some pictures of “grandpa gropes” are fakes. By irresponsibly promoting such rumors without checking on their veracity, you are spreading lied and encouraging the owners of media platforms to censor blogs like this one. If you had half a brain, you would recognize that lots of far-left Democrat women passionately hate having been groped and would loved to have taken down Biden during the 2015-16 primary campaign if he were a groper – just like they have done to Cuomo. Franken and others. However, the real Groper-in-Chief bragged about groping women by the pxxxx in a recorded interview and has been publicly accused of doing so by his victims. When the evidence about Biden becomes half as strong as for Trump, I’ll take it more seriously.
In case you weren’t aware, Congress has rejected the Build Back Better program, refused to get rid of the filibuster to pass new voting and election laws on a party-line vote (and possibly pack the SC), and have torpedoed Biden nominees Omarova (Controller of Currency), Rashkin (Fed), Weil (Labor), Tanden (OMB), Chipman (ATF) and a half dozen others. Liberal fantasies about a “transformative presidency” have rightly died. The infrastructure bill that passed was the product of bipartisan negotiations and supported by many Republican Senators. Biden’s only major legislative victory was the ARP passed a year ago, which added fuel to the inflation that was about to become Biden’s biggest problem. Where do YOU get the idea that Biden hasn’t been constrained by Congress? The Courts have also been constraining Biden.
The Steele Dossier has been Trump’s best weapon in converting the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into a hoax. The DoJ Inspector General (the guy who unnecessarily released the text messages between Strzok and Page) has told you that material from Steele didn’t reach the Crossfire Hurricane team until 7 weeks after the investigation had been opened. Mueller’s volume on collusion doesn’t even mention the Dossier, since law enforcement can’t make use of unconfirmable hearsay. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s Reports or even Mueller’s Volume on Collusion all tell you the investigation was no hoax. Even Barr admitted as he left office, that Mifsud was an agent of Russia, not Westerners conspiring against Trump. Finally, after six years, no one is close to proving the Clinton campaign told Steele or Danchenko what to put in their reports.
The FBI sent 20 cars and helicopters before dawn to ARREST Roger Stone because he is often accompanied by a posse of Proud Boys who serve as his security detail. And because his attorneys, who had a joint defense agreement with Trump’s team, refused to take the open-and-shut Congressional perjury case against him seriously – fearing he might made a deal with the prosecutors. So the prosecutors delivered a clear message that they intended to sentence him to prison.
Phil writes: The new definition of a “conspiracy theory” is a story in the right wing media that will be proven accurate in 6-12 months. Name one that has not been.
There hasn’t been any new evidence about the election being stolen in more than a year. After the Cyber Ninjas took six months to count Maricopa County’s ballots without realizing the difference between mail in ballots and early voting ballots, they confirmed basically the same results as election officials did. Trump lost. With about 1% of people moving every month, the existence of disagreements between the addresses in a commercial database and the addresses in the country voter database is not surprising. Election officials maintain the official database and inform voters where they are supposed to vote. Sidney Powell has told us that her outrageous allegations about Dominion Voting machines were never intended to be taken seriously.
Much closer relatives of SARS2 have been found in bats in Laos, so close than human antibodies prevent them from infecting human cells in the lab. Many samples from the Wuhan wild animal market show the presence of two slightly different strains of SARS2, but none of those samples were from animals present when the market was closed. It is looking more and more likely that SARS2, just like SARS1, crossed over from bats to another mammalian species in bat infested Southern China and came first to the Wuhan Market in animals. The Chinese have shut down all of their wild animal farms and aren’t letting anyone investigate them. Fewer experts now believe SARS2 escaped from the WIV, but if it did, it was collected from the wild and possibly evolved in the lab.. No serious expert still believes that the furin cleave site was introduced by genetic engineering because a sub-optimal site was present in the original strain. The Delta variant evolved a better furin cleavage site. No, Dr. Fauci wasn’t responsible for funding the research program that produced the current pandemic. (I’m in the middle of reading Matt Ridley’s book on the origin of SARS2, so my opinion could evolve somewhat.)
Obama was born in the US, but would qualify as a native-born American because his mother was American. Obama’s inauguration day crowd was bigger than Trump’s. There are no microchips in COVID vaccines. The attack on the Capitol was not an Antifa false-flag operation, nor a normal day inside the Capitol. There was no Democrat child sex ring at the Cosmic Ping-Pong Pizzeria in Dupont Circle, DC. Trump didn’t return to the presidency in 2021 as predicted by conspiracy theorists. The Sandy Hook murders were not faked as Alex Jones claimed.
Name one conspiracy theory that was proven correct in the last 6-12 months, other than Hunter Biden’s laptop. We don’t actually know if any fake material was added. He suspicious attempts to profit from his closeness to his father were known long before the laptop, and the laptop has been in the FBI’s possession for about 2.5 years without producing any indictments. Grassley’s revelations may or may not have a trivial explanation.
Franktoo: “According to factcheckers…”
I am literally LOL. I feel like I’m being haunted by the ghost of He Who Shall Not Be Named, except that ghost really only ever wanted to engage Chiefio.
Here’s a link to a comment on another blog that encapsulates my amusement.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/02/pentagon-clarifies-no-offensive-biologic-weapons-in-ukraine-bio-labs-where-u-s-defense-dept-was-working/comment-page-2/#comment-8715677
P.S. I’d tell you the name of that ghost, but then my comment would go straight to Comment Purgatory, and you still wouldn’t know the name of the ghost.
H.R. – you can’t be serious! (shades of McEnroe there…)
Fact-checker (noun): someone who tells you the officially-endorsed line, whether or not it’s true or even is logical.
The Steele dossier was pretty obviously a fabrication. I’m not seeing why anyone would take it as real. We have EM’s eyewitness report of what he saw on January 6th 2021, and by chance what I saw on live TV (since I just happened to be looking at the time) showed the “protestors” being ushered in past the barriers (they were moved by the officials, not the protestors) and no violence offered, so there’s no way that was an “insurrection”. Yep, there are always some idiots who cause trouble, but they were invited in rather than storm the place. You can tell me my eyes lied to me, but I won’t believe you. Had the capitol police left the barriers there, and stood there behind them (with guns if necessary, though they probably weren’t needed) nothing would have happened. False flag….
For the SARS-Cov-2 virus, there are documents around showing that this was being investigated at Wuhan a few years before, and that it was financed by Dasczak (probably mis-spelt his name there), and the funds were sourced from Fauci. I don’t have the links to hand, but it’s been discussed enough here and elsewhere to find if you’re bothered. The 2005 report on SARS-Cov that Fauci signed off said that Chloroquine worked to cure it when given early, and somewhere I have the link to that NIH report but again everyone here has seen it. Hydroxychloroquine thus would be an obvious candidate given the reduced side-effects. It’s thus strange that the official trials for HCQ either gave it too late, or in excess quantity, or had some other glaring flaw relative to what was known beforehand from 15 years earlier.
I read the “Q” announcements as telling the activists “hey, don’t worry, this is all in hand and Trump will triumph” to stop them from doing something right now and instead wait until it was no longer possible to change things. Rather clever way of keeping people quiescent. False flag again….
It’s really odd that Dominion voting machines can produce counts in fractional votes. Don’t you think that’s odd when a vote can only be a unit thing? Obviously it’s not just counting the votes but performing some processing, too, and in fact you’ll find a description of how this works in the user manual. Too much smoke for there to be no fire there. The Dominion system is designed to deliver the desired total votes almost independent of the votes cast, and for that to be able to be modified if desired. RTFM. Also really odd is that legal action was taken to prevent a full audit, when if it was totally above-board and kosher you’d expect people to want to be able to prove that.
The statistical analyses showing vote-rigging don’t carry too much weight, since of course you can prove anything you want if you torture the data enough. However, that does make it important to run a full audit on the voting, inspect the machine firmware and files, and prove the vote beyond doubt.
It seems it’s always been pretty easy to convince people that these are the End Of Days and that Armageddon is nigh. I’ve lost count of the number of such predicted events I’ve lived through and we’re still here. Famines have been localised, and largely a result of political cock-ups or wars, and not worldwide. For people in Ukraine, their world might end (and a lot have definitely died), but it looks unlikely to result in a world-wide extinction. If it does, the most likely cause will be misinformation. Those damned fact-checkers.
@Simon D: That’s how it went with Pentagon pressers and Congressional testimony over the past couple of weeks.
It all started with “No labs in Ukraine. Right wing conspiracy theory.” — Fact Check = True
H.R. says: “I am literally LOL. I feel like I’m being haunted by the ghost of He Who Shall Not Be Named, except that ghost really only ever wanted to engage Chiefio.”
Probably a zombie clone. But (not) speaking of Voldemort, it’s becoming clear that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Trouble.
@Franktoo – The big lie is what you are telling. Who shut down all liberties because of some Honking? Was that Putin? Or Turdoh?
Who fired people for not getting an experimental Vaccine? Was that Putin? Or Biden?
Who is jailing people if they dare call an XY a man, instead of their wished for “woman”? Was that Putin? Or Boris?
Who is putting people in concentration camps if they test positive, or worse, if they have been around someone that tests positive for COvid? Was that Putin? or Scott Morrison?
Whos is calling for the abolition of medical services to those who do not get a vaccine that does not work? Putin? Or you (the left)?
Take your talking points and get the hell out of here! This is free speech country, where we KNOW Hunter and Joe are as corrupt as they come. You do not until your masters tell you so. We knew 18 months ago!
And you are wrong on so many points.
Point 1: Who spied on Trump? (now proven)
point 2: Who has violated the Constitution by keeping folks locked up for over a year with no charges?
Point 3: Who buried the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine tests?
Point 4: WHAT FACT CHeckers? The ones that fact check the Babylon bee? Seriously, can you post something factual or even original?
your entire post is simply an exercise in propaganda, and you have NO FACTS to back you up! Proud boys? Prove it Biden Mouth Piece! You cannot because that is horse shit as is the rest of your lies!
I just blew you out of the water, and all you came back with was fake news lies and provable fake news! Your response is pathetic. But that is all you have.
Bring it on Antifa! you got nothing. except Fake news proven lies. I got facts. And that galls you! It galls all the left and that is why you are trying to shut down free speech. Because you cannot debate honestly! Or at all you were raised in a protected shell where no dissension was allowed so you never learned how to use facts. Instead you use lies, innuendos and fake news to push a narrative that does not exist.
Begone troll! You stink the place up with your lies and pathetic prostestations.
@YMMV – I suspect he went to indoctrination school, learned to change his verbiage and changed his IP, so Chiefio let him back on. And I agree. That is he who shall not be named – in spades!
And for F2, that is a colloquialism. Not a racial statement. But you will take it that way, so run off to your masters and tell them “racism be there!”
One more thing Sorrioso3 or Frank2, what is the worst thing that any world leader can do? Is it beat up on a helpless neighbor?
or start WWIII?
So far, the only ones calling for the latter are Biden, Zelenskyy and the American Chicken hawks (the left). In other words YOU.
So no, I am not saying the west is as bad as putin. I am saying they are worse! And you are the worst of the worse!
Begone Chicken Hawk Troll Begone!!!!
We need a thread on “According to fact checkers…”
Here’s another example spotted at SDA, written by Scott Adams, who left out that the FBI doesn’t know where the laptop is.
—–
Scott Adams;
The cat is on the roof.
1. What laptop?
2. That laptop is Russian disinformation
3. Okay, it’s real, but it doesn’t implicate Joe Biden.
4. Okay, it implicates Joe Biden a little, but nothing to worry about.
5. [You are here]
—–
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2022/04/04/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-8/
Amen! H.R.!!! But no fact checkers! We want people who can tell the truth!
@HR, Fact Checkers ! hell we have the most trust worthy Fact Checkers right here ! 8-) I trust this crew far more then any Media/facebook gang. They are also valued spies that keep us way ahead of those MSM clowns that only report the news that is cleared by the Dark State to push their agenda. Thank you one and all…pg
Link to fact-checkers (Snoops) claiming groping picture of Biden were faked. I can’t prove it, but they have obtained the original pictures that were modified, talked with the photographers, and identified where it was first posted.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/14/viral-image/image-appears-show-joe-biden-groping-woman-altered/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-grope-photograph/
These days anyone who looks at these pictures and doesn’t immediately ask themselves if they are fakes is a absolute idiot. There are literally thousands of people around the world generation fake material like this to mislead the gullible.
I’ve checked out all of the major internet fact-checkers and they all are associated with liberal organizations. They are the liberal press fact-checking the liberal press. Nevertheless they occasionally do correct stories from the NYT and WaPo. They do have a reputation to uphold and many depend on donors. For that matter, the NYT loves to catch the WaPo making a mistake and vice versa.
When Glenn Greenwald famously deserted the liberal press because of its prejudice against Trump, he cited 10 Trump-Russian stories different outlets got wrong. However, the only reason Greenwald knew that these 10 stories were false was because eight times other members of the MSM published stories asserting their peer’s story was wrong. The other two times, Mueller’s office immediately issued press releases saying the story was wrong. As biased as they are, the MSM does seem to care about reporting the truth and correctly their mistakes – while they are slanting and spinning the news. In climate change, so much JUNK has been published by the media that even an honest fact-checker would have a difficult time discerning the truth, assuming he wanted to find it.
AFAIK, there are no right-wing fact checking organizations. Trump’s assertions so often have no basis in fact that no one on the right can afford to search for the truth. Trump can, if provoked, tell his Fox audience to switch to OAN. Megyn Kelly had the biggest audience on Fox before Trump start complaining about her. This makes it tough to have confidence in anything suspicious that right wing sources publish, like the story about Hunter’s laptop. (Never fear, Joe can always pardon Hunter.)
Well, this could be interesting, or not. We shall see.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/450-gb-deleted-material-hunter-biden-laptop-whistleblower-vows-release-images-videos-and
In his ignorance Philjourdan writes: Who fired people for not getting an experimental Vaccine? Was that Putin? Or Biden?
Neither of the mRNA vaccines was an “experimental vaccine” when Biden ordered federal workers to get vaccinated or be fired. The FDA normally requires two large Phase III clinical trials showing efficacy with a p value below 0.05 rejecting the null hypothesis and with a large enough number of patients to demonstrate safety. Since the average American faces a 1% risk of dying from a COVID infection and the risk of younger people dying is several orders of magnitude smaller, very large vaccine trials were needed to ensure adequate safety. Most Phase III vaccine trials were done with about 40,000 volunteers, half getting vaccine and half getting placebo. Side effects occurring in 1 in 10,000 people should have been detected.
The FDA normally requires two appropriately large Phase III clinical trials demonstrating efficacy and safety before granting “full approval” (permanent approval) to a new treatment, leaving a less than 0.25% likelihood positive results could be due to chance. However, when there is no effective treatment available for a deadly or serious disease, the FDA may grant “emergency use authorization” or EUA (temporary approval) after a single Phase III clinical trial. The second Phase III trial must be run within a specified period after approval or the emergency approval can be withdrawn. Assuming the second Phase III study affords results similar to the first, full approval is granted.
The only ones handing out vaccines which hadn’t been tested in large Phase III clinical trials demonstrating safety were the Russian and Chinese vaccines. The US does all of its experimental studies in volunteers. For Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA granted an EUA on 12/22/20 and full approval on 8/23/20. Only after full approval did the Biden administration began making vaccination mandatory for as many Americans as practical. Below are the papers that show vaccine effectiveness immediately after vaccination (95%) and over the first sox months after vaccination:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NeJMoa2110345
BTW, I knew about this blog long ago when climate change was discussed, but I haven’t commented extensively here before. It’s really scary and embarassing how many climate skeptics skeptics have turned into conspiracy theorists.
It doesn’t matter what the reason was, the fact is the clinical trial was not finished. Therefore, the vaccine is essentially experimental. And the government forced people to take it or else. You can write all the long-winded BS you want but it doesn’t change reality.
Franktoo – only the Comirnaty version of the vaccine had full approval when vaccination was mandated. The one with emergency approval, which happens to bring no legal comeback on Pfizer, was however the only one that was available. AFAIK no-one has actually received the Comirnaty vaccine that is approved and would open Pfizer to compensation for vaccine damage. Though it appears that both the Comirnaty and the vaccine actually used (BT…62b) are almost identical, legally they are different vaccines. Thus there’s a bit of bait-and-switch here. I haven’t however followed the other available vaccines to see if the same thing happened and the full approval was only given to a vaccine that wasn’t available. Things get murky.
However, it was the experimental vaccine that was mandated in effect even when there was one with full FDA approval (but you just couldn’t get it).
As it happens, a close friend of a close friend, who was a healthy-weight 72-year-old with a few lung problems that were easily controlled suddenly got severe cancer in many organs within 3 weeks of getting the Covid vaccination in the UK, and died shortly after that. This problem of a sudden diagnosis of cancer in people who had been in remission, or as in this case hadn’t had cancer before but had had other problems, appears to be a feature of the vaccination drive. Such deaths would not of course be assigned to Covid. However, look at the obituary column and see how often you see “died unexpectedly” or “after a short illness” or “died from cancer”. Also look at how well the funeral directors are doing. Suddenly I’m seeing adverts for pre-paying your funeral. The people who will absolutely know what the current death-rate is are the insurance companies (who will be paying out more money than they expected to). Also worth noting that here in France the insurance companies won’t pay out on a suicide, and they consider a death after vaccination as suicide.
It used to be pretty rare to see young athletes die on the field. It’s getting somewhat less rare.
FDA approval or not, there’s just too much evidence that the vaccines are a problem. It may only be a few percent of the people who get vaccinated that end up with a major problem (that is, death or severe ill-health), but that’s actually a whole lot of people.
Why did Pfizer not want to release the full trials data for 75 years? If it’s all above-board and good science, you’d think they’d want to release that data quickly to settle the question. From what I’ve read so far, though,it seems there were more adverse reactions than we would have expected. The heart problems stand out as an adverse reaction.
Of course, with such a disaster it’s only to be expected that there will be a lot of arse-covering, and stuff being hidden. There was a huge amount of pressure on the vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine “at warp speed” and to cut corners. Yep, we’ve been told that this was done safely, but if your trials only last 3 months then it’s impossible to detect problems that occur only after 6 months or more, or to detect problems that will happen when the vaccinee is challenged by a virus that is mutated from the original one but is still closely related. We also know that previous attempts to produce a vaccine against a coronavirus failed dismally, both in animals and people, and that mRNA technology was approved only for use against a cancer that would otherwise be rapidly fatal so the risks were justified. Yep, the person might die from the treatment, but they might live longer than if they hadn’t been treated. We also had a new lipid method in the vaccines, and a new adjuvant that hadn’t been tested much. With so much new technology, it’s not that surprising that there might be problems not foreseen.
The body is an extremely complex thing, with a lot of interdependencies. The immune system also routinely kills cancerous cells, thus if you task the immune system to produce around 100 times more antibodies against Covid than it would normally produce against an illness, you use up a lot of its capacity and the routine stuff like removal of cancer cells will be impacted. Seems like a good reason for that sudden rash of people getting either rapid onset of cancer or a sudden return of a cancer that was in remission. Basically it’s a terrible strategy.
I can see the good intentions of the authorities wanting to have a vaccine ” at warp speed” to stop people getting ill in the pandemic, and to stop the health-system getting so overloaded that people would die in droves of curable diseases too. I can see the reason they chose the spike-protein to make people immune to, since it is easier to have one target and they didn’t know at the start that the spike-protein caused the main damage to the body. I can see the scientists doing their best to produce that vaccine and get it out early enough to be useful. I can even see the scientists thinking that the 5% fatality-rate that the initial China data implied would justify a few adverse reactions being ignored and covered up, for The Greater Good. However, the fatality rate from the disease in reality was not that large, and the largest cause of death was the treatment used (or not used).
You can see the cock-ups along the way, based on beliefs rather than science. One of those beliefs was that you can’t cure a viral infection, and that the only way to solve it is a vaccine to make the immune system more effective. Now we’re also seeing the cover-ups. It doesn’t need a conspiracy theory to explain why people are trying to hide mistakes, even if at the time they thought it was the best thing to do.
As soon as I’m settled in w/computer, it looks like I’ll need to start the training process for Frank2too …such an untidy mind, spilling out all over the page…. Until then, looks like you folks are keeping the dreck contained…
Franki is a hoot! we enjoy it’s creative writing ! 8-)
@ Frank2 – Snopes? ROFL! You are desperate
https://www.thewrap.com/snopes-mikkelson-plagiarism/
There are many more. Poltifact? What was the lie of the year in 2012? Do you recall? How about Jeeps made in China? Guess what. They are. So that is 2 strikes against you.
3 is coming up
Frank2 – Experimental vaccine. Yes son. It was experimental. By the CDC definition. It was given special approval, it did not go through the rigorous approval process before being distributed. It was only long after that some (not all) of them were hastily approved when the push back started. That still makes them experimental (especially since they STILL have not published the side effects or the percentages affected).
And please spare us your lies. You have troll written all over you. Stop being a seminar troller. If that is even in your DNA.
Simon: I sorry to hear that your friend was diagnosed with cancer in many organs within three weeks of vaccination. When the same cancer shows up in several organs, that is often caused metastasis from a primary tumor that had been successfully treated. In any case, cancer usually requires mutations in multiple growth regulating genes and usually develops over a long period of time.
Our problem: Steve Bannon infamously said that if you “flood the zone with sh1t”, people will believe that truth can’t be found and they will follow their innate prejudices and not seek out the truth. Anti-vaxxers and/or Pro-vaxxers are “flooding the zone with sh1t”. If we want to know the truth, we’ve got to get out of our echo chambers.
Some math: On the average, about 10,000 Americans die every day from all causes, or 1 in 33,000 every year. About 500 million doses of mRNA vaccine have been administered in about a year. . To a first approximation, there is a 1 in 33,000 likelihood of a person dying within one day of being vaccinated purely by random chance – 17,000 Americans in one year. Now, few people knowingly got off their death bed to get vaccinated and died the next day. However, those with really serious health problems are known to be much more vulnerable to COVID and have been strongly encouraged to get vaccinated. We can debate how best to refine this estimate, but many thousands must have died within one day of vaccination simply by chance. This renders amateur analyses of VAERS data meaningless.
This is where random-assignment, double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials can help. Large Phase III clinical trials with an mRNA vaccines have consisted of 20,000 people who received vaccine – and who might suffer side effects caused by vaccine OR by chance – and 20,000 controls who received placebo and suffered “side effects” ONLY by chance. If vaccination were causing a serious problem in one in a thousand people, we would know! WIth multiple trials, rare events that occur in one in ten thousand might be detected. Now, it is true that people who volunteer for clinical trials are innately healthier than the population as a whole, and a higher incidence of side effects could occur in average Americans than in volunteers. However, since elderly people were the top priority for vaccination, more than 40% of the volunteers were over 65. In theory, a doctor is supposed to warn fragile patients when the risk of vaccination is too high.
Multiple vaccine names: Drugs have a scientific name that can be used by anyone and a trade name/brand name that belongs to the company through copyright. Advil is Upjohn’s (now Pfizer’s) trade name for the drug ibuprofen. Comirnaty is Pfizer’s trade name for “BNT162b2 vaccine” which is shorthand for “the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine”. In Europe, BNT162b2 is sold under the trade name Tozinameran. These are different names for exactly the same vaccine – the one that has received full approval in both the US and Europe. Technically, BNT162b2 refers only to a modified mRNA that codes for part of the spike protein, which is formulated with lipids to make “lipid nano-particles. Biologists have been using such mixtures of nucleic acid and lipids to get new genes into cells for almost four decades and have evolved mixtures that do so with the least toxicity. When they were first formed to exploit mRNA technology, the first thing Moderna and BioNTech did was optimize the safety of these lipid mixtures for use in people rather than the lab. After spending hundreds of millions to get a vaccines approved, it is ludicrous to suggest that they are going to risk everything they have earned – multiplied by 5 or 10 for punitive damages – by switching to a formulation that wasn’t approved.
75 Years: The FDA, not Pfizer, was asked by FOI to release all of the documents covering the PROCESS by which the FDA set standards for approving COVID vaccines and as well as the clinical trial data (which is loaded directly into a database at each site participating in the clinical trial and shared with the FDA). The request as submitted allegedly covers an estimated 330,000 pages of documents that need to be reviewed and individually redacted. The FDA has a limited number of people trained to do this job and needs to reply to other smaller FOI requests too. In an effort to force the requestors to narrow their focus or prioritize their request, the FDA proposed processing and turning over 500 pages per month, a typical rate for large requests. Court-supervised negotiations are underway. As it turns out, after extensive internal and external discussions, the FDA developed the standards it would apply to COVID vaccines, and voluntarily published summary of them for PUBLIC COMMENT. The main complaint they received was that the safety of brand new mRNA technology should be followed for more than 21 days and the FDA responded by upping this period (to 33? or 42? days) for half of the 40,000. The vaccinated have now been followed for 6 months and will be for 2 years. The company and the FDA independently analyze the data in the clinical trial database and report their findings to the public meeting of the FDA’s outside vaccineadvisory committee. The day-long presentations and discussions transcripts are posted on the FDA website. FOI isn’t likely to uncover and surprises.
Suspicions about Warp Speed: In addition to the mRNA vaccines, about Since more that two dozen COVID vaccines have been produced in less than two years, there must have been some factors that sped up the process for dozens of countries without cheating on safety. First, nobody cared how long protection from vaccination would last: If you want a vaccine that will provide protection for many years or life, you need to run trials that last many years. Most programs targeted producing levels of neutralizing antibodies that were at least as high as produced by natural infection (which was providing excellent protection against re-infection) and assumed that would provide protection long enough to be useful in an emergency. To accurately quantify how much protection the vaccine provides you need to run your clinical trial for long enough that about 150 people total in the entire trial get infected. About 1% of Americans were testing positive for COVID per month in 2020, so a clinical trial with 1000 volunteers would likely require 15 months for 150 volunteers to test positive or 4000 volunteers for 4 months. Instead, Operation Warp Speed skipped such Phase II studies that crudely demonstrate efficacy and immediately jumped to a large very expensive Phase III trial with 40,000 volunteers that demonstrated both safety and efficacy at the same time. With 40,000 volunteers, it probably took only about two weeks (after 3-4 weeks between doses and 2 weeks after the second dose to boost immunity) for 150 volunteers to test positive. Furthermore, both hospitals and volunteers were lining up to participate in trials of a COVID vaccine. If you’ve got 100 sites processing 20 volunteers per day, you can give eveeyone their first injection in 20 days. If you’ve got 10 sites, 4 volunteers per day per site and and a modest pandemic – only 0.2% of people are getting infected per month, your trial would require 15 years. Finally, the government paid for the manufacture of vaccine for the next trial while the current trial was underway and persuaded contract manufactures to give vaccine top priority. This is how two dozen vaccines got developed in less than two years.
Why target the spike protein? There are a wide variety of ways to make a vaccine. However, most antibodies recognize viral proteins being expressed on the surface of infected cells while self-assembling into complete viruses. Antibodies attract T-cells to these infected cells and the T-cells kill them. However, a few antibodies bind to the protein that allows the virus to enter cells – the spike protein that binds to the ACE-2 receptor. These antibodies are called “neutralizing” antibodies because they prevent virus from ENTERING cells (rather than helping kill infected cells). A natural infection results in production of a dozen or more antibodies (which rarely cross-react with a host protein and trigger an auto-immune disease), but a vaccine that produces neutralizing antibodies to only the spike protein and does so only near the site of injection is innately safer. This is why many vaccines involve just the spike protein, or a DNA virus that can’t replicate and codes for the spike protein or mRNA that codes for the spike protein. Other vaccines have been made by growing virus and inactivating it so it can’t replicate (if the inactivation process works properly). To the best of my knowledge, the two mRNA vaccines targeting the spike protein provide more protection than any other kind of vaccine. However, the protection offered by natural infection was greater than by vaccination – at least until Omicron came along. In all cases, levels of neutralizing antibodies and protection fades over time – six months for vaccines – but the T-cells and B-cells produced by vaccination persist and seem to provide long-term protection against hospitalization and death, but don’t prevent infection itself.
Vaccines cause cancer? Your immune cells mix and recombine genetic elements so that they can create millions of different antibodies. When you are infected or get a few cancerous cells, your immune system turns on the production and refinement of millions of copies of the antibodies that binds most tightly to a foreign protein. The other millions of possible antibodies are still available to deal with another infection or cancer. The real problem with both infection – and to a much less extent vaccination – is that the production of the wrong antibodies can get over-stimulated and result in auto-immune disease. Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and MS often begin after viral infections, though most of us survive numerous infections without developing auto-immune disease.
Phil Jourdan: People have been claiming that Trump has been spied on since Trump abandoned Trump Tower for his New Jersey golf course during the transition in 2016. Like his claims that Obama and Cruz weren’t natural-born Americans eligible to become president, Trump’s accusations don’t automatically make allegations of spying true.
Before accusing someone of spying, you need a definition of immoral or illegal spying. If you observed someone when they have an expectation of privacy, that is spying. A peeping Tom is spying. Someone who taps your phone is spying.
There is no expectation of privacy when a post card is mailed to you, you do expect a letter inside a seal envelop to remain unseen. Like a postcard, the return address on an envelop mailed to you isn’t private. All Joffe was doing was looking at the return addresses of email and other electronic messages arriving from Russian computers at Trump Town and the White House. The information inside the email and other electronic communication is encrypted, but the addressing information can’t be encrypted. Joffe was reading the addressing information. That is NOT spying on Trump. If Joffe were spying, Durham would have charged him with that crime years ago.
When people are talking in a public location, there is no expectation of privacy. The FBI’a Confidential Human Sources who talked to Trump campaign officials during the Trump-Russia investigation were not spying, If you can record a phone call without notifying the other person, The CHS who recorded those public conversations were still not spying.
An agent from the Crossfire Hurricane team was part of the team that briefed candidate Trump and others on National Security issues and how to avoid being overheard by enemy agents. Did Trump have an expectation of privacy at a meeting of a dozen people? If not, he wasn’t spied upon.
The only people who DEFINITELY SPIED on Trump were the Russians in his hotel room during his 2013 Moscow beauty pageant! It is common knowledge that the Russians surveil ALL important visitors. Now, few know what the spies saw. Given Trump’s reputation as a risk-taking womanizer, however, half of the people in Moscow probably have a friend with a friend in the FSB and have heard rumors that could have been repeated to Danchenko. Were the allegations true? Who knows. Were they raw intelligence to be reported? Sure. Was this material suitable for publication? H No! The public doesn’t understand raw Intelligence. As an intelligence professional, Steele had no business sending it to Fusion GPS
@Franktoo:
Your stuff reads like Pfizer paid troll obfuscation, and is littered with provably (and already frequently proven) falsehoods (lies or errors TBD).
If you can not eliminate the crap claims, get the facts correct, and basically clean up your act to not smell like a paid troll, your time here will be limited. I’ve not had time to deal with this as I was marathon driving, but that is over now.
Examples:
Um, no. A successfully treated cancer is gone. A FAILED treatment metastasizes.
The assertion it is just a name difference on the Vexxine: nope. Also a legal liability dodge. ONLY the new approved brand has medical liability (limited as it may be). The available one is under Emergency Use law with zero liability..
Assertion lipid nano particles are safe: Can’t be known for many decades and with far more careful study. One example? They cross the blood brain barrier when actual virus does not. Nobody knows what damage is done by spike protein produced via nRNA in the brain. I’ve known some folks with cognition changes post Vexxine….
Much of your reasoning consists of logical fallacies. Appeal to authority. Name calling. Throwing a bucket of true, but irrelevant, technical detail at the wall to obfuscate the limited relevant bits. Assertion without evidence. Classical Troll techniques.
The assertion only Russia spied on Trump, for example. Hell, the FBI FISA Warrant is public. Hillary paid for the “dossier”, & the chain through to FISA court and FBI spying is documented. That is spying for political ends and pretty word games do not change that fundamental truth.
Vaccines & cancer: All sorts of drugs and vaccines can cause cancer. That is why we do long term testing. Several cancers are known to be virus caused, so live virus vaccines are especially a concern. Vaccines suppress white cells. This reduces the normal cancer killing process, allowing cancers to proliferate. Sometimes enough to escape your immune system control.
Defense of spike protein choice: the other proteins yield longer lasting immunity. Note that one of the vaccine developers has publicly stated that choosing the spike protein target was a mistake as the spike protein alone has been shown to cause damage.
Your defence of the vexxines looks like a script read by someone who is not following the literature on this. I.e. like a Troll Farm product.
Be aware that this blog is functionally “My Notebook” run for me. It is not paid for by anyone, no advertising (other than WordPress for their revenue). It is mine alone. I value comments that are constructive, well informed, polite, and NOT trollish, nor foolishly stupid and vapid. So far, yours do not measure up.
Waste my time cleaning up after your error filled, politically slanted, and Troll Like Graffiti in My Notebook, and find yourself shit canned. Listen, learn, keep to known facts and avoid the garbage Talking Points of the Progressive Liars & MSM and you can be welcomed. In short: don’t post known crap and check that we haven’t already resolved the truth on things before going on long winded slanted error filled polemics.
Franktoo – EM has just addressed the points I was going to write about, so I won’t cover those again. I’m not seeing this as trolling,though,just someone who accepts the official explanations and hasn’t done enough digging beneath them. I could easily be wrong there, though, but I do know a lot of people who accept the official line including my ex-inlaws in the States, who are very smart people but believe the official announcements and are staunch Democrats. Then again, they are Democrats of the JFK era, and don’t seem to have seen that their party has shifted since then.
For vaccine problems, I’d suggest you read Geert Vanden Bossche, who is a vaccine developer and really knows his stuff. It ought to make logical sense to you that if you have a vaccine that produces 100 times the normal antibody quantity than the body normally produces against an illness, then *something else* in the immune system will be under-resourced. It’s also known that that antibody titre reduces at around 40% per month, and thus it’s designed-in that this vaccine will not provide any long-term protection. You can read this as that the government specified that they wanted a vaccine that would provide protection for 3 months, and the vaccine developers didn’t question the reason for the specification but made something that complied with it, and the 100x antibody titre was the only way they could make it work for just long-enough to pass the specifications.
You maybe forgot the initial pronouncements of the WHO that Covid wasn’t transmissible between people. Maybe you also forgot Fauci’s statement that the general public shouldn’t wear masks since they didn’t make any difference. You maybe didn’t notice that the WHO task-force to investigate the rôle of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in the saga included Peter Daszak, who was the person who funded the bat-virus research there. No conflict there, obviously, when they said WIV wasn’t involved…. You maybe also missed that Fauci gave Daszak the funds, and then told Congress that he didn’t fund the WIV. Some arse-covering needed there…. Incidentally that might also explain the presence of the HIV sequences, since Fauci has for a long time wanted to produce a vaccine against HIV (and blocked the use of antivirals that worked). For that, no conspiracy theory needs to be put forward, since it’s pretty obvious that a lot of medical people believe that a vaccine is the best fix for viral disease and anything else comes a poor second. They have faith in vaccines.
These days it’s pretty hard to be certain of getting the truth. When experts disagree on something, which one (if any) do you accept as being right (or just closer to right)? It takes some digging, and generally the people who contribute here dig in their own corner and illuminate the rest of us. We get reasons and links to relevant papers, and the benefits of other peoples’ lifetimes of experience. Might not always be right, but much closer than the average bear. My corner to dig is in physics, so generally I’m not much of a help on the political stuff, but on that I learn useful things.
The official announcements may well be disinformation/propaganda. It’s what governments have always done – nothing new there. It’s rare for a politician to admit a mistake. It’s also rare for a politician to give a straight answer to a question, and you must at least have noticed that. Probably useful to either do some digging yourself or at least read the digging that’s been done here.
E.M.: “In short: don’t post known crap and check that we haven’t already resolved the truth on things […]”
–
One of the distinguishing characteristics of this blog is the willingness and ability of many here to chase down details from all over, put them here for discussion, and in general home in on the verifiable facts of matters long before others stumble across the same information.
For example, Larry Ledwick was looking into the Wuhan Flu at least 2 months before it was on the radar anywhere in this country. And then we kicked around preventatives and PPE, most of us wearing masks and gloves long before anyone else even thought to do so, and then dropping them for most cases (N95s have their place) as it became clear that the masks that were soon to be mandated were nearly useless.
Another good example was jim2 holding everyone’s feet to the fire as we discussed graphene contaminants and other aspects of the various vaccines. He made sure that we just didn’t throw out any ol’ internet speculation. You had to back it up. (He sure made David A work his butt off, eh? 😉)
I can’t name all the usual suspects, but cdquarles, Ossqss, another ian, jim2, philj, pg, yourself, E.M., and many others have been looking for verifiable facts from sources that were then examined for their reliability and veracity.
All this was usually ahead of the curve and this blog was moving on to the next piece of the puzzle while other sources were just becoming aware of those things we had discussed.
So, one really must start reading here on the” muuuuh COVID!!!” issues starting about November/December of 2019, and follow the trail to today if they are to understand why they get the eyerolls from regulars here when they present certain ‘facts’ that just aren’t so. The links are here in postings made months or even a year or more ago.
The same is true for many of the other topics that are of broad interest where a narrative is being pushed by the YSM. The narratives are obvious, but what are the facts of those matters? We are still working on some of those.
Enough babbling from me. I wrote enough to give someone new here the gist of how things move along and you, E.M., made the all important point of why you started the blog in the first place; a notebook to use when someone drops in and goes off on a topic that is done and dusted.
P.S. I well remember the start of this blog as you became tired of posting the same old stuff, again and again over on WUWT. You put it here and could then just point to it.
Sorry Frank2, the job of left wing comedian is taken by Al “Let me grope you” Franken, and Kathy “who the hell is she” Griffin. You are just a jolke.
I guess we caught you in another lie. Quote Steve Bannon all you like, but you have never read him. You do not read anything except fake news, or you would know that the allegation Trump made about being spied upon has been proven true by the Durham investigation!!!! You are a lousy troll. And your mock empathy is pathetic.
Enough of your ignorance and lies troll! Begone before someone drops a house on you!
@EM
I know you have been swamped with your move, but Durham has basically released information that shows not only was Candidate Trump spied upon, but so was President Trump! Tech Exec #1 (Rodney JOffe Neustar CEO) was gleaning his DNS queries before AND after inauguration. As was the Hillary Clinton campaign! Hence why Sussmann has been indicted! But not only SPIED upon, they attempted to plant evidence! So the indictments have just begun. Frank2 does not know this because he only gets his news from fake news and they have not reported this, although it is in the court filings of Durham, so public knowledge to all but the idiots who trust the fake news media for any kind of reporting.
I am glad our company dumped Neustar. Joffe violated the basic tenets of business. He sacrificed his company’s reputation for political gains. Stockholders will hold him accountable.
@H.R: “And then we kicked around preventatives and PPE, most of us wearing masks and gloves long before anyone else even thought to do so, and then dropping them for most cases (N95s have their place) as it became clear that the masks that were soon to be mandated were nearly useless.”
See, I never bought the mask hype. Remember seeing it first on WUWT from Mosher, of all people. And, in the back of my mind, I remembered some studies about surgical masks, when used properly:
Click to access annrcse01509-0009.pdf
Since then there have been multiple (over twenty) studies done trying to falsify that one. No dice. Actually, at least one showed better patient outcomes with no masks (wow, surgeons perform better without hypoxia). Of course, in abdominal surgery, in cases of severe peritonitis, masks can be useful if they are sprinkled with “winter-green” at frequent intervals to “mask” the odor and keep the surgeon’s gag reflex in check. ;)
Maybe, I should have looked more diligently for the original study and posted it, but people were getting so hot under the collar and irrational, it seemed like a lost cause. Really, anyone doubting Mosher and his “Asians are the coolest” mindset was getting lots of flak. Lots of hypochondriacs out there and lots of Mosher fans (wasn’t Mosher in the arms trade at some point?)
Then I checked out JoNova. And she was all about, “Woot! This is my bailiwick! I’m an epidemiologist, you fools!” Like keeping a respiratory flu/cold out of Australia was like keeping rabies out.
Anyway, I’m sorry. People weirded me out.
And, hey, Iceland!
So, Iceland was testing out the wazoo, and of course cases went way up (PCR tests, you know), but I was looking for deaths, ’cuz I’m morbid that way.
Oddly enough, the 95+ year old Icelanders seemed to be doing better. It was obvious that the Covid was only a threat to the old and unhealthy under 90s. Weird, huh?
Then, U-Tube was actually paying young healthy people to get a clot-shot for the propaganda!
But nobody thinks they’re just having a larf? They’ve been doing Daylight Savings Time for years.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/the-mask-problem
EM: I’m not a “shill” for pharmaceutical companies that might be desperate enough to cheat in order to get a COVID vaccine approved – though cheating would be more likely with Moderna (a start-up without any other products) than with Pfizer (with many products and assets). I’m a “shill” for the system we have constructed that effectively prevents drug companies from cheating including: 1) An outside advisory panel of expert doctors who personally see and treat patients with the drugs they recommend or reject for approval. 2) Scientific professionals (with civil service protection from being fired without cause) at the FDA, who have family members who will be vaccinated with the vaccines they approve and some of whom perceive themselves as the guardians protecting us from rapacious drug companies. 3) The doctors and staff at the hospitals where clinical trials actually carry out clinical trials, who electronically submit all of the data they collect to a database shared with FDA and drug company statisticians. They have no idea which patients are getting drug and which are getting placebo. These doctors and staff are guided by an ethics committee at each hospital that is interested in maintaining the hospital’s reputation with the FDA (which they need to participate in other clinical trials) and with the public. 4) The plaintiff’s bar, which is salivating for their next big opportunity to get rich by dragging Big Bad Pharma in front of a sympathetic jury when something goes wrong. You see their advertisements trying to recruit victims on TV every day. 5) Finally, the research side of big pharmaceutical companies makes thousands of new compounds looking for one good enough to test in the clinic. (Allegedly in the bad old days only one 10 would make it through clinical trials and get approved and two-thirds of those wouldn’t make enough money to repay the cost of developments.) A company the size of Pfizer could be exploring pre-clinical candidates for several dozen approaches to treating various diseases while expecting to fully fund clinical trials only a fraction of these candidates. That produces a tough-minded culture that rigorously scrutinizes the weaknesses of every development candidate and tries to weed out the candidates with serious flaws. The non-research side of the company is mostly interested in fully exploiting every drug or vaccine that gets approved. With start-up companies, venture capitalists select the best projects for funding and provide funding in tranches.
I recognize that – for a variety of good and bad reasons – Americans have lost faith in many of our critical government institutions. The FDA is a critical institution during a pandemic. However, from my reasonably well-informed perspective, I think we have a system that does a good job of separating the drugs and vaccines that are safe and effective from those that are not – a system that doesn’t rely on the ethics of a big pharmaceutical company. (It’s not a perfect system, mostly because clinical trials capable of catching all possible problems cost too much money to run. You may take a drug that lowers blood pressure for the rest of your life, but the clinical trials of that drug may followed patients to determine efficacy and safety for only half a year, or even only two months. However, the FDA scrutinizes all reports of adverse incidents and may require drug companies to run additional clinical trials after approval.
FWIW, I just got a second booster (and daily text messages from the CDC asking me to report side effects). The data I’ve seen says I now have about the same risk of being hospitalized or dying lower than as someone half of my age (70) who is unvaccinated. Pretty awesome, if true. See: COVID-19 Case, Hospitalization, and Mortality Rates in Unvaccinated, Fully Vaccinated, and Boosted Utahns by Age Group Since December 21, 2021 (Omicron Period). I wish the CDC and my state had information this clear. Are all fifty states (even red states like Utah) faking efficacy data? Unlikely. With 10,000 Americans dying every day of all causes and more experiencing several medical problems at the same time 1-2 million doses of vaccine were being administered every day, it isn’t clear to me how anyone can sort through all of the data on serious side effects. However, we have multiple clinical trials with 40,000 patients getting vaccine or placebo without those patient or those collecting data knowing who got vaccine. Most countries without nationally-developed vaccines are buying mRNA vaccines.
https://coronavirus-dashboard.utah.gov/risk.html
@Franktoo
“the system we have constructed that effectively prevents drug companies from cheating”
Sometimes. On a good day. A bit. No point in going into details for those who aren’t open to them.
“Americans have lost faith in many of our critical government institutions.”
Never let it be said that we disagree on everything.
You left something out. The media, the news media, social media, all of it.
I can still believe there are some honest people in the drug companies, and maybe even some in the government institutions, but in the establishment media? No way!
Liars and censors.
The Utah dashboard is interesting. Too bad they count cases within 14 days of getting a jab as “unvaccinated”. Some studies show that that jab suppresses your immune system for 14 days, and is not yet giving any protection. So I would classify those Covid cases as due to the jab.
The graphic titled “Weekly Age Adjusted Case, Hospitalization, and Mortality Rates² in Unvaccinated, Vaccinated, and Boosted Utahns Aged 12+”
shows that it is OVER. Don’t bother with jabs anymore. Its over,
The graphic titled “Pre-Existing Conditions of All Cases by Age” is telling.
Covid picks on the weak and the sick.
“it isn’t clear to me how anyone can sort through all of the data on serious side effects”
It’s a huge job, and few are seriously trying to sort it out.
Meanwhile, another form of ADE has been shown. (not necessarily bad)
Which shows how much we still do not know about the effects of the experimental jabs.
Two things about that video. 1. That’s how the cellular arm, in part, teaches the B cells how to distinguish between self and not-self. Some auto-immune syndromes are the result of this going awry. 2. Antibody dependent enhancement, at least in the past, means enhancement of infectivity by hijacking antibody binding to cell surfaces.
The study, appears to address another mechanism, one way ADE happens with Dengue. Things that can happen with natural infections can also happen with vaccines; and not necessarily be the helpful responses desired.
Hmm, this study identified cross-reactive spike protein antibodies acquired by corona virus infections prior to infection with SARS-CoV2.
YMMV – AFAIK any vaccination depresses the immune system for a couple of weeks or so, except possibly the Rabies shot which is normally given after infection. Really needs input from CDQuarles, who has the in-depth knowledge.
Still, that two-week period is why standard practice over the last century or so has been to not vaccinate into a pandemic since it adds risk.
Other longer-term problems with the vaccines won’t be known till they happen, since the trials did not last long-enough.
EM: I’m not a shill for all institutions. For example, I’d call the IPCC is a self-perpetuating organization of climate alarmists created to serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in an on-going trial – with no defense attorney allowed – of our fossil fuel-based economy. A trial that is pre-destined to find us guilty of the greatest crime in world history.
Nevertheless, the physics of radiation transfer tells me that rising GHGs will slow radiative cooling to space and force the planet to warm until a balance between incoming and outgoing energy is re-established. This is simply conservation of energy at work.
YMMV and Simon: Thanks looking at my link to the Utah dashboard and reminding me about ADE. ADE is a well-understood problem that was being discussed from the very beginning of vaccine development and there is every reason to believe that the clinical program was designed to detect this phenomena. That program was sent out for public comment early in the development process. The first group of 20,000 volunteers has been studied for six months when ADE might have occurred and they will be reviewed after 2 years (this fall). However, it would have been unethical to withhold vaccine from the placebo group for two years, so we no longer have the ideal control group for detecting new problems.
As far as I know, we are not more vulnerable to infection with COVID for the first two weeks after vaccination. Your likelihood of getting infected remains normal for the first week after vaccination and beginning two weeks after vaccination you are 95% less likely to become infected. So, if you look at a long period after vaccination (assuming the pandemic remains constant and provides a constant risk of infection), half of the infections will occur during the first week and the other half will occur over the next 20 weeks. That could create the appearance of an enhanced risk for the first week.
If we were highly susceptible to COVID infection for the first few days to a week after vaccination, we would have been advised to take extra precautions during this period: If possible, stay home and wear a mask. Since we weren’t given that advice, I doubt there is any significant risk. We were advised not to get vaccinated soon after testing positive, possibly because an additional stimulus to your immune system might promote a deadly cytokine storm.
When one was infected with the original variant, it took most of a week for significant amounts of antibodies to appear in the blood. Symptoms and viral load for those who recovered without hospitalization diminished over the next week. During that first week, some protection is provided by the innate immune system (mostly interferons), but COVID, like many viruses, synthesizes proteins that counteract interferons. We now think that children are less effected by COVID because their innate immune system is more effective (while their adaptive immune system (antibodies and T-cells) is less effective). Many (half?) children who have tested positive for COVID have no residual antibodies after infection.
So, if it takes about a week for antibodies to develop due to COVID infection, it would be unreasonable to expect vaccination to provide protection from Day 1 after injection. The antibodies produced by vaccination reach a maximum after about 28 days, but levels are significant well before then and should provide useful protection. IIRC, it makes little difference if you count breakthrough infections beginning one week or two weeks after vaccination.
The raw data that is dumped in VAERS is difficult for professionals to analyze and impossible for amateurs like us. That is because 10,000 people were dying on the average day before vaccinations (or the pandemic) began and at least that many were coming down with serious medical conditions every day. And with 1-2 million getting vaccinated everyday, there is going to be an apparent connection between vaccination and death or serious illness simply by CHANCE. Without reliable information about causes of death or serious side effects and their normal incidence rate, I can’t handle the problem or judge whether the consensus estimate of a few serious side effects per million vaccinations is correct. However, I can look at large clinical trials with 40,000 volunteers given vaccine or placebo and trivially conclude that the incidence of serious side effects in this population is likely less than one in ten thousand. That’s good enough for an old guy like me. Nearly one million Americans have died, about 1 in 330.
Vaccinating children – who have little chance of dying – is a more complicated subject, especially with teenage males and cardiomyopathy. However, a teenage male infected with COVID is at greater risk of getting cardiomyopathy than a teenage male getting vaccinated. The side effect in both cases is linked to the immune response to the spike protein. However, it is presumably safer for that immune response to be triggered by temporary and controlled expression of spike protein near the site of injection from an mRNA that can’t replicated and will soon be degraded, than it is to have spike protein expressed by a replicating virus in an uncontrolled manner in many cells in the body with ACE2 receptors.
Franktoo seems a bit desperate to get me to engage with him / her / it. Two comments, both aimed at me, both “justifying” that Franktoo trusts in other people and agencies to do the thinking for him / her /it. All laced with appeal to authority and “The Science” writ small… First one on the Drug Power Lobby Fiasco of the vexxine. 2nd one on Globull Warming. (Both big scams by TPTB GEBs).
Makes a fella wonder…
Well, first off, this is a thread about Ukraine (a GEB attempt to get WW III going by the looks of it). So neither of those topics is really appropriate in this thread. But I’m not a stickler on thread specificity. Still, the motivation to go Off Topic for a Trollish Food Fight is low.
2nd, there’s just that whole “low interest in engaging in old well thrashed topics with what seems a troll”. We’ve beat the Globull Warming thread to death a few times over. The most simple fact is that the Scare Tactic is what, about 50 years old now? We had the Global Cooling New Ice Age scare in the late ’60s early ’70s, then the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1975 happened and they had to shift to a Global Warming Scare. So somewhere around 40 to 50 years. And yet No Bad Thing has happened. The seas have not swallowed Miami. NYC still has ports. The rains are falling on California and I’m headed for the pool in Florida. Simple fact is, this Scare has run out the clock. It’s over. We’ve had at least 40 years of “DOOM in 12 Years!!!!”…
Similarly, I’m headed for 3 years of ZERO issues with Chinese Wuhan Covid thanks to a weekly (about 3 cents) dose of Ivermectin. Ditto some family & friends. All despite mixing with a “few hundred thousand of my closest strangers” over the years. India, Peru, Japan, Africa showing the same efficacy. Can you say “It’s dead Jim!” (that being the Covid Scare). We’re just Soooo Over It. So you can embrace the Big Pharma Scam all you want. The truth is now blatant for anyone to see. Not a lot of “juice” left in embracing that narrative… Folks are either in the “Boosters and damaged metabolism forever” group or they are in the “I’m getting on with life and smell a Big Pharma Rat” groups. Pissing at each other over the choices will not change minds at this point. Those doing the Jabs will just have to suffer the slow decay of their lives to learn the hard way. Me? I’m fit, healthy, have an immune system that’s tossing off everything, and enjoying pool time with friends (and not a mask in sight). Why start a pissing match over that?
Then, finally, I’m house hunting in The Free State Of Florida, enjoying sun and even got in a little bit of fishing. I’ve got a nice Tartan Motor Sailer boat waiting for me and I think I’m going to try fishing for bigger ocean fish. That’s just too much good stuff in my life to want to drink the sour grapes of a Franktoo Food Fight over old dead Scares.
Life is for living, and this one is doing Just Fine without the Scares, GEB Talking Points, or garbage pseudo-science from folks with lots of credentials but no moral compass between them and graft (or worse, not enough common sense to see how wrong they are… fooled by their own cleverness. When that’s the BEST spin you can put on something, it’s pretty bad…)
So I’ve left Franktoo shouting into the aether for a while. Not out of some kind of spite. Just because I’ve more fun things to do than engage in his / her /its (pronouns please!) rite of personal justification.
If anyone else wants to, go ahead. Me? I’ve got a date with morning coffee then a morning hot tub dip sounds nice. After which we go look at some ranchettes. Spouse is more interested in a new house in town. I’m fond of a place to park an RV and maybe a private fish pond. We’ll likely end up with about 1/2 of each ;-)
@Franktoo
You said in your previous comment that 2 weeks post gene therapy, you are 95% less likely to become infected. Please explain how the numbers on this Walgreens dashboard for positivity rate by vaccination status https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.jsp (page 3. Sorry, cannot direct link) fits with that narrative.
Franktoo – it may be worthwhile checking what you know. It’s not normally what you don’t know that bites you, but what you think you know but just ain’t so. Thus my suggestion to read Geert Vanden Bossche about vaccine problems, since he is an expert who has introduced several vaccines in his life. The depression of the immune system for around 2 weeks after vaccination is documented. It was also known that mass-vaccination with a non-sterilising vaccine is a very bad idea (see Marek’s disease in chickens). Also note the number of vaccinated people who have had Covid multiple times. With a non-sterilising vaccine, herd immunity is actually not achievable no matter what the authorities claim, but instead allows new mutations to appear at a high rate.
On global warming and radiative balance, note that the vast majority of the energy transfers in the climate system are via atmospheric movements, with the density of the air changed by the quantity of water and its phase. At this point in time, the “CO2 control knob” cannot explain the changes in average temperature over the last few thousand years, and of course the rate of rise of temperature out of the Little Ice Age (which started around 1700-1750, long before the CO2 level started rising) cannot be explained that way. Looking at the data, any signal from the CO2 increase cannot be distinguished from the previous rates of rise, and the predicted “tropospheric hot-spot” from the extra CO2 also doesn’t show in the actual data.
Dire climatic catastrophe in the next dozen years or so has been predicted by the experts regularly since around 1970. It hasn’t happened. Isn’t it odd that generally people go on holiday to somewhere hotter and sunnier unless they are into winter sports? In fact, by all the data we can gather, crop yields have been increasing, deaths from climate-related factors have fallen, and over my lifetime a greater proportion of people have escaped poverty.
The reality is that we can’t predict the future climate. We don’t know enough about how that very complex system works. We can’t even predict the weather more than 3 days in advance, and the two-week forecast is a coin-toss. A computer model is actually a collection of assumptions that will only predict correctly if the assumptions are correct and the physics is correct. However, for practical reasons both the time and space resolution is limited – we don’t have enough memory and compute cycles to do the job at a sufficiently-fine scale, which results in parameterisation (read approximation) to be able to make it computable with current hardware. It’s going to be wrong. How far wrong, we won’t know until we can compare measurements with predictions, but the previous predictions based on the same basic model designs have been wrong for the last 30 years and have predicted hotter than the measured temperatures. Plus, of course, all the models disagree with each other. At most, only one can be right, so taking an average of the predictions of 30 or so models is a bad strategy anyway, but so far they’ve all been wrong.
What is the Truth? You need to put the effort into get closer to it. For Ukraine, the subject of this thread, very little in the news will be true, though the deaths are most likely real. For the Covid problem, compare the death-rate in countries that used masks and locked down against those that didn’t. Also look at those that provided medication against those that banned medication except in a hospital situation (and Switzerland did ban HCQ for a period, resulting in a rise in deaths that lasted until they allowed it again). Will politicians in general admit they made mistakes? Sweden was the only one that did, and only as regards protecting the elderly better. For the climate problems, again look at the data as opposed to the prophets of doom.
Predictions can be useful, but the data tells us more. If the predictions don’t match the reality, then the theory is wrong.
More interesting history in re Poland: https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/ukraine-and-the-importance-of-history
@Philemon:
The Poles suffer from the same geographic tyranny of the European Plane as the Russians, but from both sides and without the Urals to retreat behind.
It is an indefensible flat plane, widening to the East. Russia can defend IFF it has control to the West of Ukraine OR has neutral “buffer States” there. Thus the current war. But Poland is just a conquest waiting to happen from East or West (or both).
Jon K: Did you read page 4?
“Controlling for recent COVID-19 cases, results show that the unvaccinated groups are typically younger, and healthier, less symptomatic and less likely to report direct COVID-19 exposure or recent travel compared to vaccinated group. Controlling for recent COVID-19 cases, results show tha the unvaccinated group has a 17.1% higher positivity rate compared to the 3-dose group. Controlling for other factors leads too a larger difference between groups.”
It has been known for a long time that 2-dose vaccination AND previous infection provides almost no protection against infection by Omicron. That is precisely why Omicron has become the dominant variant and produced by far the biggest surge in new cases of any variant – despite almost two years of building immunity acquired by infection and 1 year of vaccination. This was especially true in South Africa, where even the Delta variant was unable to produce many infections in the fall of 2021; the vast majority of South Africans had been infected by then. Nevertheless Omicron explored there first. When Omicron was just taking off, Pfizer reported that those with boosters suffered 75% fewer infections, but that this level of protection was likely to fade over time as antibody levels fall. It’s been about six months since a first booster was authorized and the data from Walgreens and from Utah certainly don’t show 75% protection. That’s why I got a second booster.
What vaccination IS supposed to protect against is serious illness from Omicron. The reduction in hospitalization and death data from Utah shows exactly this. However, the benefits of a booster were larger than I expected.
Hope this helps you understand what the experts are saying about these confusing subjects.
Franktoo: “What vaccination IS supposed to protect against is serious illness from Omicron.”
Words have meaning. The definition of’ a vaccine was changed in order to get FDA emergency use approval**. Why? Because the ‘vaccine’ didn’t prevent one from getting the FauXi Flu. It did ameliorate the symptoms either partially or completely. ‘Vaccinated’ people could still get and spread FauXi’s Flu, with or without symptoms.
There is a reason mRNA therapy shots are referred to as ‘the jab’ or ‘clot shot’ or ‘vaccine’ or ‘vexxine’. Why? Because they are not vaccines.
If you allow that the tail of a dog is a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four, because calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. Calling experimental mRNA therapy a ‘vaccine’ does not make it a vaccine.
The Wuhan Flu topic has been discussed in great detail here with links to data, studies, and analysis, all starting around December of 2019 (Thanks, Larry Ledwick!, wherever you are.) You are generating CAT5 eyerolls because regular commenters and readers here have “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt” and not just once, but several times over.
It’s little things like that sentence of yours that I picked out and isolated that says, putting it as kindly as I can, at the least you have not been keeping up with the class. I’ll admit, you seem to have been keeping up with the narrative. I say this without sarcasm, good job there. But the regulars here are tired of, or just completely bored with the narrative.
–
Then there is the topic of the VAERS data and its equivalents in other countries. It’s pretty clear now what the ‘vaccines’ are and what they are not. What’s not clear are the immediate, short-term, and long-term effects of the jabs and boosters. But that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms and still generates a good bit of interest.
Cheers.
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**And HCQ+Zinc and Ivermectin had to be discredited so there were no alternative treatments to prevent rollout of the ‘vaccines’.
Adding to H.R’s comment, the vaccines do not prevent people becoming infected or infectious. They were only specified to reduce the severity of the illness. Thus the vaccinated people would possibly not realise that they were infected and infectious, and not self-isolate unless they noticed symptoms, and thus likely infect more people than they would have otherwise done.
The antibody titre diminishes at a rate of 40% per month. This is probably why they specified the initial antibody titre to be around 100 times the normal body response, since because of the rush the trials were programmed to last only 3 months.
It is up to the individual to decide whether the risks are lower by taking the vaccines or by not taking the vaccines. There are no absolutes here, and a mandatory compulsion to take a vaccine that is under an emergency-use authorisation (since in practice the fully-authorised version is not being made and not available) is actually illegal. Even the EUA vaccine would be illegal if a medication was acknowledged to be available.
Personally, I would prefer to rely on a well-provisioned immune system (that has enough vitamin D, for example) that has been fine-tuned by evolution and demonstrably has worked because we’re still here to talk about it. The death-rate for Omicron is in any case very low unless you’re already at Death’s door. Vaccinating kids and people under around 60 years old with a non-sterilising vaccine which doesn’t stop them catching the virus or spreading it seems pointless, and the older people who are a higher risk should decide for themselves.
Looking at the performance over the last couple of years, just think how much worse it would have been if it had been Ebola. Around every couple of years we’re likely to have a new variant of some disease that is pandemic-capable.
Thus, Franktoo, you are welcome to take as many boosters as you wish, but you should know that each one will only give you reasonable protection for around 8 weeks, based on the data from Israel. It won’t stop you getting the disease over that time, or from passing it on. Because it doesn’t stop you catching the virus or incubating it, it also makes it more-likely that you will produce a new variant that escapes the vaccine altogether, and you can then pass that on to other vaccinated people. Because the new variant escapes the vaccine, they will become as ill as they would if unvaccinated (as you will).
Vaccines are not the answer to coronaviruses. They mutate too frequently, faster than the vaccine manufacture can keep up.
@Simon D – As soon as I heard that Fauxi’s Flu was a corona virus and a vaccine was being developed, I recalled the fact that a successful corona virus vaccine has never been made, and it was not for a lack of trying. (Got that from Larry or cdq, I think.)
Things always went pear shaped in animal trials; rapid or somewhat delayed death was the usual outcome. The search was on beginning with the SARS Cov-1 outbreak with no success.
With that in mind, I was not about to cheerfully roll up my sleeve and take the jab. I preferred and still prefer to remain in the control group.
@EM – I’m headed for the pool in Florida.
I read somewhere that Florida has the most pools per capita than any other state. Yet everyone is within a 90 minute drive of a beach! Go figure!
“I’m getting on with life and smell a Big Pharma Rat”
Anyone who has 2 grey cells to rub together does as well. Which leaves out 35% of the people. I got the initial 2. I will get no more (and that only because of the nagging of my wife AND because it was supposed to prevent getting it). Which brings us to the big lie:
@Frank2 – “What vaccination IS supposed to protect against is serious illness from Omicron.”
That is a lie. First off, the Vaccine came out WAY Before Omicron came around. Second off, the Vaccine was touted as a real vaccine, not a therapeutic when it was first released. That quickly died a death of a thousand cuts. Only after Big Pharma started touting “boosters forever” AND Omicron came along (which IS the REAL Vaccine), did Big Pharma decide it was against serious illness, even though the statistics about those with the Vaccine who got Omicron and those without who got it, show no statistical significance when getting Omicron. Funny how you forgot to mention that.
AH! But of course, because you do not know that. You are a toady to fake news and so do not know any real facts.
E.M.Smith says:
23 April 2022 at 1:07 am
@Philemon:
“The Poles suffer from the same geographic tyranny of the European Plane as the Russians, but from both sides and without the Urals to retreat behind.
“It is an indefensible flat plane, widening to the East. Russia can defend IFF it has control to the West of Ukraine OR has neutral “buffer States” there. Thus the current war. But Poland is just a conquest waiting to happen from East or West (or both).”
Heh! An old Soviet anecdote: Khrushchev, Adenauer and Gomulka are at the Pearly Gates. So, St. Peter asks Adenauer, “What do you want most?” And Adenauer says, “To see Russia destroyed!”
Then St. Peter turns to Khrushchev, whom only divine omnipotence has restrained heretofore. And Khrushchev says, “Destroy Germany!”
St, Peter finally turns to Gomulka, who says, “I think I would like a nice cup of tea, please.”
Unfortunately, Poland is not as sensible nowadays.
@Philemon:
Just got back from pool and hot tub before dinner… it is a couple of minutes away. The ocean is an hour of two drive (depending on Gulf or Atlantic. )
The pool is for nightly… the ocean us for weekends or fishing :-) The pool is free, the ocean takes $20 of gas. The pool has a hot tub. The ocean has sand and a bar ;-)
Decisions decisions…..
BTW, I was expecting to see Poland complain about being between the two… in retrospect, I ought to have expected the punch line of “I want you to grant both Russia and Germany their wishes”..,
@E.M.Smith says:
23 April 2022 at 11:25 pm
BTW, I was expecting to see Poland complain about being between the two… in retrospect, I ought to have expected the punch line of “I want you to grant both Russia and Germany their wishes”..,
Well, the willing suspension of disbelief required to expect any of them to get within sight of the Pearly Gates is a pretty big ask… even before the part with St. Peter. ;)
Okay, so maybe Poland is sensible about some things: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/poland-is-done-buying-the-vaccine-cancels-deal-with-pfizer/
Or is it a stick-up?
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/poland-to-pfizer-about-that-take/comments
H.R.: I mis-spoke when I said: “What vaccination IS supposed to protect against is serious illness from Omicron.” I should have said that the experts were telling us that the mRNA vaccines developed to protect against the original variant of SARS2 were providing good protection (80-85% reduction compared with the unvaccinated) from serious illness from Omicron (hospitalization), but limited protection against infection. Those who had only the original two shot vaccination almost a year earlier were nearly as likely to get infected as those who didn’t, while those who got a recent booster suffered about 75% fewer infections, but that level of protection diminish over months, perhaps as fast as protection declined after two injections.
You apparently believe that a vaccine should not be called a vaccine unless it provides permanent protection against re-infection. The protection from the tetanus vaccine fades over a decade and then you need a booster. All of the vaccines given in early childhood require boosters and some are administered FIVE times. Immunity acquired from infection with chicken pox or from vaccination lasts through mid-life and then the dormant virus in nerve cells re-emerges as “shingle” as your immune system weakens as you get older. (There is now a vaccine to prevent re-emergence.) Protection from the influenza vaccine last less than a year, typically protects against about half of the strains circulating in the average year and reduces hospitalization of those infected by only 30% (IIRC). Flu vaccines have been available in the US since 1945, so some older people may have received as many 75 vaccinations. We call all of these treatments “vaccines”, not “vexxines”, or “clot shots” (clots were a very rare side effect of the AZ and J&J viral vector vaccines, not the mRNA vaccines). You, of course, are free to call them whatever you want.
As best I can tell, the mRNA vaccines provide far more valuable protection against COVID, than the flu vaccine does against seasonal influenza. They are more effective than any of the more traditional vaccines that have been developed elsewhere. And they are vastly more effective than vaccines for tuberculosis, HIV and malaria – which don’t exist despite decades of research. You can deride these mRNA vexxines given what they don’t do; but I think they are great for what they do. And I can deride HCQ+zinc and probably ivermectin for what they don’t do in definitive random-assignment double-blind clinical trials. If ivermectin does have some benefit, it is vastly inferior to Paxlovid (except in cost) and it certainly isn’t working by the same mechanism of action that it did in the cell culture experiments that initially attracted attention to it.
With 20/20 hindsight, we should have paid more attention to the fact that infections with the coronaviruses that cause the common cold don’t produce long-lasting immunity, just like influenza doesn’t produce long-lasting immunity. Given that the antibodies produced by natural infection with SARS1 were known to be falling and that breakthrough re-infections were increasing, there could have been more warnings that the protection from COVID vaccines – like flu vaccines – was not likely to be permanent. Most vaccines that produce lifetime protection are for infections that also naturally produce immunity. Then there was the problem of variants, which was sure to worsen with time. However, the mRNA vaccines neutralized all known variants in the lab when they were approved. (IIRC, the A-Z vaccine wasn’t effective against the beta variant in South Africa and was quickly withdrawn from use there.) The mRNA vaccines immediately (after two weeks) reduced infection by 95% and by 90% over the first six months when the alpha variant dominated. In Israel, detected infections fell almost 10-fold each month after 50% of the population was vaccinated around the end of February, so I’d say natural infection plus vaccination produced “effective herd immunity” there against the alpha variant and likely would have done so in the US if the delta and omicron variants hadn’t arrived.
HR concludes: “It’s pretty clear now what the ‘vaccines’ are and what they are not. What’s not clear are the immediate, short-term, and long-term effects of the jabs and boosters.” It has been almost two years since the first volunteers received mRNA and other COVID vaccines and more than a year since widespread use began. The mRNA+lipid I was injected with mostly remained near the site of injection, was degraded within days and cleared from my body, and the fragment of spike protein it produced there has long ago been degraded by the same natural processes used for all proteins expressed on cell surfaces. The only things left are the immune cells that recognized that fragment of spike protein. Assuming I survived, my body would have produced a very similar collection of immune cells in response to natural infection with SARS2, plus additional immune cells targeted to other viral proteins that might also cause auto-immune disease. This is likely the reason why a few young males suffer from temporary cardiomyopathy after vaccination and more suffer cardiomyopathy from natural infection. Furthermore, SARS2 infects all cells in many different tissues and organs expressing the ACE2 receptor and immune cells kill all the infected cells. (The killing of infected nerve cells is presumably why some victims of COVID lose their sense of smell or taste, and those nerves provide a route of access to the brain, where MRI has consistently detect changes in older victims of serious infections.) This is why I would prefer to acquire immunity from local controlled expression of spike protein in my arm rather than uncontrolled expression in many tissues following natural infection. (:))
As best I can tell, I have been “keeping up with the class on COVID vaccines”, but the only way to test your knowledge and overcome confirmation bias is to listen to and discuss different points of view. Hope my information may prove to be valuable to some of you. This reminds me that I need to look up Geert Vanden Bossche and see why he objects to non-sterilizing vaccines.
@Franktoo – cdquarles already took the lead covering the topic of vaccines, such as tetanus, that require boosters. Your’re covering old territory.
The CDC changed their definition of a vaccine in order for the mRNA jabs to be called a vaccine for release. (Refer to philj’s brief comment above.) They did not meet the long-accepted definition of a vaccine, thus ‘vaccine’. I prefer the long-accepted definition. It made sense.
There’s an issue is not only the spike proteins produced by the virus, but the spike proteins from the ‘vaccine’ pumped into your body, and again and again (and again and again…) with boosters. Spike proteins are not a good thing. Ask any young male athlete, There are at least 738 once healthy young men that might agree with me, at least the ones still alive to discuss it.
I’ve been happy to remain in the control group for an untested new therapy. ADE may be beginning to rear its ugly head, but it’s a bit early to know what the extent of it will be.
I’ll probably come to a final decision about the mRNA therapies in about 6, 8. or maybe 10 years. I still find US and Canadian reporting on the topic to be less than useful, if not downright misleading, where it exists. It may take a while for the complete picture to shape up.
As Dr. Fauci said, the best vaccine against the virus is to get the virus. Omicron to the rescue! (He also said “masks don’t work” over the course of many years and as recently as March of 2020, but that’s another odd little tidbit that was little discussed in the YSM.)
Frank2 – YOU STATED the vaccine was not supposed to prevent, just lessen the severity. Now you waffle. Now you are trying to say HR is wrong about what a Vaccine is. You are wrong. A vaccine was supposed to prevent infection from the specific bug, not mitigate the symptoms. That is a Therapeutic!
YOu are swallowing the fake news whole hog. And just proving you are wrong at every turn. You are not worth reading because all you are doing is trolling – as soon as you are found out and proven wrong, you move the goal posts.
The goal posts will no longer be moved for trolls/.
Hallmark®, When you care enough to send the very best.
🤣🤣🤣🤣…. 😲?!?
@Franktoo:
I find your plowing already harvested ground tedious and a waste of time.
I’m done playing word games and I’m done with folks who do not acknowledge when they have been shown wrong. No goal post moving.
We know these things as true. The evidence has been posted:
1) The mRNA Shot is NOT a vaccine. It is an experimental therapeutic. Changing the definition for convenience is called lying.
2) The choice of mRNA to make spike proteins was either an error or deliberate malice. They damage people in many various ways from clots to death. They also give antibodies for at most a few weeks, decreasing with each added shot. Rapid spike mutation causes vaccine escape.
3) Virus capsule / particle proteins are needed to get memory T or B cell activation and durable immunity.
4) Expressing spike proteins on body cells results in autoimmunity reactions, up to and including death, in a subset of people (size unknown but significant).
5) Lipid Nanoparticles cross the blood brain barrier into the brain, covid virus does not. Production of spike proteins in the brain can cause damage. Severity and duration TBD.
6) Failure to aspirate the shot likely is causing these failure modes to be worse.
7) Massively more folks have suffered injury and death from this experimental shot than all prior vaccines combined. Orders of magnitude more than have caused the recall of prior vaccines.
8) There are known, working, therapeutics that make the shot irrelevant and near criminal to give. (I’ve used one for over 2 years now as a prophylactic with great success).
9) Big Pharma is fighting any real effective therapy with all they have got. They want that mRNA money train to continue. This is being done with despicable tactics like character assassination and targeted firings, license revocations, and Agency Capture.
10) Mandating an experimental drug or treatment is a criminal act. Ref. Nuremberg.
11) The risk to chidren from Covid is near zero and less than the flu. The mRNA shot is way more damaging and lethal to them. Requiring children to be so injected is a criminal act. “First do no harm.”
12) The PCR test could not tell flu from Covid. Most “covid” deaths were really something else. The data is corrupt, contaminated, manipulated and worse than useless, especially for making decisions to inject an experimentsl gene therapy. Most all deaths are in the over 70 with several comorbidities cohort. Folks destined to die soon anyway. (I am in the over 65 cohort…)
13) The more jabs are given, the more likely a person is to get Covid, spread it, and the worse is the status of their immune system. Antibody Dependent Enhancement is being evidenced as is Original Antigenic Sin. Cancers are at risk of increasing, and all cause morbidity is way up.
And a whole lot more….
You can either admit and recognize those truths, or brand yourself Troll. (And I no longer care if folks choose to be idiot trolls, not my problem to argue with them or educate them: read the historical record of documented posts with medical references). As the saying goes: “Stupid is as stupud does.”
Patent repeat stupidity with refusal to recognize validity of opposing proof and arguments will be taken as acceptable evidence the actor is probably an AI BOT, or, indistinguishably, a die hard Troll or a Useful Idiot. As none of those are worth wasting time on: they will be tossed to trash as soon as the amusement or entertainment value drops too low.
In short: don’t be an idiot wasting our time by being a PITA. No matter how cute you think you are being.
Why the sudden harder line? Because typing on the tablet is much slower, I have more to do, and the fishing here is more interesting than dealing with bots, trolls, or obstinate idiots. I’ll get a goat if I want to butt heads…
I would tell, we all have a conformation bias, every day, all day.
No one wants to be wrong. Some follow the controlled data we are told about on the surface. Who can blame them? In the end, that is never a short term accurate typically, on long term challenges.
The negative efficacy of boosters in the UK, (and other countries) showed very well the challenge in the, now not available, data. Flag!
The challenge of zero therapeutics, through early times onward from the controlling interests, tells a frightening tale folks.
Has anyone watched the show, “The Purge”?
Just sayin,,,,,time will tell the truth if it is allowed to >>>
Denmark suspends its vaccination program May 15.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20220426/denmark-suspends-national-covid-19-vaccination-programme/
I have asked many in the medical community if boosters related to ADE. Most said, no comment…
Others said, if you have a real vaxx you would not need it.
Think about it …—…
@E.M. – That cryptic ‘Hallmark’ comment above was directed at our TLA friends… because it seems that “they care”.
Franktoo is very, very good compared to “He who Shall Remain Nameless” (HWSRN). Many of our old friend’s “not-so-serioso-so-so’s” peccadillos have been corrected and have been replaced by a much smoother, less focused on E.M. comment generator. I’m fairly sure HWSRN was a carbon-based life form. I’m not so sure about Franktoo. Speculating is half the fun.
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Meanwhile… I caught a nice little 2,5 foot Tiger shark on Monday. The lil’ guy only ran about 10+/- minus pounds and I was using 50# braid. So it wasn’t a question of landing the shark, but unhooking and releasing him/her unharmed.
It was a fun tussle, though. I was using a 12′ foot medium-heavy, fast-action rod. That rod/reel/line combo can throw a 1-oz weight 100 yards with hardly any effort. That’s good, because the shoulder I tore up a couple of years back is still only about 85 or 90 per cent. I can get a bait out into productive surf with little effort.
So… what is it that you’ve caught lately, E.M.? The red snappers and gag groupets are hitting om the left coast of Florida.
Franktoo – the reason for not using non-sterilising vaccines is very obvious and well-known. They allow people vaccinated with them to become infected and incubate the virus (and thus infect others), and with every replication of a virus there is a known chance of a mutation. If that mutation escapes the vaccine, it will of course replicate more, and can be passed on. Thus look up Marek’s disease in chickens. If that doesn’t frighten you, you haven’t understood it, so do some thinking here. This is likely the reason that the WHO insists on 100% vaccination being needed, since the vaccination itself makes it more dangerous for the unvaccinated.
Last time I looked, Sir Keir Starmer (a very proper politician in the UK), who has been very strident on people getting vaccinated and wearing masks and had his double vaccination and booster shots and obeyed all the masking rules he wanted others to keep, had tested positive for Covid a total of 6 times. You’ll also have noted that prominent USA politicians (also very much in favour of vaccines and masking with double-masks) have also caught Covid and needed to self-isolate.
Basically, evidence shows that the vaccination (and masks) provide very little protection if any, and since the only protein that the vaccines recognise is the original spike which has rapidly mutated, there can be no durable protection anyway. The vaccines (being non-sterilising) cannot in any case result in herd immunity. Thus the exhortation to get vaccinated to protect Grandma is simply untrue. She’ll catch it from you if you are vaccinated but infected, and it may be a variant her vaccination can’t protect her against.
Obviously you have had the vaccinations and at least one booster. So far, you have had no problems. However, more people have had problems with these vaccines than with all previous vaccines combined. The majority of those will not have been reported officially, since that is a known problem with reporting vaccine damage. However, the insurance companies are reporting the general death-rate about 40% up from normal, and funeral services are having a boom-time. In France, insurance companies are refusing a pay-out for vaccine-related deaths, since they consider it suicide.
It will take a few years before all the data comes out. Hopefully you’ll personally continue to not have problems, but note that losing maybe 3% of the working population to “unexpected death” does have economic effects.
There remain a lot of things unknown about the long-term effects of both the virus and the vaccines. We’ve never managed to produce a sterilising vaccine against corona viruses before, and even the non-sterilising vaccines have produced more problems than they solved (test-subjects died when faced with a variant). Hubris to think we’ve got a good answer now.
I saw a nice analogy a few days ago – it’s like getting script-kiddies to write some code, find it works with limited and quick testing, and installing it in all the nuclear power stations in the world simultaneously. Is that a good strategy?
@Simon ; you forgot the most important thing . The financial and political incentives to make C.O.V.I.D. -19 the scourge of the World. Hundred $Billions and Dictatorship over the people is a great incentive to lie cheat and steal using this political protocol.
Instituting the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Reich by their select Elite is the prize that they have been working toward for generations. Crimes against Humanity is at work here. Any means is justified to them for obtaining their prize. Their NEW ORDER. A Utopia for them. Slavery and death for the rest…pg
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HR: We have been administering flu vaccines and calling them “vaccines” for more than half a century. Flu vaccines do not provide permanent protection. They only provide protection against about half of the variants in circulation in the average year. They provide only marginal protection against hospitalization and death for the unlucky 50% who still get the flu despite vaccination. Even without boosters, mRNA vaccines provide more protection against hospitalization and death than flu vaccines, and COVID is a more deadly disease. Even the less-deadly omicron variant killed 200,000 Americans this winter versus 37,000 for flu during a typical year. Anyone who calls omicron a “vaccine” for COVID is nuts. However, those protected by vaccination and boosters and who get tested while ill so they can benefit from Paxlovid or a monoclonal antibody probably aren’t experiencing a greater risk from COVID today than from seasonal influenza. The benefit of a booster were clearly shown in the Utah data I linked above and other publications (but not a random-assignment, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial).
The was no sign of ADE or any other problems within six months in the (at least) 40,000 who received mRNA vaccines by chance in the clinical trials compared with the controls who didn’t. The only difference was those receiving vaccine by chance suffered 90% fewer confirmed infections.
All vaccines have the potential to promote the evolution of vaccine-resistant variants and Bossche is correct in asserting that the problem of resistant escape mutants is worse with non-sterilizing vaccines. The temporary immunity produced by natural infection also promotes the evolution of resistant mutants. Nevertheless, we have been using non-sterilizing flu vaccines for more than a half-century. Likewise the use of antibiotics promotes the evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains and the use of herbicides has resulted in herbicide-resistant weeds. We don’t avoid using these useful agents merely for fear of resistance, we deal with that problem later and with combination therapy. However, the Delta variant was first detected in India in November 2020, before vaccines were introduced. It became the dominant strain everywhere in the world (not just where vaccines were being used) because it replicated faster, not because neutralizing antibodies produced by vaccination bound less tightly to its spike protein. Omicron was first identified long after mRNA vaccines were introduced, but no one understands how it evolved: Unlike previous variants, the stepwise mutational pathway was not captured by sequencing intermediate variants along an evolutionary pathway. It emerged with dozens of mutations never seen before in South Africa in November of 2021. Three hypotheses have been proposed to explain its unusual origin: a) It evolved in Africa in an isolated location where no sequencing was done. b) It evolved rapidly in chronically-infected immuno-suppressed patients. Africa is the AIDS capital of the world. Other variants have arisen in chronically infected immune-suppressed patients. c) Omicron crossed over to an animal species, where it evolved without detection and crossed back to humans. When Omicron exploded in South Africa in November of 2021, the major variant was the Delta virus, but the number of cases was dramatically lower than developed countries that had been suffering their Delta surges. It seems likely to me that almost all South Africans had been infected with Delta or earlier variants (herd immunity) and that only a modest number had been vaccinated. The major selection pressure therefore came naturally-acquired immunity, not the vaccine. Omicron evolutionary advantages include more rapid transmission and the ability to completely overcome naturally-acquire resistance and vaccine-acquired resistance, except when the latter has been recently boosted. When a new variant emerges in a highly vaccinated country, then we can say that vaccine-acquired immunity was responsible for the evolution of resistant mutants. It hasn’t been a major problem yet.
If spike proteins are dangerous, they are more dangerous when synthesized in a wide variety of tissues throughout the body – including the heart – in an uncontrolled manner. After vaccination with an mRNA vaccine, a controlled amount of spike protein is synthesized ONLY in the muscle near the site of injection and to a small extent in the nearest lymph node. That is why the risk of cardiomyopathy (and other problems initiated by the immune response to spike protein) are far higher following infection with COVID, even in teenage males. Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to administer additional doses of vaccine after an earlier dose has produced a rare, but serious side effect like cardiomyopathy.
SARS2, like all viruses that infect mammals, has 1-2 dozen genes that function to suppress the host’s innate immune system, including two microRNAs that have been mentioned. However, mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines code only for (the receptor binding domain of) the viral spike protein and none of the other viral genes that suppress the innate immune response. In this sense, they are safer than vaccines made from weakened or killed virus, which could, but probably don’t, have some potential to suppress the innate immune system. I’m not sure of the origin of the myth that mRNA vaccines suppress the host’s innate immune system. If this were a serious problem it should have been seen in the vaccine group during clinical trials. The complaints of Bossche and other are quite confusing to me and it would be nice if peer-review forced these critics to make their concerns clearer. Bosscha’s references to innate antibodies are confusing, since antibodies (and T-cell receptors) are part of the adaptive immune system created through genetic recombination. The innate immune system is comprised of a variety of immune cells and molecules that up-regulate them like interferons and complement. I’d appreciate any links to clearly written information criticizing vaccines. I’m not big on videos or Tweets, which are mostly ways people perform to enhance their status.
The REAL problem with mRNA vaccines (IMO) is a phenomena called original antigenic sin. Pfizer and Moderna have experimented with variant-specific mRNA vaccines for several variants including beta, lambda? and omicron, and boasted that their technology can produce a variant specific vaccine in a few months. However, we still don’t have a vaccine target to any new variant. Original antigen sin is the problem. When those who have already been vaccinated are given a vaccine with an mRNA modified to match the RBD of a new variant, the immune system thinks it has been attacked by the same invader as it encountered before and produces more of the same antibodies that it made before, not new neutralization antibodies for the new RBD on the spike protein. The variant mRNA vaccine and the original variant vaccine produce indistinguishable immune responses, which explains why I am getting boosted with the well-tested original vaccine and not a new mRNA vaccine targeted to delta or omicron. Original antigen sin was discussed in a Science magazine article, but the failure of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s variant-specific vaccines to better target variants hasn’t been widely publicized. If Bossche or other critics were the experts they claim to be, they would be complaining that the first mRNA vaccine has likely made it more difficult to make a vaccine that deals with all variants or all coronaviruses. (The same problem plagues one of the variants used in flu vaccines. Hopefully, someone is making progress on this issue. We are lucky that the original mRNA vaccines still provide useful (but not sterilizing) protection against delta and omicron, but the same thing may not be true of the next variant.
Simon: The Israeli study on the protection boosters provide against Omicron only covered the first 8 weeks (and only in those boosted first) because the Omicron surge hadn’t lasted more than 8 weeks. That study was an initial look whether a second booster helped with omicron (partially because Israeli began giving first boosters well before the US and their protection was fading by the time Omicron arrived. Although we don’t have data for anything past 8 weeks at most, I assume the protection produced by a second booster will be cut in half in about 6 months, which seems to be a reasonable guess based on the rate of decline of neutralizing antibodies and protection seen earlier. Flu vaccines also don’t protect for a full year.
@H.R. – I caught a nice little 2,5 foot Tiger shark on Monday.
My brother took me surf fishing in FLA for Whiting. But I caught a 1′ nurse shark! So that is my biggest shark catch! We let her go.
@Simon Derricutt! – SHHHHHH!!!! The mRNA vaccine was a noble experiment. But is showing its flaws! Let the little liberals continue to take it! In 2 years there will not be enough of them left to vote in Pelousi for her house seat!
So as ye sow, so as ye shall reap.
Simon: Coronavirus vaccines are no longer considered experimental treatments. The rumors that US insurance companies won’t pay out on death policies because the treatment given EMERGENCY (temporary) approval and strongly recommended by both the FDA and CDC have been debunked in many places. Emergency approval does not mean experimental. Those who volunteered for clinical trials were getting an experimental treatment. I suspect the same rumors now originating from France will also be debunked.
As I have pointed out several times before, about 10,000 people die every day (1 in 33,000) in the US of all causes. One to two million doses of vaccine have been administered on an average day. There are going to be tens of thousand of people who die within one or two or five day of getting vaccinated MERELY BY CHANCE. I’ve just had on my second booster and VAERS has been prompting me by text almost daily to report ANY POSSIBLE side effects. They didn’t do that after my flu vaccination and few would bother to report side effects from a flu vaccine because everyone knows they are safe. With all of the publicity about side effects from COVID vaccines, many side effects that have occurred simply by chances are being reported. Take cancer, for example, a disease that usually requires multiple mutations to strike the same cell and often takes years to develop. If I’m diagnosed with lung cancer tomorrow, it couldn’t have been “caused” by my second booster or first booster and almost certainly wasn’t caused by my first two vaccinations a year ago. If I was diagnosed with leukemia, there is a remote chance that the immune stimulation from vaccination helped trigger uncontrolled proliferation of a white blood cell in my bone marrow that already had some mutations in growth promoting or suppressing genes. Maybe someday an FDA statistician looking a VAERS data will prove that a cause-and-effect relationship exists. However, when the death rate has been enhance by 10-30% by COVID during surges over the past two years. That means that the risk benefit of vaccination and boosters is almost certainly highly favorable. It doesn’t mean that I should neglect the larger risk of heat disease and cancer during this pandemic.
You are certainly correct that the current mRNA vaccines can not produce herd immunity. Neither can natural infection – which is what the GBD prescribed.
Only liberal conspiracy theorist formerly were stupid enough to believe that the normal Americans who work at the FDA (with civil service protection) and the expert doctors who advise them – both of whom have with family members who are personally getting vaccinated and who family members and patients are getting vaccinated – are getting corrupted by Big Pharma. pg shadow would make Elizabeth Warren proud.
Why are heath care officials eager to vaccinate as many school age children as possible. The chances of these children – at least when healthy – dying of COVID are negligible. When ending the pandemic through herd immunity was possible, vaccinating as many people as possible was essential, but the possibility of herd immunity is now gone. The only reason I can see for pushing vaccination of school children is to prevent the possibility of needing to close schools again should a new and perhaps more deadly variant arrive. This is a great reason for pushing vaccination (and one booster for children. In my county, 12 of 15 recent large outbreaks have occurred in schools as almost everyone is expecting to return to a normal state. Given that 500 Americans are still dying of COVID every day (200,000 per year), some precautions arguably still appear to be reasonable, I’m just not sure why authorities think vaccination will significantly mitigate the risk schools might have to close again.
YMMV announces that Denmark is suspending its vaccination program on May 15, A little context would help.
People who want them are still able to get boosters or vaccination.
89% of those over 12 are fully vaccinated and 76% have received boosters, In total, that’s 2.25 doses/person vs 1.72 in the US. 30% of Americans have received boosters.
During the recent omicron surge, 45% of Danes tested positive, while only 10% of Americans did. It’s hard to judge what fraction of total infections either country’s testing program missed, but the Danes must be near or at herd immunity with respect to omicron at least until protection begins to fade. The CDC recently reported that 58% of Americans had detectable antibodies characteristic of natural infection with SARS, but didn’t determine what fraction had high enough antibody levels to be considered “immune”. Only 33% of those over 65 had antibodies while 75% of children did.
Immunity from both natural infection and vaccination is unusually high in Denmark and far higher than in the US. Nevertheless they expect to starting vaccination in the fall to prepare for a possible winter surge.
Perhaps the same group of pandemic experts looking at this data might recommend that Denmark back off on vaccination until this coming fall, but encourage the US to catch up as fast as possible. And perhaps conspiracy theorists would prefer to believe that US authorities are merely under the control of greedy Big Pharma, which wants more boosters to increase profits.
https://www.mycentraloregon.com/2022/04/28/denmark-announces-it-is-temporarily-pausing-its-covid-vaccination-campaign/
Noting the copious volume of text produced by Franktoo, and how it reads like a Company Press Release or Big Pharma Lobbiest, it got me wondering… who has the time (and, since time is money, the money…) to make such postings? Who oh so carefully turns objections to Talking Point replies? So I did a little NSLOOKUP on line at https://www.nslookup.io
Very interesting results…. Now normally I won’t dox or “out” an IP address. Just make a vague reference to the geography or domain holder… but these are weird. I’ve replaced the 2 lowest order digits with xx. Note that it is a “business” block in Washington D.C. (and what “business” is Washington in?..). Then note the complete lack of records. AAAA records. SOA Start Of Authority. Mail server. Nothing. Just the parent Telco in DC. So who in DC has the power to make a telco hide thier RFC Required records? Makes a fella go “HMMmmmmm”. So error, TLA, or connected Friends Of Governmrnt?
I’m suspecting Franktoo is our highest ranking Govt Connected Troll assigned yet.
Might be interesting to see what other sites discussing Big Pharma Crimes have had “visitors” from that IP block, or named Franktoo….
I don’t have the time to chase it up right now, what with fishing and house hunting to do…
But for the rest of you engaging: Take what comfort you can in knowing you are bring graced by a DC Denizen without any identity to his IP address… wiped clean by someone…
I’ll cross check this result later on a linux box…. just to assure it isn’t a Web site failure.
I searched some of the sentences. Not the first time those were digitized for purpose.
@E.M. – As I wrote above, “When you care enough to send the very best.”
😎
Franktoo – “You are certainly correct that the current mRNA vaccines can not produce herd immunity. Neither can natural infection – which is what the GBD prescribed.”
From the start, these vaccinations were incapable of producing herd immunity, because it was known that they were non-sterilising. Natural immunity from having had the disease is however sterilising, and gives rise to herd immunity. Herd immunity is where the percentage of non-immune people is low-enough that infectious people don’t encounter enough non-immune people when infectious for the total number of infected people to increase. It’s mathematically and statistically defined, but depends on individual actions so isn’t that precise. More of a rule of thumb.
Of course, a mutation can occur which negates that herd immunity, and coronaviruses mutate frequently. Though people can get sick with the new mutation, they remain immune to the old one. That immunity has been shown to last decades, effectively lifelong.
“Why are heath care officials eager to vaccinate as many school age children as possible. The chances of these children – at least when healthy – dying of COVID are negligible. When ending the pandemic through herd immunity was possible, vaccinating as many people as possible was essential, but the possibility of herd immunity is now gone.”
That possibility of herd immunity was never there, because the vaccine was non-sterilising. That fact would have been known to all the professionals involved. Thus vaccinating schoolkids never made any sense. In fact, vaccinating people under around age 50 never really made much sense. Although some people under this age did become ill and died, the connection between deficient vitamin-D and how ill people became with Covid was known fairly early on, so it’s likely that a bit of government advice about diet and supplements (and spending time in the sunshine) would have reduced that death-toll.
Gibraltar had a very high vaccine take-up, with the official figure exceeding 100% (probably means some undocumented inhabitants got the vaccine, too). That didn’t stop the next wave, though.
After vaccination, and allowing a couple of weeks for the antibody titre to build up to its peak of around 100x the normal titre that the body would produce in response to a challenge to the immune system, the antibody titre then decreases at a rate of around 40% per month. I haven’t seen data as to what proportion of those antibodies are just binding, and what percentage are neutralising, but the proportion of neutralising antibodies seems to be low. Overall, though, the benefit of vaccination/boosting has totally gone after 5-6 months. I think this was deemed acceptable because it was expected that the virus would be gone by then, but of course it didn’t go and instead we got the standard appearance of successive waves over years.
” Take cancer, for example, a disease that usually requires multiple mutations to strike the same cell and often takes years to develop. If I’m diagnosed with lung cancer tomorrow, it couldn’t have been “caused” by my second booster or first booster and almost certainly wasn’t caused by my first two vaccinations a year ago.”
Since the immune system normally keeps cancers controlled and kills of cancerous cells, diverting those resources to producing 100x the antibodies it normally needs for an illness could well be the thing that allows a cancer to suddenly develop when it appeared to have been cured. That seems to have happened to Ken (a friend of one of my oldest friends), and very dramatically and over weeks. Maybe not helped by the focussing of the health service on Covid rather than routine healthchecks.
Early on (April 2020), there was existence proof of a successful treatment method in Spain – see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833340/#!po=34.9057 . Took a while before the study got published, but people at the top should have been aware of it anyway. After all, that’s their job…. Thus even without vaccinations, a treatment was possible that resulted in zero deaths in an old-folks home where we’d expect most deaths to be the normal situation. Asthma treatments and antihistamines – cheap and effective. No need for mechanical ventilators or Oxygen supplies. Just standard medications.
Thus there was never any legal justification for an emergency use authorisation for the vaccines anyway, since a medication route existed that was safe. In the 2005 NIH report on SARS, Chloroquine was shown to be helpful if given in the first few days after symptoms, and given the similarity (it’s in the name, after all) it was expected that this would also help with SARS-Covid-2. Hydroxychloroquine would be expected to be a bit safer with fewer side-effects. The essential thing here was to give the medication early enough, to stop the virus replicating and give the immune system time to deal with it before it was overwhelmed by there being too many viruses replicating.
Thus it’s a bit complex overall. Early treatments and prophylactics work, as does having a high-enough level of vitamin-D. Vaccination may be needed for people with a poor immune system, or fat bastards who don’t take enough care of their nutrition and don’t spend enough time in the sunshine. Interestingly, seems that breast cancers are also related to vitamin-D levels – again that pointer than the immune system deals with cancers in normal operation, and making sure it has enough “fuel” is a useful thing to do. Current adverts say that 50% of us will have to deal with some sort of cancer (admittedly advertising medical fixes for it) so maybe supplementing could improve those chances somewhat.
For the authorities, probably easier to shotgun the vaccine to everyone to reduce the perceived overall risk, rather than tell people what they could do to reduce the personal risk. In truth, though, we cannot know the long-term risks of the vaccines because too much was new. We also can’t know of the long-term risks of Covid (with its thousands of mutations available) either, but reducing the replication-rate by using medication must reduce that risk, thus telling people to stay home with symptoms until they either recover or get ill enough to need hospital is not an optimal solution.
Seems India gives everyone with symptoms medication (which includes Ivermectin), and also gives the same to their contacts. Looks like it’s working well, too. Much cheaper than Remdesivir or the other recent offerings, and it works. India has a good policy. Then again, they haven’t got much choice because they haven’t got anywhere close to the doctor/patient ratio the West has. They need a cheap do-it-yourself fix.
The perceived advantage of the mRNA technology is that it can be mostly standardised, with the actual mRNA quickly adjusted to produce the protein desired. Thus once you can figure out the molecule you want to make, you can code for it in an afternoon and have a working vaccine that should not need much testing since most of the testing has already been done. What you’d be looking for is whether it met the specifications in what it produced. Sounds wonderful – the magic bullet. Unfortunately wet chemistry doesn’t always do what you expect. I suppose you’ve read the Japanese report of finding the mRNA doesn’t stay where it is injected, but instead concentrates in testes, ovaries, and lymph nodes all over the body? It also doesn’t disappear in a few days as stated, but can be there 3 months later. Complex thing, the body….
@Simon:
Yup. AND, when the shot is not aspirated, some percentage of them will be into an artery or vein. In those cases, the mRNA is spread all over the body, rapidly. Very little “stays in the muscle”. You get a cascade of Bad Things as all sorts of organs are involved in making spike proteins. The most immediate being the lining of the blood vessels and heart. Thus all those young healthy male sports players die by the hundreds… Seems you need a working heart to play soccer / football…
Of course, the USA Medical Authorities told everyone not to bother to aspirate the shot… even though it has been standard practice for decades (darned near as long as I can remember).
Today, on Linux, using “whois”, I got a tiny bit more:
So it’s a direct allocation from the telco (business division) to “someone” without identity. It’s been registered since 2009, so a dozen years. It comes out of a data center in Loudoun County, Virginia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashburn%2C_Virginia
So this IP was assigned early in the growth of the area, before there were many people (or private businesses to serve them…) in the area.
Then this bit in Economy:
Now Telos itself is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos_(company)
It’s also possible that this is just an AWS node, and possibly even a “free” one used to set up a VPN ( I think I posted about that some long time back, that you can get a node for free and set up a VPN). But, IIRC, AWS nodes are identified as Amazon owned IPs (though it’s been long enough that would deserve a double check… I could be wrong).
THE really suspicious bit from my POV is the null-space information. Smells more like Defense Contractor or TLA than Amazon. So were I making a directed search, I’d take a look at Telos IP assignments and uses and see if there was a pattern match. (But I don’t care enough right now… This is a minor muse for over morning coffee or when trying to fall asleep; not a serious Dig Here! event…)
So my “best guess” so far is a contractor assigned to spread The Party Line, either for a TLA directly or more likely (both for cost and for deniability) via a Security Contractor who subcontracted to another individual (2 indirections…) but provided the secure anon access.
Don’t have a problem with that. Just good to know when possible.
Though there is the small chance this is a Bot from one of the University connections or contractors. But I don’t think so. While it DOES have the signature “never directly address a criticism or acknowledge a fault”; that is shared with experienced Trolls. The use of language is very good and both syntax and grammar are standard English without obvious artifacts (or regionalisms… or even much personal character…) Apparent “year level” of the language is college (ought to dump it through one of those education level analyzers, but only 1/2 cup into morning coffee ;-) so a bit of a reach for common home grown Bots, though likely available to Agencies. Would be nice if it indulged in some “chit chat” or interpersonal exchanges or would even remotely budge “off topic” from the assigned task (yes, I know, on a Ukraine Thread the whole Covid thing is “off topic”… but that’s another sign of “unaware of context”…)
Overall, I’d say it is unlikely to be a Bot, but if it is one, it’s a good one. Either University Experimental or TLA sponsored (which may be the same thing).
My money is on subcontractor to an Agency.
Gee… a search on “CIA Loudoun” is fun. Seems they practice things there, and not always all that well…
https://www.thedrive.com/news/2821/cia-forgets-plastic-explosives-in-a-working-school-bus
Hmmm…. April 1. Is there a different date to show it isn’t a hoax?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/cia-left-explosive-material-on-loudoun-school-bus-after-training-exercise/2016/03/31/428f9824-f78d-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html
So it does look like the TLAs play there. Though maybe not assigning The Very Best they have…
Does look like a place with a high presence:
https://mediamonarchy.com/death-of-william-bennett-cia-contrac/
Well, it does look like a pattern.
Sometimes I regret that the CIA didn’t like my resume enough to call me back / recruit. At other times it looks like maybe it was a better career move to not be mixed up in their line of work. What with folks doing “what they do”…
Hit “post” too soon! A search on “CIA Ashburn” is amusing too:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CIA-Ashburn-Reviews-EI_IE41381.0,3_IL.4,11_IC1130338.htm?filter.iso3Language=eng
Snicker…
Simon D: “Interestingly, seems that breast cancers are also related to vitamin-D levels – again that pointer than the immune system deals with cancers in normal operation, and making sure it has enough “fuel” is a useful thing to do. Current adverts say that 50% of us will have to deal with some sort of cancer (admittedly advertising medical fixes for it) so maybe supplementing could improve those chances somewhat.”
Supplementing could put you in the 50% that do not have to deal with cancer. And as you point out, perhaps that 50/50 number will improve to 60/40 or 70/30 who won’t have to deal with cancer.
Of course, that would mean a sizable reduction in expensive cancer medications and surgeries. It would seem to me that if you are in the cancer treatment biz, you’d want to make just enough progress against cancer to keep the money flowing, but not so much progress as to put a kink in the money-flow hose.
Word has gotten out about vitamin D and the Mexican Beer virus. It will be interesting to see if cancers begin to drop after this rise has finished its run.
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A side note: In some casual conversations, I have encountered several people who took the jab, but now say they will not take any booster. It seems the concern of a lot of people has changed from getting the bug to the possible side effects of the mRNA therapies.
I know of a set of twins where one moved to mostly indoors in the northern midwest, and got the jabs, while the other took extra Vit-D and sun in California and chose to stay a pureblood. The one in the Northern Midwest has had breast cancer surgery this year. The other, a clean mamogram.
Make of it what you will, sample size of 1 not statistically significant (or even really useful). IMHO only valid use is to point at a potential “Dig Here!” topic to investigate.
Might be interesting to look at relative cancer rates in North Dakota vs Texas or to compare Progressives vs Purebloods in a few years….
Part of the problem with cancers is that they’re multifactorial. You too often end up trading one kind for another. Closer to the equator (all other things necessary and sufficient being equal), you get more skin cancers. Such a study, properly done (which includes a vigorous error analysis and propagation), would be very useful.
The Franktoo issue is a bit like one on an outdoors site some years ago. Questairtoo appeared as reasonable and asking questions, and slowly became a contrary advocate and quite aggressive. When it was pointed out that he had no interest in persuasion and was only there to show a different audience how tough he was, he disappeared.
One thing about any agents, they should really be in place for a while as an occasional commenter before they start on their mission.
Frank2 – Simon: Coronavirus vaccines are no longer considered experimental treatments.
Baaap! Wrong again! Most still are. Seriously! If you want to be a good troll, at least get the latest facts! You are just a pathetic troll!
Most of the mRNA vaccines are still experimental because the time limit has not been met Moron!
@EM – Re: Troll Frank2 – You had more info than I could discern, but I figured that out a long time ago. He is a TLA troll, probably reporting directly to Fauxci. As he has all his lying talking points down.
I stopped reading him a third of the way through his latest bullshit diatribe. I guess that is why they are creating the department of Information that will make sure everyone follows their lies!
Bye Franky tutu! What an asswipe!
A while back I asked if anyone had seen maps of the war situation in Ukraine.
Here’s a more recent map I found over on CTH.
@PhilJourdan:
Please remember my One Big Rule of no “Insults to the person”. That applies to Trolls as well. (Though I’m still trying to decide how to not apply it to Bots when you can’t tell who’s a Troll vs a good bot…).
Franktoo could just be a highly indoctrinated true believer “Useful Idiot” (not an insult as it is the Socialist term of art – hey, they defined it, I’m just using it) so deserving of some politeness.
Though having just seen the news of the new Biden Ministry Of Truth, I’m much more inclined to believe Franktoo is an early recruit; given parallel onset in time…and geography.
So please, hold the insults. We have an early adopter opportunity to profile and develop identification and neutralizing techniques for Minustry Of Truth propaganda agents, and I’d rather not lose that advantage by scaring them away….
Per that map I found over on CTH, it’s obvious Russia is getting its @$$ kicked.
@H.R,:
It is? How so? All I see is Russia occupying the East where Russian ethnics live, and in position to make a “cut off Ukrainian army in a salient” move.
Then again, I don’t know half the symbols used or the veracity of the map… it seems to have arrows and dots everywhere red.
I do have to say my “Putin not wanting to destroy but pushing slowly for surrender of Ukraine with minimum damage” thesis is now suffering from too long an elapsed time. So if not that, floundering gains a lot of credibility.
@E.M. – Same sentiments from me as you just laid out. That’s why there was no winky or /sarc.
That map does not fit the narrative that the brave and valiant Ukraine forces are kicking butt. If Putin intends to control East Ukraine and sit alongside of the the arms supply route to pick off shipments to the East from Poland, then it looks like the Russians are at that point.
So besides that bit of snark about Ukraine kicking Russia’s @$$, I don’t know exactly what all to make of it. But it’s the first new map I’ve seen in a while.
It is amazing how we react to what we are told verses what we should know.
IMHO, we have the first digital war zone of public affairs.
Just sayin, prove me wrong.
None of this adds up.
Sorry, can’t help it.
H.R. – “It will be interesting to see if cancers begin to drop after this rise has finished its run.”
I get the impression we’re going to see quite a rise in cancers over the next few years. Though as CDQ says cancers are multi-factorial, it does still look to me that the immune system normally removes them, so any reduction of its efficacy in doing that will probably lead to a higher incidence. With a bit of luck, people will gradually recover from the vaccinations and their immune systems will become fully-functional again, but that’s not certain. We just don’t know. Of course, I’m looking at this as an engineer and programmer, rather than as a doctor, so I could be getting it wrong. I see the adjuvants as raising the priority of dealing with the programmed virus at the expense of all the other things the immune system normally deals with. AFAIK the utility of adjuvants was accidentally discovered, and far from being useful things to add to the mixture injected they are in fact essential in telling the immune system that this stuff needs a permanent memory of how to deal with it. Without the adjuvants, you don’t get a long-term protection – the immune system deals with the challenge and basically forgets it because it wasn’t a big-enough problem.
Of course, I wonder about that 50% figure for cancer. Seems to be getting much higher than when I was young. Could it be the annual ‘flu jab might be a reason? I’ve never taken the ‘flu jab, but a lot of people do. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve really looked at vaccination anyway, since I had the main ones as a kid and got a few more when I needed to travel to India in 1986, but otherwise don’t go asking for new jabs. Now I’m starting to question the effects of vaccination, and whether there can be too many of them.
@Simon:
Like you, I had most of the “childhood diseases” so never got vaxxed for them.
I did get smallpox vaccination (one of the last), polio (both kinds), whooping cough (I think) and whatever else was normal vaccination in about 1960 as a several year old child.
Now we juice up babies with a few dozen in their first year (many in their first months) and have more messed up kids than ever… so I think you can have too many, and importantly, too fast and too early.
Adjuvants mostly just poke the immune system hard to react to anything around ATM so less vaccine is needed to get the desired response. Most of them look like horrible stuff to inject, IMHO. Any relationship to the increasing load of allergies being seen? Nobody cares to look.
I had one flu shot once. Nothing happened. I no longer bother with it. Seems a waste of my time as I don’t get “seasonal flu” anymore anyway; having had it a couple of times decades ago.
FWIW, my mother developed cancer a few months after her first flu shot (decades ago when they were new). We all said it was a coincidence. Now I’m starting to wonder…
It also appears Russia is trying to isolate Ukraine from ports and more generally the sea. This may become the permanent state of the geography there.
That map above shows Russian troop movement and size, likely a Ukraine provided map, only shows Ukraine movements in the north, the rest looks static. Some armchair general drew in pincer moves to indicate cutting off the Eastern pocket. Looks to me to be a trap to crush Russian troops between the best regular forces in the east and the huge less trained irregulars from the west. much like that done to the invasion force that attempted to split Ukraine 2 months ago. Putin is no Military General, he was a KGB coronal. So far he is following his old script that he first used when Yeltsin put him in charge to subdue Chechnya.
First he jumps up and down and threatens massive force and destruction and everyone goes OMG it is the Russians coming. Then he sends in an Expeditionary force as a police action to capture the government. and the locals say no and kick them out!. Then he sends in heavy force to destroy everything and everyone that rejects his demands. Scorched Earth. then gives a favored group control to rule for him.
This time he is up against a large enough Nation that can counter his forces and they have been laying for him for 8 years, All of NATO is supplying the Ukraine’s with the latest man operated equipment to take out air and armor forces.
Putin is by law limited in the forces he can muster for an Expeditionary Force and Nucs can only be used to counter a massed army that threatens Russia. These are locals driving out invaders, Putin can’t call out All the Russian military for his little adventure and he can’t Nuc Europe. It is the way The Russian system is set up and Putin has to operate under their rules.
This is a nimble lightly armored David armed with a nasty sling shot counter a big slow heavy armored and armed Goliath.
Putin has been preparing for this for years with his old KGB psyops drum beat of saving Eastern Europe and Russia from the “Western Nazis that have now infested Ukraine” most of which is just propaganda shouted long and loud. Zelensky, a front for the Nazis, was supposed to fold at first threat, he turned into a patriot and Putin’s forces fell into the trap. Now in the East a trap has been set. Will little general Putin send his limited forces into another trap? My bet is he has to follow his nature and go for the tempting kill zone. So who will get “Killed”? The Russian Goliath or the Ukraine David.
My bet is that David will prevail.
Another thing to remember is that if you don’t die from A, you will still die from B to Z. Fewer traumatic deaths, and infections are one kind of trauma, the more chronic diseases will be seen.
@pg – It would be nice to know the source of that map.
I suspect you are right about it being produced by Ukraine. It doesn’t show much of Ukrainian forces, which makes sense. Ukraine wouldn’t want to give away information on their troops and would show off how much they know about the Russian troops.
Our asinine congress critters are insane, of course: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=245746
Fun, fun, fun! https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/neocons-running-the-russia-show-what
My apologies to Frank2 and our host. I should not have called him an asswipe. I retract it.
Next time I will just say TP.
@H.R. says:
30 April 2022 at 3:08 am
Actually, that conforms almost exactly as how Pointman said it is playing out. I fail to see the “ass kicking” of the Russians. And given that the map is probably Ukraine based, it is a lot worse.
Doing some searches for Ukrainian troop deployments, all that pops is a map from well before the Russian deployment.
Yet lots and lots of maps claiming to know where Russians are at. A few showing NATO all outside Ukraine.
VERY strange that Russian locations would be clearly known and ally Ukraine completely unknowable…. IMHO this indicates STRONG Selective Bias and the maps are likely fabricated propaganda.
EM – “FWIW, my mother developed cancer a few months after her first flu shot (decades ago when they were new). We all said it was a coincidence. Now I’m starting to wonder…”
By chance, Karl Denninger also commented along those lines at https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3825689 . Seems logical. Slight quibble is that AFAIK whales don’t get cancer at all, and no-one knows exactly why. May be a few others, such as tardigrades (but they are really weird anyway). In any case, looks like messing with the immune system carries a risk that we actually can’t quantify for an individual, though the statistics will produce a specific risk-level. If that’s looked for, and if looking for it is politically acceptable.
On the maps of Ukraine, best to treat them as propaganda anyway. Satellite photos would imply that they probably have some truth involved, but the best lies contain enough truth to be plausible. Despite your explanations of looking from Putin’s viewpoint, I’m still not really seeing reasons for the tactics used. You don’t win hearts and minds by killing kids and grandmothers, or by bombing cities into rubble. There should have been a better way to achieve the objectives. I think Putin maybe had bad information, and expected his troops to be treated as liberators. Also, maybe the bribes that were intended for Ukrainian officials didn’t reach them and instead disappeared into Russian bank-accounts, so the groundwork (buying local politicians and leaders) that had been intended didn’t actually happen. Hard to make sense of all this since we all knew that Ukraine was pretty corrupt. The deaths and devastation are very real, and I really can’t see the profit for Russia. If they’d just taken over Donbass and Luhansk and stopped the shelling there, I doubt if anyone in the West would really have been that concerned, seeing that as stopping a war rather than starting one. With hypersonic missiles in the mix, the idea of having a “buffer state” between Russia and Nato no longer has much utility, and in any case I’m sure Russia would use tactical nukes on any army trying to invade over land.
Fun, fun, fun! https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/neocons-running-the-russia-show-what
One of the commentaters there seems to be confused about who the neocons/neoliberals were/are. He seems to think it was just people like him who got sucked into the propaganda, as opposed to poor Trotskyites with no party to call their own. He probably doesn’t know what a Rockefeller Republican was either.
Anyway, I still remember good old Ann Coulter joking that she couldn’t be a neocon because she wasn’t jewish.