If you thought, as I did, that low cost, readily available treatments and prophylactics were ‘limited’ to vitamin D, zinc, NAC, oxygenating therapies like intravenous hydrogen peroxide, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and a few others – basically, chemicals, both natural and artificial – plus sunshine, well, then, you were wrong.
The US (and other) government agencies not only completely failed to promote these (and in many cases suppressed them) but they also failed to promote hydrotherapy. Basically, you increase a person’s core body temperature, preferably keeping the head cool. The mechanism discussed involved a non-linear increase in interferon production, observed at a core temperature of 102 deg Fahrenheit, which is critical in keeping the body’s immune response more limited towards the viral replication stage, and not have organ failure due to massive inflammatory response.* However, exact mechanisms never have to be understood to make valid observations about net cause and effect. After 20 minutes of heat, cold water is applied with massage, to “lock in” some of the heat via vaso-constriction.
This was uncovered by a Dr. Roger Seheult, discussed in “Doctor Explains Form Of PREVENTION & TREATMENT of Viruses | Roger Seheult & Lewis Howes”, on youtube, who investigated how the Spanish flu epidemic was treated. In conventional (army) hospitals, where such things as suppressing fever via aspirin was done (not a good thing), they had “10, 15 percent” come down with pneumonia. In so-called “sanitariums”, where hydrotherapy (called “fomentations” at the time) was applied, he doesn’t state the rate of pneumonia, but he does state the radical difference in mortality: 1% vs. 6% in army camp hospitals.
Oh, jeez. Louise, does anybody think that a humane government, which wasn’t prostituted to profit-seeking enterprises, would fail to educate it’s citizenry about a low cost therapy that could be done at home*, instead of basically encouraging everybody to do zero treatments at home, but go to the hospital when you start having problems breathing?
==================
Seheult speaks well of hydro4covid dot com and hydrotherapyathome dot com
* I mean an approximation of “fomentations”, which was labor intensive. Viz., hot/cold showers. Although Seheult didn’t mention it, a shower cap worn with crushed ice could keep the head somewhat cool, though it won’t cover the carotid artery, which got attention in the sanitarium treatments.
Seheult also says,
“Interferon is a protein and it does exactly as it sounds it interferes with viral infections what sars covid 2 does at the very beginning of this is it takes interferon and suppresses it and it does it in a way because it it uses its proteins in a way that it suppresses the body’s ability to create interferon to use interferon we know that from from very well conducted uh studies that have shown that people who have innate problems with interferon always seem to have very bad courses with stars cov2 people who have mutations with low interferon levels have very bad courses of sars 2. so we want to strengthen interferon correct”
An obvious question is: what is the distribution of poor interferon genes like amongst various countries and races?
From bloomberg, 82 year old Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer in a speech on April 6 rejected the idea that the Court was conservative. Well, in a way he’s right. It’s not conservative. It’s reactionary. Breyer is supposed to be one of the “good” as in less godawful justices from a progressive point of view, but his comments show how divorced from reality he and the Court are. I suppose if you work in a horror show long enough even the three-headed boy begins to look normal after a while. Still I wonder how Breyer’s recent comments fit into the current campaign to ease him out before McConnell is in position for another Frankenstein choice.
“in other rich countries, at least half the economy is not for profit, sometimes more. But in America, it’s just a few percent. So American life is made mostly only of the values of predatory capitalism now”
“Of course I want my children to know about slavery and Jim Crow. But I want it to be balanced out with the rest of the truth. They’re not taught about Black people who accomplished things in spite of white supremacy; or about the Black people today who got ahead, built things, achieved things; and those who had opportunities that their ancestors fought for.”
“Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent that’s who they are. More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it.”
“Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.”
“Beyond the noisy conflict between defenders of meritocracy and their woke opponents, our society has chosen, and continues to choose, to educate its children with the apparent aim of making a class of leaders who are disconnected from any real solidarity to others but unable to think for themselves, combining the worst qualities of individualism and conformism.”
In “The Most Massive Scientific Fraud Ever Committed In The US – By Author Jeffrey Smith” you can see the effect on rats, including their testes and liver, from eating GMO corn. It actually changes the color of the testes from pink to blue.
The kind of society that puts up with this, on the one hand (the great American sheeple); and inflicts this (Big Business and plutocratic agendas) is unsurprisingly the kind of society that puts up with suppression of cheap and effective therapies and prophylactics.
=================================
from voltairenet.org: “Covid-19 : failure of the Western approach”
“The Covid-19 epidemic affects the whole world, yet its mortality varies from 0.0003% in China to 0.016% in the United States, i.e. more than 50 times higher. This difference can be explained by genetic differences, but above all by differences in medical approach. It shows that the West is no longer the centre of Reason and Science.
…
All epidemics have historically been successfully fought by a combination of isolating the sick and increasing hygiene.
In the case of a viral epidemic, hygiene is not used to combat the virus, but the bacterial diseases that develop in those infected by the virus. For example, the Spanish flu in 1918-20 was a viral disease. It was actually a benign virus, but in the context of the First World War, very poor hygiene conditions allowed the development of opportunistic bacterial diseases that killed en masse.
From a medical point of view, isolation applies only to the sick and only to them. Never in history has a healthy population been quarantined to control a disease. You will not find any work of medicine older than a year anywhere in the world that contemplates such a measure.
…
Most viral epidemics last three years. In the case of Covid-19, the natural duration of the epidemic will be extended by the administrative duration of the containment.
The confinements in China had no more medical reason. They were interventions by the central government against the errors of local governments, in the context of the Chinese theory of the “mandate from Heaven” [3].
The use of surgical masks by a healthy population to combat a respiratory virus has never been effective. Indeed, until Covid-19, none of the known respiratory viruses are transmitted by sputum, but by aerosol. Only gas masks are effective. “
I left out perhaps the most intriguing part of the voltairenet article. I know that hydroxychloroquine was part of the Chinese formulary from a year ago, Feb. I’ve wondered what is their state of the art, since then (esp. since hydroxycholoroquine has been shown to be of little to no benefit when used late in the disease process). AFAIK, western mainstream media never showed the least interest in doing investigative journalism on this topic. Just like they seem totally disinterested in foreign medical systems, in general. That’s one reason the Frontline documentary “sick around the world” was so interesting. Nobody else was telling their stories.
The article states,
“States that have made the opposite choice to those in the West, i.e. those that have prioritised health care over vaccines, have collectively developed a cocktail of cheap drugs (including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin) that massively treat Covid (see box). The results are so spectacular that Westerners question the figures published by these states, led by China.”
The article then shows a photocopy of an “Excerpt from a confidential Swiss document.”, that shows many of things discussed by people looking outside the mask-plus-lockdown box, such as vitamin D and ivermectin. However, it’s not clear that this describes a cocktail protocol in Switzerland or China; or maybe somewhere else.
I’d like to know the backstory about why it’s confidential. Perhaps its from a hospital administrator whose career would be ended if he/she was determined to be the leaker.
About Spanish Flu lethality or benignity, I have read that the Spanish Flu was very lethal upon contraction, often within 2-3 days of first presentation of symptoms, most especially in the young and the healthy, in whom a “cytokine storm” resulted in lungs too dysfunctional to intake oxygen.
Would a bacteria move that fast? I don’t think so.
So I will discard a theory or advice based on ” Spanish Flu as a virus was benign in its own right, as are most such viruses.”
As part of the Supreme Court story, Biden has issued an Executive Order creating a 36 member commission to issue a report within 180 days principally with:
“(iii) An analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals.”
It’s important to remember that the principal function of commissions is to look like you are doing something when, in fact, you are doing nothing and only want to kick the can down the road long enough for people interested in the subject to get bored and go away. Tells in this case are the size and make-up of the commission, large and varied, no iconoclasts, in other words a recipe for a long insipid mishmash. The commission will also not be tasked with making any recommendations. I mean why even bother? other than the obvious, to waste time.
i remember it being mentioned early on that parts of Italy during Black Plague time had figured out to quarantine everyone to prevent spreading, and even provide “UBI”. but they abandoned it because the Lords were unhappy that the poors were getting bread without work and might lose their ability to bend knees and doff caps vigorously enough.
quarantining only the sick is only possible if you know who the sick are.
since our Lords decided to let the virus become endemic because it suits their business models, here we are trying to keep isolated from we-know-not-whom who might be carrying the thing.
let it rip a bit more and then we can have even more lockdowns about which people will whine. because those are only necessary after failing to carry out other containment measures. but instead of whining at those who choose to make lockdowns necessary by forcing the Owners to ramp up test/track/trace/quarantine + prophylactics and treatments both early and late.
now we will just have to suffer rolling lockdowns, variant chasing, and constant yearly injections as test subjects for new, untried and barely tested “vaccines”, all while maintaining all of the other measures as well since they still don’t know if these vaccines actually prevent spreading.
someone’s getting rich, though. and that’s all that counts in this “society”.
Rioting among Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland protesting an Irish Sea border induces EU to postpone suit against UK for failing to implement the sea border.
Also an issue: the decision by the Crown not to prosecute as a COVID restrictions violation, Sinn Fein politicians at an IRA funeral.
Hugh —
There really is only one point of debate re: Supreme Court expansion.
When someone like McConnell rigs the rules, you smack them so hard they consider long and hard about playing games in the future. While, at the same time, you blame the entire smackdown on them for creating the need for a smackdown in the first place.
Playing “hardball” in defense of institutional integrity requires that the players recognize that they need the institution’s integrity in order to prosper. It comes down to whether a powerful individual thinks he is better off cheating in a world of cheaters and thieves or, alternatively, accepting limits on his own freedom in order to achieve, from collective efforts channelled thru public institutions, some protection from the “freedom” of others.
The neoliberal game, that Biden played thruout his career, was always predicated on the idea that, given well-functioning institutions, all the gains to the powerful lie on the path of undermining public institutions and norms. Neoliberal ideology obscures and denies much of the need to constrain the powerful or enable the popular will in opposition to private greed and domination.
We are far down the path of destroying the state insofar as the state, in law and policy, can serve a common, public interest. Politically, the Democratic Party as led by the Clinton-Obama-Biden faction, exists to veal pen any idealist impulse play “hardball” with the likes of McConnell.
Sadly, the idea that the Biden opposes McConnell diametrically is unsupported by evidence. They are rivals in serving the plutocracy. Both lead minority Parties and are both at odds with their Party’s respective electoral bases. The drama of the narrative put forth in political Media of their strategies in tactical manuever is designed to keep those dissatisfied electoral bases engaged but impotent, while the looting continues.
The full horror is difficult to look at, and like a train wreck still in progress, difficult to look away from.
Eric, Biden and the Democrats can either be honest or they can play games. The commission is a game. If I were being charitable, I would say that the Biden agenda is first covid relief, then infrastructure, the commission allows him to delay any SCOTUS reform until after these. But—what we are not being told is how many votes are needed to enact those reforms. If it’s 60, it’s dead before it gets there. If it’s 50, does anybody know where Manchin and Sinema stand on any of this? At a bare minimum and no matter whatever else is going on, Schumer should be pressing to fill every federal court vacancy in an expedited fashion and not just with anyone but with New Dealers.
Re Sinema and Manchin, Schumer should be reminding them that while they have a lot of power now, they won’t always, and pay back is a b—. And Schumer should make it his Job One that it will be. Does Schumer have the stones to do it? Has he ever?
If Biden and the Democrats allow themselves to get bogged down or play too many games, they are setting themselves up to get trounced in 2022. If they were smart, and they aren’t, they would return to Dean’s old 50 state strategy and be recruiting and building for 2022 now.
Putin may have finally had enough. From “Incentives: Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin possible moves – Donbass crisis.” @ thesaker blog:
“President Biden has handed Putin the justification for a first strike by openly stating his intention to conduct a cyber attack on Russia “soon.” That is a public declaration of war. The fact that the Russian ambassador was recalled from Washington and has not been sent back should be a wakeup call to America that DC itself is on the potential target list.
For these reasons I believe that there is a high probability that Russia will strike first before NATO can fully put in place the forces for planned exercises for this Summer. The strike will probably be non-nuclear, focused against US forces only, and its purpose will be to delegitimize the US power in the eyes of the junior members of NATO, and to weaken or cripple the US ability to project power.
If China and Iran see Russia strike the US military, it would not be surprising if they also pile on using their own hypersonic missiles to destroy US Navy assets in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.”
I think it’s extremely doubtful Iran would “pile on”, unless they’re attacked by the US or Israel in a major way, first. The Chinese option is more credible; and, in fact, it’s earlier occurred to me that the threat of same may deter the US from pushing Ukraine into a foolish attack.
If the Russians strike the US outside the Ukraine area, and for some reason forgo sinking ships, as thesaker expects, striking Syria makes the most sense, since US assets are stealing oil from the part of Syria that we are illegally squatting on.
The answer to neoliberalism is obviously Russian oligarchical autocracy. Too funny. If McDonald so decreed it, his base would vote for Putin as president versus Joe Biden or any democrat. McDonald’s base is this craven. This traitorous. This treasonous. Communists at heart, or worse, Stalinists.
Oh, I totally agree with your stance. I was just highlighting how powerfully effective basing policy on the truth would be, in contrast with their predictable mealy mouthed subterfuge.
You’re dreaming, man. The way to continue discrediting the US military is through the non-conventional means the insurgencies have been using.
No leader w/o a suicide wish dare oppose the US military in a toe to toe conventional battle. The scale of destruction the U.S. could rapidly impose on Russia and China in a conventional warfare scenario would set those countries back decades. Sure, they can match the U.S. military tech in some arenas. But, they can’t even begin to scale their armaments to match the U.S. stockpile.
Now, draw this battle out for a little bit and watch the rest of the world try to compete with the world leader in industrial death production. Absent a nuclear response, China and Russia could not even begin to damage the U.S. infrastructure sufficiently to shut down our arms producers. The reverse isn’t true. As my Father (retired army airborne two-silver star colonel) used to say: You win battles by “being the firstest, with the mostest.”
The U.S. leadership is just itching for some conventional conflict to break out so they can once again “shock and awe” the rest of the world in obedience. And if some country is stupid enough to invite them to do it? Well, that would work out very badly for them.
The U.S. strategy since the Cold War has not changed. Spend absolutely as much as you can on military superiority while maintaining the bare semblance of domestic integrity. Just enough to keep the proles from revolting. Just be a little better at domestic affairs than your foes so you can continue to sink the country’s largesse into arms manufacture.
I mean honestly, who here thinks China would be eclipsing the U.S. GDP were the U.S. to defocus on military spending and plow it back into the economy? Not me.
It’s a balancing act with the final act being total U.S. world dominance. That is precisely what all those think tank generals playing their war scenarios are betting on.
The U.S. military brass want World War III. Fortunately, the rest of the world’s major leaders have been smart enough not to give it to them.
Both Putin and Xi are following the standard playbook of using foreign adventures to distract from their failures at home. Putin blew his response to covid. And while the sputnik V vaccine looks pretty effective, many Russians, unlike the strange collection of Putin-lovers we have here, don’t trust it because they trust him. As for Xi, he too blew at least the initial response to covid, but pushed off to the side is that the Chinese need very rapid economic growth to stay socially stabilized. They have something like an extra 20 million new workers coming off just their farms each year, they have had covid-related lockdowns, slower growth because of the effects of covid on the world economy, and their banking system continues to be a ticking time bomb. And there is the increasing and ongoing US pivot or containment policy. And of course behind that, climate change. Xi strikes me as somewhat more competent than his colleagues, moderately intelligent but limited. So he too will use foreign distractions where he can.
I found a couple interesting comments in a recent NaCap thread. I will copy-paste them here.
Randy G
April 10, 2021 at 12:10 pm
Timbers — Great points.
The U.S backs a putsch led by fascist militias (ironically, Yanukovych had agreed to early elections that he was likely to lose) and then are outraged that regions of the corrupt and dysfunctional country — the Donbas and Crimea — that voted for the deposed President are galvanized to secede. These are areas that are linguistically and culturally Russian.
For the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis the hated Russians (the Moskals) are what the Jews were for the German Nazis — an enemy vermin that threatens ‘their sacred Nation’. How do you live in a country where you are considered vermin for speaking Russian, your normal language, and for not swearing allegiance to fascists who detest you? Once the bloodletting begins, you might be tempted to bolt for the exits.
Incidentally, when I was visiting Ukraine in 2009, including Lugansk and Donetsk, the main cities in the Donbas that declared themselves ‘Republics’ after the Maidan putsch, I had ‘political’ discussions with some Ukrainians (mostly in their 30s) that I met in Kiev.
Alexey, who had a history degree, told me that ‘my government’ (USA) was funding and training fascists in Ukraine, and that those fascists, mainly from Western Ukraine, planned to take power violently. He insisted they were ruthless, they would kill anyone who stood in their way, and there would be a civil war in Ukraine very soon. (One person — Alexey’s mom! — spoke perfect English as she been a university professor in English lit during the Soviet Union; she helped with translations as needed.)
Essentially, I thought Alexey was being melodramatic. Although I don’t consider myself naive when it comes to the malevolence of U.S. ‘foreign policy’, I told Alexey and the other Ukrainians that it seemed unlikely the U.S. would promote fascism and a civil war in Ukraine. After all, the U.S. had won the Cold War, Ukraine and Russia were no longer communist, they were weakened and disorganized countries — especially Ukraine — and what would be the point of destabilizing them any further?
Alexey was clearly annoyed and told me, politely, that I was clueless and had no idea what my government was up to in Ukraine, or how dangerous the situation truly was. He told me that the Ukrainian fascists, if they came to power, would view him as a traitor, deserving of death.
In the years after that discussion, I continued to think of Alexey’s views as melodramatic and maybe even paranoid.
Until February 2014. When everything he had described and anticipated in 2009 came true. Alexey was marked as a ‘traitor’ and he has fled to Krasnodar, Russia with his wife and son. His elderly parents remain in Kiev, but he cannot visit them since he is considered an enemy by the ’new’ U.S. and EU backed ‘democratic’ miracle.
By they way, I did apologize to Alexey for my naive cluelessness regarding the activities of ‘my government’ — AKA the criminal regime on the Potomac.
Reply ↓
km
April 10, 2021 at 2:12 pm
I lived eight years in Ukraine, much of it working for Ukrainian companies, in a Russian language environment I speak Russia and Ukrainian, although I have not a drop of Slavic blood in me, AFAIK. I am not related, by blood or marriage, to a Russian or Ukrainian.
Believe me when I say that the “Russian propaganda” about Ukraine is pretty much entirely true.
So Ukrainian skinheads bad but Russian skinheads good. Got it. And Ukrainians are like nazis because millions of them were deliberately starved to death in the 1920s by Stalin and the Russians while the Russians are like the jews because they inflicted these mass starvations. Seems kind of anti-semitic to me.
But I do get that international frontiers don’t apply to Russia because Russia. If the US interferes abroad, that’s bad, but with Russia, even to the point of annexation, not so much.
A friend in Colorado reports they’ve opened up vaccinations to everyone 16+, which is as young as they’re willing to vaccinate. She herself is 23 and has already gotten the first shot. So it looks like at least some places are now vaccinating everyone who wants it.
Ah, don’t know much about military strategy. Nevertheless, some observations, opinions.
I don’t think either the US or Russia or China has any interest in an all out conventional war, wherein one needs boots on the ground to control the local government. I think all 3 players would be content to destroy the enemies’ infrastructure, if it came to that.
I do think the US wants to pick fights it can definitely win, preferably with terrorist proxies, or NATO allied bodies, depending. As per “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, in most cases, economic warfare is preferred, with an occasional murder, though local thugs in power promote that form of imperialism.
Russia, on the other hand, only wants to not lose fights that it is drawn into. At least, until now, as per the case laid out in the saker blog.
My comment may have been ill-thought out, even given my lack of knowledge of military affairs, as the principle behind thesaker has himself stated that Russian forces in Syria would likely be overwhelmed in the case of feasible attack by the US. Their military isn’t set up for prolonged offensive warfare, far from their shores. I’m afraid that my annoyance that the US is flouting international law, and blatantly stealing from a poor nation, clouded my judgement. For reasons I don’t understand, US sanctions are lately causing starvation in Syria, which the Russians could alleviate, but have not, yet.
However, the Russians have had hypersonic missiles from the 1990’s, and at present, my belief is they can easily sink US Navy ships. This suggests that the Russians may have escalation dominance in the Syrian theater, even without decisive ability to protect Syrian soil. They can also deliver hypersonic missiles from bombers, so they can’t hunt down US ships anywhere they please, I should think.
I’ve read elsewhere that Iran has had escalation dominance in their neighborhood since the 2000’s (and before they had any hypersonic missiles). It they’re smart, they will have developed the ability to destroy Saudi oil infrastructure. I’ve also read that Russia has escalation dominance in the Ukraine, which is expected.
China now has a larger navy than the US. I’ll guess that they have escalation dominance in terms of naval warfare near their east coast. I don’t know about Taiwan, where it’s understood the battleground would be limited to Taiwan.
I’m not necessarily anti-vax, but I am a bit surprised that so many people are rushing to get these COVID vaccines even though there hasn’t been much testing done on them. Especially since the ones pushing them on the public the hardest are the pharma execs and the politicians.
I think we must reform the Supreme Court. I’m not sure what the role of a judiciary should be — given the very bad history of the Court, how much should we constrain the court? Is this one of the governing structures we should just do away with? I’m pretty close to getting there. One of my favorite discussions of the use of state power is Robert Jackson’s speech on the power of federal prosecutors, comments which also apply to judges. Jackson was a Supreme Court justice who took a leave from the court to prosecute the Nuremberg trials.
Assuming we continue with the same structure, I’d argue for something like this — a judge is selected by the president and subject to legislative confirmation for a ten year term. They are eligible for reappointment after the ten years (not before, so that a single president cannot choose the same judge twice). The second appointment is carried out just like the first, with the need for legislative confirmation.
We should figure out how to set radical limits on what the Court can rule on. More and more, we’re seeing rulings that represent what the judges think would be better laws than what the Congress passed and the President signed. And there’s no do-over for a Supreme Court failure. The issue of the broad area of discretion within law enforcement is one of the reasons I like the Jackson speech. Frankly, I think Congress and the executive should just simply ignore the Supreme Court’s determinations that are overreach.
Anyway, this is an issue we need to keep thinking about.
It’s cool. Per usual, I can be a bit over the top before my first cup of Joe kicks in.
The rules of the game are still about who controls the skies in our shrunken world. And whoever controls the skies, controls communications, because the communications facilities are always the first to go.
The team with most drones and guided missiles does the most damage by paralyzing coordination (firstest with the mostest). Once the skies are safe for F-16’s and such due to the massive “unmanned” bombardment on communications and missile defense sites nothing stops the tanks. They blitz to the positions of geographic power under air cover and it’s basically all over but the insurgency.
The only thing that’s changed since WWII is the “unmanned” component. That’s modern warfare at scale in a nutshell.
As much as I hate it, trying to figure out my Dad led to extensive reading of military history and strategy. I’ve read pretty much every book ever written on Viet Nam, as well as Sun Tsu, Clausewitz, Enders Game, and for modern warfare I’d highly recommend Hew Strachan “The Direction of War — Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective. “
I know next to nothing about viruses, but I sure hope that COVID is not like the dengue virus which, according to Wikipedia, “has five serotypes; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications.”
You really can’t dismiss the folly of some mammoth, greed-driven f*ck up by our rulers to worsen the situation when they’ve already blissfully set us on course to turn the planet to cinders and destroy its ecosystems with nary a concern about anything beyond the value of their brokerage accounts, it seems. Not to mention that they’ve done absolutely nothing about the huge population growth that is the source of all of it.
Because you’d think, and again I don’t know much about viruses, that if COVID was similar to the dengue virus in that way then the vaccine could actually increase the risk of serious complications if one gets infected with one of its variants.
So, that’s a thought that runs through my mind that makes me hesitant to get the vaccine. How realistic that is or what the possibilities of that are, I don’t know. Of course. But I know not to trust as truth whatever our rulers tell us so I know I have to think for myself. And I base my decisions on what I do know, what I can do, what my logic tells me may happen, and the chances and size of the pot of each of the potential outcomes, as I see them.
That’s the best one can do, really. The pharma execs are already openly killing people for money and getting away with it. Think they’re going to be concerned about the possibility of running over a few million or so more people when they got their greedy eyes on that got-to-have-it third yacht? They probably got blanket legal immunity from the government to distribute the vaccines to the public anyway. And would it be out of character for the politicians to recklessly drive us into calamity as they take their eyes off the road to hourly monitor the value of their stock portfolios? I’d say an emphatic no to both of those. And can you trust the U.S. Government’s highest health officials? Absolutely not! Fauci openly lied to us about the efficacy of wearing masks and even admitted to it.
So, rather than probably spend 20 to 30 hours researching viruses, I’ll just stick to what I believe I understand and play my hand based upon that.
Most people are not sociopaths. They get up in the morning, go to work, and do their jobs. This includes the scientists that work for big Pharma. If you happened to be a scientist for a pharmaceutical company, what would you do? Make a vaccine that would kill millions? Do you think you’d listen to sociopathic management if they told you that you had to? No. You’d quit and whistle blow.
Get a grip. Look at the other side of your argument.
Oh, and go get vaccinated please so the rest of us sane people can get on with their lives.
Most people are not sociopaths. They get up in the morning, go to work, and do their jobs. This includes the scientists that work for big Pharma. If you happened to be a scientist for a pharmaceutical company, what would you do? Make a vaccine that would kill millions? Do you think you’d listen to sociopathic management if they told you that you had to? No. You’d quit and whistle blow.
Very few would “blow the whistle.” These days very few even are willing to hear the whistle being blown or are foolish enough to think that being scandalized by scandal would matter.
The sad truth, proven repeatedly, is that only a minority are willing to resist authoritarians by other than passive aggressive means, means that generally make things slightly worse.
Everything else about COVID has been botched. Being suspicious is rational.
The politics of clapping louder so Tinkerbell can live get old.
The level of resistance is driven by the alternatives on offer. The cost of resistance these days is losing your job, your status, your family and friends, your freedom, and often your good reputation (see Assange). Whereas the cost of capitulation is just your conscience and you can make up fantasies about the greater good to make yourself feel better(see Bezos and Musk). In these times, you may have to be a sociopath or psychopath to contemplate whistleblowing, especially when you are aware of how ineffective it is 99% of the time.
Look at Burma. When the alternatives are dire enough, people will rise up em mass, even in the face of death.
I’d whistle blow.
As one who is free — to my knowledge — of personality disorders it’s how I get to sleep at night. It’s about maintaining moral integrity despite the rest of the world losing theirs.
If there isn’t a majority of people who share this moral conviction, wtf are any of us doing here?
And how far do your “individualized” suspicions need to go until you are in fact hurting the people around you who are a bit more trusting of their peers.
This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin’ proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When ya blood was read
That’s how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head
I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin’ a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realize
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the nine, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Run it!
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Checka, checka, check it out
They load the clip in omnicolor
Said they pack the nine, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin’ all the lies that they’re tellin’ ya
Buyin’ all the products that they’re sellin’ ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin’ bullet in ya head
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Uggh! Yeah! Yea!
Ya standin’ in line
Believin’ the lies
Ya bowin’ down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head
Ya standin’ in line
Believin’ the lies
Ya bowin’ down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
Ya gotta bullet in ya fuckin’ head!
My father blew the whistle . . . in 1940. Stayed with the organization another 30 years. Was promoted once in his entire career. Twenty years later most middle managers avoided him.
Being an honest man has spiritual and moral rewards. Most people are indifferent shites. Just sayin’
Thanks for the reference. Added to my humongous Amazon list of books that I will probably never read. Unfortunately, it’s not on audible, and I have 2 spare credits.
You seem like the kind of lawyer who pounds the table a lot …
No, I don’t think that a team of U.S. scientists working at a corporation under orders from their CEO would purposely create a vaccine that would kill millions. Not that I dismiss the possibility either, but that sounds more like Deep State work than corporate work because the Deep State has a greater capability of dodging detection and accountability.
What I do believe is that pharma CEOs would be so greedy that they would not adequately test the vaccine against variants, if testing for that is even possible, particularly under the circumstances in which they had a high personal financial incentive to rush a vaccine to market and the government probably gave them blanket legal immunity if anything goes wrong later. I also believe that it is possible that the virus could be similar to the dengue virus in that exposure to one variant immunizes you to that variant but actually increases the chances of becoming seriously ill if you are exposed to another variant and that maybe the COVID vaccine is equivalent to the initial exposure of the dengue virus and people who have taken the vaccine might be in increased danger of becoming seriously ill if they are exposed to a variant of COVID. But I don’t believe that our government and the pharma execs know this to be true, just that the government wants us to get back to work so they can get back to pimping us out without being mass heckled on twitter and that the pharma execs want to maximize their personal wealth. Plus, these people have access to the “good stuff” if they get COVID anyway, the sure cure, the stuff they gave to Donald T that had him back on his feet and hovering rails of Adderall in no time and relatively fit as a fiddle. Not to mention the wonders it worked on his fellow physical fitness dedicates Mount Christie and Speedy Guiliani when they got COVID.
What I believe is this Eric, and this might put your knickers into a knot, I believe that there is a substantial possibility that this virus was man-made and purposely unleashed on the public. Why? Because it is becoming increasingly obvious, especially during these last five years, that ecosystems essential to human life are breaking down, the planet is warming at an accelerating rate, and we are at least a few billion people over comfortable capacity. In lieu of that, I have a tough time believing that every one of the people in the world who have the means available to them to create a virus such as this, primarily heads of states and mega-billionaires, looks at the human calamity coming down the pipe that is primarily due to overpopulation and then looks at their kids, grandkids and the future of their country and basically says “f*ck ‘em, I’ll be dead anyway by the time the sh*t hits the fan”. In fact, we should expect that something eventually will be deployed such as this, I have, because it is the near perfect solution, too perfect for my suspicions, to depopulate earth and heal its ecosystems. It’s just what the planet ordered: it only kills humans.
Now if some entity was playing chess instead of checkers and wanted to design and deploy a lethal virus to seriously put a dent the world’s population they’d have to design something that beats the immunization process that vaccines set off and if they really wanted to have the ability to pump up the volume on the killing they’d design the variants to work similar to the dengue virus where the variants become more lethal from a process that usually leads to immunity.
As far as potential state actors are concerned, a man-made virus such as I’ve described not only would depopulate the earth but it also has the advantages that maybe less than a handful of people would have the be in the know in the entire operation; it leaves no fingerprints and if you drop it in Wuhan it will probably be blamed on the wet markets or possibly escaping from the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the variants you have on hand allow you to drop them on enemy countries so that they get hit particularly hard by them; and it does no damage to what is left after the depopulation, in fact it very likely would make our planet’s life essential ecosystems healthier.
Please explain to me the leaps of logic you took to get from your definition of #CapitalistPropaganda as “wealth makes you better than other people” to “anti-vax folks have a #CapitalistPropaganda bullet in their head”.
metamars
If you thought, as I did, that low cost, readily available treatments and prophylactics were ‘limited’ to vitamin D, zinc, NAC, oxygenating therapies like intravenous hydrogen peroxide, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and a few others – basically, chemicals, both natural and artificial – plus sunshine, well, then, you were wrong.
The US (and other) government agencies not only completely failed to promote these (and in many cases suppressed them) but they also failed to promote hydrotherapy. Basically, you increase a person’s core body temperature, preferably keeping the head cool. The mechanism discussed involved a non-linear increase in interferon production, observed at a core temperature of 102 deg Fahrenheit, which is critical in keeping the body’s immune response more limited towards the viral replication stage, and not have organ failure due to massive inflammatory response.* However, exact mechanisms never have to be understood to make valid observations about net cause and effect. After 20 minutes of heat, cold water is applied with massage, to “lock in” some of the heat via vaso-constriction.
This was uncovered by a Dr. Roger Seheult, discussed in “Doctor Explains Form Of PREVENTION & TREATMENT of Viruses | Roger Seheult & Lewis Howes”, on youtube, who investigated how the Spanish flu epidemic was treated. In conventional (army) hospitals, where such things as suppressing fever via aspirin was done (not a good thing), they had “10, 15 percent” come down with pneumonia. In so-called “sanitariums”, where hydrotherapy (called “fomentations” at the time) was applied, he doesn’t state the rate of pneumonia, but he does state the radical difference in mortality: 1% vs. 6% in army camp hospitals.
Oh, jeez. Louise, does anybody think that a humane government, which wasn’t prostituted to profit-seeking enterprises, would fail to educate it’s citizenry about a low cost therapy that could be done at home*, instead of basically encouraging everybody to do zero treatments at home, but go to the hospital when you start having problems breathing?
==================
Seheult speaks well of hydro4covid dot com and hydrotherapyathome dot com
* I mean an approximation of “fomentations”, which was labor intensive. Viz., hot/cold showers. Although Seheult didn’t mention it, a shower cap worn with crushed ice could keep the head somewhat cool, though it won’t cover the carotid artery, which got attention in the sanitarium treatments.
Seheult also says,
“Interferon is a protein and it does exactly as it sounds it interferes with viral infections what sars covid 2 does at the very beginning of this is it takes interferon and suppresses it and it does it in a way because it it uses its proteins in a way that it suppresses the body’s ability to create interferon to use interferon we know that from from very well conducted uh studies that have shown that people who have innate problems with interferon always seem to have very bad courses with stars cov2 people who have mutations with low interferon levels have very bad courses of sars 2. so we want to strengthen interferon correct”
An obvious question is: what is the distribution of poor interferon genes like amongst various countries and races?
Hugh
From bloomberg, 82 year old Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer in a speech on April 6 rejected the idea that the Court was conservative. Well, in a way he’s right. It’s not conservative. It’s reactionary. Breyer is supposed to be one of the “good” as in less godawful justices from a progressive point of view, but his comments show how divorced from reality he and the Court are. I suppose if you work in a horror show long enough even the three-headed boy begins to look normal after a while. Still I wonder how Breyer’s recent comments fit into the current campaign to ease him out before McConnell is in position for another Frankenstein choice.
someofparts
https://eand.co/the-origins-of-americas-unique-and-spectacular-cruelty-74a91f53ce29
“in other rich countries, at least half the economy is not for profit, sometimes more. But in America, it’s just a few percent. So American life is made mostly only of the values of predatory capitalism now”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/black-lives-matter-curriculum-has-unintended-lesson/618501/
“Of course I want my children to know about slavery and Jim Crow. But I want it to be balanced out with the rest of the truth. They’re not taught about Black people who accomplished things in spite of white supremacy; or about the Black people today who got ahead, built things, achieved things; and those who had opportunities that their ancestors fought for.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/19/rightwing-misinformation-liberals
“Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent that’s who they are. More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/01/big-sister-watching-you-whittaker-chambers/
“Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/merit-blake-smith
“Beyond the noisy conflict between defenders of meritocracy and their woke opponents, our society has chosen, and continues to choose, to educate its children with the apparent aim of making a class of leaders who are disconnected from any real solidarity to others but unable to think for themselves, combining the worst qualities of individualism and conformism.”
metamars
In “The Most Massive Scientific Fraud Ever Committed In The US – By Author Jeffrey Smith” you can see the effect on rats, including their testes and liver, from eating GMO corn. It actually changes the color of the testes from pink to blue.
The kind of society that puts up with this, on the one hand (the great American sheeple); and inflicts this (Big Business and plutocratic agendas) is unsurprisingly the kind of society that puts up with suppression of cheap and effective therapies and prophylactics.
=================================
from voltairenet.org: “Covid-19 : failure of the Western approach”
“The Covid-19 epidemic affects the whole world, yet its mortality varies from 0.0003% in China to 0.016% in the United States, i.e. more than 50 times higher. This difference can be explained by genetic differences, but above all by differences in medical approach. It shows that the West is no longer the centre of Reason and Science.
…
All epidemics have historically been successfully fought by a combination of isolating the sick and increasing hygiene.
In the case of a viral epidemic, hygiene is not used to combat the virus, but the bacterial diseases that develop in those infected by the virus. For example, the Spanish flu in 1918-20 was a viral disease. It was actually a benign virus, but in the context of the First World War, very poor hygiene conditions allowed the development of opportunistic bacterial diseases that killed en masse.
From a medical point of view, isolation applies only to the sick and only to them. Never in history has a healthy population been quarantined to control a disease. You will not find any work of medicine older than a year anywhere in the world that contemplates such a measure.
…
Most viral epidemics last three years. In the case of Covid-19, the natural duration of the epidemic will be extended by the administrative duration of the containment.
The confinements in China had no more medical reason. They were interventions by the central government against the errors of local governments, in the context of the Chinese theory of the “mandate from Heaven” [3].
The use of surgical masks by a healthy population to combat a respiratory virus has never been effective. Indeed, until Covid-19, none of the known respiratory viruses are transmitted by sputum, but by aerosol. Only gas masks are effective. “
metamars
I left out perhaps the most intriguing part of the voltairenet article. I know that hydroxychloroquine was part of the Chinese formulary from a year ago, Feb. I’ve wondered what is their state of the art, since then (esp. since hydroxycholoroquine has been shown to be of little to no benefit when used late in the disease process). AFAIK, western mainstream media never showed the least interest in doing investigative journalism on this topic. Just like they seem totally disinterested in foreign medical systems, in general. That’s one reason the Frontline documentary “sick around the world” was so interesting. Nobody else was telling their stories.
The article states,
“States that have made the opposite choice to those in the West, i.e. those that have prioritised health care over vaccines, have collectively developed a cocktail of cheap drugs (including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin) that massively treat Covid (see box). The results are so spectacular that Westerners question the figures published by these states, led by China.”
The article then shows a photocopy of an “Excerpt from a confidential Swiss document.”, that shows many of things discussed by people looking outside the mask-plus-lockdown box, such as vitamin D and ivermectin. However, it’s not clear that this describes a cocktail protocol in Switzerland or China; or maybe somewhere else.
I’d like to know the backstory about why it’s confidential. Perhaps its from a hospital administrator whose career would be ended if he/she was determined to be the leaker.
different clue
About Spanish Flu lethality or benignity, I have read that the Spanish Flu was very lethal upon contraction, often within 2-3 days of first presentation of symptoms, most especially in the young and the healthy, in whom a “cytokine storm” resulted in lungs too dysfunctional to intake oxygen.
Would a bacteria move that fast? I don’t think so.
So I will discard a theory or advice based on ” Spanish Flu as a virus was benign in its own right, as are most such viruses.”
Hugh
As part of the Supreme Court story, Biden has issued an Executive Order creating a 36 member commission to issue a report within 180 days principally with:
“(iii) An analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals.”
It’s important to remember that the principal function of commissions is to look like you are doing something when, in fact, you are doing nothing and only want to kick the can down the road long enough for people interested in the subject to get bored and go away. Tells in this case are the size and make-up of the commission, large and varied, no iconoclasts, in other words a recipe for a long insipid mishmash. The commission will also not be tasked with making any recommendations. I mean why even bother? other than the obvious, to waste time.
anon y'mouse
i remember it being mentioned early on that parts of Italy during Black Plague time had figured out to quarantine everyone to prevent spreading, and even provide “UBI”. but they abandoned it because the Lords were unhappy that the poors were getting bread without work and might lose their ability to bend knees and doff caps vigorously enough.
quarantining only the sick is only possible if you know who the sick are.
since our Lords decided to let the virus become endemic because it suits their business models, here we are trying to keep isolated from we-know-not-whom who might be carrying the thing.
let it rip a bit more and then we can have even more lockdowns about which people will whine. because those are only necessary after failing to carry out other containment measures. but instead of whining at those who choose to make lockdowns necessary by forcing the Owners to ramp up test/track/trace/quarantine + prophylactics and treatments both early and late.
now we will just have to suffer rolling lockdowns, variant chasing, and constant yearly injections as test subjects for new, untried and barely tested “vaccines”, all while maintaining all of the other measures as well since they still don’t know if these vaccines actually prevent spreading.
someone’s getting rich, though. and that’s all that counts in this “society”.
bruce wilder
Rioting among Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland protesting an Irish Sea border induces EU to postpone suit against UK for failing to implement the sea border.
Also an issue: the decision by the Crown not to prosecute as a COVID restrictions violation, Sinn Fein politicians at an IRA funeral.
Elections May 5
Eric Anderson
Hugh —
There really is only one point of debate re: Supreme Court expansion.
When someone like McConnell rigs the rules, you smack them so hard they consider long and hard about playing games in the future. While, at the same time, you blame the entire smackdown on them for creating the need for a smackdown in the first place.
That’s politics. That’s hardball.
Eric Anderson
Were Biden interested in expansion it would sound like this:
“Come on, man! I wouldn’t be doing this if Mitch had played by the rules. He’s forced my hand to level the playing field that he tipped on edge.”
Simple and truthful. Thus, it has a snowballs chance in hell of happening in DC.
bruce wilder
Playing “hardball” in defense of institutional integrity requires that the players recognize that they need the institution’s integrity in order to prosper. It comes down to whether a powerful individual thinks he is better off cheating in a world of cheaters and thieves or, alternatively, accepting limits on his own freedom in order to achieve, from collective efforts channelled thru public institutions, some protection from the “freedom” of others.
The neoliberal game, that Biden played thruout his career, was always predicated on the idea that, given well-functioning institutions, all the gains to the powerful lie on the path of undermining public institutions and norms. Neoliberal ideology obscures and denies much of the need to constrain the powerful or enable the popular will in opposition to private greed and domination.
We are far down the path of destroying the state insofar as the state, in law and policy, can serve a common, public interest. Politically, the Democratic Party as led by the Clinton-Obama-Biden faction, exists to veal pen any idealist impulse play “hardball” with the likes of McConnell.
Sadly, the idea that the Biden opposes McConnell diametrically is unsupported by evidence. They are rivals in serving the plutocracy. Both lead minority Parties and are both at odds with their Party’s respective electoral bases. The drama of the narrative put forth in political Media of their strategies in tactical manuever is designed to keep those dissatisfied electoral bases engaged but impotent, while the looting continues.
The full horror is difficult to look at, and like a train wreck still in progress, difficult to look away from.
Hugh
Eric, Biden and the Democrats can either be honest or they can play games. The commission is a game. If I were being charitable, I would say that the Biden agenda is first covid relief, then infrastructure, the commission allows him to delay any SCOTUS reform until after these. But—what we are not being told is how many votes are needed to enact those reforms. If it’s 60, it’s dead before it gets there. If it’s 50, does anybody know where Manchin and Sinema stand on any of this? At a bare minimum and no matter whatever else is going on, Schumer should be pressing to fill every federal court vacancy in an expedited fashion and not just with anyone but with New Dealers.
Re Sinema and Manchin, Schumer should be reminding them that while they have a lot of power now, they won’t always, and pay back is a b—. And Schumer should make it his Job One that it will be. Does Schumer have the stones to do it? Has he ever?
If Biden and the Democrats allow themselves to get bogged down or play too many games, they are setting themselves up to get trounced in 2022. If they were smart, and they aren’t, they would return to Dean’s old 50 state strategy and be recruiting and building for 2022 now.
metamars
Putin may have finally had enough. From “Incentives: Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin possible moves – Donbass crisis.” @ thesaker blog:
“President Biden has handed Putin the justification for a first strike by openly stating his intention to conduct a cyber attack on Russia “soon.” That is a public declaration of war. The fact that the Russian ambassador was recalled from Washington and has not been sent back should be a wakeup call to America that DC itself is on the potential target list.
For these reasons I believe that there is a high probability that Russia will strike first before NATO can fully put in place the forces for planned exercises for this Summer. The strike will probably be non-nuclear, focused against US forces only, and its purpose will be to delegitimize the US power in the eyes of the junior members of NATO, and to weaken or cripple the US ability to project power.
If China and Iran see Russia strike the US military, it would not be surprising if they also pile on using their own hypersonic missiles to destroy US Navy assets in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.”
I think it’s extremely doubtful Iran would “pile on”, unless they’re attacked by the US or Israel in a major way, first. The Chinese option is more credible; and, in fact, it’s earlier occurred to me that the threat of same may deter the US from pushing Ukraine into a foolish attack.
If the Russians strike the US outside the Ukraine area, and for some reason forgo sinking ships, as thesaker expects, striking Syria makes the most sense, since US assets are stealing oil from the part of Syria that we are illegally squatting on.
Plague Species
The answer to neoliberalism is obviously Russian oligarchical autocracy. Too funny. If McDonald so decreed it, his base would vote for Putin as president versus Joe Biden or any democrat. McDonald’s base is this craven. This traitorous. This treasonous. Communists at heart, or worse, Stalinists.
Eric Anderson
Hugh —
Oh, I totally agree with your stance. I was just highlighting how powerfully effective basing policy on the truth would be, in contrast with their predictable mealy mouthed subterfuge.
Eric Anderson
metamars —
You’re dreaming, man. The way to continue discrediting the US military is through the non-conventional means the insurgencies have been using.
No leader w/o a suicide wish dare oppose the US military in a toe to toe conventional battle. The scale of destruction the U.S. could rapidly impose on Russia and China in a conventional warfare scenario would set those countries back decades. Sure, they can match the U.S. military tech in some arenas. But, they can’t even begin to scale their armaments to match the U.S. stockpile.
Now, draw this battle out for a little bit and watch the rest of the world try to compete with the world leader in industrial death production. Absent a nuclear response, China and Russia could not even begin to damage the U.S. infrastructure sufficiently to shut down our arms producers. The reverse isn’t true. As my Father (retired army airborne two-silver star colonel) used to say: You win battles by “being the firstest, with the mostest.”
The U.S. leadership is just itching for some conventional conflict to break out so they can once again “shock and awe” the rest of the world in obedience. And if some country is stupid enough to invite them to do it? Well, that would work out very badly for them.
Eric Anderson
And I’ll add:
The U.S. strategy since the Cold War has not changed. Spend absolutely as much as you can on military superiority while maintaining the bare semblance of domestic integrity. Just enough to keep the proles from revolting. Just be a little better at domestic affairs than your foes so you can continue to sink the country’s largesse into arms manufacture.
I mean honestly, who here thinks China would be eclipsing the U.S. GDP were the U.S. to defocus on military spending and plow it back into the economy? Not me.
It’s a balancing act with the final act being total U.S. world dominance. That is precisely what all those think tank generals playing their war scenarios are betting on.
The U.S. military brass want World War III. Fortunately, the rest of the world’s major leaders have been smart enough not to give it to them.
Hugh
Both Putin and Xi are following the standard playbook of using foreign adventures to distract from their failures at home. Putin blew his response to covid. And while the sputnik V vaccine looks pretty effective, many Russians, unlike the strange collection of Putin-lovers we have here, don’t trust it because they trust him. As for Xi, he too blew at least the initial response to covid, but pushed off to the side is that the Chinese need very rapid economic growth to stay socially stabilized. They have something like an extra 20 million new workers coming off just their farms each year, they have had covid-related lockdowns, slower growth because of the effects of covid on the world economy, and their banking system continues to be a ticking time bomb. And there is the increasing and ongoing US pivot or containment policy. And of course behind that, climate change. Xi strikes me as somewhat more competent than his colleagues, moderately intelligent but limited. So he too will use foreign distractions where he can.
different clue
About Russia and Ukraine,
I found a couple interesting comments in a recent NaCap thread. I will copy-paste them here.
Randy G
April 10, 2021 at 12:10 pm
Timbers — Great points.
The U.S backs a putsch led by fascist militias (ironically, Yanukovych had agreed to early elections that he was likely to lose) and then are outraged that regions of the corrupt and dysfunctional country — the Donbas and Crimea — that voted for the deposed President are galvanized to secede. These are areas that are linguistically and culturally Russian.
For the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis the hated Russians (the Moskals) are what the Jews were for the German Nazis — an enemy vermin that threatens ‘their sacred Nation’. How do you live in a country where you are considered vermin for speaking Russian, your normal language, and for not swearing allegiance to fascists who detest you? Once the bloodletting begins, you might be tempted to bolt for the exits.
Incidentally, when I was visiting Ukraine in 2009, including Lugansk and Donetsk, the main cities in the Donbas that declared themselves ‘Republics’ after the Maidan putsch, I had ‘political’ discussions with some Ukrainians (mostly in their 30s) that I met in Kiev.
Alexey, who had a history degree, told me that ‘my government’ (USA) was funding and training fascists in Ukraine, and that those fascists, mainly from Western Ukraine, planned to take power violently. He insisted they were ruthless, they would kill anyone who stood in their way, and there would be a civil war in Ukraine very soon. (One person — Alexey’s mom! — spoke perfect English as she been a university professor in English lit during the Soviet Union; she helped with translations as needed.)
Essentially, I thought Alexey was being melodramatic. Although I don’t consider myself naive when it comes to the malevolence of U.S. ‘foreign policy’, I told Alexey and the other Ukrainians that it seemed unlikely the U.S. would promote fascism and a civil war in Ukraine. After all, the U.S. had won the Cold War, Ukraine and Russia were no longer communist, they were weakened and disorganized countries — especially Ukraine — and what would be the point of destabilizing them any further?
Alexey was clearly annoyed and told me, politely, that I was clueless and had no idea what my government was up to in Ukraine, or how dangerous the situation truly was. He told me that the Ukrainian fascists, if they came to power, would view him as a traitor, deserving of death.
In the years after that discussion, I continued to think of Alexey’s views as melodramatic and maybe even paranoid.
Until February 2014. When everything he had described and anticipated in 2009 came true. Alexey was marked as a ‘traitor’ and he has fled to Krasnodar, Russia with his wife and son. His elderly parents remain in Kiev, but he cannot visit them since he is considered an enemy by the ’new’ U.S. and EU backed ‘democratic’ miracle.
By they way, I did apologize to Alexey for my naive cluelessness regarding the activities of ‘my government’ — AKA the criminal regime on the Potomac.
Reply ↓
km
April 10, 2021 at 2:12 pm
I lived eight years in Ukraine, much of it working for Ukrainian companies, in a Russian language environment I speak Russia and Ukrainian, although I have not a drop of Slavic blood in me, AFAIK. I am not related, by blood or marriage, to a Russian or Ukrainian.
Believe me when I say that the “Russian propaganda” about Ukraine is pretty much entirely true.
Reply ↓
Hugh
So Ukrainian skinheads bad but Russian skinheads good. Got it. And Ukrainians are like nazis because millions of them were deliberately starved to death in the 1920s by Stalin and the Russians while the Russians are like the jews because they inflicted these mass starvations. Seems kind of anti-semitic to me.
But I do get that international frontiers don’t apply to Russia because Russia. If the US interferes abroad, that’s bad, but with Russia, even to the point of annexation, not so much.
Joan
A friend in Colorado reports they’ve opened up vaccinations to everyone 16+, which is as young as they’re willing to vaccinate. She herself is 23 and has already gotten the first shot. So it looks like at least some places are now vaccinating everyone who wants it.
metamars
@Eric Anderson
Ah, don’t know much about military strategy. Nevertheless, some observations, opinions.
I don’t think either the US or Russia or China has any interest in an all out conventional war, wherein one needs boots on the ground to control the local government. I think all 3 players would be content to destroy the enemies’ infrastructure, if it came to that.
I do think the US wants to pick fights it can definitely win, preferably with terrorist proxies, or NATO allied bodies, depending. As per “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, in most cases, economic warfare is preferred, with an occasional murder, though local thugs in power promote that form of imperialism.
Russia, on the other hand, only wants to not lose fights that it is drawn into. At least, until now, as per the case laid out in the saker blog.
My comment may have been ill-thought out, even given my lack of knowledge of military affairs, as the principle behind thesaker has himself stated that Russian forces in Syria would likely be overwhelmed in the case of feasible attack by the US. Their military isn’t set up for prolonged offensive warfare, far from their shores. I’m afraid that my annoyance that the US is flouting international law, and blatantly stealing from a poor nation, clouded my judgement. For reasons I don’t understand, US sanctions are lately causing starvation in Syria, which the Russians could alleviate, but have not, yet.
However, the Russians have had hypersonic missiles from the 1990’s, and at present, my belief is they can easily sink US Navy ships. This suggests that the Russians may have escalation dominance in the Syrian theater, even without decisive ability to protect Syrian soil. They can also deliver hypersonic missiles from bombers, so they can’t hunt down US ships anywhere they please, I should think.
I’ve read elsewhere that Iran has had escalation dominance in their neighborhood since the 2000’s (and before they had any hypersonic missiles). It they’re smart, they will have developed the ability to destroy Saudi oil infrastructure. I’ve also read that Russia has escalation dominance in the Ukraine, which is expected.
China now has a larger navy than the US. I’ll guess that they have escalation dominance in terms of naval warfare near their east coast. I don’t know about Taiwan, where it’s understood the battleground would be limited to Taiwan.
Hugh
I think there is a lot of confusion going on between ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and hypersonic missiles.
Z
I’m not necessarily anti-vax, but I am a bit surprised that so many people are rushing to get these COVID vaccines even though there hasn’t been much testing done on them. Especially since the ones pushing them on the public the hardest are the pharma execs and the politicians.
Z
nihil obstet
I think we must reform the Supreme Court. I’m not sure what the role of a judiciary should be — given the very bad history of the Court, how much should we constrain the court? Is this one of the governing structures we should just do away with? I’m pretty close to getting there. One of my favorite discussions of the use of state power is Robert Jackson’s speech on the power of federal prosecutors, comments which also apply to judges. Jackson was a Supreme Court justice who took a leave from the court to prosecute the Nuremberg trials.
Assuming we continue with the same structure, I’d argue for something like this — a judge is selected by the president and subject to legislative confirmation for a ten year term. They are eligible for reappointment after the ten years (not before, so that a single president cannot choose the same judge twice). The second appointment is carried out just like the first, with the need for legislative confirmation.
We should figure out how to set radical limits on what the Court can rule on. More and more, we’re seeing rulings that represent what the judges think would be better laws than what the Congress passed and the President signed. And there’s no do-over for a Supreme Court failure. The issue of the broad area of discretion within law enforcement is one of the reasons I like the Jackson speech. Frankly, I think Congress and the executive should just simply ignore the Supreme Court’s determinations that are overreach.
Anyway, this is an issue we need to keep thinking about.
Eric Anderson
metamars —
It’s cool. Per usual, I can be a bit over the top before my first cup of Joe kicks in.
The rules of the game are still about who controls the skies in our shrunken world. And whoever controls the skies, controls communications, because the communications facilities are always the first to go.
The team with most drones and guided missiles does the most damage by paralyzing coordination (firstest with the mostest). Once the skies are safe for F-16’s and such due to the massive “unmanned” bombardment on communications and missile defense sites nothing stops the tanks. They blitz to the positions of geographic power under air cover and it’s basically all over but the insurgency.
The only thing that’s changed since WWII is the “unmanned” component. That’s modern warfare at scale in a nutshell.
As much as I hate it, trying to figure out my Dad led to extensive reading of military history and strategy. I’ve read pretty much every book ever written on Viet Nam, as well as Sun Tsu, Clausewitz, Enders Game, and for modern warfare I’d highly recommend Hew Strachan “The Direction of War — Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective. “
Z
I know next to nothing about viruses, but I sure hope that COVID is not like the dengue virus which, according to Wikipedia, “has five serotypes; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications.”
You really can’t dismiss the folly of some mammoth, greed-driven f*ck up by our rulers to worsen the situation when they’ve already blissfully set us on course to turn the planet to cinders and destroy its ecosystems with nary a concern about anything beyond the value of their brokerage accounts, it seems. Not to mention that they’ve done absolutely nothing about the huge population growth that is the source of all of it.
Or have they?
Z
Z
Because you’d think, and again I don’t know much about viruses, that if COVID was similar to the dengue virus in that way then the vaccine could actually increase the risk of serious complications if one gets infected with one of its variants.
So, that’s a thought that runs through my mind that makes me hesitant to get the vaccine. How realistic that is or what the possibilities of that are, I don’t know. Of course. But I know not to trust as truth whatever our rulers tell us so I know I have to think for myself. And I base my decisions on what I do know, what I can do, what my logic tells me may happen, and the chances and size of the pot of each of the potential outcomes, as I see them.
That’s the best one can do, really. The pharma execs are already openly killing people for money and getting away with it. Think they’re going to be concerned about the possibility of running over a few million or so more people when they got their greedy eyes on that got-to-have-it third yacht? They probably got blanket legal immunity from the government to distribute the vaccines to the public anyway. And would it be out of character for the politicians to recklessly drive us into calamity as they take their eyes off the road to hourly monitor the value of their stock portfolios? I’d say an emphatic no to both of those. And can you trust the U.S. Government’s highest health officials? Absolutely not! Fauci openly lied to us about the efficacy of wearing masks and even admitted to it.
So, rather than probably spend 20 to 30 hours researching viruses, I’ll just stick to what I believe I understand and play my hand based upon that.
Z
someofparts
Don’t forget the possibility that our misleaders may truly be insane enough to lob nukes at Russia or start a hot war with China over Taiwan.
Remember, they are cool globalists. Being American is for the flyover rubes.
Eric Anderson
JFC Z —
Most people are not sociopaths. They get up in the morning, go to work, and do their jobs. This includes the scientists that work for big Pharma. If you happened to be a scientist for a pharmaceutical company, what would you do? Make a vaccine that would kill millions? Do you think you’d listen to sociopathic management if they told you that you had to? No. You’d quit and whistle blow.
Get a grip. Look at the other side of your argument.
Oh, and go get vaccinated please so the rest of us sane people can get on with their lives.
bruce wilder
Most people are not sociopaths. They get up in the morning, go to work, and do their jobs. This includes the scientists that work for big Pharma. If you happened to be a scientist for a pharmaceutical company, what would you do? Make a vaccine that would kill millions? Do you think you’d listen to sociopathic management if they told you that you had to? No. You’d quit and whistle blow.
Very few would “blow the whistle.” These days very few even are willing to hear the whistle being blown or are foolish enough to think that being scandalized by scandal would matter.
The sad truth, proven repeatedly, is that only a minority are willing to resist authoritarians by other than passive aggressive means, means that generally make things slightly worse.
Everything else about COVID has been botched. Being suspicious is rational.
The politics of clapping louder so Tinkerbell can live get old.
Astrid
The level of resistance is driven by the alternatives on offer. The cost of resistance these days is losing your job, your status, your family and friends, your freedom, and often your good reputation (see Assange). Whereas the cost of capitulation is just your conscience and you can make up fantasies about the greater good to make yourself feel better(see Bezos and Musk). In these times, you may have to be a sociopath or psychopath to contemplate whistleblowing, especially when you are aware of how ineffective it is 99% of the time.
Look at Burma. When the alternatives are dire enough, people will rise up em mass, even in the face of death.
different clue
I see we have our own little racist anti-russianite nazi-lover right here on these threads.
Eric Anderson
I’d whistle blow.
As one who is free — to my knowledge — of personality disorders it’s how I get to sleep at night. It’s about maintaining moral integrity despite the rest of the world losing theirs.
If there isn’t a majority of people who share this moral conviction, wtf are any of us doing here?
And how far do your “individualized” suspicions need to go until you are in fact hurting the people around you who are a bit more trusting of their peers.
Selfish little brainwashed capitalists.
Eric Anderson
I’d suggest the anti-vax folks have a #CapitalistPropaganda bullet in their head and don’t even realize it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5NeyI4-fdI
This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin’ proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When ya blood was read
That’s how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head
I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin’ a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realize
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the nine, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Run it!
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Checka, checka, check it out
They load the clip in omnicolor
Said they pack the nine, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin’ all the lies that they’re tellin’ ya
Buyin’ all the products that they’re sellin’ ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin’ bullet in ya head
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Uggh! Yeah! Yea!
Ya standin’ in line
Believin’ the lies
Ya bowin’ down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head
Ya standin’ in line
Believin’ the lies
Ya bowin’ down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
Ya gotta bullet in ya fuckin’ head!
bruce wilder
My father blew the whistle . . . in 1940. Stayed with the organization another 30 years. Was promoted once in his entire career. Twenty years later most middle managers avoided him.
Being an honest man has spiritual and moral rewards. Most people are indifferent shites. Just sayin’
metamars
@E Anderson
Thanks for the reference. Added to my humongous Amazon list of books that I will probably never read. Unfortunately, it’s not on audible, and I have 2 spare credits.
Eric Anderson
metamars:
Roger that, man. Roger, that.
Z
Eric Anderson,
You seem like the kind of lawyer who pounds the table a lot …
No, I don’t think that a team of U.S. scientists working at a corporation under orders from their CEO would purposely create a vaccine that would kill millions. Not that I dismiss the possibility either, but that sounds more like Deep State work than corporate work because the Deep State has a greater capability of dodging detection and accountability.
What I do believe is that pharma CEOs would be so greedy that they would not adequately test the vaccine against variants, if testing for that is even possible, particularly under the circumstances in which they had a high personal financial incentive to rush a vaccine to market and the government probably gave them blanket legal immunity if anything goes wrong later. I also believe that it is possible that the virus could be similar to the dengue virus in that exposure to one variant immunizes you to that variant but actually increases the chances of becoming seriously ill if you are exposed to another variant and that maybe the COVID vaccine is equivalent to the initial exposure of the dengue virus and people who have taken the vaccine might be in increased danger of becoming seriously ill if they are exposed to a variant of COVID. But I don’t believe that our government and the pharma execs know this to be true, just that the government wants us to get back to work so they can get back to pimping us out without being mass heckled on twitter and that the pharma execs want to maximize their personal wealth. Plus, these people have access to the “good stuff” if they get COVID anyway, the sure cure, the stuff they gave to Donald T that had him back on his feet and hovering rails of Adderall in no time and relatively fit as a fiddle. Not to mention the wonders it worked on his fellow physical fitness dedicates Mount Christie and Speedy Guiliani when they got COVID.
What I believe is this Eric, and this might put your knickers into a knot, I believe that there is a substantial possibility that this virus was man-made and purposely unleashed on the public. Why? Because it is becoming increasingly obvious, especially during these last five years, that ecosystems essential to human life are breaking down, the planet is warming at an accelerating rate, and we are at least a few billion people over comfortable capacity. In lieu of that, I have a tough time believing that every one of the people in the world who have the means available to them to create a virus such as this, primarily heads of states and mega-billionaires, looks at the human calamity coming down the pipe that is primarily due to overpopulation and then looks at their kids, grandkids and the future of their country and basically says “f*ck ‘em, I’ll be dead anyway by the time the sh*t hits the fan”. In fact, we should expect that something eventually will be deployed such as this, I have, because it is the near perfect solution, too perfect for my suspicions, to depopulate earth and heal its ecosystems. It’s just what the planet ordered: it only kills humans.
Now if some entity was playing chess instead of checkers and wanted to design and deploy a lethal virus to seriously put a dent the world’s population they’d have to design something that beats the immunization process that vaccines set off and if they really wanted to have the ability to pump up the volume on the killing they’d design the variants to work similar to the dengue virus where the variants become more lethal from a process that usually leads to immunity.
As far as potential state actors are concerned, a man-made virus such as I’ve described not only would depopulate the earth but it also has the advantages that maybe less than a handful of people would have the be in the know in the entire operation; it leaves no fingerprints and if you drop it in Wuhan it will probably be blamed on the wet markets or possibly escaping from the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the variants you have on hand allow you to drop them on enemy countries so that they get hit particularly hard by them; and it does no damage to what is left after the depopulation, in fact it very likely would make our planet’s life essential ecosystems healthier.
Z
Z
Eric,
Please explain to me the leaps of logic you took to get from your definition of #CapitalistPropaganda as “wealth makes you better than other people” to “anti-vax folks have a #CapitalistPropaganda bullet in their head”.
Z
Z
Eric,
What exactly is the wealth incentive by not getting the vaccine?
Z
Z
Eric Anderson,
You’re one badass wannabe whistleblower, bro!
Z