First known map of night sky found hidden in Medieval parchment Nature (Kevin W)
Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows Guardian
The Thoughtful Prick by Clare Bucknell Harpers (Anthony L). “On Casanova.”
#COVID-19
Science/Medicine
Today’s must read. Click through for entire thread. Circulate widely.
The mechanism of SARS2? Endothelial damage. In plain English? Covid-19 fucks up the lining of your blood vessels. All 60,000 miles of it. Blood vessels lack nerves. You feel OK as it eats your arteries. Doesn't mean it's "mild." It means the endothelium isn't innervated.
— 📖NY Times Bestselling Author Alisa Lynn Valdés 🖋 (@AlisaValdesRod1) October 19, 2022
The CAN99 from @vitacoreinc just got NIOSH approved as a N95! It's a bit smaller than the 3M Aura series, so fits better on smaller faces. Sam from @OpenAeros says "the fabric straps are nice, nose wire fits well and feels more breathable" Picture for size comparison. pic.twitter.com/Ch6cWrqbG6
— Aaron Collins (@masknerd) October 18, 2022
Here’s what the seven stages of severe COVID-19 look like Los Angeles Times (Dr. Kevin)
COVID BA.2.75.2 subvariant can evade nearly all antibodies: study CTV News (Dr. Kevin)
US
The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school. pic.twitter.com/Ga0EJZIVbI
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 19, 2022
Ebola Is Back—and Vaccines Don’t Work Against It Wired (Dr. Kevin)
Climate/Environment
In South Africa, Resistance Rises to the World Bank’s Climate-Killing Mega-Projects Counterpunch
In the Netherlands, Balancing Energy Security Against Climate Concerns New York Times (Kevin W)
China?
The Pentagon is seeking sweeping new powers in preparation for a war with China,https://t.co/qOtzARq37T
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 18, 2022
Biden’s Tech-War Goes Nuclear Mike Whitney, Eurasia Review
Highlighting competition with China brings ‘no benefit’ to EU as Brussels seeks to ‘fine-tune’ ties with Beijing Global Times. I believe it was at the last China-EU economic summit, which Xi attended virtually that the EU participants pressed Xi about Ukraine (which China had made clear in advance was not on the agenda) and Xi airily batted that away. The EU would not be attempting to punish China if Xi had fallen in line.
Old Blighty
Unions leaders threaten winter of mass strikes ‘to end pay crisis’ Telegraph
The Bank of England has declared economic war on the people of the UK Richard Murphy
UK inflation returns to 40-year high of 10.1% Financial Times
Suella Braverman quietly tries to give herself fresh anti-protest powers openDemocracy
The Great Crossing Craig Murray (Chuck L)
BT pensions scheme lost $12 bln in assets after UK ‘mini-budget’ -annual report Reuters
British currency gyrations are about weak government not fiscal deficits Bill Mitchell
The Netherlands Has Deployed NATO’s First Killer Robot Ground Vehicles Vice. Yours truly anticipates these will be used first in cities against crowds as opposed to in battle.
New Not-So-Cold War
It annoys me when I am slow to work things out. So recall the new Russian proposal for a gas transit hub in Turkeyie. Turkeyie is reported to be enthusiastic about the scheme since it would give Turkey revenue and leverage over Europe. Russia would benefit by having a route to ship (more) gas to Europe and have its origin muddied by mixing it with gas from other countries.
This is a big big deal for Turkeyie. It’s such a big deal that it seems likely to produce the needed Turkeyie acquiescence to Russia taking Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, if and when that happens. Note that Turkeyie has heretofore made clear it was mighty unhappy about that prospect.
Ukraine war: Russia begins evacuation from Kherson in south/a> BBC.
Note this is a secondary story: Ukraine war: Blackouts in 1,162 towns and villages after Russia strikes BBC. Mentions continued strikes today.
Sergey “Armageddon” Surovikin: It’s time for difficult decisions Aftershock News. Full text and video, extract from machine translation below (original here). Boy, does Surovikin maintain the “don’t fuck with me” vibe he projects in photographs in this video:
There is a difficult situation in this area. The enemy purposefully strikes at infrastructure facilities and residential buildings in Kherson. Hits from HIMARS rockets damaged the Antonovsky bridge and the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, traffic on which was stopped.
As a result, the delivery of food products is difficult in the city, there are certain problems with water and electricity supply. All this not only significantly complicates the life of citizens, but also creates a direct threat to their lives.
The NATO leadership of the armed forces of Ukraine has long been demanding from the Kyiv regime offensive operations in the Kherson direction, regardless of any casualties – both in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and among the civilian population.
We have information about the possibility of the Kyiv regime using prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson, about the preparation by Kyiv of a massive missile attack on the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, and a massive missile and artillery strike on the city indiscriminately.
These actions can lead to the destruction of the infrastructure of a large industrial center and large casualties among the civilian population.
In these conditions, our primary task is to preserve the life and health of civilians. Therefore, first of all, the Russian army will ensure the safe, already announced departure of the population under the resettlement program being prepared by the Russian government.
Our further plans and actions regarding the city of Kherson itself will depend on the emerging military-tactical situation.
I repeat, it is already very difficult today.
Note that Surovikin ‘splaining this not-pretty decision is a departure from the past MoD tight-lipped posture. It looks like they learned that silence after the Kharkiv pullback was politically costly.
Andrei Martyanov presents a slide on the dam and adds:
More than 50,000 people will be swept away by a monstrous flooding. But then again, crimes against humanity are increasingly the MO of the combined West. This is why evacuation of civilians is declared from Kherson and Kherson area.
Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 18.10.2022 YouTube. See starting at 10:12 about Kheson.
Four non-nuclear ways Putin could escalate the Ukraine war The Hill
Two Major Indian Refiners Just Stopped Buying Russian Crude OilPrice
Ukraine – Drones Turn Off Electricity Moon of Alabama
EU won’t introduce gas price cap for now amid disagreements between countries Azerbaycam24
Will the energy crisis crush European industry? Financial Times. A little late to be worrying about that, no?
Syraqistan
Hundreds of lsraeli settlers broke into Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron last night and held a dancing a concert violating the sacredness of the place. pic.twitter.com/GFsHq9mbQc
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) October 18, 2022
What is happening in the West Bank right now: a full breakdown Mondoweiss
Australia Quietly Walks Back Its Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital Haaretz
Imperial Collapse Watch
Let's have a war with Russia, China, Iran and a few other countries we deem insufficiently deferential (Peru? Nigeria? Pakistan?) all at the same time just to see how it works out. https://t.co/CCf6N1FJF1
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 18, 2022
The U.S. Is Losing Yet Another ‘War on Terror’ Nick Turse, Rolling Stone (guurst)
Trump
Trump-Russia Steele dossier source acquitted of lying to FBI BBC (Kevin W)
EDVA Jury: Igor Danchenko not guilty on all counts The Reactionary (JS)
2022
Americans Explain Why They Are Not Voting In The Midterms The Onion
Five takeaways from the fiery Demings-Rubio debate in Florida The Hill
Is Stacey Abrams the Hillary Clinton of 2022? The Intercept
Supremes
Supreme Court orders the DOJ to explain why it let Chevron prosecute me Steven Donzinger (JS)
How nuns got squeezed out of the communion wafer business The Hustle (Paul R)
How Capitalism Kills Good Software Steve Keen (Micael T)
FTC Wants To Add Right To Repair To Existing Energy Saving Rules Vice
Inflation/Supply Chain
Health insurance prices set for takeoff Politico
Fed Can’t Pause Rate Hikes With Core Inflation Accelerating, Kashkari Says Bloomberg
New England Risks Winter Blackouts as Gas Supplies Tighten Wall Street Journal
Business Cycle Indicators as of Mid-October 2022 Menzie Chinn
Class Warfare
Where Higher Education Went Wrong American Conservative (Anthony L)
Amazon union suffers huge defeat in New York warehouse campaign Financial Times
Amazon’s Attrition Costs $8 Billion Annually Leaked Documents engadget
Hospital Monopolies Driving Up the Costs of Healthcare Angry Bear
Antidote du jour (CV):
And a bonus (guurst):
🔥 fighting peacocks pic.twitter.com/hh0KHmKYzm
— Nature Is Lit (@NatureIs_Lit) October 15, 2022
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
254 comments
Comments are closed.
ELON’S ANTHEM
(melody borrowed from Colonel Bogey March BY Lt. F. J. Ricketts)
Elon
Bought Twitter then said ‘WAIT!’
‘Your bots you must recalculate!’
‘You lot are . . . not as I thought!’
Elon is surely a sophisticate!
Elon
Has plans for whirled peas!
He’ll solve . . . our problems overseas!
Elon’s One-Quarter-Trillion
Grants him great wisdom . . . just like Socrates!
When he tweets . . . it shows up on our TV’s
Like the Oracle of Delphi
Patents flow . . . to him with the greatest ease
So his dollars can multiply!
And he makes cars . . . that drive around on their own
For they have Tesla’s flawless eyes
But if . . . software gremlins arise
EMS crews must mobilize!
Elon
Says Ukraine’s not to blame
He liked things . . . before the Russians came
‘Minsk Two . . . is what we should do’
But it’s been eight years since we lost that game!
Taiwan
Is next on Elon’s list
He says . . . we can all coexist
Oh but sweetie . . . a whole new treaty?
As if the Chinese aren’t already pissed!
Way up in the sky don’t you wonder why
Those lights are there?
Many satellites up at dizzy heights
He’s on a tear
Starlink internet is his new asset
Around the world
Signals they emit if you have his kit
The web unfurled
Then there’s Optimus the robot Elon sells
What it means to us is something no one tells
Will it be a boon to humans everywhere?
Or is it AI now growing self aware?
Elon
Is mortal like the rest
Money . . . lets him be so obsessed
With notions . . . and wild promotions!
But does he find them in Pandora’s chest?
Elon
Is on a spending spree
Building . . . the world he wants to see
Dancing . . . and refinancing
And sitting right where . . .
Right where . . .
Sitting right where we’d all like to be!
I was reading the Alisa Lynn Valdez twitter thread and yeah, nice rant, but who is she and where is the evidence of what she is saying?
Well, Googling her tells me that her best-selling authorship is in…Young Adult Chick Lit. Hmm… So next I hit pubmed dot gov. WHOA! Here ya go:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=covid+endothelial&size=50
In April 2020 I was listening to a Royal Society of Medicine online discussion on Covid. They had them weekly for some time and then moved to less often. Even at that time they noted that Covid was a vascular disease that was causing serious problems beyond respiratory infections. The damage at the microscopic level was already theorised at that point. Basically – yes, a lot of people knew and nobody with power did anything about it. As Alisa notes – yes, they are trying to kill you…
The Royal Society of Medicine is having another webinar about Covid-19 in light of the rather obvious 4th wave of 2022 on Wed 26 October. You can find the link to it here and it’s free for all attendees (don’t have to be a medical professional either): https://www.rsm.ac.uk/events/rsm-studios/2022-23/cer60/
Covid is a vascular disease? No. This is oversimplification. I dislike that. Vascular disease is just part of where bad things happen. It feels like cardiologists trying to own the disease: its our field, our field! For instance, Immunologists have a lot to say, and IMO much more that cardiologists.
Quite fair! I myself am oversimplifying it. The discussion 2 years ago was more about the fact that it is a multi-system attack that Covid provides.
That Sars-CoV-2 damages the endothelium (via the ACE 2 receptor, messing with the RAS system) has been known since the first year of the pandemic – see especially Roger Seheult`s Medcram Covid updates at that time where he gives explains if full and very clearly the mechanism. What else damages the endothelium: chronic high blood glucose levels (insulin resistance), stress, air pollution (incl smoking) – see the connection with the co-morbidities that lead to poor outcomes with Covid. Endothelium already compromised and along comes Sars2!
What protects same: vitamin D, low stress levels, clean air, nitric oxide (produced by the endothelium and enhanced by sunlight), exercise, good blood sugar profile – especially for the genetically sensitive, a low carbohydrate diet.
Note that the same factors are involved (are key players in fact) in “metabolic syndrome” i.e. chronic high BG leading to insulin resistance, high blood pressure in other words the main driver of cardiovascular disease. Note no mention of serum cholesterol levels.
Thank you Sardonia and Redlife! The people in my circle who have ‘moved on’ with their lives, many of whom have had a ‘mild’ case of COVID do need this info but they don’t need the ranting. I would never share something like that to try to convince them to carry on masking and limiting where they go and with whom they share air. These articles are more along the lines of what I need and what I was searching for when I realized someone in the NC community was probably ahead of me!
No, they DO need tough talk. I’m appalled that you are denigrating it. This is not ranting. This is blunt and vivid.
They won’t read papers and won’t understand them if they did.
This laypesron explanation might enable them to get that endothelial damage can’t be felt and won’t show up on tests until the damage is severe.
I am appalled that you are enabling societal-level destruction. People are getting sick. IM Doc can’t even communicate to the Covid Brain Trust via e-mail because he is so overloaded, burned out, and depressed.
And YOU are supporting this by “Oh we can’t be straight and candid, it might offend them.”
Fuck that. We are paying for this via shorter lifespans, more sickness, inflation, higher medical insurance costs, difficulty of getting any services. But oh, no, you are afraid of how YOU might come off via associating yourself with a straight-talking tweetstrom.
This is only confirming my need to abandon North America. Lemmings happily all going together over a cliff. Countries all over Asia have vastly lower Covid rates w/o going full China by having good levels of masking, and in some countries (Japan) also attention to indoor CO2 levels. You’d rather promote disease by not being willing to challenge bad habits.
My family and I have been battling through this pandemic while those all around us listen only to the propaganda. When we decline their invitations we tell them exactly why. When they question our sanity for not “moving on” we explain our thinking even more aggressively. But no, we do not share with them this raw intelligence, unless they engage us in a thoughtful manner on this level. They are all so enamored with the covid propaganda that sharing this would be counterproductive. Mind you, if our circle included thought leaders or policy makers, or even those adjacent to that world, then yeah, no holds barred.
Short of bringing on nuclear war, the worst thing Biden has done was say let them see your big American smile.
With all due respect, calling people stupid over and over again has become the PMC modus operandi and it does not work (except as a means of hardening the red/blue battle lines).
I think Valdez, who I found very, and encouragingly, effective, loads heavily on the treacherous irresponsibility of elites. To say that someone has been a victim of a massive campaign of denial is not calling them stupid. If they object, you can just say you care about them and want to warn them. Then you trim off references to their irresponsibility, which occurs in the fog of a disinformation war.
meh, contrariwise, one can also argue that polite, you-do-you mollycoddling is also a PMC trait. This argumentum ad PMC, (and argumentum ad fearmongerem is even worse, of course), can be a bit blinkered to the point of self-defeating.
I say that as someone who has been frustrated with some of the ‘twitter activism’ of the more ‘liberal’ wing of anti-covid twitter, which I’ve often found lame to the point of self-defeating (for example, slut shaming large gatherings of unmasked people who should know better – yes they should but this battle was lost 15 months ago, it’s like the Japanese soldiers lost in the jungle who don’t know the war is over. A different approach should be considered. Twitter is probably not the best place for this kind of communication, though). But an accurate rant like Yves’ can focus the mind. I think a more optimal balance can be struck when it comes to targeting ire, as hemeantwell discusses.
From my little corner of the world…
The first question anyone I send this to will ask, “And this person’s medical credentials are???”
fwiw, I have tried and tried numerous times to get family and friends to pay attention.
They won’t listen. They don’t want to hear it. They are convinced it’s not that big of a deal and if they do catch covid, they won’t die because they are vaccinated/boosted.
My 96 year old mother passed away in August. I couldn’t even go to the funeral and services because my family doesn’t take precautions.
I found out right after the funeral and get togethers, two nephews tested positive for COVID.
I’ve given up.
I’m not so sure. I think the lemmings-over-a-cliff thing is pretty much baked-in for all non-containment countries at this point. It’s just that it will probably happen on a slower timescale in east Asian countries than in the US and Europe. Notably, the reopenings of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore and, latterly, Japan were quite disastrous (a friend of mine actually relocated his young family from Singapore to China as a Covid refugee because of the way the wind was blowing in SG), although all of those countries are probably more western-aligned than, say, Thailand or Vietnam. Japan seems to be going a similar way since it re-opened to tourists a month or so ago, and they have dropped off mask messaging (not sure if they’ve dropped mandates yet) because they “don’t want to make western tourists uncomfortable” [despair emoji]. Of course, many tourists travelling to Japan will want to do quite a bit of eating (and drinking) there, at which point if they are wearing masks, they will have to come off. And if they aren’t bothered about eating indoors in their own countries, they won’t be in Japan. Alas, infection can happen in a matter of seconds, as we all know.
That said, on an individual level, so far as every-woman-for-herself goes (which is where we’re at at this point), I’m sure that for an expat in Thailand or Vietnam (and maybe other countries) it would be a lot easier to avoid infection if one was especially careful, including while maintaining a relatively high level of community/social engagement than in the pathologically selfish and terminally self-deluding west.
Another consideration maybe is that those east Asian countries will be in a far better position to do a policy pivot in the future if they decide that’s the way to go. Who knows what will happen, but I can imagine a scenario where, if China is still doing the dynamic zero thing by the end of the decade, they won’t be the only country in the region doing it as the toll of uncontrolled spread and repeat infections becomes more obvious and harder to sweep under the rug (and the more countries in a geographical area doing dynamic zero, the less onerous it will be on each individual country, as there will be fewer outbreaks). Such a scenario would be several years at least from coming to fruition at this point, I’d say, depending on how new variants play out. But maybe I’m just an optimist [/heavysarc]
Barely anyone wore a mask in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam when I was there two months back. Covid numbers might be low because testing rate is low. Death rate is low probably because the populations are generally younger and physically fitter, and it’s sunny most of the time. Singaporeans mask religiously but their numbers are much higher compared to other south east asian countries on account of ease of getting tested.
Say what you will but the only country where I felt safe from covid was, and still is, China.
Yep, most Indonesians are no longer wearing masks with the exception of service workers in the capital. I just love how the government keeps harping about “Covid cases are low because of vaccination and people are following Covid protocols”. ROFL.
People still can’t talk about decent sick leave policies because the “markets” might get upset.
It is often a choice between provoking an extreme reaction that leads to closed minds and closed ears or offering milder suggestions. Every interaction is different, but in one instance, after months of ignoring or dismissing all of my “health” suggestions, a friend suddenly became receptive after a bad experience with Paxlovid.
I’m not downplaying the extreme dangers –just last weekend during the Gowanus Arts Festival, I found that I was the only one visiting the studios who was wearing a mask. (I stayed within my own building, visited very briefly, and didn’t go elsewhere. I hope for everyone’s sake that there were others.)
Yes, strong emotive language can cause people to stop listening. Language like “your overlords have misled you and you have lapped it up” is very popular with the Tucker Carlsons and conspiracy theorists of the world and can cause you to get lumped in with them if you aren’t careful.
I find it’s usually stronger if I can stick to facts and evidence and get people to draw the scary conclusions themselves.
I never said we can’t be straight and candid! I happen to agree with her but if I sent that to my PMC friends, they’d write off as hysteria. I often feel the same way about Caitlyn Johnston’s writing. Usually agree with her but wouldn’t share with many because those people who see themselves as right, calm and rational will write off because of the strident, yelling way it would come across to them. People do need to be hit over the head, but I’d rather hit them over the head with studies.
Wow.
As Yves Smith at NC says, “Wonderfully Clarifying.”
Ya know, Yves, as the proprietor of the largest independent news site on the internet, maybe YOU should fight a little harder for us DREGS OF SOCIETY to organize and fight back in NORTH AMERICA.
I’m appalled at you today.
Never give up.
Never surrender!
Go to hell. Since when have YOU done anything for “the dregs of America”? You don’t even give to this site.
And you are so deluded as to think small voices can do anything to arrest the well-advanced decline of America, brought to you by the top 10%, who will happily participate in a US rerun of the looting of Russia in the 1990s? It’s way too late.
You also have a bizarre notion of loyalty. Since when should I be loyal to a country that has betrayed everything it purports to stand for? And I still have to support it. I can’t escape the IRS.
And as Talleyrand is purported to have said, “I never abandoned a regime until it abandoned itself.”
Re: the IRS
You may know about this, but if you are contemplating life overseas, check out Form 2555. It’s not a complete escape from the IRS, but a nice step in that direction. ;)
TL;DR Learn Mandarin.
No, move to Asia. All of East Asia has way lower Covid rates due to masking. That’s all it takes to make a big dent in contagion.
I don’t think most people have that option. Speaking about living as an expat/foreigner in East Asia, I can tell you that the most popular foreigner forum in Taiwan is filled with anti maskers. I was supposed to move to Taiwan earlier last month, but life intervened, so perhaps I’ll go there sometime next year. Japan’s foreigners might not be that different, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Foreigners-in-Japan-should-stop-whining-and-put-a-mask-on.
At least in Taiwan, it’s supposedly pretty easy to make local friends, but in Japan, it’s pretty much impossible. Fortress China is impenetrable, and I don’t know much about South Korea.
I live in one of the South East Asian countries, and most people here are no longer masking, and the Covid rate is low purely due to the lack of testing. Me? I will lay down my mask only when Xi Jinping says it’s all clear.
Im told in Thailand and Malaysia masking is still at pretty high levels.
Was in Singapore a week ago. Overall level of masking just OK, but on public transportation (masking recommended but not required) we saw 100% masking. Not exaggerating. Every single person wearing a mask, and all wearing them correctly (although some were just surgical masks). Not sure how long it lasts, but now in Australia where my wife and I are virtually the only people masking.
Masking is required on Singapore’s public transportation for commuters aged 6 and above. Straight from the horse’s mouth https://www.smrt.com.sg/News-Room/COVID-19-Efforts/FAQs#11209157-1-do-i-need-to-wear-a-mask-in-your-trains-and-buses
It’s understandable given how crowded the trains and buses could be during peak hours. I used to live in Singapore for a couple of years by the way.
There are some anti-mask ‘Covid is a lie’ types in Japan, but pretty much 99.9% of people you see on the street are still masking, at least in Tokyo. Early on in the pandemic, ‘no masuku gaijin’ became a kind of social stigma that anyone paying attention wouldn’t want to identify as. You do see some tourists walking around without masks… probably wondering why so many people are staring at them. That said, mask etiquette isn’t what it was a year ago. More noses poking out over masks, etc.
https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/foreign-tourists-react-to-mask-wearing-in-japan-and-japanese-people-react-to-foreign-non-maskers
Pretty interesting.
Yuuuuup.
Endothelial damage is caused in every viral infection from influenza to rhinovirus. The woman does not know what she’s talking about, and it’s overt fear mongering.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4251441/
If that were true, then why do you never hear of ‘Long Influenza’ for example?
However, there are plenty complications from the flu.
Covid, and the way it has been handled, should be causing a second look at a number of things accepted as endemic. I’m especially thinking of the woeful ability, in this country, to mitigate the spread of airborne pathogens.
I had a talk with my Cardiologist about this, Myocarditis can be brought on by Influenza. Its less likely to be sure, but still happens. Covid (or anything) doing endothelial damage is in itself not not noteworthy–processed food and insulin spikes do it all the time–what’s noteworthy is the extent of Endothelial damage which I would definetly like to hear more about.
Because you do not hear about something does not mean it does not happen. #MECFSisLongCOVID
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26475444/
Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is associated with pandemic influenza infection, but not with an adjuvanted pandemic influenza vaccine
I’m not suggesting the tweetstorm is or isn’t truth. I’m still masking and still taking Covid deadly serious.
But to answer your question, “Long Influenza” is perhaps we probably should have been calling “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” for all these years. One of the only good things to come out of Covid may have been to have all these pre-Covid sufferers have their illnesses retrospectively recognized as non-hysterical/non-crazy.
well you may never have heard of it. but doctors certainly have (though it is not called Long inlfuenza and it is not only influenza but many infections both viral and to a much lesser extent protozoan and bacterial.
It just wasn’t called that. This article describes how Woodrow Wilson was “never the same” after contracting the 1918 flu.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-when-woodrow-wilson-came-down-1918-flu-180975972/
Do not make shit up. Covid is widely acknowledged as an endothelial disease. That is why it damages so many organ systems.
Sardonia provided a ton of links to that effect, which you ignored.
As a part of it, and not always. It is a respiratory disease primarily that all too often becomes systemic and in those cases it is not restricted to vascular tissues but spreads to other tissues as well. Besides, most of the damage comes from interfering with the cellular responses and inflammatory reactions rather that direct infection. I dislike very much those oversimplifications such as “it is a vascular disease” i would admit “it is also a vascular disease with XXXX frequency” but not a vascular disease by definition. Better “systemic” than “vascular”. It looks like certain kind of specialists want to own a complex infectious disease.
With all due respect, that is not correct. It is often primarily gastric.
https://www.lowellgeneral.org/health-and-wellness/health-library/mild-covid-19-often-appears-with-only-gastro-symptoms-study
Similarly, a large scale survey of Wuhan patients (IIRC n=~40,000) found over 30% had primarily/solely digestive symptoms.
This is still true with Omicron:
https://www.everydayhealth.com/coronavirus/could-your-digestive-issues-be-a-symptom-of-covid-19/
Yves – thank you for the hard work in the comments and articles you do here on Covid.
My partner is still suffering 3 1/2 weeks after his first positive test. We are middle aged, honestly in the prime of our lives and I’m watching the person I love not be able to get up out of bed until 2pm. This is not the flu, this is not normal. At this point I truly have so much anger about how our societies have just decided – “oh well”. I tell people that my partner is still suffering and they go…”OHHHH” and it’s pretty obvious that they really don’t want to interact with it. It’s really uncomfortable for them, since they know my partner and know that my partner is very active, healthy and engaged. I just keep hoping that it will get better…
I won’t forget the community here that has kept my spirits up during all of this. Thank you.
The only reason you wrote this comment is because you had no understanding what I was saying. Is it your assumption that I think COVID is not bad or dangerous of that your partner is a liar or something? Did I say “it was just like the flu”? Do you think I feel we should all be running around without masks or letting the government say nothing about air filtration and nutrition?
I said none of that, and as a child of a parent who had ME/CFS before they knew what it was I probably understand more than you know about how difficult it is.
I was saying that researchers know about vial endothelial damage, and that this reporter did not know about and wove a horror story about it does not help because it is an exaggeration.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.23354
In all these years what have they done to understand this? Nothing.
Calling COVID and “endothelial disease” is what is harm to all of us. Because it is a viral infection that causes endothelial problems is a lot of people but not all of them. It diminishes your husband because it ignores his uniqueness. I do not want researchers to study “Long COVID”. I want them to study your partner.
Thank you for this. COVID is real. I have had it, as have all of my immediate family. Long COVID is real. My brother has had it, with some significant complications. But part of the insidiousness of the disease is its unpredictability, and the fact that it affects everyone differently. We’ve known about the endothelial effects since early on. While these, and “long COVID” in general (whatever that is – symptoms and definitions vary) are certainly to be taken seriously, this thread makes it sound like if you get COVID you will eventually face a hideous rotting away of your circulatory system. From what I have been able to determine from what little real information and research are available, this is not the fate of the majority – perhaps the great majority.
In saying this I am not trying to minimize the suffering of those who do experience serious long-term effects at all. I am also not criticizing masking and other sound care measures. But this thread is clearly fear-mongering. If you think this approach is necessary to get people to do what is right, then fine. But in my opinion, this thread does not present an accurate picture of COVID reality. When such extreme statements are shown to be exaggerations, it is just one more reason for people to reject *real* information. That is the problem for me.
I’m not an virologist but, my take away from the article you reference was that not every virus affects human endothelial cells at all or in the same way. Based on numerous links in the thread it seems certain that Covid does have an impact. Here are snippits taken from the article you linked to.
“Whilst one recent study in mice recorded endothelial cell infection (Ogiwara et al., 2014), in most animal models of human infection IAV infection of the endothelium is rarely observed (Kuiken et al., 2010) (see Figure Figure2).2). Together, these data suggest that infection of endothelial cells by IAV is unlikely to contribute to disease severity in humans.”
“However, in spite of these in vitro studies, there is limited evidence suggesting that IAV infection of human endothelial cells occurs in vivo. Post mortem analysis of patients who succumbed to H5N1 did not demonstrate the presence of virus in pulmonary endothelial cells (Gu et al., 2007). Similarly, endothelial cells were only very infrequently infected in a limited number of patients infected with fatal pandemic 2009 H1N1 (Shieh et al., 2010).”
“In sum, whilst human endothelial cells are not infected with IAV, endothelial cells still play an important role in the pathogenesis of IAV in humans.”
This potential for damage to the vascular system along with the destruction of T-cells by Covid is not a good thing long term.
Soft tissue damage occurs in all gunshot wounds, anyone talking about bullet design or velocity does not know what they’re talking about.
That is your argument, mutatis mutandis. I find it very hard to believe you make it in good faith.
Good faith or bad, it relies on the unstated assumption that lasting injury doesn’t occur from common viral infections. If you wrote in good faith this shows either poor reasoning or precisely the sort of ignorance you accuse the young woman of.
I noted this in another comment, but I think “Endothelial damage is caused in every viral infection from influenza to rhinovirus.” is a fair critique. There is no unstated assumption that “lasting injury doesn’t occur from other viral infections”. We know there are — and yet we didnt (and China still doesnt) shut down our economy for them. It comes down to cost vs benefit. How much more severe is the Endothelial damage — and the damage to every other system as Ignacio notes — vs other common infections?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in Yves’ camp that we should be taking this more seriously, but its important to respond to valid critiques for what they are
You are all getting me wrong thinking I am not in “Yves camp”.
And Raymond, I now where said there was no long lasting effect from COVID. Talk about making stuff up! In fact I believe it more than you know and I believed that viruses caused ME/CFS but no one listened to me 15 years ago either.
If I were in Yves situation, I wouldn’t run.
I would stay and fight and rally my supporters. If it is happening to her, then it is happening to millions of others.
The only difference is Yves has a platform to fight back. Yves just made like 150K $ in the site fundraiser. Why not use this to gain power from the morons that run this country? Why not heal and unite as opposed to divide and conquer?
As Ash says in Army of Darkness:
“Go ahead and RUN. RUN home and cry to mama! Me? IM THROUGH RUNNING!”
You are taking a lot on yourself telling Yves what to do.
She is doing an enormous public service by providing this site. There is an information war going on throughout the western world and most of the stuff we read is total bs designed to render us mute and powerless in the service of the top 0.005%.
She takes a risk by providing real information. You only have to look at what is happening to others who go against the government propaganda to see the risk.
You are using this blog to inform yourself. Now you go and do something equally transformative. And then let us know what that is so we can all have a say on whether it is the right thing and where you are going wrong.
What gall. How dare you presume to tell me how to run my life or where to live. You have a lot of nerve siting in judgement.
And then to act as if “fighting” makes any fucking difference.
And I see you don’t offer to pay for my living costs yet presume to tell me how to run my life, including incurring unnecessary health risks by staying in a country with a corrupt public health and medical system. You don’t even contribute to this blog yet act like you have a say in what I decide to do.
That’s a weird take mate. Obviously $150,000 is a lot of money to most Americans, but at the institutional scale? $150k is only enough to keep a modest independent news blog ticking along and punching above its weight. That’s it, that’s the fight.
Becnel didn’t pay attention and it shows. $150K not for me. It is for the site. That means site hosting, institutional grade Cloudflare, two paid and one generous honorarium comments DJ, other payments for custom tech work, and five paid site writers, plus my admin duties? Christ Almighty, bookkeeping, accounting and tax filings alone are over $10,000 a year. It’s pretty much impossible for a small business to hire an accountant for less.
A single full time named writer at ProPublica gets $250,000. We get by on bupkis and he has the temerity to make a stink about it, when he does not give us a dime?
Call me Mr. Tinfoil, but I think someone somewhere decided to paint you with the rich/dilettante/hypocrite palette.
You don’t give the bastards much to work with do you?
It’s got me feeling double-guilty about missing the fundraiser. I think I’ll ask for cash this Christmas – if I get any it’s yours, and I hope you’ll feel free to fritter it away on your health and well-being.
So it’s the consequences.
I read recently eu has found 17-mil with long covid (sorry, no link.) We don’t do data, but we have 2-mil covid deaths counting ‘extra’ deaths. Our pop is about same as eu, say 20-mil dead or out with long Covid; that’s about 6% of pop. Somewhat confirming this is that it’s so hard to find workers, and worker support ended long ago.
A 6% worker decline might imply 6% loss in gdp. China gdp growth has been cut in half, from 6 to 3%. So if these numbers are about right, their gdp hit is less than ours as we suffer far higher losses.
And anyway, is it all about growth? No concern at all for the 20-mil? And that number only has one way to.
A fair critique? So what? It’s empty.
As for unstated assumptions, where’s this talk of shutting down the economy come from?
Like JAC, if you’re in good faith then you display deficient reasoning skills.
For those unaware, Lynn-Valdes’ background I believe is as a Long Covid advocate. IIRC she was infected in 2020, the effects were life-ruining, and she has been on a mission to learn a lot about the disease, what has gone wrong with her, and why. Her efforts in that thread put the likes of Jha, Walensky, Fauci, Prasad, Bhattacharya, Balloux, Kulldorf, Collignon et al to total, absolute shame.
I think her thread was inspired by this 10-17-22 article, which includes the tables for markers and therapies that are in her tweets.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-022-00998-0
This is the state of information these days. We criticize (looking at you Lambert) Fauci who has been studying infectious diseases his entire life, and then pay attention to a Children’s Literature writer who has decided she is now an immunology expert.
There’s plenty evidence that Covid is transmitted as an aerosol, meaning schools/factories/offices/gov should have been focusing on better ventilation, corsi boxes etc as well as masking from the first day.
Somebody that hasn’t noticed this decades-old research regarding infectious diseases shouldn’t have a decision making position on the subject.
Have you noticed that Fauci has been shown to be a corrupt and dishonest apparatchik of the “official” Medical Industrial Complex? The man flat out lied, knowingly, to the public about masking at the beginning of the Coronavirus Pandemic. He helped cover up the involvement of “inside” actors in the Wuhan lab debacle. Etc., etc., ad nauseam. In short, he knowingly did things that caused the deaths of a large number of people in the United States.
More than Fauci has been studying infectious diseases, he has been studying group dynamics and career advancement.
It might be better that the woman in question is a writer. At least she has no visible conflicts of interest in the medical field.
Criticism of Fauci is more than well deserved. You can be a scientist and be completely wrong.
Yet you listen to Lambert, who has even fewer formal credentials than she does. And you miss she’s been early and accurate on Long Covid.
How is this possibly a good faith argument? Invoking Fauci’s credentials would be more appropriate in an indictment of those credentials.
And what is this “state of information” you speak of? Whatever it is, 9 out of 10 fellow kids agree: Lose the plural in your first-person.
>Five takeaways from the fiery Demings-Rubio debate in Florida-The Hill
Rubio and Demings both insisted on the need to respond to Russian aggression amid that country’s invasion of Ukraine
I was looking for the transcript of the debate but could not find it. I wanted to confirm what I heard a blogger state, that Rubio blamed Russia for destroying their own pipeline and thereby attacking NATO. This made me think of what I heard Robert Barnes on the Duran say last night. To paraphrase, he intimated that the most successful coup the deep state (substitute with your own appellation) conducted was the takeover of the Democratic Party.
This was a perfect opportunity for Demings to take Rubio to task for his outspoken hawkish foreign policy and what does he do? He pretty much agrees with Rubio with some minor differences. Barnes mentioned the “coup” in reference to the Alex Jones ruling where Jones was hit with ~$1B in fines. I didn’t know what a miscarriage of justice the court case was since everyone likes to pile on AJ I haven’t been following the fall-out. According to Barnes, the implications are stark and dire, podcast is well worth a listen.
Bonus antidote of the fighting peacocks, sent me post haste to a brief searching effort on US (or other country) sports teams named after the bird. Behold, your St. Peter Peacocks who were also the darlings of the NCAA men’s college hoops tournament during March 2022.
Bizarre or unusual team names are not limited to just the above bird, it seems.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1701343-ranking-the-10-worst-mascots-in-college-basketball
The Cal-Irvine Anteaters is pretty cool. But no mention of the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs?
And no mention of the ‘Nads, a Texas HS team with a great cheerleading squad.
My suggestion is to name sports teams after extinct or endangered species. If we couldn’t or can’t save them, the very least we can do is honor and remember them.
And perhaps, sports fans everywhere will pause from rooting for their Leopards, Rhinos, Elephants, and Gorillas and think a moment about those real, flesh-and-blood, perishing animals.
I thought someone missed a golden opportunity to rename their baseball team as the Cleveland Centrosaurus
https://lecourrierdesstrateges.fr/2022/10/13/ukraine-arretez-le-massacre-par-francois-martin/
As François Martin says in the article Russia cannot accept losing this war. Putin is prepared to fight to the last Russian and if that means a war with NATO then so be it.
Apparently not just Putin: today looked cursorily the comment sections of some Russian news sites, and the main narrative seemed to be that Russia is already at war with Poland/whole Europe (like in 1941) and where the family blog is the regular army hiding since it’s not already out there beating the crap out the enemies?
I suppose for the Russians it would be like seeing your favourite team get to go play in the Super Bowl, only to find that for the first three quarters of the game that your team is sending in the second stringers and even the rookies to play thus letting the other team score cheap points off your team. And you are just waiting and demanding on your best players to go in and clean the clocks of the other team who by this point are running on empty due to the efforts of those second stringers.
Sports metaphors applied to war strike me as ghoulish and very American.
Umm, I’m not American. But the parallels between war and sport are there and if you want to push it, the contests for the original Greek Olympics were basically war skills such as javelin, wrestling, etc.
I’m aware. It’s all entertainment.
Have you ever thought that if somehow all death and injury could be taken out of war, that in fact it would be entertainment? Think about the Vikings and their idea of heaven – or Valhalla as they called it. It was essentially a place where they could fight together in combat each day and in the evening, they would be put together again and all go together to the Halls to get drunk and talk about their deeds of valour. Not my idea of heaven but it takes all types. And if you read accounts by war veterans of different countries, they never miss the violence but they do value the real friendship that they made on a level rarely seen in their civilian lives back home.
Instead we humans seems to enjoy making sports ever more bloody and brutal (or maybe it is just the signs of a failing society?).
Observe the Roman circus of old, and modern day MMA.
Boxing (book tip: The Sweet Science, by A.J. Liebling) seems almost like gentlemanly behavior compared to MMA.
And in recent years i have seen a rise of attention to boxing, in a nation that used to ban it unless the participants wore head protection, thanks to certain ladies getting international attention.
As in 95% of the video games on the market today?
Reminds me that winter sports exist perhaps largely thanks to one Norwegian Colonel, who traveled Europe teaching ski techniques to mountain nations.
His thinking was that sport was about preparing a nation for war, by keeping the population in fighting shape.
Quite the character.
American Football has always struck me as warlike.
Its usually relegated to anecdote status, but if Harvard had not just built a then million dollar stadium, there was a move by Teddy Roosevelt to ban football.
As different degrees of contest, war and sports shade into each other. Many hunting cultures (including capitalism) have special, important places for ceremonial mock battles within and between their societies. And how about that Mesoamerican ball game!
Rugby is pretty close to war. Actually the anthropological literature pretty clearly shows that there is continuum between war and sports…
Any of the comments mention similarities to the Sept 1939 invasion of Poland or the 1939-1940 Winter War with Finland?
I don’t know who François Martin is or what audience he reaches in the francophone world. But I read his essay. I think it is a very good and honest piece of work. Martin calls on humanity. From that point of view it is almost unbelievable what’s going on over there. As we at NC know, from all reports and guesstimates (Dima, Martianov, Mercouris etcetera) the toll in human life and total waste of materials, resources and a future way of living over there is immense.
Martin’s call for an armistice and talks may well be ignored. Our western leaders are blind and deaf for this suffering. They’re obsessed with Putin. I read Borrell’s speesch yesterday. It is choked with words like fight, frontier, winning, imposing, be bold, battlefield… imho he’s solipsistic, undiplomatic, completely in panic-mode. He wants to be the best informed man in the world (his own words). This is not someone who can delegate. In the theory of Covey he’s almost in quarter four…not effective, not important. Usually people burn out when they get in that mode…
Russia is already at war with NATO. The Russians (not Putin alone) are prepared to fight to the last Russian because if they lose there will be no Russia.
NATO has already made it clear that their plan is to destroy Russia.
>Tucker Carlson clip – The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule,
What the clip didn’t mention is that:
By adding the shots to the childhood schedule, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will transfer liability for vaccine injuries to the federal government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), allowing for Pfizer and Moderna to finally bring an FDA approved shot to the market without opening itself up to lawsuits. Moreover, it will act as another windfall for companies that have already brought in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues, by requiring these vaccinations for children who attend public schools.
https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-cdc-will-vote-thursday-to-permanently?sd=pf
Once an FDA approved version is brought to market I foresee the return of mandates.
Covid childhood “vaccinations” of any type are still being administered, to the extent that they are, under Emergency Use Authorization. No childhood “vax” protocol is fda “approved,” whatever that has come to mean.
EUA is not some quaint little public health device for keeping the public “safe” from experimental medication. It is, or was, a LAW, with specific requirements for drugs administered under its authority, one of the most significant of which is that no one can be forced to take it.
So now the fda has the “power” to write its own laws to oblige the pharmaceutical companies by shielding them from financial liability for dangerous products, and where children and pregnant women are concerned?
Yep. The stage 3 trials – EUA – are/were supposed to last until 2023. The original stage 2 trials for adults were supposed to last at least 6 months.
I’ve watched FDA and CDC wave through incompleted trials (shortcutted) on the claims that “early data shows”, without showing me the data. (I’m not anti-youknow. I do want good trials run long enough to show safety, and – forgive me – I was never convinced the very short time frames could do that. There’s no long term data – 5 years minimum for a vx – even now.)
adding: wanting to keep the original trials’ data secret for 50-75 did’t built trust in the product for me.
typos: …for 50-75 years didn’t….
Why yes Ms Katniss, the USA is murderously insane.
Poisoning kids for profit and sheltering the people who do it is part of what the Government is for.
Expect more predation of this kind now that it is being normalized.
Stop for a moment and look at what the US Elites have done the last few years.
Donziger is in the links again, Assange and Murray, the raids on Uhuru and Mar A Lago, tossing Habeas Corpus away in the 2016 NDAA, Total information awareness, militarized police, pervasive surveillance, a deadly pandemic deliberately let run wild…
And profiteering from pain and suffering with a recklessness that is historically unsurpassed.
I do not believe that Joe Biden is mentally competent, and the violently delusional behavior of his administration reflects that, IMO.
Dealing with someone who is agreement incapable is one thing, dealing with someone who is delusional, enraged and heedless of consequences as well…
Imagine if Thalidomide had been mandated for all pregnant women back in the 1950s?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal
I went to elementary school with a Thalidomide baby who had a flipper arm. He was a couple years ahead of me and his mom had probably bought some of the good stuff from Europe.
Few “President’s Medals for Distinguished Service” have been so well-deserved as the one JFK awarded to Frances Oldham Kelsey. As a compliance officer with the FDA, she was not convinced that thalidomide had been sufficiently tested and blocked its approval in the U.S. in the face of huge pressure.
https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/frances-oldham-kelsey/
Her Wiki page makes good reading too. She only passed away in 2015 at the age of 101 years old but the number of people’s whose lives she saved being destroyed is beyond account-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
Of course these days people like her would have been weeded out by the CDC and chased back to Canada in her case.
Thanks, Rev. Indeed.
And then out of Canada…
“we were heroes once, and young”…
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-to-vote-on-adding-covid-19-vaccine-to-vaccines-for-kids-program-on-wednesday
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/agenda-archive/agenda-2022-10-19-20-508.pdf
You better look busy, Miss Lizzy
When you play that starring role
You make me dizzy, Miss Lizzy
When you score an own goal
Come on, come on
Come on, come on, Lizzy
Resign ‘fore I grow too old
Run and tell Kwasi moto
I want you to go go
Run and tell the party Tory
Baby, you’re history
Come on, come on
Come on, come on, maybe
You’ll be like political rabies
Come on, a little late for a tizzy
Put your little resignation before the nation
Come on, Miss Lizzy
Yeah, things don’t look so fine & think of the jubilation
Come on, come on
Come on, come on, Dizzy
Its about your end of time, ow!
Come on, give me closure
Get your resignation in on time, girl
Woo! Miss Lizzy
Girl, things don’t look so fine
Come on, come on
Come on, Miss Lizzy
Girl, I want to harry you
You make me dizzy, Miss Lizzy
When I write your name
Ooh, baby
Say you’re driving me insane
You’re just a fill-in @ a bad time
Girl, I bet you wish you were a mime
Dizzy Miss Lizzy, by the Beatles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK4VRJ2WeRY
Lizzie is just teed up perfectly for that song, like a shiny new Titleist, waiting to be driven 300 years right down the middle of the fairway.
Nice shot, Wuk.
Wow. Two good songs today for the NC Songbook. I’ve got about 75 songs now so I think I’m going to publish something when I get to 100.
Keep up the good work, Antifa, Sardonia, and Wukchumni.
>”…I think I’m going to publish something when I get to 100.”
How old are you right now?
LOL!
72
A shout out to Larry Williams who wrote and recorded Dizzie Miss Lizzie and others that were
covered by The Beatles including Slow Down and Bad Boy..
Hundreds of cots lined up in the NYC facility, ready to host largely individual male asylum seekers. Hope they get a tight control on very small weapons and so forth. We have seen video of when it can reach a high boiling point before, after all. Ok yeah the below is from film but you get the point I am attempting to make here.
https://youtu.be/H0mWYZfBWrg
The Hill’s four ways Putin could escalate sure sounds like four things Biden would do to Russia before admitting defeat in Ukraine. The “nyah nyah no one’s proved the US had biolabs in Ukraine” opening was absolutely vile and everything that followed read like psyops.
Deep State rhetoric is so inflated it’s no wonder most Americans are ignoring Joe’s new, improved Potemkin War now featuring Light Brigade strategies.
Twitter links no longer seem to work on NC. Anybody else having this problem? If so, any hacks to cure it?
You will note from other comments discussion of topics posted on twit.. No problems noted. I’m using Brave and DDG, but maybe try Firefox, Yandex, or another if you’re having issues.
I generally try to find a working Nitter and search for the poster. Twitter really really really wants you to join.
In addition, they want you IP address and other data. I refuse to participate even though I use VPN.
I have found opening Twitter links in a private window works more conveniently and reliably than nitter.
‘It’s such a big deal that it seems likely to produce the needed Turkeyie acquiescence to Russia taking Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, if and when that happens. Note that Turkeyie has heretofore made clear it was mighty unhappy about that prospect.’
Turkey has wanted a foothold on the northern part of the Black Sea for a long time via Crimea. Maybe the hope was to dominate the shores of the Black Sea coastline more. Of course this deal is a sweetheart deal for Turkey but what I think has happened is that Turkey sees that the EU is going down the gurgler. But that if Turkey turns their attention to the east, there awaits them untold wealth by integrating themselves into the rising trade block there. And that is the bigger prize. Sort of like when Britain had to give up on North America – and found far more lucrative wealth opportunities in the east.
With the fall of Germany, Turkey can provide the Southern states with gas after they shake the boot of the EU.
Had link to good story on this from rushing source but the net in the sky seems to be improving it’s aim.
You think that Erdogan will supply gas to Greece?
Certainly, if Greece makes the right offer. So much to bargain with between the two.
I would guess total demilitarization of the eastern Aegean islands for a start like the Greeks were supposed to do. Maybe even Cyprus will come into play as I think that that island will also need to get their gas from Turkstream. So many possibilities.
I can already see the internet tough boys talking about “Vienna”…
Issues of Northern Cypress run into issues with various Lebanese, Egyptian, Israeli oil deal for new Eastern Med fields.
Given that Turkey just pushed its way into building two bases in Libya (versus Russia-France opposition I think), almost every thing you can say about the Southern European – East Med fossil fuel situation gets very complicated very fast.
re: The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule
If the CDC does this, then:
1. Home schooling will increase
and
2. My opinion of the CDC will be confirmed.
For the Biden regime it would be a multiple win. It would mean that the feds would commit themselves to buying hundreds of millions of doses of this vaccine for years to come thus assuring a solid revenue stream for big pharma – who would show the appropriate level of gratitude. A lot of parents would understandably pull their kids out of school which would undermine public education to the benefit of charters schools and the like – who also would show the appropriate level of gratitude. So yeah, it is all about money even though it totally undermines public confidence in regualr vaccines and public education.
Also consider the knock on effect of lowering public uptake of the “proven effective” vaccines. Not only continuing waves of “Long Covid,” but newly started waves of previously controlled childhood diseases. The ‘Long March’ back to 1800’s standards of living has begun.
This doesn’t have to be either ‘stupid’ or ‘evil;’ either way the effects will be the same. It’s results that count.
By that you mean it can be BOTH evil and stupid?
Zounds! A multiple guess question!
A) Evil does it.
B) Stupid is as stupid does.
C) Evil and stupid, helping each other.
No matter what the choice is, a lot of people are going to swell the ranks of the Excess Deaths category.
The Sovietization of American children needs to be stopped. Children were the property of the Soviet Union, not the parents.
More home schooling? Excellent. Parents need to sue as a class to not pay the portion of their property taxes that support local schools if their children are not allowed to attend following other’s financial, philosophical and religious precepts.
Advantages of home schooling, parent at home, not driving kids back and forth, less carbon!, more security, better for kids than strangers teaching them. Infinite universe of free resources like Kahn Academy are available. The Left is terrified of losing control over the minds and bodies of children.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/revolt-of-the-parents-vol-3-wisconsin-waukesha-kenosha-oklahoma-school-board-election-11649280677
Yes, always a good idea to have one’s chattel close at hand
Puritans project their inner fears onto others and commit redemptive violence against them.
Sorry, there is no right to ideological reproduction. You waived that as soon as you tried to convert someone to capitalism by force and you waive it again every time you invoke one of your childishly hyperventilated war game myths. I happen to think the correct response to someone trying to force their values on you is to destroy the perpetrator’s ability to force anything on anyone, even their “own” household.
When did “the left” ever have control over the minds and bodies of children?
I’m still scarred by all of the duck and cover exercises designed to make the rights’ fear of communists common property. No, I didn’t need to have a minute of prayer, and no I did not need to pledge allegiance to a concept of which I was not yet aware.
Just teach me how to add and subtract without all of your angst washing over us all the time.
Liberals NOT LEFT.
Musk: ‘Minsk Two is what we should do’ (Antifa)
Not exactly.
Minsk II called for the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts to remain within Ukraine with a special status and self-government. The status of Crimea was not addressed, nor was the issue of Ukraine’s neutrality.
Musk’s proposal, in contrast, called for redoing elections under UN supervision in all four regions that had voted to join Russia. Crimea was to be recognized as part of Russia, “as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake)”, and Ukraine was to “remain neutral.”
Seems like way too late for Minsk II. Agreement-incapable Westerners always behind developments. There is no longer trust for such a scheme.
I do not see why Ukraine or the Western Powers would ever agree to a referendum conducted under UN supervision, as that would only further legitimate the outcome. Further, the US never gave Texas or Mississippi a vote on remaining in the Union if memory serves. Better to be defeated in war and lose it by force then you can use it as a source of revanchist grievance for a couple centuries, in contrast to something that legitimates the loss.
If I were negotiating for the West, I would never let those oblasts have anything resembling a legitimate referendum from the standpoint of Western opinion ever.
I don’t think the referendums legitimize anything as such, no matter who sponsors them. The principle of self-determination is what has been legitimizing secession and new states since the WW1 in international law.
Of course, it was meant mostly for former colonies, but there’s a provision for being oppressed and/or not properly represented by the mother state. Donbass, for example, having been shelled for 8 years, could be able to make a good case of both.
In the end, though, it seems the thing that gives the true “legitimization” for seceding is having the military power to do it.
While I agree about your last point, no one would waste the time and resources that they do on referendums if they did not serve a legitimating function, and you raise the obvious connection to their use with respect to international law as well as diplomatic arguments.
IIRC somebody close to Wilson at Versailles said (maybe in more high-falutin’ words) that the whole self-determination thing was going to come back and bite us on the ass. Has it ever.
A COVID update from eastern Ontario. In a shocking turn of events /s* – cases are on the rise and hospitalizations near as high as in the Omicron wave, outbreaks in the local hospital https://globalnews.ca/news/9198787/covid-19-situation-kingston-ontario/
*mask requirements dropped everywhere, back to school, Canadian thanksgiving gatherings, etc. Whocouldanode?
Now a good news story, I am a volunteer subject for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. I had my first in-person data gathering session (blood work, weight, body measurements, ekg, blood work, vision and hearing tests, memory tests, general mental and physical health questionnaire) since pre-COVID yesterday. The research centre for eastern Ontario is at a small Ottawa hospital. I was prepared to have a fight about giving up my KN95 mask for a hospital surgical mask but lo and behold, the staff were wearing N95s and giving out KN95s! The research study staff were all wearing Lambert’s beloved 3M Auras! And I am told the hospital chose three different masks and had all employees fitted and then enforced wearing of the one found to be the best fit. Now mind you they’re disinfecting and cleaning surfaces like crazy but I’ll take that plus good masks over the loose fitting or no masking I see pretty much everywhere I go these days. Also, no breathing tests to avoid over sharing of air! (And no bone density tests due to a shortage of X-ray technicians. Hmm)
Last, some Canadian researchers have made some progress diagnosing long COVID https://globalnews.ca/news/9194036/long-covid-canada-researchers-diagnosis/
Thank goodness someone is getting religion.
I was just in NYC at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Clerical staff not wearing masks. MDs only surgical masks.
Must be nice to live in a region of civilization.
Here in San Francisco as I shop for a new doctor I get a strong recommendation for one. He hopped onto the initial call and it went like this:
Him – sure, we can schedule you to come in.
Me – For now I prefer video consultations – I’m trying to avoid Covid
Him – You know there are no mask mandates anymore, right?
Me – Yes and I find that sad.
Him – (aggravated). Well if you come in I’ll put on a mask for YOU.
I passed. Gonna mail him a packet of grape Kool-Aid and a letter saying “Here’s something you can whip up and have in your waiting room for you patients to enjoy. You’ll have to find your own cyanide though.”
The good news with that encounter is that you have just discovered a valuable Touchstone for everybody-
‘As a metaphor, a touchstone refers to any physical or intellectual measure by which the validity or merit of a concept can be tested. It is similar in use to an acid test, litmus test in politics, or, from a negative perspective, a shibboleth where the criterion is considered by some to be out-of-date.’
So if you sound out a doctor how s/he feels about the present Pandemic and s/he says that it is all over, you know that their judgement is fundamental flawed and cannot be trusted. If you visit a doctor and see that they are wearing an N95, then you know that they understand.
The kool aid note made me laugh out loud. Thanks, I needed that!
A contrasting data point on hospital masking policies: on the 8th, I had to visit the ER of a large regional hospital in the British Columbia interior. Although mask-wearing was mandatory, as announced by posters at the door, and masks being handed out at the first point of contact inside, they were just the useless floppy medical type. In the entire 4 hours that I was there, mine was the only N95 to be seen.
In general, public institutions (e.g. schools, universities, hospitals) in BC have been unwilling to go beyond weak provincial policies. This contrasts with some outstanding exceptions in other provinces where individual institutions have been willing to go beyond provincial minimums. I was proud to see that my alma mater in Ontario has had an indoors mask requirement (albeit for just medical grade types) since the start of the fall semester.
Indeed, the little hospital in Ottawa was an exception to what I usually encounter here in eastern Ontario. Only surgical masks at my doc’s office, dentist and pharmacy. Kingston hospital supplies a surgical mask and it is a fight to retain your KN/N95.
With the reminder today about endothelial damage caused by COVID and how little we pay attention to it, I am pretty much convinced that our PTB really do want us to die. It isn’t benign neglect.
Not sure if you’ve seen it, CanCyn, but Public Health Ontario’s new data portal is very helpful.
https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/Data-and-Analysis/Infectious-Disease/COVID-19-Data-Surveillance/COVID-19-Data-Tool?tab=overview
The default summary tab for Covid shows the level of Covid and influenza activity in the province. Side by side, on the same screen, Covid and influenza. So convenient.
You’ll note that currently the level of Covid activity is considered “moderate” since the test positivity rate is only between 10.0% and 16.9%. Thankfully, Doug Ford’s conservative government basically stopped testing in December 2021, so the positivity rate has been “moderate” ever since. Much better than seeing that indicator change as that would be alarming. Or something.
Thanks Will, I know the site. It wasn’t working for me for a few days. But seems to be OK now. Yeah, no more reminders that since we stopped most testing in December that rates are likely higher than indicated. And only updated once a week. Sigh. It replaced the dashboard that the Ontario Science Advisory folks originally created: https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/ I suspect that there is a story about that organization just waiting to be told – another example of politics and science not mixing.
When I’m feeling optimistic I multiply reported cases by 6 or 7 but generally assume a factor of 10, as mentioned by someone (can’t remember if it was doc or a scientist) in Ontario last year when they first scaled back testing. But mostly rely on wastewater trends and have for some time.
We gonna need a bigga antidote …
I liked em both, but times are getting darker.
I was terrorized by a ostentation of peacock nation in the City of Angles on occasion, and yeah i’ll miss their runny poop purposely laid for me to step in it, and soundtrack perhaps lifted from a bad 1950’s horror flick, but not really.
Those dulcet tones of peacock communications are the soundtrack of 1940’s and 1950’s jungle pictures. They were not challenged in their splendiferousness until the ‘discovery’ of the plangent cries of the Tookie Tookie bird in the 1960s.
See, and hear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGUgtebFVQE
I feel fortunate indeed to have survived the scourge of quicksand, which judging from how often it was a central plot on film and tv. you’d think it was everywhere.
…i’ve yet to come across any
Is “ostentation” the collective noun for peacocks? If not it should be, consider:
As we strolled through the park we were delighted but slightly frightened to come upon a raucous ostentation of peacocks just beyond our path.
The sleeping kitten was enough for me. My “aaahh…” meter actually went over 10!
A plethora of scary links today, unsettling in the extreme.
This is the strangest election season I can recall..it seems almost non existent.
Two geriatric parties, and Biden is who we thought he was. For the people who knew him because he was VP and plays a tough guy on TV, he’s been exposed as lazy, dumb and mean. He promised he could get Republicans of work with him (going c’mon man isn’t a strategy), he could manage the Senate, and would restore America’s place in the world. He’s 0-3 on grand promises.
Some will say he’s old, but this is an excuse. He’s always been stupid. His partition plan for Iraq in the 00’s was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen unless the goal was to turn Iraqi oil over to Iran.
I think Team Blue elites and partisans internalized “The Emerging Democratic Majority” and simply decided they would win without doing anything and everyone would be nice to them. So the really don’t know what to do. Biden is promising day one legislation now. Huh? He’s not going to overcome the filibuster, so why not today?
How can anyone be excited? The GOP has no business being in the majority, but neither does Team Blue.
This basically sums it up. I am considering voting Republican at the federal level for the first time in my life (usually just vote third party). I don’t agree with Republicans on much of anything, but at least maybe the Biden loons will suffer some repercussions when their so-called foreign policy turns into a disaster that can’t be concealed by the press.
I think we plebs are the ones who are going to suffer those repercussions!
As a former.campaign professional (and more extensively volunteer from 1974 forward) on local and state candidate and ballot measure efforts, I found after an extremely narrow ’96 win flipping a Congressional district that there was zero interest in the entire region – none – in doing anything but radio and TV thereafter. Seats had become (even) safer. Ads are so much easier than organizing real people to talk and write to other people. That sinkhole only grew wider with time. There are several major underminings of our society that resulted, but one minor one is that, yes, in all but about 15% of districts and states, you won’t know a non-presidential election is happening.
“The Pentagon is seeking sweeping new powers in preparation for a war with China..”
I think more and more it all takes on the tone of an arms race. Whether weapons or computing chips, with that tone the spending increases. And the USA has seen how wild arms race spending can be. It doesn’t always have to make sense, the money just pours out.
“The Netherlands Has Deployed NATO’s First Killer Robot Ground Vehicles”
If they were any good, then why aren’t they shipping them to the Ukraine to go fight the Russkies? After all, Germany is shipping four IRIS-T air defense systems to the Ukraine before their own Bundeswehr has a chance at them.
The farmers and the working class are a more important target. Here’s hoping those targets go have a nice tea at the PMC’s homes.
Of course if you were being chased by one of those things, you could always lose them on a flight of stairs-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRDl5_-wJ0Y (47 secs)
Works for Daleks as well.
I don’t know if its urban legend, but the popular response to those Dalek foiled by stairs run of some UK comic strip led to the decision to do NuWho.
I admire the way they leaned into it on Doctor Who
Love the distorted cry as it kicks the air.
The remake really took the Verhoeven edge off everything.
Mechanical killer robots are much more expensive than the flesh ones they create from otherwise useless deplorables. And as Israel noted, there’s a chance that any advanced weapons systems sent to Zelensky will end up in Iran! They may also be slowly doing the math on the genius of using a $20,000 AA missile to shoot down a $200 drone, and wondering if putting a $10000 killer robot downrange of $0.20 .50 caliber bullets is financially sound.
*limited to stock on hand, backorders available
Who cares about price, Ukraine and Poland will pay, and the West might just write the bill total down to “faithful obedience”.
True, with cost-plus contracting, high price is a benefit. Actually, they could put the costs in the marketing and sales budget. Look at what a bit of exposure has done for the Iranian drone sales.
“If they were any good, then why aren’t they shipping them to the Ukraine to go fight the Russkies?”
They may or may not be effective on a battlefield but they’ll probably work just fine against unruly civilian populations.
Unless of course some of those ATGMs that were sent to the Ukraine end up in western Europe where one of them will easily deal with one of those robots.
That thing looks like it rolled out of a 90s scifi tabletop game.
Rev, look at the sensors on that UGV.
Hit them with a well aimed bullet or a round from a grenade launcher and you have put it out of action.
This one is a toy.
Arm those Boston Dynamics dogs with RPG’s and teach them to swarm…
Kinda hope the whole shebang collapses before upwardly mobile & ground robots are commonplace.
Think of the consequences for the 400 odd million gunslingers here in the not so united states, suddenly they’d all be outgunned by the R.U.R.al District Sheriff.
Hmmm…. I’d have to oppose that with the ‘Possee Commutatorus.’ A merry band of lovable rogue AC gun swingers.
{—-musical interlude—}
Gimme Three Steps, by Lynyrd Skynyrd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dBpG7pQOA
Good choice, but don’t forget the “Uneasy Rider”, Charlie Daniels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-3T2kNxTQ
Oakland CA police are actively trying to get shotgun wielding robots.
Good times.
Shades of Robocop
What’s the collective noun for a group of robots? Jukebox? Hum?
A hum of robots surrounded the peaceful protesters …
Thank you, Yves.
Further to the FT article about the impact high energy costs on European industry (and to my third comment on the NOPEC post), you are right to say it’s a bit late. There were warnings from German and Italian industry in the spring, but they were ignored.
Further to the Richard Murphy link, readers may be interested in how the Bank of England (Yves’ “elite technocrats”) and the City took advantage of the crisis and got their policies and people in,
https://twitter.com/asentance/status/1582035696105435137?cxt=HHwWgsDRha3FwvQrAAAA,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/17/economic-experts-jeremy-hunt-advisory-panel-osborne-mini-budget and https://unherd.com/thepost/the-left-has-just-ushered-in-an-age-of-austerity/.
It was not a surprise to hear the MSM talk about and welcome the return of the adults, orthodoxy and even deep state. It was depressing to hear the so-called left welcome this sort of coup and get worked about about Truss and Kwarteng’s plans to reform (break up?) the Treasury (a reform that Labour PM Harold Wilson tried in the 1960s), update the Bank of England’s mandate (perhaps extend the remit from solely keeping inflation to 2% to paying attention to employment, as per the Fed’s mandate, and add monetary policymakers from outside the City and London) and disregard the Office for Budget Responsibility (a fig leaf invented by and for George Osborne and which has never got a forecast right in its existence). The British left is hopeless.
Speaking of the British left, I found an interesting take on Jeremy Corbyn that I’d not heard before by Mark Blyth in a 2019 lecture, Mark Blyth – Global Trumpism and the Future of the Global Economy (at minute 59:44)
According to Blyth, Corbyn had no desire to become prime minister, but rose from the back benches with the sole purpose of destroying the party of Thatcher primarily by facilitating their “strapping a bomb to their chest” in the form of Brexit.
If true, then it looks like mission accomplished.
I always looked at Brexit as more of a “we can do badly all by ourselves, thank you” type of move.
I think for at least the voters up north it was about sticking it to the London suits.
I don’t think Corbyn has plans for anything. The only reason he became party boss was that Labour experimented with direct/popular election (something you will not see them repeat any time soon), and he threw his name in on a lark.
Basically that left him as a fish out of water, and the tory-lites out of London pounced him from day one.
Given their ideological proclivities, it is likely that tory-lite labour will just add fuel to the dumbster fire. TINA will prevail. Until it doesn’t. So maybe Corbyn scored an unintentional twofer and his views if not himself will rise from the ashes. Ever the giddy optimist, me.
Then he would make a good pair with Bernie Sanders, eh?!
It says everything that a nasty piece of work like Hunt is treated as a serious stateman.
Plus, it’s amusing that we’ve seen essentially a coup d’état – the (sort of) elected leader of the country ushered away into the shadows, occasionally shuffling into the public mouthing words provided for her while unnamed individuals instruct her on what to do. And yet nobody says a word. Just imagine how it would be described if this happened in Africa or South America.
The UK just jumped from the fire into the frying pan. Instead of an immediate collapse, imposing austerity along with rising interest rates pretty much guarantees a bitter winter and spring for millions of people. And the Tories seem paralyzed as they realize that they have no good options whatever when it comes to removing Truss. Inflation is now 10% while wages are barely rising – that is a massive hit to peoples spending power even before mortgages go up. Its insanity.
Inflation is now 10% while wages are barely rising – that is a massive hit to peoples spending power even before mortgages go up. Its insanity.
And it’s not just the UK, it’s everywhere. Starting to see a lot of dribbles from MSM here in the US, “oh, by the way, looks like gas prices could be a lot higher this winter, so sorry”. My guess is sometime after Nov 6th, there will be outrage that “Putin” has exponentially increased the price of natural gas in the States.
The western world is effectively a technocratic front for a plutocracy.
We have political figureheads “advised” (directed) by faceless technocrats to the benefit a monied elite that make up a de-facto plutocracy.
“Australia Quietly Walks Back Its Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital”
Israel may moan about this but Oz should never have recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital in the first place. And there was only two reasons why this happened at all. Scotty from Marketing was Prime Minister then and he was trying to suck up to Trump by doing this as Trump had moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. The second reason was that we had the Federal election coming up and Scotty figured that doing this would benefit an electoral seat that a Coalition candidate was running for as it had a large Jewish contingent. Going by memory, it didn’t work but the decision had been made anyway.
{happy clapping}
Re Endgadget and Amazon–last night I finally caught up with Nomadland–a very good (and relatable for we Western wanderers) movie but one that downplays the thrust of the original book.. While the storytelling is well observed, the opening scenes at an Amazon warehouse make that workplace look laid back and even friendly. Clearly this was the price for Amazon’s cooperation. The movie’s goal is to make us feel the pathos of the country’s cast off working class elderly without getting too specific about blame. We are exposed to their humanity while the inhumanity of Amazon and other bottom line companies is left for others to talk about.
Perhaps in dealing with their retention problem Amazon’s top executives could watch the film they helped to make. They are way too “ends justify the means.”
“Is Stacey Abrams the Hillary Clinton of 2022?”
In all fairness, Stacey Abrams thought that it was her turn in 2020. Old Joe was looking for a running mate that was both black and a woman. Stacey Abrams thought that she had a shot at the job but old Joe brutally let it be known it would not be her in an online video. Her face was a study when she realized that she had been set up to fail in public.
Both Abrams and Clinton are election deniers.
Maybe Stacey Abrams would not have been such a great idea as Veep after all-
‘Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has pushed back against the notion that the Democratic Party is overly focused on abortion rights at a time when voters are most concerned about inflation, suggesting that terminating pregnancies is a way for women to cope with high prices.
“Having children is why you’re worried about your price for gas, it’s why you’re concerned about how much food costs,” Abrams said on Wednesday in an MSNBC interview. “For women, this is not a reductive issue,” Abrams said. “You can’t divorce being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy from the economic realities of having a child.”’
https://www.rt.com/news/565004-abrams-defends-abortion-as-inflation-cure/
How is that supposed to work when, through Democrat ineptitude, that getting an abortion is nigh on impossible in so many States now?
https://scitechdaily.com/harvard-doctors-reverse-long-held-ideas-about-fat-diabetes-and-heart-disease/
“Everything is connected,” said King. “We think blood vessels and endothelial cells play an important role not just in regulating brown fat, but also in regulating whole body’s metabolism. Thus, these endothelial cells are a key factor in regulating weight and developing diabetes and, as other labs have shown, blood vessels appear to be a major regulator of brain function as well. Intervening at the level of endothelial cells could have a major impact on many diseases.”
In the end everything is connected.
I guess medicine has been stuck in a mechanistic view of the body since the days of the first university dissection. This part does blood flow, that part do digestion etc etc.
I’m seeing the Dominowe Factor coming into play, kind of a terrestrial Kessler Effect if you will, unpayable debts bouncing into one another creating a banking contagion in the exit stage left world.
This hitting as we await our first true mass calamity event of climate change, its all a bit too much but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZalmsnPrvSU&t=359
RE: Health insurance Prices Set for Takeoff
This really ticks me off.
https://wendellpotter.substack.com/p/exclusive-unitedhealth-group-made
EXCLUSIVE: UnitedHealth Group made $81 billion in revenues during Q3 2022, billions subsidized by American tax dollars
United Healthcare’s third quarter earnings are up 296% from the same quarter in 2012.
Because they can. Because NO ONE WILL STOP THEM.
UNH stock price at the end of the third quarter in 2012 was
around 55; today it is trading at 518.
Funny that. I had their coverage when one of my kids was born… late 90s. It was great, covered most everything and no games. Now I hear people talk about how awful it is… must not be shareholders
UHM is now the 10th largest corporation in world, I believe.
I’m a UnitedHealthcare client (member). I have paid into Medicare prior to using Medicare. UnitedHealthcare is the medigap insurer (Plan N) that I use; not because they are the better choice, but because they are the only choice, in my locale. My medigap Plan N is paid out of my pocket (not taxes). That is not to say UHM is ethical. They are NOT.
UHM recently (2021) were found guilty of stealing Doctors fees in the Las Vegas, NV area and fined $2.6M in compensatory damages and $20M in punitive damages by the Clark County, NV Superior Court. (This is UHM’s modus operandi—-cheat until someone takes you to court.)
I have firsthand knowledge with UHM. They are the third-party administrator for my dental plan. One month ago they denied without explanation appropriate coverage of my Dentist’s fees. Same old, same old. (The fight has only begun.)
Some good and thoughty Links today. The American Conservative–Where Higher Education Went Wrong
The article continues
And finally
Exactly.
A good classical liberal arts degree, which is supposed to teach you how to think well, is the kind of degree being called nonsense; those stem degrees, which do not teach you how to think well, are the ones being pushed.
A little knowledge can be a bad thing, but being unable to think especially about one’s limited knowledge, is worse. After all learning how to think is part of being wise; wise people are harder to control, aren’t they?
When I came along said degree was not priced as an investment. Now it is. You want a return to that previous way. So does he.
And yes you need to be able to think straight but also the real world experience to think about. Otherwise you are a computer without data.
I was thinking more that the right kind of education is like being able to read. It gives you power.
All the elites’ approved degrees give them power over you, not you over them; the knowledge given is being used to program you without hindrance as good thinking skills are a good anti-viral; Today, real world experience is often a Potemkin Village. You can get past the village with difficulty, but what is more important for that, knowledge or skill? Or is it a combination of both?
From where i sit, the worst offenders seem to come out of the so called humanities.
>>>the so called humanities.
Well, yes, as they have all be crapified as to make a person stupid. The old fashioned ones did the opposite at least both in the theory and the attempt.
The Times of Gaza Twitter video link should be taken down imo, as a completely false narrative trying to incite antagonistic feelings. The Cave of Patriarchs (al-ibrahami mosque) is extremely sacred to both Jews and Muslims, believing to be the tomb of Abraham, Isaac, Sara, and (Jacob?). It is currently split into both a synagogue AND mosque, allowing both faiths to worship separately (which is why the video shows the group dancing on only one side of the large room). Current religious/political will and law allot 10 days to each faith where they are allowed complete access for their respective worshippers during holidays. And guess what, this was a holiday-simchat Torah-the Jewish celebration of completing the annual reading of the 5 books of Moses (which are the scrolls you see carried by some of the participants). There was no break-in, no concert violating sacred grounds as described by the video, just the opposite, it was a holiday honoring the sanctity of the time and place. This is a non news story trying to fan flames and feeding on ignorance.
Comments on that thread dispute the claim that the ceremony took place on one of the ten allotted days.
Excuse me for taking the comments there with a grain of salt, I didn’t scroll too deeply into that dumpster fire. Makes one appreciate the respectful discussions on this site.
I should have mentioned last night that it was only a few days ago that settlers, escorted by armed soldiers, went into the Al-Aqsa compound at the Dome of the Rock mosque and started their dancing there as well. And yes, I saw this in a video so it was not a made up story. If they did this sort of thing at the Sistine Chapel then maybe more people would have noticed. The whole point of the dancing is just an exercise of ‘in your face’-
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/israeli-settlers-dance-al-aqsa-mosque-causing-outrage
If COVID truly causes Senesence, that really sucks because Senesence in cells is thought to be the leading cause of old age at the cellular level. So everyone that gets COVID may age faster. Ugh.
Wanna bet that the anti aging meds that are being developed will be affordable only to the very wealthy?
We’re a rollin’ stone, all alone and lost
For a life of entanglements, we have paid the cost
When we pass by, all the people from other countries say
Just another society on the lost highway
Just a deck of a Ford class, and a changing battle line
And a empire’s lies makes a life sadly sublime
Oh, the day we met infamy in the islands, we went astray
We started rolling down that war at any cost highway
It’s a real Catch 22
Neither good nor bad, just a ploy to get you through
And now we’re lost, there’s hell to pay
Blowback is a bitch on the lost highway
Now boys don’t start to ramblin’ round
On this road of thermo nuclear has bins, are you sorrow-bound?
Take my advice or you’ll curse the day
Bombs started rollin’ down on that lost highway
Lost Highway, by Hank Williams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dezZCxer8
Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows Guardian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s great, something else life threatening to worry my pretty little head over…
I’m giving this here orb 30 years to get its act in order or i’m outta here!
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/10/19/mccarthy-no-blank-check-for-ukraine-under-gop-majority-n504314
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy warned Tuesday that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win back the House majority, reflecting his party’s growing skepticism about financial support for Kyiv as it battles Russia’s invasion.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News. “They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check.”
The comments from McCarthy, who is in line to become speaker if Republicans win the House, raised fresh questions about the resiliency of America’s support for Ukraine as a growing number of Republicans, particularly those aligned with Donald Trump’s “America First” approach, question the need for federal spending abroad at a time of record-high inflation at home.
….
And speaking of that proxy war, the concerns being registered by Americans are not limited to the amount of cash we’re flushing into this endeavor while people are facing economic hardships at home. More and more mainstream media outlets have recently begun to at least mention the concerns being registered by people who worry that we are sleepwalking our way into a nuclear war with Russia.
….
That’s a depressing interpretation but it has the ring of truth to it. Vladimir Putin doesn’t have to outright “win” the war in Ukraine. He just has to manage to not totally lose and keep grinding on until the other side becomes too exasperated to continue. And if Kevin McCarthy’s statements from yesterday match up with the feelings of enough Americans at that point, that level of exasperation may be quickly approaching. The world is enough of a mess at this point. If Russia can’t be fully “defeated” aside from some sort of world war three scenario and they refuse to back down or offer a settlement, what options are left? Some of the realists in the room should be pausing at this point to ask these questions.
============================================
Now, I know this is Kevin McCarthy and some have MDS (McCarthy derangement syndrome – sidelong glance at Wuk ;)
What is interesting or maybe even encouraging is that republicans are asking if this Ukraine adventure meets the threshold of America’s vital interests – after an all out propaganda offensive by the PMC for our allies in Ukraine. Maybe this even means a two party system where there are actual real alternatives instead of the Kibuki pretend of idpo stuff while the important stuff is determined by the PMC…Nah, but any deviation from the narrative has to be appreciated.
I should probably relent as the statute of his limitations has long since passed on My Kevin (since ’07) and he’s free to make gestures amounting to much ado about nothing.
Wuk
If Churchill was willing to support Stalin against – well, you know who, I’m willing to give a kudo to McCarthy merely for his few words against unabashed alliance with Ukraine. Granted, what McCarthy said may not be much, but we live in such a sea of pro war propaganda that I feel I must grasp at straws, no matter how slight they are. After all, who else in political leadership in Washington has said anything even mildly negative about Ukraine involvment at all?
A stalemate would be refreshing, but that dog won’t Hunter.
I wonder whose ‘laptop dog’ “Creepy” Joe is.
Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine…The comments from McCarthy, who is in line to become speaker if Republicans win the House, raised fresh questions about the resiliency of America’s support for Ukraine
You really have to parse the words politicians use. Neither Republicans or America support this war. It was/is being conducted by the ruling class/political elites. I saw a twitter feed where people were asked to identify Ukraine on a map with only borders and no names, the results were predictable.
‘Resiliency’ appears to be the new buzzword.
‘Resiliency’, and so exit ‘robust’ and ‘synergy’…
Regarding endothelial damage, this is exaactly the same mechanism, albeit slower and less virulent that killed people in Michael Chrichton’s book The Andromeda Strain.
When I compare Covid-19 to that pathogen, it’s only about 24% tongue in cheek.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf
I think all you need to do to explain democrats bleak election outlook is look at real wage losses.
I’m sympathetic to the inability of any president to influence the read wage trend in the shortterm. On the other hand, if Biden aggravates war in Ukraine, and that has knockoff effects on energy prices (as well as any number of other commodities) then there will be condiquences…
Challenge Butter at $7 per pound gets people’s attention.
Up from $4.
So do gas prices over $6.
Here in the North American Deep South we have regular occurrences of near empty milk and dairy aisles, and empty shelves throughout the grocery aisles. Now there is a massive influx of Christmess Junque filling the recently emptied garden departments of the Bigg Boxx Stores. Last year’s Christmess season was poor around here. This year, people have even less disposable income to throw away on toys and cheap, tawdry ‘decorations.’ I wonder if ‘Black Friday’ will be quietly cancelled this year?
Thanks Yves, Lambert and crew for shifting, as best you can, to the use of Turkeyie as opposed to Turkey. It’s more respectful and of course it’s their request. Taught public school for many years and enjoyed the many “unique” names (for a common westerner) to learn to use. I wasn’t in the mix long enough to have to use the “them, they, this, there” pronouns so I was lucky to an extent. Again, thanks – they (no pun intended) deserve respect.
I had been wondering about the Turkey/Türkiye orthography! Thanks for pointing this out
re: Where Higher Education Went Wrong – American Conservative
Thanks very much for the article. I’ve always agreed with Dewey’s ideas about education.
Christopher Lasch’s book ‘The Revolt of the Elites and The Betrayal of Democracy’, c1995, examines these issues in detail.
Some context on the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque.
It is also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and half of it is a Mosque, and half a Synagogue. (Some on both sides consider it to be either one or the other
Also, it is not a concert, it is Simchat Torah celebration. (I call Simchat Torah celebrations the most raucous celebration of reruns this side of a Star Trek convention)
It is also clear that the celebrations are on the Synagogue half, as can seen from the ark (אָרוֹן קׄדֶש) for holding Torahs.
I believe that the settlers did break in, and as such they committed a crime, and should be prosecuted.
Also, with any discussion of the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs one should always mention the 1994 terrorist incident in which settler Baruch Goldstein murdered dozens of Palestinians on the Mosque side.
re How Capitalism Kills Good Software–I have several programs I use that were put out by companies that no longer exist. These are all Windows programs and often written for the no longer supported Windows XP. And in cases where the current Windows does not support, the Linux Wine version of the Windows API very well may. It hasn’t gotten much past XP and often struggles with newer software.
In fact this Linux stability is one answer to those who feel open source is crude and limiting. In some ways the software world may have peaked 20 years ago and it’s all been downhill since.
Some parts of Linux is stable in that sense, while others are far worse than Windows or Mac.
Sadly i am seeing more and more the opinion that the only stable userspace API for Linux is Win32 via WINE. And Win32 was introduced with Windows 95.
I am fully expecting Linux to turn for the worse when Torvalds finally retires from being kernel boss, and pass his baby off to someone else. Because the people first in line there has been the champions of some of the biggest messes in the Linux ecosystem over the years.
The Guardian reports a very high 60-80% drones being intercepted by Ukrinian air defense before reaching their targets. It refers to “British Intelligence” as the source. This seems much higher than I would have expected. Does anyone have better Intel on this?
“British Intelligence” as the source – I would take it with a pinch of salt.
If just 1/3 effectively reach the target that’s incredible bang for the buck.
Anecdotally I read Ukraine sent up a jet to take out a drone, nailed it, but the debris took out the jet. Likely Ukraine didn’t see that as a success.
The Guardian is just propaganda for anything regarding the foreign policy of the UK.
You mean perfidious Albion?
There are no “Ukrainian air defenses” beyond Buks and another Soviet system. They are not fit for purpose v. drones. If they did manage to hit any, it would be 1. Massive overkill and 2 Big risk to civilians due to mucho falling debris.
Gee, the deaths would be greater than in some firebombings of World War Two. How nice. Are we the baddies?
Those aren’t, you know, people like us.
They are them, so it’s okay.
We are doing it for the Children!
A moment to chill (from current events)
Last year I wrote this comment to an article about the apparent closure of the pacific coast highway along Big Sur:
In today’s LATimes is an travel article about the Big Sur coast that has excellent history and photos for viewing. latimes.com is subscription controlled but you can use the “text reader” add-on (Firefox) to read the article and view the photos for free. The photos are excellent. The article is a nice break from current events.
https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2022-10-19/big-sur-history-river-inn-highway-1
Yves
I can only speak for myself, but I, and I suspect most other regular readers, find your blog extremely valuable.
If you choose to leave I selfishly hope you manage to continue the blog from wherever you go, but otherwise I appreciate what you’ve done a great deal and wish you well.
I never said I was giving up the blog and I don’t intend to.
It’s a funny thing, the best source of news is not devoted to being the best source of news, but is rather devoted to critical thinking.
Makes one think…