anticlimactic
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TRANS
When I thought about the issue of ‘trans’ I realised there was a single underlying theme : the elimination of women! [Not literally]
It attacks the few areas where women can stand out such as sports and ‘women of the year’ awards and even as ‘mothers’. The word ‘woman’ is being phased out in favour of ludicrous alternatives. A lesbian wrote that in her area bars and cafes were refusing to serve them as they are all somehow ‘transphobic’.
This appears orchestrated.
There is only one area which can have this power – social media. Some time ago it was found that Facebook had successfully experimented with modifying beliefs and attitudes. Is this another ‘experiment’?
Humans are easily programmed – tell them what to believe and they will believe it AND will aggressively attack those who don’t believe it. I suspect the latter is the main appeal – the excuse to be aggressive in ways that would otherwise be unacceptable.
It explains a lot if this is thought of as the basic reason for trans-activism with anything else just being window dressing.
Prigozhin
There are a lot of articles on RT giving an air of authenticity to the story BUT if the threat was real then would this be allowed?
It still seems very weird and nonsensical!
It is good to read that the submersible imploded rather than the occupants being stuck for days waiting until their air ran out. It would have been so quick they would not even have time to notice it [one millisecond].
It seems the US Navy detected the sound of the implosion two hours after the craft submerged so why did we have days of speculation that the occupants were possibly trapped and waiting for the air to run out?
When I recently saw an illustration of the flags of the BRICS countries it struck me how extremely unlike one another they are in culture and religion.
The ‘West’ is comparatively uniform by comparison.
The main issue about Musks’s takeover of Twitter is the threat of ‘freedom of speech’ becoming a reality on Twitter.
EVERYONE who is opposed to Free Speech is an enemy of humanity. The main reason to ban free speech is to aid the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’, the effective enslavement of mankind.
A list of companies who removed advertising from Twitter should be made public. This is just one example of ‘Enemies of Humanity’, there is a growing number of groups and individuals who deserve to be on the list.
Prigozhin’s outburst does not seem to be based on reality.
Merkel and Hollande have both admitted that they agreed to Minsk to give time to recruit, train and arm Ukrainian troops. In Feb 2022 I read that the Ukrainian army had 600,000 troops. You don’t do that unless they are ACTUALLY going to be used against Russia. The US had planned on that.
In Feb 2022 the Ukraine had amassed an army of 150,000 troops on the border of the Donbas. There seemed a strong possibility they would invade and ethnically cleanse the Donbas as Georgia tried in South Ossettia. If Russia had not intervened they would have seemed weak and impotent.
Not least, just before the invasion Zelensky promised that Ukraine would create nuclear weapons, AND Ukraine had the facilities to do this. A critical threat which could not be ignored.
While all the aggression was from the West they always wanted Russia to make the first move so they could be blamed, and so they created the situation where Russia was forced to act. After that the plan was that sanctions would destroy the Russian economy and cause an uprising destroying Russia as a whole so it could be split into multiple countries. That plan did not work!
In India monkeys are sacred but gangs of them in cities can cause havoc. They found that if they shaved the leader the gang would disband. Perhaps the leader of the West is ‘being shaved’!
One accusation which should be of concern to Russia is that the senior military are incompetents more interested in lining their own pockets. This is not tolerable in this situation and would need to be remedied if true.
Depleted Uranium – I found this snippet :
“One 2012 study found that more than half of the babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 had birth defects. Among the pregnant woman surveyed in the study, more than 45 percent experienced miscarriages in the two-year period following the 2004 U.S. assaults on Fallujah. Geiger counter readings of depleted uranium-contaminated sites in densely populated Iraqi urban areas have consistently shown radiation levels that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal.”
But the UK has said [in effect] that dropping powdered DU from an aircraft over London would not be an issue!
For the most part NATO weapons have not been used in battle. On the occasions they have the designated enemy has had inferior weapons. I would have put China in this category when Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ began.
Weapons systems can be created, bought in large numbers, and never see action before they are replaced. Because of this there seemed no point in producing ammunition for an extended conflict so when munitions are required in large quantities there are no manufacturing facilities able to comply in a timely fashion. It will take years just to supply the small war in Ukraine.
US weapons in particular are very complex which means they often require maintenance. Up to 30% could be out of action because of this. I think I read that an F35 will need maintenance after 10 hours flying. The West was amazed when Russia deployed fighters to Syria and they flew 24/7, just refueling, rearming and changing pilots.
Another aspect of modern warfare is the David/Goliath thing where expensive equipment can be destroyed by cheap missiles and UAVs. A multibillion dollar aircraft carrier can be destroyed by a few million dollar missiles. Fighters and tanks can be destroyed by hand-held missiles.
Finally, smaller countries have developed advanced, and possibly superior, weapons. Iran has developed missiles with pinpoint accuracy, Turkey’s Bayraktar UAVs have proved devastating in conflicts, Russia has had a stream of new advanced weapons tested in conflict, and China is modernising its weapons systems as quickly as possible.
NATO has shiny weapons with minimal munitions – good for threats and posturing but not good enough for conflict.
One final thought – if Russia attacked a NATO country, Poland say, would all the other NATO countries REALLY risk nuclear annihilation by joining in the conflict? It is a question which may need to be answered soon!
I read that Soros also funded all the prosecutions against Netanyahu. Some Israelis obviously take a dim view of this!
The Patriot missile does not have a good history.
They first came to prominence in Kuwait where they were used to intercept SCUD missiles from Iraq. It was claimed at the time that they caused more damage than the very inaccurate SCUDs! A whistle-blower at the time declared their effectiveness was much exaggerated but they still received a lot of funding.
Saddam Hussein tried to use them when the US invaded but they had been remotely disabled.
Erdogan tried to use them against the Turkish airforce during the attempted coupe but again they had been disabled. [Hence his interest in the S400…and his disaffection with the US!]
The only other instance I know of where they were used in earnest was Saudi Arabia. The Houthis launched a SCUD aimed at Riyadh airport. The Patriot missile system detected it and fired missiles but they hit the separated booster stage and not the warhead. As usual the SCUD missed the target and caused no real damage.
Now the Ukraine debacle. There will never be an easier situation in which to intercept a Kinzhal.
As far as I am aware the Patriot system has never proved itself in battle.
In US courts it is difficult to know who will be found guilty or not, unless you know who they support!
No matter what the evidence is Democrats are ALWAYS innocent and Republicans are ALWAYS guilty.
GRAIN DEAL
It seems that most of the Ukrainian grain ends up in Europe, to such an extent that it destabilising the price of grain in surrounding countries.
A big problem for Europe is obesity. The gluttons of Europe are taking the grain from those in Africa and elsewhere who are actually starving.
I am still fascinated by the Kinzhal and speculate how it could be built.
I do not see how explosives would be much use so I would think it would have a solid warhead using kinetic energy to do the damage. Tungsten would be ideal in such a warhead, not only is it heavy but has a melting point of 3410C.
Could it be intercepted? Not really – at mach 10 it would be travelling at 3 km/sec! You would have about 30 seconds to detect it, fire a missile, and guide it to the target which is travelling at 3 km/sec. If it is solid then there is nothing to ‘blow up’, it may be possible to deflect it slightly.
Even beam weapons would have little effect. You might destroy the engine but it is mainly ‘powered’ by gravity so would have little effect. Even partially melting the warhead would make little difference.
When it hits the ground it would penetrate quite a distance, but not 200 feet! I suspect damage is caused by the shockwave which may propagate as a narrow cone.
It’s like having your own meteorite.
I read that in WWII Russia also defeated Japan :
When a million strong Russian army attacked the Japanese in China it made Japan realise they had lost.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not needed except as experiments to test the immediate and long term effects of nuclear weapons on live subjects.
What may be an uncensored search engine and AI :
Good news: Tusk is a conservative AI, a browser and a search engine
“When we see the few truth-tellers who are the stars of their organizations jettisoned – Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone, Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, James O’Keefe from Project Veritas… we must face the fact that there is an organized conspiracy to suppress truth.”
– Paul Craig Roberts
Another one bites the dust.
50 trillion dollars to achieve ‘zero carbon’ in the US. As implied there is no evidence that it will make any difference – it is just a religious belief among a certain set of people, mainly based on ignorance. The UN estimates 130+ trillion dollars is needed to ‘stop climate change’ globally.
Let’s assume it all happens and it all works – it succeeds.
Most of those trillions will be spent on the fossil fuels needed to open mines, excavate refine and transport raw materials, plus manufacturing and installing the finished items.
The biggest problem is that ‘renewables’ rarely have a lifespan of more than 25 years. Most of the infrastructure will need replacing every 20+ years!
The next big problem is that ‘renewables’ are difficult to recycle. Fibreglass and carbon fibre will go straight to landfill. Worn out turbine blades already go to landfill. Solar panels will go to landfill, I am not sure if even the silver and other metals can be economically recovered from solar panels. There seems to be issues recycling lithium from car batteries, it seems feasible but not economic. More landfill!
This means there will be a large demand for fresh raw materials, which again will mostly rely on fossil fuels. If this disaster goes ahead I can see a time when ALL fossil fuels will be dedicated to creating an inferior energy grid.
Although it is ‘saving the planet’ I have never heard of any project being done on a ‘not for profit’ basis. There will be lots of smug millionaires and billionaires who truly believe they are being ‘virtuous’.
It is probably more feasible to continue with the current project of reducing the global population down to under a billion.
Nuclear missiles are currently ICBMs. ‘B’ stands for BALLISTIC. It is like throwing a rock to hit a target several thousand miles away! Ballistic also means a fixed path so interceptor missiles can be positioned along the expected flight path. To hit a bunker you would need to send lots of nukes and HOPE one would be close enough to do damage.
In most cases an ordinary Kinzhal would be more effective – for destroying bunkers, silos, power stations, dams, etc. They have a range of 3000 km and are accurate so very few are needed.
Nukes are okay for destroying cities, but it probably wouldn’t be necessary!
One area where Russia is a world leader is titanium alloys and it is my guess that this is how they have created a material so heat resistant.
CROWS
Some years ago I used to walk to college through the local park. There were always 50 to 100 crows at the top end.
One day on the way back I felt peckish and bought a sandwich. I was eating it as I walked down the park and I became very aware that ALL the crows were moving down the park with me! They did not flock to me like pigeons might but kept the same distance as they shadowed me.
The intimidation worked and I threw down the last of the sandwich.
A very eery and memorable event
Shingles!
I am 70 and until recently I had only known one person with shingles. Then the 20 year old daughter of a friend had shingles last year, and now the British NHS has regular adverts on TV about shingles.
Does anyone know if this is a side-effect of the vaccine?
US Dollar Reserve
It has often been pointed that economists are not as intelligent as they think they are. A snippet a few days ago had a White House economist saying “control of the world’s reserve currency offered benefits, including the ability to impose sanctions”
The question should be “What do countries want from a reserve currency?” They DO NOT want to have their economies damaged by sanctions on the whim of the US. They DO NOT want the threat of having their dollar assets frozen and possibly seized if they are deemed to have upset the US.
In fact the US, EU and UK have frozen assets of Russia AND Russian individuals which makes the dollar, euro and pound undesirable.
It has been pointed out there is no good alternative to the dollar so it should worry the US that so many countries are desperate enough to actually look for an alternative.
BRICS+ gives a trading area which can be dollar free. Using local currencies seems to be on the rise which could make them much stronger, as it did the rouble.
By weaponising the reserve currency it seems the US will lose out. I remember when Trump told China that the US could freeze China’s 3 trillion dollars overnight! Really not a good move!
“Wagner Chief Calls On Putin To Declare End Of War”
Russia has not even accomplished its first objective – taking over the Donbass. It would give the impression that Russia is very weak and it would be indicating defeat.
Even if a peace could be negotiated it would not be regarded as binding.
Even if Ukraine did not immediately join NATO I would see Ukraine being flooded with NATO troops and weapons, including nuclear missiles.
‘NATO’ [U.S.] would argue Donbass and Crimea are still part of Ukraine and could be attacked.
Russia has no option but to fully defeat the whole of Ukraine. At the very least it has to take over the Odessa region to make Ukraine landlocked and prevent a NATO port being developed.
The suggestion of ending the war is so bad I thought it could be fake information.
The US must be horrified at the thought of peace breaking out in the Middle East, after all their effort!
I suspect Saudi Arabia will find that their Patriot missiles will not work when they need them, as Saddam Hussein and Erdogan found out. I wonder if it is possible to find and disable the remote control kill switch?
MQ-9 Reaper
I keep thinking back to WWII. To fight V1 rockets when they ran out of ammunition RAF pilots would come alongside a V1 flying bomb and position their wing under the wing of the V1. They would then flick the wing of the V1 so it tipped on its side and it would then crash to the ground.
The effect seems similar to what happened with the Reaper, although I would have thought it would automatically correct to normal flight. Just speculation!
“Nuclear arms race” – No! It’s over – the Russians won.
Nuclear missiles are currently ICBMs. ‘B’ stands for BALLISTIC. It is like throwing a rock to hit a target several thousand miles away! Ballistic also means a fixed path so interceptor missiles can be positioned along the expected flight path.
SARMAT2 changes all that. The missile can take an indirect route, and the nuclear warheads are steerable and so improving accuracy and evading defense missiles. In short it is almost impossible to intercept and has greater accuracy.
This means that far fewer nuclear warheads are needed – a few thousand at most instead of 40,000! In many cases an ordinary Kinzhal would be more effective – for destroying bunkers, silos, power stations, dams, etc.
Rather than a proliferation of nuclear weapons it is more likely to result in a vast reduction.
“the good old days of Western prosperity are over”
Yep!
Europe in particular has suffered from the Green Cancer which shut down so much cheap energy in favour of unrealistic alternatives, for no good reason.
Europe also closed down most trade with Russia after Crimea was repatriated, hundreds of billions a year.
Then came the lockdowns in Europe which damaged so much, people and businesses.
Then came last years sanctions against Russia which reduced the last sources of cheap energy and impacted food production. Even before that the US was pressurising Europe to drastically cut trade with China.
It doesn’t end there. The potential exists for large numbers of businesses to fail. Apart from widespread unemployment it could further damage the already fragile banking system. Failing banks could cause contagion in the finance sector, totally destroying the financial system.
At this point things get really bad!
As ever, the people making the decisions do not suffer the consequences, just the people at the bottom. The question is how big this section of society will become.
KINZHAL
The idea that a Khinzhal missile could destroy a nuclear hardened bunker 500 feet underground is awe inspiring. There are buildings where you suspect that most of it is underground but could easily be destroyed with this missile, like GCHQ in the UK and NATO headquarters in Brussels.
I don’t see that it would need explosives, just add a heavy metal like tungsten to add to the kinetic
force.If used against an aircraft carrier then it depends how it works. It would be travelling at over 3 kilometers per second so would only be in the ship for a few hundredths of a second. If it simply drilled a neat hole through the ship then the ship would probably survive. I assume it generates a shock wave which does all the damage.
The article says Russia is producing about 200 per year. How deep will the military cooperation be between China and Russia? If Russia shared the technology with China then I would expect production could be thousands a year if required!
NATO DIRECT
If NATO became directly involved in Ukraine AND if there was any attack on Russian soil or on Russian ships then ALL NATO countries become fair targets.
I read that the new NATO headquarters in Brussels cost a billion dollars – shame if anything happened to it. [Not really!]
It would escalate rapidly. The only question would be who would fire the first nuclear missile.
REAPER REAPED?
The US are making strange claims – that the Russian fighter clipped off its propeller or discharged fuel into its engine! Miraculous and suicidal flying at several hundred miles an hour.
The Russians say it was just coincidence but I suspect the Russians did affect the aircraft.
Many years ago a Russian general said Russian fighters were equipped with an EMP weapon, or they may know the command codes for the Reaper.
It will drive the Americans mad wondering how the Russian brought it down with no contact! Are their Reapers useless?
J6
Trump and his followers were unforgiveably naive not to realise there would be provocateurs at the rally. They should have warned their supporters to be wary of anyone urging violence or other illegal actions. In addition they should have asked some supporters to video as much of the event as possible.
Failing that, when they realised the event was becoming highly politicised they should have asked everyone there to send copies of any videos so they could be stitched together to give a reasonably accurate record of what actually happened.
The incarceration without trial of many at J6 is worrying. After all it is likely these people will lose their jobs or businesses, plus impacts on their families, so is a huge punishment even though they have not found guilty of anything.
Judges are supposed to be impartial yet there seems evidence that their decisions are politically motivated. Is there a mechanism such that they can be ‘struck off’ as judges if their judgements are not in keeping with the ‘crimes’.
The US is saying to China – don’t help Russia as this will free up resources for the US, so we can come after you!
Ukraine
It seems like the US wants to wrap up the war in a few months time, hoping Ukraine can make some gains so that they can negotiate with Russia from strength. Sounds like desperation.
Russia talks about the conflict lasting another year or two!
– Russia is draining the West of arms and ammunition – seems like a good idea to keep it going.
– The sanctions are harming the West more than Russia so rub their faces in it.
– After the revelations about Minsk II the idea of any negotiated settlement is really a non-starter.For over 8 years NATO has been training Ukrainian troops and giving them arms and ammunition. In addition over the past year the West has spent over 100 billion dollars of aid for Ukraine.
After just 12 months almost ALL of this is gone! What will NATO countries look like after another two years? I don’t see that Russia has any choice but to conquer the whole of the Ukraine.
This would give Russia the opportunity to seize foreign owned land, property and businesses in compensation for stolen assets.
Then comes the trials for war crimes. I am sure that many will flee to the West, but this also helps to clean up Ukraine.
It was interesting to read that Ukraine has so many resources it should be a wealthy country, but all this wealth has been sucked out by criminals. Potentially being conquered by Russia could be the best thing to happen to ordinary Ukrainians.
4 Billion Years of Global Temperature :
A fascinating graphic. It shows that for the past 600 million years the ‘normal’ temperature of Earth was about 12C higher than today. It also strongly suggests that there is a definite upper limit of about 24C, so no ‘runaway greenhouse effect’! There must be a feedback mechanism limiting the temperature. I suspect this is due to increasing cloud cover upping Earth’s albedo and so reflecting more heat back into space.
Raul – I bought the vitamin D capsules off Ebay [UK] at 10 GBP [Naturplus]. There are other offers at the same price point. They do not seem to post outside the UK but I would have thought similar offers would exist on other Ebay sites, although I live in the less than sunny UK where the demand for this will be higher!
VITAMIN D
In the summer of 2020 Cambridge University published a study based on hospitalised Covid patients in Italy. They found an extremely strong correlation between being low in vitamin D and being hospitalised.
At no time in the following 30 months did the UK government [or any other government] stress the importance of vitamin D in fighting Covid.
I was speaking to a muslim neighbour and she said that she had lost relatives to Covid. I could not really say that if they had taken vitamin D supplements they might still be alive.
I bought a years supply of 10,000 IU vitamin D capsules for the equivalent of 12 dollars!
The Ukraine military leaders seem to have the same mindset as the WW1 generals. Losing large numbers of troops is an annoyance as they have to find more. If an attack proves deadly they are willing to do it again no matter the cost to the troops! They should be shot, literally!
There can be no negotiated peace, and I hope Russia is not so naive as to not realise that. It would be treated in the same way as the Minsk Accord – an opportunity to re-arm Ukraine and train more troops. Russia’s only choice is to conquer the the whole of Ukraine. Parts will become Russian and the rump will still be Ukraine, although possibly as a protectorate.
It would be useful if Russia could share a border with Hungary. It would give Hungary an option to join BRICS+. Part of Ukraine could be ceded to Hungary, but Poland must not gain any territory in Ukraine.
From the Russian point of view it is difficult to see how the situation can be settled. The US may keep escalating so that nuclear war is the only option.
OZONE
The holes in the ozone layer were only discovered fairly recently. In response some scientists literally sat round a desk for an afternoon to discuss it. As often seems to be the case today the starting point was that it was man made rather than natural. The conclusion was that CFCs were responsible. That was the ONLY ‘proof’ that Man and CFCs were responsible!
Ozone [O3] is unstable and needs to be continually replaced. This is done by sunlight so less ozone will be produced at the poles where sunlight is oblique. It does not seem ridiculous that the spin of the Earth will cause the ozone at the poles to drift towards the equator. I do not think that holes at the poles are unnatural.
One amusing story about CFCs involves a Chinese company which made an allowed CFC, but it created a byproduct CFC which wasn’t allowed. The EU agreed to pay for this CFC to be destroyed, but they paid 100 times more than it cost to create! The Chinese company then started to create lots of this CFC and asking for more money. Last I read the EU had shelled out 2.3 billion Euros!
CO2
The graph showing that for the past 800,000 years CO2 levels were between 200PPM and 250PPM is shocking. At 180PPM it is almost impossible for vegetation to grow and at this level most of the life on Earth would disappear. It was obviously a close thing.
At 200PPM life would have struggled. One experiment used bushes grown in different levels of CO2 : 200PPM, 400PPM and 800PPM. The 200PPM bush was a stunted dwarf, the 400 PPM bush was ‘normal’ and the 800PPM bush was several times the volume of the one grown at 400PPM.
We are lucky to be living at a time that CO2 is at 400PPM, although life would thrive more at higher levels. Here’s hoping for 800PPM and a better future!
