Polder Dweller
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Great news about Assange even if it’s not yet the end of the story.
I have to think that Baraitser was still following orders – Trump couldn’t pardon Assange because he hadn’t convicted of anything yet and he couldn’t publicly drop the extradition request without alienating the armed forces and handing the Democrats a stick with which to beat him. Perhaps he can now ‘accidentally’ fail to appeal before Inauguration Day. We can always hope.
Looks like more people are noticing that mask mandates increase the number of infections.
We’ve been standing still for centuries.
Or rather going backwards over the last few decades.
Back in the early 80s I was living in England and I used to go regularly into London where I would never see any homeless people and certainly no beggars. Now you see them everywhere throughout the UK, in every small town, also children. This is Thatcher’s legacy. The trickle-down economy she bought into resulted in British industry being destroyed and a massive transfer of wealth away from ordinary people and into the hands of the rich. The damage could have been undone or at least limited by successive governments – that was what Blair was voted in to do – but the new ultra rich now also had (bought) political power and any hopes of turning back the clock were dashed.
@Mr Roboto
That’s something that an awful lot of people are thinking but very few dare say out loud, so it’s good you say it. There are certainly those amongst the rich and famous who talk openly about the world being overpopulated.
The Covid-19 patients had more antibodies that had turned on them than people with lupus, an autoimmune disease caused by similar wayward antibodies.
Errm, excuse me, but hydroxychloroquine is used to treat people with lupus.
With the Hunter Biden cases increasingly making it through to the mainstream, it looks like the DNC is gearing up to cut old Joe loose.
That’s what I used to think, but I’ve yet to see a drop in infection rates following a mask mandate, quite the opposite in fact. So there has to be a reason for that. Yes, the idea is to wear a mask to protect others, everyone knows that (or at least they should), but I’m suggesting that wearing a mask actually increases the wearer’s chance of becoming infected because he or she doesn’t use it properly. If used properly, they work as expected – infected wearers infect far fewer other people and uninfected people have the same or perhaps very slightly less chance of catching the disease.
Middle of the night I woke up with a strange conviction, that mandatory face masks are responsible for the runaway infection rates in Holland and other countries including the USA. Everywhere that governments have mandated the wearing of masks, infection rates have risen soon after.
Is this even a reasonable assertion to make?
I firmly believe that masks can work, but that requires that they be used properly (use once for a maximum of a few hours, put on, take off by holding the ear elastic and never touch the actual mask) and pretty much nobody does that, myself included. Instead, what happens is that each day people pull a bedraggled mask out of their pocket and put it on. They take it on and off multiple times during the day and regularly adjust it up or down always using bare hands on the mask itself. Then they rub their eyes, pick their nose or whatever and infect themselves. At the same time they stop anti-social distancing because “Hey I’m wearing a mask so I’m safe, right?”
If it’s not possible to get people to use them correctly (it isn’t) then we’d all be safer if we just strictly kept to the six-foot rule.
Prove me wrong.
Australia and “Europe” area comparison.
Not sure what the makers were trying to prove there. Where are Scandinavia and the Baltic states? Ukraine, White Russia, Moldavia and Russia up to the Urals?
This is a fascinating article about how it can be that the French- and Italian-speaking cantons in Switzerland have a much bigger Covid problem than the German-speaking ones. The hypothesis is that it’s due to cultural differences and the nocebo effect. It’s in French so but Google translate can probably do a decent enough job on it.
«Coronagraben»: une fausse énigme?
I hope V. Arnold is OK – he’s part of the TAE furniture.
Here I am in far away Holland with the media and everyone around me whooping for joy over prospective president elect Joke Biden. It’s so bad that I have to feign happiness. I agree with every word you wrote and take solace in that, that I’m not crazy, that at least there are a few of us who think that, despite his many shortcomings, the Trumpster was a far better choice for president.
I’m depressed about the Assange “trial”.
It’s crystal clear to me why there’s fat all chance of Trump pardoning him, since Trump has always worked hard to keep the armed forces on his side. From the five star generals down to the lowliest GI they all believe that Assange is a traitor who should be locked up and the key thrown away unless he can be given the death penalty. It makes me wonder if the whole point of the Atlantic piece was actually to make sure that Trump didn’t even consider withdrawing the extradition request.
Russians are the dumbest idiots on the planet!
Chernaya Gadyuka
– Ah, come in Lysyyrik! I hear you have a cunning plan for me? One that makes us look both evil and incompetent, solving none of our problems and only adding to them?
– Oh yes, Mr P, I think you’ll find it ticks all the boxes, it’s a very cunning plan.
– Pray tell, do, I’m on tenterhooks.
– Well, when N’s in Tomsk, we’ll slip him some novichok.
– Excellent! He’s of no particularly importance to us and novichok is 5x deadlier than VX, so it’ll kill him within minutes! Hmmm, I just don’t see where the incompetence comes in, though.
– Well, Mr P, the real novichok would kill him in just over a minute, so we’ll actually use this rubbish stuff that’ll only put him into a coma, just like we did…
– With the Skripals? I see, this really is a cunning, even if entirely predictable plan!
– Thank you, Mr P. As I was saying, we’ll do this just before he boards his plane for Tomsk and then he’ll come over all wobbly during the flight.
– There’ll be doctors on board, of course, to make sure he doesn’t die?
– Oh no, the plane will have to make an emergency landing and a team of doctors on the ground will have to take care of him.
– Sounds good, keep going.
– Suspecting poisoning, they’ll pump him full of atropine and then take samples of his blood etc. for a full toxi-do-dah analysis.
– Then they’ll find ‘our’ novichok, won’t they?
– Yes, they should if they’re any good, but we’ll threaten to whack ’em if they release the results to the world.
– Whack ’em, eh? Nice! But what can they tell the world, then?
– That’s easy, Mr P, they’ll say he’s gone hypoglycolonic – he is a diabolic after all, and so it’s perfectly plausible – and they’ll say that they found no traces of toxins in his blood.
– Right, with you so far, Lysyyrik, except I don’t see how we let the world know that it was us who nobbled him.
– Aha! This is where the plan gets cunningest, you see. His associates and the Germans will beg us to fly him to Berlin so their doctors can take a look at him.
– Why would they do that?
– Cos we’ll have suggested it “all diplodocus-like” through the special channels, of course.
– Ah yes, of course, the special channels, brilliant! But why would we comply?
– Because we want to look like we’ve got nothing to hide, sir. It’s an extra level of incompetence I built into the plan.
– Most cunning! So then, when he arrives in Berlin the doctors there will immediately find the “novichok” and tell the world that the evil Russkies have been up to their old tricks again. I like this cunning plan, let’s put it into action immediately!
– Not so fast, Mr P, I haven’t finished yet.
– Really? There’s even more to it? You do astound me sometimes Lysyyrik!
– No, you see, their doctors will suspect poisoning and pump him full of even more atropine. Do a toxi-whatsit analsys and then announce to the world that he wasn’t poisoned and that he’d just gone into a hypoglycol coma and that the Russky quacks had done a good job saving him.
– Why on Earth would they say that?
– Cos otherwise…
– We’ll whack them?
– You’re getting it Mr P! Yes, but here’s we turn it up to eleven on the cunningometer. A day later, we tell their doctors that we were only kidding and that nobody’s going to whack anybody whatever they announce to the world.
– And so then they say that they did find “novichok” after all?
– You took the words right out of my mouth, sir. Yes, they say that and then they tell Mutti and she talks to Heiko and the EU and NATO and Trump and then they announce that the evil Russkies have been up to their old tricks again and put more sanctions on us and cancel North Stream 2.
– I don’t know what to say, Lysyyrik, this is the most cunningest cunning plan in all of Cunningdom that even the great Professor Cunnington of Cunning University at the very pinnacle of his cunninghood could not have dreamt up. Let’s not waste another moment! I’m so happy I feel like indulging in some gratuitous violence. If you would permit, Lysyyrik?
– Be my guest, sir…
<< THWACK >>
– How was that?
– Excruciatingly painful and entirely inappropriate, Mr P.
– Thank you, Lysyyrik. One does have one’s standards to maintain, you know.The WikiLeaks organisation has published a number of classified documents detailing […] Democratic national committee emails showing the party was trying to rig the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton.
I actually think that this has a lot more to do with Assange’s arbitrary detention than either Guantanamo or the collateral damage video. I wonder if the Orange one realizes he’s doing the DNC’s bidding?
Can we stop calling Mrs Baraitser “judge?” She clearly isn’t one because she is incapable of remaining impartial and is therefore obliged by law to recuse herself. Since she does not she is in contempt of her own court and must be disbarred. A jail sentence is also a possibility.
And in the midst of it all, they insist on keeping the twice-yearly idiotic move between Brussels and Strasbourg going. You don’t want to know what that costs.
Not twice yearly, try every month and at a cost of roughly €114m a year, link.
WHO Warns of COVID19 Rebound Risk, Says Pandemic ‘Worsening’ Globally
That’s got to be great news – the WHO got everything everything else wrong, so this is probably wrong, too.
The idea: save the banks so they can lend money at higher rates than they borrow at from the ECB. Utterly crazy and useless.
The ECB really is a one-trick pony, isn’t it? The Germans, meanwhile, are showing the way out of this crisis by reducing VAT, cutting energy taxes and (more contentiously) giving incentives to buy a new car. All the ECB has to do is to provide large interest-free loans to governments to allow them to do as Germany. The trickle-up economy will take care of the rest and there will be no need for a constitutional crisis between EU and Germany.
Oh wow, I didn’t even see that as a bone of contention. I’ll look around for evidence if you like, but the sources of my opinion are the NOS Journaal from a week or so ago about a cancer patient having his follow-up treatment delayed indefinitely even though it was at a critical stage; another NOS piece where a cardiologist from the VU was practically begging people who were having any heart issues not to delay; the BBC saying that thousands of people with illnesses other than Covid19 were not getting treated; a GP friend of mine in the UK who echoed exactly the same point; and my neighbour who works on a children’s ward at the LUMC and told me they’re running at about 25% normal capacity.
This has absolutely nothing to do with me having a low opinion of doctors and nurses (which I most certainly don’t have) who I know very well are working hard under often very difficult circumstances.
Excess deaths may be the best, if not only, way to get an accurate fatality number for COVID19.
I couldn’t disagree more. Especially in the UK, but also in most countries, so many people have not been examined or treated for cancer, heart problems, kidney disease etc, etc it’s no wonder there are high numbers of excess deaths being reported.
I don’t know how much you’ve been following the situation with the pronouncement by the German Constitutional Court (Bundesvefassungsgericht Karlsruhe) on the ECB bond buying programme, but this is real dynamite for both the Euro and the EU. It’s very difficult to find good commentary on this, however this article by monsieur Frexit himself, François Asselineau, is well worth your time. I don’t know how good your French is, but there’s always Google Translate.
The Karlsruhe Shock Wave is Shaking the Euro and the European Edifice
You’re right the death rate figures from Russia don’t look convincing. In fact I had remembered what I read about Russia incorrectly, it was a tweet by @Covid19Crusher from a couple of days ago which talked about the improvement in the number of recoveries, not a drop in death rate. My mistake.
Russia will in the next few days pass Spain as the no. 2 in total cases behind the US. But it reports “just” 2,418 deaths to date, vs Spain’s 27,321.
I read that Russia started with mass use of hydroxychloroquine + azitromycine + zinc on 16 April and saw the death rate tumble.
A few remarks: Germany has a huge amount of ICU places. Neighbor the Netherlands has far fewer. But that’s also partly due to a different philosophy: where most countries try to keep people alive as long as possible, the Netherlands has a tradition, way before corona, of focusing more on quality than quantity of life. Old people with multiple ailments are not kept alive at all costs.
Maybe, but then why does Worldometer say that there are 22400 total recovered in Germany against 250 in The Netherlands?
You’ll like this.
I just flew home to Holland from South America. Back home I quickly developed cold/flu-like symptoms but with no fever. I phoned the doctor to find out if I should be tested for Covid19 and was told that they’re not testing any more, that I should stay at home and only seek help if I should develop a high fever and/or breathing difficulties.
So I asked how the RIVM (Dutch institute for national health and the environment) could possibly keep track of the spread of the disease if they’re not testing suspected cases, but the poor receptionist could only shrug her shoulders, “I don’t know,” she said.
the creation of a “Climate Innovation Fund”, which will invest $1bn (£760m) over the next four years to speed up the development of carbon removal technology
We’ve already got the perfect carbon removal technology, it’s called a tree.
Poor Andy suffering with PTSD (post-traumatic sweat disorder).
If only having sex with pimped underage girls and then lying about it was actually funny.
Meanwhile, while you weren’t looking, the Fed is busy saving Wall Street again. Got to rescue them bonuses
I’ve got no problem with bonuses when things go well provided the beneficiaries get hit with “maluses” when things go awry.
Where did the Amazon burning pic come from? I assume it’s exaggerated otherwise doomsday is upon us.
There’s a theme running through all this of US intimidation and bullying. Even countries like Sweden, home to the Nobel Peace Prize, are unable to stand up for what they know to be right.
America has the entire West by the short and curlies. How long though, till the worm turns?
Well, I did call him “well fed”, but you’re absolutely right, he’s significantly out of proportion and there must be some meaning there. After all Da Vinci was an accomplished artist, so he will have done that for a reason. Hmmm….
Renaissance paintings can be so rewarding, especially Da Vinci, because of all the symbolism packed into them.
Somehow my eye is more drawn to the Madonna’s brooch than to the carnation. It is basically in the shape of the vesica piscis. The stone is black so it could be a very dark sapphire, jet or obsidian and I would suggest that this blackness symbolizes the void.
The carnation, blood red and a symbol of perfection, although held out in front of her, seems also to emanate from the brooch, from the void. Even so, the rather well-fed baby Jesus although apparently reaching for the carnation, has his gaze elsewhere, namely the viewer of the painting.
The neckline of her dress mirrors that of the brooch leaving us in no doubt that this is the symbol of the divine feminine. The baby Jesus, with his gaze and expression seems to be beseeching us to grasp this point.
A fascinating painting, thank you for posting it.
At least six ravens have been kept at the fortress since the days of King Charles II, who feared the Tower and the kingdom would fall if they were ever allowed to leave.
Well, the Torygraph gets it wrong again. I was at the Tower of London in April 2006 and there were no ravens there. I asked an attendant where we could find them and she pointed to a sign which explained that they had been taken away to a safe place for fear they would catch bird flu.
The state Britain is in today makes me think the prophecy came true.Just think about John Bolton as a human being
I saw that quote a while back and I’ve been trying, but it’s really hard. I could imagine him as a walrus, that I could handle, and then Pompeo could be the Eggman, coo-coo ca-choo.
