Base32

If they are, I suspect its for testing purposes, and in relatively small quantities. DPRK and iran aren't able to cover up deliveries; shipping and rail records ensure that. Large sclae transfer of Chinese weapons systems, which are now increasinglydifferent to the Soviet era would certainly require the movement of Russian military personnel into China for training. We know that, because that's exactly what Ukraine had to do in the West. Even equipment which is nominally of Soviet design. So far what Zelensky has said is that China has been providing engineers to Russian factories and possibly gunpowder. That's not quite the same as providing weapins systems. Its more about improving production yields. There is talk about Chinese company making weapons in Russia; that's somewhat curious. Is it Chinese companies making Chinese weapons in Russia, or a Chinese company has taken over a Russian company and is doing busonss Bild first came out in 2023 with claims about Chinese weapons on the battlefield, but they have been quiet about it since. There is evidence that China is analysing the battle space, and no doubt learning a lot about about. There might be some Chinese materiel invlvement, but nothng that is making any strategic difference. The fact that evidence hasn't yet been release; its been promised for next week, makes me think its not convincing or is ambiguous (ie. is Ukraine certain that Chinese munitions have come directly from China, rather than Russia obtaining the same munitions via a third party who just happens to buy from China. Iran is a major customer of China, for instance. Chinese arms exports footprint: 85% of Chinese Arms exports are to APAC, and 60% of that is to Pakistan. Possibly Myanmar is a source. Myanmar has been supplying Russia with mortar rounds https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russia-received-ammunition-manufactured-by-myanmar/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/russia-reimports-arms-parts-from-myanmar-and-india-aiming-at-improving-weapons-for-use-in-ukraine-customs-data-analysis-shows/ There is mutual benefit; Myanmar needs new ground attack aircraft in its civil war, and frankly, the RuAF has been pretty absent over Ukraine, so they have spares, maybe even spare pilots. Ukraine might present evidence of exploded munitions, analysing for parts of Chinese origin. From this, you can estimate, fairly accurately how much is entering Russian stockpiles. If it is the case (China is now a supplier), its further evidence, whatever happens, Putin's Russia is finished, and Russia is now a vassal of China. And China wants China back.

If elections don't gom the way Russia wants them to go, then Russia's demands are not met, and they continue to rape women, murder small children and massacre men. As for your other comments, 100% Tankie Bilge. I assume English is not your native language considering the strange way you address former Colonel MacGregor. Are you Chinese? The Chinese get first and last names mixed up.

And the problem with those PPP rankings, China can really only go up. The US can go down. Plus all thse foreigners living in Thailand suggests living standards might not be hunky dorey back home for many.

Its the Black Knight theory Is it the "Tis But a Scratch" or "Its just a flesh wound" stage?

The sensible response is to do what the West does best; innovate. The old Henry Ford approach to mass production is dead. Let China invest resource into building massive complexes to build lots of the same thing. One innovative approach is microfactories, coupled with additive manufacturing (for example, 3D-printing) and AI. The West has spent 200+ years building infrastruture. We have a lot of under used real estate, as legacy industries have faded, eg Detroit. Covid has left a surplus of commercial property. Microfactories are factories which are low volume, but high variety. You make things that people want. A factory in California isn't making things what people in New York want. A factory in New York does that. If the factory is down the road from me, I am not waiting on a 3 week lead time for the factory in California to build what I need, then find a shipping slot in an very complex logistics chain, nor do I need the local distributor having to maintain a ruinously expensive inventory where the numbers are based on a bet. In the medical world, we now have personalised medicine. At one point, that meant, if you had cancer, undergoing various tests, called companion diagnostics, to work out which medicine works best for you. Now it means extracting your cells, and synthesizing a treatment just for you. Its happening now. We have personalised products already; you can order a coffee mug with a holiday snap on it etc. With additive manufacture, the whole concept of tooling goes out of the window. We fully monetize our innovation. Currently, we design a car. We arrange for that car to be made in another country. A factory is built, tooling and presses purchased. Before you know it, knock-off Range Rover Evoques and fake i-phones appear. The fakery might be even coming from your own factory, from the other half your JV partner never lets you see. With additive manufacture, the tooling is code. You don't want that factory making 3-d printed phones, delete the code, remotely lock the machines. If you have anyone in that factory, they will have no clue how to get the thing going again. They are left with a lot of scrap that is quickly written down. Its not a model that can be easily replicated by someone else. China will find it very difficult to make something that exactly fits that New Yorker's requirements, because they are in China. They could do it if they choose to fit out a microfactory in New York; all very fair competition.. In China, their massive factories, with employee towns become obsolte. To implement the microfactory model, they need a diverse consumer market. We have that. They don't. Oh they have a consumer market, but they want lots of the same thing. We all want different things. I want a pair of trousers that actually fit without a belt to hold things up. I want a car that I can park in my city, not park in some other city on the other side of the world. I don't want a fridge, where I have to leaf through 50 different languages before I find the English bit. And speaking of food, I want to do my bit supporting the local farmers, and apologies, not subsidising the Aussie ranch owner, but I don't want to do that in a way thats turning the clock back 100 years and poking around at slabs of fly encrusted meat at the local market, where its "cash only mate". Anyway there could be other approaches. We need to play to our strengths, and being imitators isn't one of them

Offset the charges by reducing costs of flags of convenience.

Terminated, an emotive phrase, sounds more dramatic than what it actually is.

Those complaining about "biolabs" don't actually know what a "biolab" is. I worked most of my career in so-called biolabs. Nearly every university has several biolabs. Every hospital has at least 1 biolab. I know some of the Ukrainians doing work in these labs. You know one of the things they were working on? It sounds utterly amazing, but the application is rather dull. In the Noughties, they worked on death rays. Or rather, how they could direct plasma to disinfect a room, as an alternative to a formaldehyde bomb (which is still the gold standard). The idea didn't really work, but it illustrated a particularly Soviet approach to science. I knew the lab head. He couldn't speak English, wouldn't speak English. He'd go to a conference to present findings. He'd get a young lackey from the lab to translate to the conference. He would stand up, speak in Russian for a bit, show off some half arsed overhead acetates, when everyone else was using Powerpoint, and he'll get his lackey off to one side. The research was interesting, but the how show was embarassing. Nevertheless, the presentstions would be met with stoney silence. No one wanted to spend half an hour trying to get a question understood, while the break coffee was getting cold. On e of the many reasons for the support for Biolabs is related to why Ukraine had to get rid of their nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union collapsed overnight. It was extremely chaotic. Hollywood was full of plotlines involving evil renegade Soviet generals. We had rumours of backpack nukes being lost (largely a myth). Scientists getting recruited by rogue regimes. Cults like AUm Shinryoku were doing their level best to recruit scientists of the very highest ability, to support their apocalyptic paranoia. Ukraine was uttely brassic. It was left with an expensive toxic mess called Chernobyl. While it was largely the engineering brains of the USSR, it was now cut off from its main market; there was no Soviet government to buy its Sukhoi aircraft etc. It was left with scientists and engineers on the breadline. And a heap load of nukes, plus freezers full of god knows what. If Russia is accusing te US of running secret seapons labs, its because they are projecting. The entire Soviet BW programme was corrupt; go read Ken Alibek's account of it. He was an Uzbek in the Soviet military, and a military doctor. He was recruited to research Yersinia pestis, a bacterium endemic in Centra Asia, and carried by small mammals. What it causes we know as the Plague. Doctors in the Soviet Union were like others; they got into medicine to help people, and swore an oath. How dom you get a MD to research biological weapons. You don't. You tell the doctor we need research into developing better antibiotics. You tell the doctor to make it easier, we need to study the plague bacterium, and generate an attenuated version, so we are not forever working in a biohazard environment. In this way, Y, pestis became the Soviet Union's lab rat. In the West, we have Escerichia coli ("E. coli"), which for the most part, is a fairly benign bacterium (excepting food poisoning). All our knowledge of genetics is built around this bug. The same in the SU for Y. pestic. Then they want these doctors to understand how antibiotic resistance evolves, so they deliberately generate resistant strains. Then the research mysteriously stops. Soviet research is very different to Western research. In the West, we develop our scientists to have thinking skills, to develop initiative. University research groups tend to be quite small, and collaborative. Its a team effort. In the Soviet Union, they had some very good scientists. But the research groups were huge, but they weren't teams. Perm is a city populated by scientists. Everyone works for the institute. Someone decides on the objective; new killer biological weapon. Then splits the project into programs of work, all occurring concurrently. The silo'd groups, in each program have no idea of the ultimate objective, only their objective. There is no contact with other groups. Its a recipe for chaos; for scientific red herrings, blind alleyway, errors. Russian scientists, when you give them a task, are very good. But when you export them to the West, well, they are a bit crap outside of their comfort zone, and consequently, most spend their entire Western careers as little more than lab techs. I'm fairly typical of a Western Postdoc. My PhD was in Marine Microbiology, after a first degree that basically covered brewing. My research was into the role of bacteria is regulating the marine climate. I had a little postdoc role in the US, which was more like geochemistry. Got a few papers out. I segwayed into waste water microbial ecology, understanding how bacteria impact the functioning of aeration pumps in waste treatment. That lead to roles in government looking at infectious disease detection. All the while I'm extending my skill set, adapting. 30m years on, I am decoding the entire US medtec supply chain to understand tariff impacts, modeling 88,000 surgery codes for 40 countries and so forth. I see Postdocs in my company from former SU countries in my career who have completely ossified, unable to adapt their outlooks. When the SU collapsed, Alibek found himself to be an Uzbek colonel in a Russian Army, and consequently he was no longer trusted, and he made the decision to flee to the US, and spilled the beans on how Russia had been breaking the Biological Weapons Convention for years. Anthrax outbreak in the USSR in the early 80s? The Soviets blamed infected beef. The real reason was scientists driving their Lada from one lab to another, with a paint tin of the stuff, and forced at a checkpoint to open it, Hollywood style. First Soviet BW attack? About 1943, Francisella tularnesis used against German tank crews. Quite effective until the wind changed, causing outbreaks in Soviet troops. He revealed a Soviet BW programme in a terrible state, no one getting paid, broken safety equipment. I can back that up from experiences in visits to Perm; my Russian colleagues woild ask me to bring paper for the printers, some Western branded buffers etc. Any translators I needed, I had to pay with booze. Rubles were worthless, and hard currency attracted too much officialdom. Booze could be traded. So the nukes in Ukraine had to go. Ukraine knew they had to go. The country was full of skint engineers and scientists, surrounded by interesting looking kit. The kit had to be secured in place, and skint scientists given non-jobs, like plasma death rays, until they came up for retirement, and could live out their vodka-sozzled days at a country dacha. And also to ensure their skillset and knowledge, with the passage of time, became worth less and less. And speaking of safety, obviously there were and are huge differences in attitudes to health and safety. I know of two needle stick injuries involving the US and the SU, working with the Ebola virus. In the US, it was a female lab tech. She received the very best of medical care and recovered; its not that hard an infection to treat in the grand scheme of things. In Russia, the poor sod was locked in a chamber, with a diary, and asked to record his final moments, so that he would become a Hero of the Motherland. He didn't make it. What Nuland was referring to was probably the thousands of decrepti freezers containing material going back decades that the US didnt fully understand. The US assumption is that the Russians better understand what legacy material is there than they do, and maybe better than what the Ukrainians do, if records had become chaotic over a 30 year period. As for weaponsation of BWs, Its a bloody hard thing to do. Amerithrax was so-called weaponised Anthrax spores that essentially contaminated most of the US postal service, through the actions of some individual likely only known unto God. 2 people died. Aum Shinryko (might have misspelt that); Japanese Christian-Buddhist death cult who tried to cause WW3 and thereby arise from the ashes, got caught out when their home made Sarin contaminated the Tokyo underground, killing a relatively small number of people, including the heroic platform guard who kicked the offending milk carton into touch (school boy error). The trial revealed how they had driving around the Imperial Palace in Kyoto with a van pumping out botulinum toxin, hoping to kill the Emperor. Inconveniently no one noticed. They followed that up by using a agricultural crop sprayer to spray from the roof of an apartment block Anthrax that they were cooking up in the basement. Locals complained about the smell and their dogs being sick (they had ordered the wrong strain from the ATCC). This was a billion dollar cult, which used computer shops as fronts to generate funding, and which had recruited many of Japan's leading scientists. The concern from Nuland was that there might be some reference strains in that Ukrainian collection useful to the Russians. eg.. Marburg virus; one of those eyeball bleeding horrendous African viruses. Called Marburg, after the German city where 4 scientists died after obtaining material from Africa. The Soviets actually sent someone to dig up one of the bodies, to get a bit of tissue, so they could propagate the virus. The assumption is that there might be unique strains there of value to Russia, but of no value to the US. Preferably, there should have been supervised disposal of the material, but that can be quite complex, with respect to designing efficient disinfection processes. No doubt some will respond, take issue with me. I don't care. I have turned all notifications off; I will not have a scoobie do if you did respond. In that way, I am fully in control how I use the forum, not like some pavlovian dog responding the the bell, the like. I respond when I want to, Which might be never.

A timely article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/19/timothy-mcveigh-oklahoma-bombing-far-right-1995 Are Timothy McVeigh's views, 30 years on, now considered mainstream?

I'm thinking its actually less likely for China to invade Taiwan than it is to snatch bits of lost China from Russia. Taiwan is complex. There are 3 groups on Taiwan. Non-Han aboroiginals, they have no say. Indigenous Han Chinese; historically, as Formosa, Taiwan was a long time part of Nippon, and many people were forced to take Japanese names. They have a different history to the mainlanders, and are the ones pushing for independance. Then there are the KMT Chinese; Chiang Kai Shek's army and their supporters. They are opposed to independence, and are looking for reunification, when the Communists are gone. Companies in both countries have significant investments wth each other. But nationalist Chinese are getting quite agitated about restoring China's imperial boarders. Some are demanding the return of Vladivostock. These calls are not coming from the wumao trolls, who are basically working for the government, but from the zi gan wu, who represent more of the man on the street, China was forced to hand over Vladivostock in 1860. The Chinese call it Haishenwai. The CCP has a policy called "China's Second Rise", which is about restoring national pride following humiliation by other powers. Among the nationalists, they are coming up with a "China First" policy. The Neo-nationalists are less beholden to Russia past as an ideological big brother, These nationalists believe every country is a threat to China, and that China should no longer apologise for being China China has been quietely getting back Chinese territory through leases, and know possession is 9 tenths of the law. Since 2020, about 5 million hectares of Russian land are now Chinese. https://cepa.org/article/goodbye-vladivostok-hello-haishenwai/ China might look at Taiwan, and think,its are full of Chinese people, we are all Chinese people. One day we will reunite. China looks at the lost territories in Russia. There are no Chinese there, because they were driven out. That's a huge hurt to fix. The war in Ukraine is reversing the China-Russia relationshio. Now China is the top dog. Russia has nothing to offer to advance China. It has minerals and dumb people to dig these out of the ground. Putin's escapade has fatally weakened Russia. Whatever happens, after this is done, Russia is broke. Its expended huge amounts of blood and treasure for very little. Its military prowess was a legacy built up during the Soviet era, now severely degraded, and unlikely to ever come back.

Unlimited weapons? Never surrender? Neither is true. And a fact was Finland joined NATO with scarely a murmur from Russia. And a fact is, prior to 2022, there was little to no prospect to Ukraine actually being admitted to NATO, given that Ukraine was already in a territorial dispute with Russia, and so would never be able to secue the necessary unanimous support from the members.

Benjamin Rich, aka Bald and Bankrupt, finds himself under missile attaqck in Sumy, on Palm Sunday. I don't endorse his channel, as he seems a dodgy individual, but its interesting to hear ordinary Ukrainian people who don't mind speaking in Russian to an Englishman.

He's attempted to flag then date of the 2016 election, but got a 5 mixed up with a 8, so the punchline failed. He's making a reference to so-called <removed>. Russians write the date dd.mm.yr, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon conventions of dd/mm/yr or mm/dd/yr. What the Russian actually wrote: So clearly he not referencing the New Testament, Matthew Nothing all that remarkable happened on the 5th November. Besides the footie, Little Mix was Number 1, maybe the Russian is waxing about that mementous event. Ireland beat the All Blacks, which is pretty cool. A couple of pandas were born in Austria A Presidential candidate was in Hershey, when a Republican was bundled to the ground by the mob, for holding up a sign. Heidi Klum was an a Halloween Party

His name pops up with some people because he's perceived to be Jewish and a Banker, a combination that has triggered some people for decades.

Rolf Harris is dead.

Russian ethnic cleansing of Mariupal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-ca98fa24-29a3-4c74-aa7d-ce38f756270d This sounds very much like Generalplan Ost; how Germany "Germanized" Eastern Europe, through the seizure of property, and reassigning homes to Germans. I really hope someone, somewhere, is working out and identifying the functionaries responsible for the development and implementation of this policy. Like Adolf Eichmann and others, they might think of themselves as mere civil servants, but they are war criminals, party to a crime.

Now I know you made up the story about going up to Oxford University. Kind of the academic version of stolen valour. Oxord Union anyone? BTW, he's a Harvard man, just like Pete Hegseth. Obviously a dangerous Leftist in your view.

He's naturally referring to when St Johnstone beat the Hoops, Celtic, and has never shut up about that glorious afternoon at McDiarmond Park when wee Graham Cummings nicked the result. Or, beimg a Russian, its the day Chelski took the lead in the league beating Everton 5-0 on the 5th November. Or he's too clever by half and thinks that was the date of the US election. it wasn't. But the wuld be 45th President did get in the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/06/trump-protester-i-was-beaten-for-holding-a-republicans-against-trump-sign AH he sued Fox, and won. Good for him.

Depends on the risk and reward. Its probably not so much the active war; I'm sure the Russians will be obliging in not blowing up the American engineers, especially as they might be looking to do some sort of deal on the other side of the border. The major issue is the extent of mining in the area. The place must be full of UXBs. Will Ukraine provide the Sappers needed, or are American PMCs with sapper experience needed? The comparison would be Iraq; did an ongoing insurgency prevent foreign companies from investing in Iraq, including upgrading its decrepit oil industry. People did go out there, and took the risk.

Heads on sticks https://america.cgtn.com/2017/04/28/trumps-approvals-lowest-ever-for-first-100-days-but-not-whole-story

Thing is, he's not planning to take on NATO and the rest of Europe. Just the 11,000 or so NATO troops already in the Baltic States. He's banking on achieving a fait accompli before NATO can react. That will mean he will need 30-40,000 Russian and Belarus troops. His assumption is that once the Baltics have gone, NATO will sue for peace. He might even send out some message assuring people in Western Europe this is just a limited operation in response to Russia's justified aims. Many won't buy that message, but enough will to cause hesitation. If the Baltic states fall, then they won't be captured back. SO the key is if NATO get notice of Russian build up. And that's dependant on thr AWAC patrols. The is whether the US will continue to support AWAC patrols, or if they continue to share data. The data collected is fed back to the US, analysed, and spat back out again. When the US stopped providing Ukraine with Intel, RAF Rivet Joint aircraft were stll flying, still capturing data, and the UK was still feeding data to Ukraine. But the data that was sent was more raw, because of the block imposed by Washington. Ukraine's artillary accuracy declined by 5-10%, similarly air to ground targets. The key to defending the Baltics is not piling in loads of extra troops, but how NATO fights a war, which is to say, NATO fights very efficiently. Every shot literally counts. To achieve that takes data, a lot of it.

141 of 193 countries voted at the UN General Assembly to condemn Russia's aggression, and to demand its immediate withdrawal. Your maths needs looking at if you think that represents only 13% of the world.

This has been signed https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/404e9777d0fddace861e329e5e7b704bc67d0daa/31_10_1018_1208/master/1018.jpg?width=700&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

Learn to quote properly. You can look up the DHS grants. They are a matter of record. Extremely easy to prove. In fact, its all detailed in the press releases from the DHS canceling the grants, as they allege the studies were identifying those on the Right as extremists (project title: " Implementation Science for Targeted Violence Prevention"). The other canceled project, "Blue Campaign Program Evaluation and Violence Advisement" they DHS doesn't say much about, except that it was somehow funding public health, like that was a bad thing. This is the DHS's own programme: https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign And this is Harvard's part in it: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2021/03/12/news-release-dhs-partners-harvard-university-support-blue-campaign The Prwsident believes human trafficing is a cover to get terrorists into America. Now you support ending this research, and by extension, increasing the risl of terrorism. And I know what projects I worked on. What you say is libellous. I am proud of my contribution to keep our troops safe. I request you retract your allegation.

Given your sychphantic support for Russia elsewhere, I suggest your political compass is extremenly screwed up. So apprentices aren't being educated in the workplace then. If they join a trade union, by definition they will come into contact with someone you call an activist. You want Jewish and Christian student societies banned? Seems a very left wing response. When you see the Hare Krishna people on the treet corner, are you constantly fighting urges not to join them? Or do yoiu cross the street to avoid them. Priests don't learn to be priests by going to church, you dolt. They learn theology at a Theological college. Your recipe for self taught priests is the model adopted by ISIS and Al Qaeda, where a former drug dealer and car mechanic can suddenly delcare themselves to be religious leaders. You are against debate. You are anti-democracy. I think old people and middle aged old soaks living in Thailand are as gullible af, given the voting demographics in recent elections and referenda. Define a "normal university" and an "abnormal university"? Was Trump University a normal university? Are abnormal universities then allow political activism in your New World? Or are you dismissing former polytechnics and the Rajabhat Universities as not "normal universities". Suggests you are an elitist. Most of your post about the British is pure testicles and literally made up. Let me know when the next anti-colonial street party is being organised, in case I want a celebration. You obviously have a diary of all these events. Or its just a figment of some sort of imagination. The Germans that were "outed" as your call it (adopting, I see, leftist, woke language) were Germans who were adults in WW2 with a hidden past. Heidegger, you muppet, was far too old to go to university and have a Nazi convert him, He was born in 1889. Post War, West Germany had free elections. Someone graduating from university in 1945 would have been born about 1924, and would have likely entered German politics about 1974. Though many Germans of that age were in the military, and postwar, having seen what the Nazis did, completely rejected their ideology. Looking at the results of the 1976 German Federal election, I don't see any evidence of closet Nazis gaining power that you intimate. East Germans, who had highly politicised education, generally voted for conservative politicans following reunification, so all the efforts of the commissars seem to have gone to waste. How are the Communists doing in Russia these days? Not very well it seems, despite 70 years of rigging things. Your reference to "Masses" is another example about how you use highly politicised language, of the sort used by Hitler, Stalin, Mao. Perhaps you have been brainwashed. Those loudmouths screeching about activists do so from the perspective of being activists themselves. They so want it to be true that an activist tells you how to think. If that's not true, then what are they? Grifters spouting nonsense. This is why politicans are stunned when they lose an election, because it turns out all the issues they raise don't matter to the voters. Governments lose elections, rather than oppositions win them.