Base32

No surprise you say this. You probably also support CCP efforts to suppress minorities with the same quisling justification. Plus you've deliberately ignored 1989 to 2001 to continue your effort to support the policies of Russia and the Soviet Union and to denigrate the West. You know what happened during that perod. Assad is a murderous bastard, but there are people in the West that admire that trait.

I know. A Yankee doesn't need to lecture me about my history. You also should acknowledge that there are non-Han minorities on Taiwan, but curiously, you "forgot" to acknowledge that, implying you are a CCP supporter. and well as a Putin fanboi. How do you think Russians ended up living in the Donbas. I just told you......

Constantine's round up of Russian news, Week 50, 2024. eg potato shortages https://www.youtube.com/live/-AokQS-qUkc?si=boZOtq7Ckru2Ip0m

Russian healthcare is crippled. Before Putin's War of Aggression, about 90% of medicines and 80% of medical equipment was imported. Firstly, healthcare is mostly not subject to sanction. The exception is certain dual use equipment blocked by the US State Department, which means replacement medical lasers. But sanctions, and increased cost of shipping, means the availability of medicines has decreased. Early on, Putin put a challenge to Russian industry to backfill the supply gaps. They have failed to do so. On the one level, medicine inflation is quite modest; prices are up 4% in 2024. But Russian government healthcare procurement has declined. And the availability of medicines has fallen by about 10%. Before the war, most Russians used private medicine, mostly paid out of pocket. It was a growing industry, because State healthcare was so lousy (one of the memorable disasters of Russia's Pandemic, was when they decided to daisy chain ICU patients to save on ventilators. A leak incinerated the ward). When the war started, Putin prioritized the state for medical supplies. The private sector was all but dead. The decline in the availability of medicines but only a modest inflationary impact means that there has been increased imports of cheap generics, probably from India and China, and a much narrower range. Hospitals in the regions bordering Ukraine have been ordered to form combat brigades; essentiallt doctors and nurses are being co-opted as field medics, with a concomitant decline in the availability of medical services to citizens. Headway, a Russian Analytics company, has noted the biggest cuts in the Federal budget are in purchase of medicines to treat severe illnesses. ie. mortality rates from cancer and heart disease, will tick up. There is a 20% decline in these medicines. DSM believes the healthcare budget has been stripped to pay for increased armament spending. I recall that before the Aggression, Siemens had won the contract to overhaul the switchgear of the Russian Rail network. The network is still largely a decrepit Soviet era system. That work all stopped. Siemens won the contract because Russian companies were incapable of fulfilling the requirement. Russian army reserves, and most of the armament factories, thanks to WW2, are in the Far East. The Rail Network is absolutely critical to the integrity of Russia. It takes 6 days by train to get from Moscow to Vladivostok, and a brutal 118 hours to drive there. The road isn't mile up mile of shiney highway, but mostly potholed single lane, sometimes without a tarmac surface. In winter, the road is impassable. If the rail system fails, the Far East becomes cut off from Moscow. Obviously this affects the movements of goods and peoples, but it also affects the integrity of the Russian Federation. Then headlines like this: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-trains-derailment-mystery-1925131 Its not the work of Ukrainian special forces. Its indicative of a rail network under pressure.

The idea they are all "ethnic Russians", or Rus, is a myth. They are descendants of colonists. Like Germans in the Sudetenland and Poland. And cut from the same cloth it seems. The first waves came at the turn of the 20th Century, from the most impoverished parts of the Romanov Empire. In that Empire, Russians were top of the pile, so those colonists would have been less likely to have been Rus. Earlier, Catherine the Great settled Christians from the Ottoman Empire in the Donbas, which means Greeks, Syrians, Semites. Serbs were also brought in. But it was Soviet practices in the 50s and 60s that rubbed out any tribal memory. People were "encouraged" to speak Russian without an accent. donbas was a sparsely inhabited region. It was drilled into these later settlers that they were not Ukrainian nor Russian, simply "people of the Donbas". Those who are pro-Russian are feeling allegiances based on Soviet notions of citizenship. I take it you would support Chinese annexation of Taiwan, Singapore, parts of Thailand, because they are "ethnic Chinese" and that justifies it. Those in the East are descendants of mining colonists, and while Russian speaking, not all are "ethnically" Rus. 1991 Independance Referendum A solid majority voted to send a solid FU to Moscow, even in Crimea, 18% identify as "ethnically Russian". But the reality is Stalin did not selectively bus in Russians, he bussed in Soviet citizens, many of whom have forgotten their heritage. Putin has taken a cue from previous dictators. He has invented a history, like Himmler created the idea of a "Volk". Its about as fictious as Ivanhoe. And , like Hitler and Himmler, he has mislead a people, who are fearful of change, with some simple stories.

He suffered from chronic long term pain problems. This will be part of his defence, and likely it will be manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. I found the murder heinous/ But I have experience of pain management, and know there is no such thing as pain management. Someone who is in chronic pain is put on a pretty random cocktail of drugs, typically dihydrocodeine, diazopam and oral morphine. There is little science to it. Its a suck it see approach by the physicians. Sometimes, people will resort to largely unproven alternative therapies such as various cannabis preparations (and some people will be typing now how smoking weed helps them. Yes, it helps them, it might not help someone else), or therapies such as Yoga, which this chap was dabbling with in Hawai'i. Over time, the parts of the brain, that determine how we respond to pain, undergo vascular changes. Essentially how we react to pain changes, and people can become more delusional. That happened to my mother. 25 years ago, she was diagnosed and treated for cancer, putting it into remission. But she was left immuno-compromised. She's a retired nurse who enjoyed gardening. So she used antibiotics prophylactically. That may have contributed to what happened to her next. In 2017, she developed a sore back and a slight fever. After 2 weeks of trying to manage it herself (she has a high pain threshold), she finally saw a GP, a locum. The locum didn't bother to check her history, and prescribed her morphine to deal with the pack pain (when in fact she should have checked histroy, noted the fever, and sent her to A&E for an emergency scan and probable emergency surgery. A fever is obviously a sign of the body trying to fight an infection. Morphine depresses the immune response. Within 48 hours, she was paralysed from T6 down, and without bowel control. What had happened is what's called a spinal cord infarction or stroke; essentially an interuption of the blood supply to the spinal cord, brought about by a build up of pus, likely staphylocccus, through an intestinal lesion. Emergency spinal decompression and plates were put in, followed by 12 months of alleged rehab, which was mostly taken up waiting for a colostomy operation. Ever since then, she has been in constant pain. She has a high pain threshold, and likely many people, would not complain. Pain comes from the plates in her spine, spasms from her legs and pain from the colostomy. Overtime, probably from being a wheelchair user, she has developed transverse neck fractures, leading to pain and loss of mobility in her fingers/ For the first few years, she kept busy in the garden, from her wheelchair. She fell out of the wheelchair a few times, and had big strapping firemen pick her up. There was a certain amount of laughing it off. But in hindsight, the gardening assumeed a more manic nature. At the same time, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimers. He was a carer for her, and she cared for him. The gardening and caring for my dad were effective distractions from the pain, but the pain was increasing, as did her medication. In 2022, things went turbo. She was admitted to A&E 17 times in 9 months, through her dialling 999, and demanding something be done about her pain. She became more bedridden, the gardening was no longer a distraction. She manipulated the carers into giving her more pain medication than she should have been having (she was maxxed on dosages for everything, and the GPs were unwilling to try alternative because, as I said, pain management does not actually exist). Then my father passed away, so that distraction went away, compounded by the subsequent depression. She was due surgery to address a long standing problem with the colostomy and a hernia, but the consultant made a major mistake of erroneously telling her there was a change in date. Her physical health further declined. Thanks to GP's acquiescence in letter her overdose of diazopam, the drug became less and less effective. Overdosing on the dihydrocodeine lead to constipation, leading to more pain. A spiral downwards. Now she was no longer fit for surgery due to weight loss. More spiralling downwards This resulted in hospitalisation, where the delusions really happened. Delusions are a manifestation of the brain trying to deal with pain, to create a destraction. In her case, she was convinced the doctors were swanning around in gold, and had killed 40,000 people, and were fleeing to Nepal. And she was repeatedly raped on the ward by security. And she was helping the police to investigate corruption in the hospital, with the reward of a big screen TV. Eventually she was put in a private room, where the delusions, paranoia deepened, and assumed a more religious nature. Yeah, a pretty distressing time. Sje is now in a nursing home, her bills paid for by the NHS. Originally it was part of Discharge to Assess, to deal with pressure sores she had developed. But now, the NHS feel they cannot deliver the medical care she needs (pain medication) in her home, and this can only be done in a Nursing Home. Her health has improved, but the pain is still there. The nurses are very disciplined in not giving in to her. When she is tired, the rapey delusions come back. Local CID have been amazing. That's what pain can do to someone. Firstly, I have utter sympathy for the family of the murdered man, Brian Thompson. Nothing justifies his murder, and people attempting to lionise Mangione are either morons, scum or both. Mangione's behaviour in court seems deranged, delusional. He's going to be judged as incompetant, and this process will be over relatively quickly. He had apparently undergone surgery in an attempt to correct his spondylolisthesis, The condition is painful, the recovery from surgery (fitting plates) is very painful. Surgery is either spinal fusion or decompression. Success rates vary, but generally about 70% after 2 years. I imagine patients continue to suffer pain for years after surgery, and success is judged as to whether pain is less, rather than gone away. There are strict clinical criteria whether a patient can receive surgery, If surgery doesn't work, there appears to be no further treatment available. Spinal surgery has a complex recent history in the US. Firstly, there is no equivalent to NICE in the US; a body that determines treatment pathways based on evidence-based academic rigour and economic analysis. There are fragmented Federal taskforces, but its a mess. Costs have spiralled out of control. Between 1993 and 2003, the cost of spinal surgery in the US had increased 10 fold, driven by surgeons increasingly using instrumentation with dubious clinical efficacy. The media had started to issue calls to Congress to do something about these surgeons. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons was accused of changing from an Education Association to a Trade Association, existing only for the monetary benefit of its members. Over 70% of neurosurgery had become spinal surgery. Spinal fusion surgeries increased 15 times over a 5 year period. In a survey, 33% of patients being offered surgery didn't need it. Compared to other industries, margins for health insurance is relatively modest. United makes about 7%. Car makers are making typically 10-15%, and they make cars that catch fire, crash, kill kids etc. Insurance companies generally get a bad reputation through not doing something; not approving a course of treatment. In effect, Insurance companies are acting like NICE, but driven by economic analysis. In general, while there are emotive stories, such as little kids having to raise monet for cancer ops in the US, NICE gets its decisions right. When spinal surgeons in the US were effectively accused of profiteering from patients' misery, the Insurance companies stepped in, forcing physicans to look at more conservative treatments, such as epidurals and stenosis, before surgery, because they need to keep costs down. For some patients, I imagine that can be seen as the insurance companies stopping them getting the treatment they need, because the surgeon is giving them so many success stories. And then when you get the treatment, like Mangione, and you find out you are in the 30% it doesn't really work for, I can imagine a line of delusional thinking that starts along the lines of it wasn't effective, because it was delayed. And hence his expected, eventual defence. No doubt more details will emerge. Of course, the case generates a great deal of emotive discussion. Opprobrium is directed to the insurance industry, but its not them that are driving up costs. Its the insurers who have really been the driving force behind companion diagnostic tests; these are the diagnostic tests, mostly for cancer, that determine whether you can be prescribed (and reimbursed) for a particular line of expensive targeted therapy. Companion diagnostics used in clinical trials means that only the patients who will most benefit from that treatment receive it, an, importantly, those who won't. or might even be harmed by these therapies (which all tend to be cytotoxic) don't receive them. The net result is improvements in cancer treatment, because the right people are receiving the right therapy for their illness. More recently, the insurance companies have been looking at readmission rates. US hospital readmission rates are appalling. You are twice as likely to be readmitted hospital in the US than the UK. When people end up being readmitted, they often leave in a box. The insurance companies are telling hospitals if you don't improve your readmission rates, we'll cut the reimbursement rates. The result is the hospitals are investing more into community nursing; nurses visiting patients in their homes, and being able to track better their recuperation. But healthcare has become politicized. It should not be. Cradle to grave is not the Welfare State, its not the State going you a favour. Its the State's obligation in honouring its social contract with the people. The origin of the National Health Service lay in the Boer War, when the Army found out that 7 out of 10 volunteers were failing the basic medical exam. The nation was in poor health, and they knew there was a looming mechanised world war, and they were afraid of not having enough soldiers. Ultimately, the citizenry, through conscription, the draft, can be expect to fight and perhaps die, not in defence of their homesteads, but for the interests of their country. The least the State can do is to offer healthcare in return for your lives.

Years ago, in my professional capacity, I was interviewed by the National Geographic, as they investigated a particular death in Sierra Leone, in the midst of the Ebola epidemic (technically a Pandemic, as it after 3-4 countries in Africa, with cases in Spain and the UK). I have spent many years in CBRN and infectious disease diagnostics. The Ebola virus is one of a number of filoviruses. Tne main symptoms are a flu-like malaise. It causes a hemorrhagic fever, which means it interferes with the clotting action, and internal bleeding as capillaries spring leaks. In the early stages, it is treatable. The symptoms you describe are largely a Hollywood invention. In most cases, the victims pass away in their own <deleted> and piss. One of the issues of the epidemic of 10+ years ago was a lack of diagnostic capacity in the region. Liberia was a complete basket case. Sierra Leone had a reasonable reference lab in the capital, but beyond that, very little. The WHO operated a number of essentially jungle labs; people setting themselves up in sheds, warehouses, with some portable thermocyclers, inflatable glove boxes, but the testing volume was very very limited. 10 years ago, there were no commericially available tests for the Ebola virus. So foreign nations sent specialists in to help. Ebola being Ebola meant that experience was basically military. The UK sent in teams of Royal Engineers to build field hospitals in Sierra leone, but we offered no extra testing capacity to that nation, instead setting up a floating hospital offshore to support UK personnel. The South African Defence Force sent a mobile lab to Sierra Leone, and did a 3 month rotation, whuch was handy as I was able to speak to some of their team about what was going on. The Chinese also sent a mobile military lab to the country, with much fanfare. In Guinea, the EU was represented by French Army and Bundeswehr units, but I believe the Russian Army got people in country. In Liberia, USMC deployed to an abandoned crop research station. Basically how any of these militaries did the testing was a bit of a secret, but it doesn't take much to suppose what it was. USMC, at the time, had JBAIDS, a portable PCR system, which included Ebola targets. They also got hold of standard commercial thermocyclers, and ported over the Edgewood assays to those. Interestingly, because American civilians were there, and the history of Liberia, the JBAIDS Ebola assay needed FDA emergency authorisation. That meant they had to publish the test data, including simulant and live agent testing. Because of the completely broken down road network in Liberia, the Marine base needed to be supported by air. Which meant the fuel for the generators had to be airlifted in, every day. This fuel powered the offices, the canteens, the airconditioning, and the labs. At the time, all the reagents used needed -20 freezing storage. As it was, the might of the US could only manage about 100-150 Ebola tests a day, limited by the amount of storage space they had for reagents. The capacity of the other labs was no better (the South Africans kept really good diaries, and they worked like dogs to test). While about 30,000 cases were detected, with about 50% of them dying, in reality, 70% of Ebola infections were not picked up by the labs. Given the expected positivity test rate, there simply wasn't enough testing capacity in the region. I see they've had a bit of a Marburg outbreak in Uganda. Marburg is named after the German University where German scientists, in the 1970s, discovered the virus, and subsequently died (Soviet agents exhumed some of the bodies to obtain tissue samples, which provided enough material to eaponise Marburg virus). In 2 years, the 2014 ebola outbreak killed about 15,000 people, so about 150 people a week on average. In a few weeks, the mystery infection has killed 135, and 416 cases. A traveller arriving in Italy has been attributed ti having "Congo Disease". Based on symptoms presenting, ( fever, headache, cough, respiratory difficulties, anemia), the working hypothesis is Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacaterium. Some think this is a bit of a stretch, because the mortality rate is too high for this bug. Whats key is this outbreak is occurring in Panzi, which is very remote. That means deploying the needed specialists is difficult. It also limits the potential for transmission, though with at least one case already in Europe, one has to be vigilant.

One hopes that they have learned lessons. What's being seen now is the 100 year unfolding of past Empires, Ottoman, British and French. In Tunisia, they sort of worked it through after a couple of corrupt Presidents fled, and have a functioning democracy. Libya was a strange one; Gaddafi actually designed the country to have no government. Everything was done by essentially local councils, answerable to jim, the "Jamahiriya". Essentially, he made sure that the Army couldn't do to him, what he and the other young officers did to the previous government. Gaddafi could have died of old age in office, and the same outcome would have happened. In Afghanistan, what state functions there were, basically disappeared when the Soviets pulled out. Later on, Afghan diaspora tried to rebuild government based on little more than folk memory. Little wonder that was easy to crumble. In Iraq, the Americans thought they could have applied the 1945 Germany model to the country, when instead they shuld have applied the Japan 1945 model. In Syria, there is still a sort of functioning state, though Assad's stupidity and weakness meant it is severely corroded (he was not, as portrayed, a "Strong Man", with a powerful force of personality, he was a weak and vain man, easily manipulated. Rather pathetic really). At the moment, the likely successor is Abu Mohammed al-Golani. His interview with CNN was interesting; Bit early to take him at his word, but initial signs are promising, as is the news coming out of Homs. But he is certainly self-aware, he knows he is talking to the world, and I think he knows Syria will need the help of the world for many years; 90% of the population is below the poverty line. Syria was never one of the richest Arab states. It never really had the oil riches the illiterate Al Sauds enjoyed. But it has a long and sophisticated history. Unlike Al Zarqawi, he wasn't a former drug dealer-gangster, nor a theologian-academic like Al Baghdadi (who was probably more comparable to Pol Pot, given his academic-driven vision of Islamic rule. Al Baghdadi came from a religious family, apparently had a PhD from an Islamic University. Pol Pot studied in Europe, and became deeply involved in Maoist-Anarchist movements, and applied all of that to Year Zero Cambodia, in an utterly monstrous and depraved way). Al-Golani comes from a wealthy Damascus family. His Nom de Guerre portrays a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the Golan Heights, or maybe that, along with the dalliance with a turban, robes and BDUs, was all part of a theatrical act. maybe his interview is part of a theatrical act. He will be judged. But he might be irrelevant. It wasn't the HTH that took Damascus, but a group from south of the City. He's taking the plaudits, like a Charles de Gaulle marching into Paris did (or Chiang Kei Shek in Taipai). The first test is whether the current Prime Minister ends up swinging from lamp post, then we know the script that is being followed. There is little said about the whereabouts of the Syrian General Staff; these were men promoted not because of competance or military prowess, but because of sychophancy, which would have been measured in what brutal method they could apply to kill terrorists/their own people. They also would have been promoted based on trust, and affiliated to the Alawites. Is there a Syrian Khalifa Haftar, with access to the good Syrian military kit. While the rebels are appealing to members of the old regime to remain at their posts, the news from Sednya prison might be a portant. Allegedly, doors to sections were sealed shut, and ventilation turned off, before the prison guards fled. Hollywood's version of the previous capture of Damascus by a loose Arab alliance who all hated each other

I suppose like all those Free Poles went back home when Lech Walesa was elected. They were asylum seekers as well, changed the character of whole towns in the English Midlands, forcing local people to eat smoked pork sausages. The nerve of it..... Wait, they didn't. Neither did Gregory down at the local Football Supporters Club moaning about what Stalin did to his beloved Ukraine. The couple running the local Indian restaurant didn't go back to Uganda after Idi Amin fled to Saudi Arabia. Many Syrians will of course return home. Why would they. Britain is full of people who they don't know, never met, but who hate them anyhow. Many will stay, tough it out, as the UK is now their home, just like Nigel Farage's Hugenot ancestors did. My Thai wife is firmly convinced that the majority of British people hate foreigners, especially Asians. Not sure where she got that idea from.

Elon Musk has chosen not to renounce his South African citizenship. He has a complex upbringing. He appears close to his mother, and is estranged from his father, Errol. Elon's maternal grandfather was a Canadian-American chiropractor Joshua Haldeman, who apparently was a big influence on him. Haldeman decided in the 50s to emigrate to the emrging apartheid South Africa, just two years after the National Party there, and had passed the Prohibition of Mixed marriages Act and Immorality Amendment Act (Acts criminalising Inter-Racial relationships), and then the Population Registration Act, classifying people as Black, White, Coloured and Indian. And thus Apartheid. Before WW2, Haldemann was a member of the technocracy Incorporated Movement. Because that was a proscribed organisation, he was arrested and fined for his part in the publication of an article deemed damaging to the King. he resigned from that group, and joined the antisemitic Social Credit Party of Canada, another political party of whackjobs. He ended up leading becoming a regional Party leader, trying to play down its Jewish World Conspiracy credentials, while at the same time defending publication of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at the same time the Nuremberg trials were going on. He emigrated to South Africa, and became a vocal supporter of the National Party there, claiming it was leading "White Christian Civilisation" against the "International Conspiracy of Jewish bankers and the hordes of Coloured people” . If having a Nazi grandad wasn't bad enough, his father sounds like a terrible chap, with his son describing him as emotionally abusive. When Musk was 9 years old, his dad shot to death 3 people he claimed were breaking in. His dad ended up fathering Elon's stepsister's children. So his nieces/nephews are also his siblings....... Screwed up man who is autistic.

Well, he's not a "Christian" (viz Freudian slip when speaking at Turning Point Action on July 24th. He doesn't have an ideology, just populism, which means, for him, Ratings. He bends with the wind, looking for acceptance among his peers as you indicate. For instance, as Trumpf the Celebrity, he mixed with all kinds of people. He went to Elton John's wedding, and probably had a good time there with some unusual characters (and Trumpf, as number 45, put on a screening of "Rocketman" at the Whitehouse, which included the first representation of gay sex in a mainstream film (Trump and Elton have a long relationship, with Trumpf being like a puppy dog when around the singer). Maybe Trumpf has some latent homosexual tendancies, repressed for decades, symbolised by his shakey marriages, I see another dysfunctional cabinet, like last time. Last time, at least at first, he assembled a reasonable group of technocrats, who would probably take a fresh look at the business of governance, from a non-ideological perspective. These were men, women, in their own fields, considered leaders, and very capable people. But that's not the sort of people Trumpf employed before. The Trump Organisation employees seems to be a bunch of second raters, considering what they went on to do. Which is fine in an essentially family business, when its the family that really runs the business. And when you start with a fortune (inheritance), generally its very hard to turn that into not a fortune. These guys seem to make a lot of money through not actually doing a lot. But now the cabinet is full of people that publicly love Trump, and publicly, he loves them. But they won't love each other. And certainly won't like DOGE when their budgets are cut, yet they, and the boss, want to do all this stuff. So MTG will be working with Musk. Which is a guarantee he will flounce. If she had some Thatcherite laser focus on detail, you might think that the US budget will come under some serious control. But in reality, she's not even a second rate politican, probably more like Angela Rayner in UK terms, another politician with little education, but a loud mouth, that does attract sympathy. And who is now getting found out. The dog murderer who will be head of homeland security; got a big budget and hundreds of thousands of agents ripe for cutting. She will argue its some other department that needs cutting, she needs more money if anything. RFK jr, when pictured holding a big Mac and full fat HFCS Coke on Trump's plain genuinely looked like he had been kidnapped. He's going to want to ban fast food, sodas et. Trump is going to push back say the Big Mac is a healthy meal, and that he's evidence of that healthiness. He will also be expected to support the FDA's request to Congress to expands its ability to access private citizens' medical records, to they can check if this AI stuff actually works, the same AI stuff the boss is a big fan of. I sense there could be some ideological resistance there. The groper cum Defence Secretary will probably go a bit quiet on dropping the Geneva Convention, when surrounded by all those Westpointers, pointing out the ethics training that the US Military wrote the book on at Nuremburg, and being a mere Colonel, he will know his place The new head of the VA is promising to get Vets the money "they deserve", but faced with big cuts in his budget, will probably turn that to mean some will be more deserving of others, which might be bad news for those who might have gained some seniority while in service. In someways, comparable to the UK "Brexit Cabinet" from Boris onwards; people appointed because they either supported Brexit, or were willing to shift their opinion (Jenrick) out of sheer opportunism. Never actually got that much done. The interesting dynamic is Vance. 15 VPs have become President. Of those only 4 sitting Vice Presidents have become elected President. 9 became President intraterm, because the boss died or resigned. Vance has a good chance at that. Normally VPs melt into the background, and play the role of the literal "spare". Vance is a young guy, and ambitious; does he have the strength of character to dominate Trumpf, particularly as Trumpf won't be seeking re-election. I will assume that Vance, privately, thinks Trumpf is like Hitler, but without the intellect. The last really ambitious VP (I don't count Biden or Harris) was Al Gore, who, as VPs go, was fairly headline grabbing (and in someways, ideology aside, quite comparable to Vance). As Trumpf ages, does he become more belliconse, and his power become more centralised with him. and America becomes ruled by EO, or do the cabinet do their own thing, he rubber stamps everything and let the boss rant? Vance has a very good chance of being 48, because either Trumpf croaks, or, as long as he doesn't totally feck things up, he'll get a very good GOP candidate in 2028, knowing enough to say moderate things to win from the center, and finally marginalise the extremists, who have been given too much voice, like they have in the UK.

Remember the Gatwick drones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-of-the-gatwick-drone https://pilotweb.aero/news/drone-airproxes-fact-or-fiction-we-try-to-find-the-reality-6305480/ So don't discount mass hysteria. People in uniform can also become hysterical, especially if told they better be looking out for drones. Or UFOs.

At uni, I once had summer job as a kitchen porter (KP) in a hotel; it was a horrendous job, really. For a few of the KPs, this was their life. One had pinned down several shifts at various hotels, and could get himself quite a nice little car. One was a pisshead. I asked him what his idea of a good night was. His answer was he'd start with a thimble of methylated spirits, and then after that, he'd just nurse a can of Special Brew, because it saved money.

In much the same way as Americans of European extraction acquired land; a very long time ago, through might, and quasi-legal edicts issued by a judiciary foreign to the original land occupants. How long the "Arabs" have been there is open to conjecture. Palestinian Arab is a British colonial term invented to describe anyone living there irrespective of ethnicity or religion. Palestine was a term invented by the Romans to divide conquered peoples. One version is that the "Arabs" arrived in the 7th Century with the introduction of Islam; the history of the Anglo-Saxon people is dominated by events which are likened to be ethnic cleansing. On one level, to identify as "Anglo-Saxon" is to aknowledge that's one forebears might have been a rapey Viking time sticking heads on sticks. We know it was more complicated than that, nevertheless, the invasions by the Angles and Saxons left their genetic legacy on the population. Its therefore natural to assume that's what happens elsewhere. There is substantial evidence that so-called Arabization likely started to happen about 100 years after the arrival of the Islamic religion in the region. Until about 750-800, most areas retained their own language and customs. A more organised theocracy imposed Arabic as a language, and Arab officials to run things. There are parallels in the west; Holy Joes/God Botherers had some role in adoption of English throughout the British Isles, through distribution of bibles, and the "Good Word". Ironically, it was Calvinists trying to turn Roman Catholics in Co. Antrim that prevented Gaelic from dying out. But Arabization of the region might be more like Rome. Rome ruled Britain for 500 years, yet there seems to be no appreciable Roman genetic legacy left in the peoples. One version portrays the end of Roman Britain being a Dark Ages version of the fall of Saigon, as the Americans scrambled to get out on the last Huey. Another is there was never that many Roman colonists in Britain. Instead, Britons became Roman, adopting Roman custom (including growing grapes, which became in much demand in Rome), Latin, religion and even Emperors. The "Arabs" have always been in Palestine. To us ignorant Westerners, they all seem the same whether they are in Gaza, Beirut, Dharan, Aden or Manama. To people in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, they are very different. You know, a lot of Brits can't tell the difference between Americans and Canadians. Americans struggle at times between Cockneys and Aussies. Mexicans can't really understand the Spanish. The Palestinians have been pagan, jewish, Christian, Muslim. They've been Greek, Roman, Arab, Palestinian Arabs, Palestinians. The area has a very complex history, but we should not be making simplistic, and probably irrelevant, conclusions about their past, based on our own historical bias, in assuming a similar history.

I never thought the ICTY would get anyone but minor thuggish foot soldiers. I was wrong. 68% of those convicted were Serbian, so the court also convicted people from the sides that had the broad support of the international community, but the split probably reflects which of the sides was responsible for the greatest number of war crimes and atrocities.dictor Any court can issue an international arrest warrant. The precedent was set by a Spanish judge and Pinochet. The Chilean dictator's troubles didn't start with an international court, it started with a Spanish judge who understood the principle of universal jurisdiction. The United States famously states US law knows no boundaries, and criminals globally are subject to US justice. This was established from the very early days of the Republic, when the nascent country refused to payoff the Barbary Pirates, enshrined in the famous USM corps song. In retrospect, during Pinochet's end-of-life, the UK and US governments behaved disgracefully, preferring strategic relationships over principle. The world would not have imploded if Pinochet had ended up in a prison-old peoples' home for murderous dictators. The reactions from some people indicate how politicised they want to make the courts. This started, maybe before, before that tabloid labeled British judges an "Enemies of the People" over a question of Parliamentary procedure and Brexit. Americans are very used to judges being elected officials, which makes them, almost by definition, to be more likely to be corrupt, and more interested in seeking votes rather than the correct application of the Law.

Ferris Bueller's teacher had a point. Its a good idea to pay attention in class, you might learn something. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/smoot-hawley-tariff-act/

Not always. What happens to average Thai wages if Thailand decided to start handing out work permits/visas for Farang? In reality, Thai managers won't be able to see massive pay rises because Cleetus from Mobile, Dirk from Groningen or Paul from Newcastle gets their £100k PA job transferred to the Bangkok office. Mass immigration might be one of the drivers for wage inequality, but is not the only one, and might not even anywhere near the most important. Sandeep arrives from India in the bright lights of London, and he gets a job emptying the bins for an office cleaning company which wins a competitive bid from a PLC in the City because they are paying mostly immigrant employees a wage much closer to the minimum wage than their competitors. There is a saving to the PLC which helps them reduce costs, contributing to the bottom line, and nudging everyone over the line for those bonuses. PLC employee wages go up because of Sandeep. Of course Wayne the bloke who got thrown out of school at 14 for sniffing glue, still can't anything better than cleaning skips for cash in hand. Rohit is an engineer with some experience. In India, his wage is £6000 a year, which is pretty decent there, but he thinks the UK offers more opportunities. His boss in India keeps telling him the grass isn't always greener, but Rohit is young, got a new wife and baby, and he spends a lot of time on Tiktok, looking at amazing snow and cars. He get a visa sponsor. He attends interview for a graduate engineer, advertised as starting at £45,000 depending on experience, which seems like a King's Ransom to him. He doesn't have quite as much experience as the other candidates. He comes out with out during the interview, he'll take the job for £10,000 a year. Does he get the job, driving down wages? No. What is happening is the UK company sets up an office in Bangalore, and employs all the CAD engineers they need there. Now the savings aren't really 1/10th of the wage cost, because they seem to need to employ twice as many people there, on shifts, because of the time difference. They design clever stuff that is manufactured in the UK by an additive process that is pretty automated. Normally those engineers would be a £60 PH overhead in the UK, now that's reduced to £20PA, taking account of the rented office in India, and that they need to have a travel budget so that some of the managers can swan out there every now and then. Wage growth is complex. There was this idea at one time of "trickle down" economics; Elon Musk now being a trillionaire (or close to it) makes you richer. It doesn't; its a garbage idea that the Oligarchs in Russia made the lives of ordinary Russians better because they became richer and brought more Bentleys. I think the opposite is also equally untrue; capillary economics, the idea that poor immigrants make other people poorer. No, what happens is you have a lot more people less well off than you. Where mass immigration can cause stress is on public services, and that is down to the humanity of the society. there is increased demand on education, healthcare. A society can be inhumane and stop migrants sending their kids to school, or, in the case of a publicly funded healthcare system, let them die in the streets, Or in the case of Farang managers in Thailand, make them send their Farang kids to an expensive international school, and take out private healthcare insurance. When Sandeep the cleaner is stopped from coming to the UK, the cleaning company doesn't turn to the semi-literate Wayne to start cleaning the Boardrooms. They invest in a few of those cleaning robots, made in China, designed by engineers in Bangalore, working for a Newcastle based start up selling whizzy AI enabled cleaning robots. Which had received a generous innovation grant from the government as an example of 21st Century Britain, taking on the world, after they won the contracts to sell robot cleaners to Bangalore airport, a stunning "export" win, given the airport had seen massive increases in passenger traffic. The Industrial Revolution had casualties. It lead to high level industrial espionage and mass infringement of patents to enable a cotton industry to be established in the nascent United States with its Revolutionary Government, who had recently inspired very bloody regicide in France. The Americans, as they called themselves, needed stolen technologies (Samuel "Slater the Traitor" Slater who stole the secrets to Richard Arkwright’s transformational “water frame” technology of cotton spinning) to make the mass slave trade much more profitable (picking cotton). It was ok, because 2 generations later, it fueled a rise in American innovation, beating that of Europe. Britain was cotton king (and sugar king) was no longer so, but that was ok, because they had made a ton of cash, and 200 years later became a service based economy, hardly affected by threats of tariffs. Not much of a navy, but then, the tea clippers, anti-slavery patrols, were just a distant memory. There is a Digital Revolution, and there will be casualties. And beneficiaries. There is an alternative, called Ludditism. A restriction on immigrants won't in itself cause an increase in employment rates. Jobs will still move overseas. There is not an easy solution, but people will offer easy sounding solutions. They always will because they need your vote, but not always have your interests at heart.

Make America Healthy Again didn't even make it to Inauguration day. The Mooch lasted longer.

Not straightforward to overturn SDWA.

https://www2.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/pb/2024/pb2024-49.pdf The beneficiaries will be Mexico, with wages up. The rest of the world, US included, not so well. Trump wants to devalue the US$ to make US exports more competitive. He thinks he can force countries to revalue their own currencies through tariffs. But a devalued USD will increase import costs driving up inflation. But you might say that's the idea, getting Americans to buy nice cheap American goods, not foreign goods. I work in the medical field. I looked at US medical device makers. There are about 14,500 of them. But less than 80 actually manufacture more than 80% of their products lines at home. About 14,000 have more than 80% of their lines manufactured wholly or partly outside of the US. Those Made-in-USA companies are generally making high value specialist equipment, that the rest of the world needs. US companies are making plenty of money, but they are not invoicing customers in USD, so devaluing the USD will reduce margins. And healthcare products are fairly price inelastic. The UK found that out post Brexit, so have the Russians, who are in a worse state because their healthcare is dependant not just on imports, but imports from foreign companies. So the cost of healthcare will go up, meaning insurance premiums go up. And Trump won't be alive long enough, for the 10-15 years needed to essentially build a US medical device industry from scratch. Our company economists are predicting staglation for the US, and concurring about a cut in global GDP. Trump's efforts to devalue the USD will be largely unsuccessful, unless he removes the independence of the Federal Reserve.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/13828692/thailand-paedo-edinburgh-jail-john-martin/ Don't think his family realise he will be ending his days in a grubby hostel, in Scotland

Unless said (allegedly) backward State passes abortion trafficing laws (Idaho, Iowa). Tennessee .is embroiled in courts as to whether their trafficing laws are legal. Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma looking at similar legislation. Then you have the ordinances in Texas that have encouraged people to take civil action preventing said travel. Take Idaho for example. When their HoR was elected in 2022, from where this awful law originated, about 1 in 3 people didn't bother to register to vote. Of those who registered to vote, only 57% actually turned up. Of those, 76% voted Republican. So the politicians took their mandate to pass this from the vote of Idaho resident. Such is democracy when people don't care much about it. I'm sure its a similar picture in other state elections, relatively low turnouts. Idaho isn't as bad as some States. "Only" 16% of the adult population are classified as having "low literacy", so 15th in the Nation. What does Low Literacy mean; the inability to read or write well enough to perform everyday tasks. Still being 15th for barely being able to read is nothing to boast about, when its the 29th least educated. Not only can't they read, Idaho residents apparently can't add up either. 20% have no access to healthcare, 16% are in abject poverty. Yet prosecuting doctors was high on the priorities of those lawmakers when they took their seats in 2022. Laws like that get states into the news, for grandstanding politicians keen to make a point. These are quite momentous laws. The Idaho State Legislature consists of 70 people, 49 of them men. 57 voted for this legislation. The way the electoral college was conceived was deliberately to stop the more populous States run roughshod over the small ones. The system gives more power to those smaller states, those poorers states, those illiterate states. And you saw that in the recent election, when the candidates didn't spend all their time in New York or California appealing to the most populous, but were hitting the road to places in the middle of nowhere. So when so-called enlightened people flee these "Dumb<deleted>istan" States, you are not reducing their power, their influence, but you are creating theocratic states of increasing influence. I guess some of these states could, in principle, be free to declare adultery to be a capital crime.

The FDA can greatly restrict the ability to perform an abortion legally.

Its relatively easy for the FDA to withdraw approval for mifepristone and misoprostol, or reinstate previous prescription requirements. Robert Califf has been director of the FDA for a long time, and will probably step down very soon. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine nearly succeeded in getting approval overturned last year for Mifepristone, which is used in about 2/3rds of abortions. Depends what Kennedy's role will be. The FDA isn't independent. Its part of the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS can and has done, over rule FDA approvals. The HHS wouldn't even need to have approval withdrawn, but insist on a tightening of the prescribing instructions, effectively killing it. The government could very well argue that while it respects the Rights of States to approve Abortions, the Federal government cannot be a facilitating party. The FDA might reduce the number of weeks which Mifepristone can be used; 70 days. 45% of abortions in the US occur before 6 weeks. Tweaking the prescribing instructions can reduce abortions, as well as tightening up where it can be prescribed. RFK is supportive of lack of restrictions on abortions, but maybe he'll have to drop his objections if he is really to be allowed to run "wild" at the FDA.

Mussolini kept the trains running. Fascists run for high office, fairly openly, in Italy. Il Duce studied the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, and the syndicalist Georges Sorel and credited Charles Péguy and Hubert Lagardelle as influences. He was widely published, writing, among other things, "Giovanni Hus, il veridico" (Jan Hus, true prophet), a historical and political biography about the life and mission of the Czech ecclesiastic reformer Jan Hus and his followers, the Hussites. He literally invented Fascism. Does Trump display fascist tendancies? Probably. Does that make him a fascist? No, and that's not a complement. He's not a fascist, because he's too dumb to understand the ideology. Mussolini was certainly an intellect. He had developed an ideology that was probably shaped by a genuine concern for the Italian working man, except that it was totally evil. Trump has no concern for the working man, hence at his rallies, he revels in boasting how he doesn't pay contractors, if he can get away with it, because he's "smart". He has an idea about "America", and what he think that means, which seems to be based on an infantile view of the world. "America" includes heroes who fight and die for their ideals, frredom, except not him, because he's not a sucker, he's smart. His major influence in life appears to be a semi-literate Scots women, who was penniless, but not because she somehow found the money for multiple trips across the Atlantic, before finally finding herself at high society parties, meeting property developer, Fred Trump. Surely, the conversation was not the attraction, as I doubt Trump Senior could scarely understand her heavily accented, and stuttering Hebridean accent (labeled recently as the worst and least attractive of all the Scottish accents, which is going some when you hear Rab C Nesbitt https://www.welovestornoway.com/index.php/articles/34445-hebridean-accent-the-worst-in-scotland-study-claims).