MicroB

Or do what's best for Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor here. As it stands, they gain from an act of aggression. The latest "leaked" terms are 1. lifting of sanctions 2. gradual normalisation of trade 3. freezing current status of the occupied Ukrainian lands for 99 years, 4. no assurance against Ukrainian NATO membership 5. no assurance against a halt in US supply of military equipment to Ukraine. What will happen is that 2 of the points will be agreed upon, some watering down of 1 of the points, and outright rejection of 2 of the point. No minutes will be kept, no independant observers of the talks allowed. The talks will conclude more quickly than expected, allowing for some discussion on leisure developments in the Russian capital. Russia only wants the US involved in talks because it is afraid if Europe is in the room, they will lie, and Vlad can be utterly trusted in everything; his word is his bond, as Arthur used to say. This will be presented to Ukraine as the best deal they are going to get, they they are going to have to give up more sovereignty, and its all their fault if they hesitate.

It seems someone inside the DHS is working to undermine and besmerch agents with the commissioning of this kind of artwork inspired by a previous era. Volksturm recruitment poster, appealing to father and son. ICE Agents are receive a starting salary of $90,000. So you can be in your 70s, 80s, sign up now. Half the forum disappears to make hay. Which might be why Dean Cain signed up. I can't anything he has done since that Superman gig Steven Seagal became a copper, then gained a lot of weight eating all those Vegan Twinkies he likes, when the acting gig in the US dried up, then became a Russian, finding work in some pretty bad Euro-thrillers. Wonder what James Woods, Kevin Sorbo and Randy Quaid are upto these days......

Japan accidently charged 42.% in tariffs. US apologises, and agrees to pay back the money. https://asia.nikkei.com/economy/trade-war/trump-tariffs/us-to-correct-tariff-order-and-make-reimbursements-japan-envoy-says

Oops. https://asia.nikkei.com/economy/trade-war/trump-tariffs/us-to-correct-tariff-order-and-make-reimbursements-japan-envoy-says US now owes Japan money. They had agreed to lower tariffs to 15%. But instead, 15% was added to existing tariffs. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/08/07/economy/reciprocal-tariff-effective/ Rank incompetance by the US government it seems. Up there with mistakes on jobs. Actually worse than that, because it put the US into further debt. Who will get the sack from this hyper efficient, super lean government? For all the talk about great deals being made, not a single deal has been made. Instead there are a series of framework agreements, some in writing, some not.

Lots of governments around the world fund early stage research. There is a logic to that. Investors can be quite risk averse. If it hadn't been for WW2 and Operation Overlord, Penicillin would have remained in Fleming's lab, and we'd probably be still using sulfonamides, and dicing with death everytime we did a bit of gardening. The "win" for government for an effective treatment or prevention of disease is less people getting sick, people live longer, Which means people work more, tax receipts go up, and we are a happier society. When your country goes to war, who pays for the development of that equipment to defend your country? The government. US,UK defence funds programme research and development. Its a lie put out by the crypto-Stalinists to suggest that the Pharmaceutical companies are entirely funded by government. Its a lie put out, and lapped up by the gullible, intended to undermine our society and faith in our institutions, both public and private. Its designed to divide peoples who ordinarily have lots in common. Free market capitalism, as you put it, has rendered new antibiotic research virtually non-existant. Its a matter of time before whole classes of surgery become non-survivable; we survive the surgery, but don't live to recover, because there is nothing left in the antibiotic armoury. Now some people think that antibiotics are a terrible thing. There are some people who also believe blood transfusion is an evil act. They are both fruitcakes. There is a synergistic relationship between industry and government in the west. It doesn't matter what it is. For the car industry, there is a great deal where the government helps the car makers keep out the opposition ("safety standards", "emission standards"0. Occasionally the government helps out further with tax rebates. They do this because of the thinking that its really good that lots of people work in car factories, because people not working in a car factory is a bad thing. Free market capitalism would mean every car factory in Europe and the US would shut. Without a government-industry partnership, your military would be fighting with sticks. Or probably Chinese AKMs and knocks off RPG7s. Before WW2, there wasn't a Pharmaceutical industry. Medicines were made by the chemical companies, and disease was basically treated using varying amounts of poison and crossed fingers. Pfizer became the Pfizer what we know of because of WW2. Pfizer and Merck were both chemical companies before WW1. Pfizer made its money making citric acid. Citric acid is geritol. Its used in soldering flux, facial creams, textile dying, heroin processing, stainless steel manufacturer, household cleaner, photograph developing agent etc. Pfizer used to make it from calcium citrate. Italy pretty much had the monopoly on calcium citrate. The WW1 happened. Pfizer scientists figured out fungal fermentation to make citric acid instead; very important. Its the first step in a company manufacturing an industrial product at scale using biotechnology (beer making is not the same, its not nearly as controlled and its not making an industrial product). Typically, these companies know how to make a lot of stuff repetitively, at scale, not small batches. Come WW2, the Australian-British scientists travel to the US, seeking someone who knew how to make a lot of the penicillin stuff, repetitively , at scale. As early as 1940, they knew that one day, someone's husband, brother, son, will be striding across a French beach into a hail of bullets, and they would need a lot of this penicillin stuff to help those wounded young men. Then, as now, the biggest killer in combat is not bombs or bullets, but infection (sepsis had a terrible impact in Afghanistan). By 1940, they had managed to treat a few people with penicillin, but it was an expensive treatment, and huge batch to batch variation. Pfizer had the soluton. Pencillin is produced by a fungus closely related to the one they used for citric acid manufacture. they knew how to make a lot of that. Less that 4 years later, the allies had massive stockpiles available, in time for the liberation of Europe, and the extermination of the Nazi menace. We know how WW2 would have worked out if left to free market capitalism. You only have to look at two companies to know. Ford and Coca Cola. Ford, not Opel, was the biggest supplier of trucks to the German Army. At the same time, they were the second biggest manufacturer of Jeeps for the Allies. Coca Cola; after sanctions blocked delivery of the secret syrup, Coca Cola made sure its German arm kept winning those lucrative government contracts, so they invented Fanta, an Apple soda, with deliveries to the German Army continuing right into 1945. In other words, industry would have done a deal, because it would have been good for business, if war had been left to them. For some Isolationists and Crypto-Stalinists, that would have been a good thing. For the rest of Humanity with a soul, thats not. FDR was well known as a survivor of polio. That fact bothered him, and he tried to hide his disability. That experience lead him to initiate the Million Dime March. Polio was terrible; the US had been suffering a 40 year epidemic (it was really a pandemic, but most acutely felt in the US). 40 years of crippled and dead kids, schools regularly closing, lockdowns at public facilties. Uniquely, it was a disease of the middle classes (working classes, stuck with unsanitary conditions, developed innate immunity). Roosevelt was one of those middle class victims. The Million Dime March was effectively crowdfunding a vaccine for Polio. When it was started, viruses were barely understood, and the Polio virus had only just been discovered. FDR reasoned, correctly, that if lead to industry, there would never be a vaccine; there is no money to be made in vaccination of kids. That funding effort helped fund Jonas Salk, who by about 1950, had developed the first polio vaccine, reducing the former soldier turned president, Eisenhower to tears. It was the American pharmaceutical industry they then turned to to make 600,000 doses of untested vaccine. The rest is history. There are various origin stories for RNA vaccines. Numpties who don't understand vaccines don't understand how difficult it is to develop whats called a sterilising vaccine. Most vaccines are non-sterilising, which means they don't control the spread of infection, but they help the body enough to stop development of a disease. Usually, it takes about 10 generations of a vaccine, or about 40-50 years work, to get something like a sterilising vaccine, if you follw the conventional approach, which is a variant of inactivated or weakened biological agent. Weakened biological agents carry risk because of nature (reversion, which we see in some battches of attenuated polio vaccine, but the risk of that is still outweighed by the risk of polio if you don't vaccinate). Inactivated agent; someone can screw up with the inactivation step. Happened in the mid-2000, DoD sent out thousands of batches of "killed" anthrax worldwide for testing, only it was live (someone changed a pasteurisation protocol). I had my letter warning of exposure. But essentially, these vaccines mean we don't have that much control in what is being presented to the body to stimulate an immune reaction. Mutations occur spontaneously or through environmental pressure. Mostly the former, because the process to make new cells can make mistakes. We mutate daily. Most of the time, its fine, we are still us. But occasionally the mutation is really bad, and we develop cancer. The same with viruses. But viruses can also mutate to an extant that they quit being a threat to us. With Sars-Cov-2, its all in that Spike protein that used by the virus to infect our cells. Without that, its not virulant. That Spike protein does a complete number on the ACE2 receptor. ACE2 is part of the Angiotensin system, which, among other things, affects your blood pressure. The receptors are everywhere. I feel we don't fully understand their function. In an ideal vaccine, you want the bit that used to mimic the virus, or the bacteria, to be the bit that the virus cannot mutate, because to mutate, its no longer the nasty virus. The old way is a Russian roulette, albeit cracking edge molecular biology means it might be a revolver with 2 loaded chambers not 1. Synthetic biology, the heart of the RNA vaccines, means we can be extremely precise. Hence the interest in the cure for cancer. Its that big. RNA vaccines have the potential to be as transformative to medicine as penicillin was. Penicillin wasn't just about treating cuts and wounds. It created the possiblity of open heart surgery, organ transplant, joint replacements. Without antibiotics, we wouldn't survive any of that. Many countries are involved, but I would say the key breakthrough research was carried out in the UK, because we are blessed with the Biotech triangle (London-Oxford-Cambridge). Thanks to a Conservative government 40 years ago, Pharma and academia are in lock step for the common good. We should thank people like Keith Joseph and indeed Maggie Thatcher for the events that lead the world to be even able to respond to COVID. Going on another tangent; very early in my career, I was a postdoctoral fellow in Alabama, conducting research in the Gulf of Mexico/America, on one of the well meaning University labs along the Gulf coast. It struck me even then, how uninvolved local industry was in that marine research. Shell gave a grant to the lab, but had zero input or interest in what we did. It was a PR exercise. At the same time, in the UK, the oil companies are very involved in that marine research with the universities. Years later you had that BP rig failure in the Gulf, leading to untold environmental damage (ruining the red snapper fishing) and leading to hookers getting government compo. Everyone looked to these labs to find out what was going on. Thanks to the lack on involvement by the oil companies, no one had a clue about the impact of their operations pre-disaster, so there was no baseline. That's all changed now, necessity being the mother of invention. But it shouldn't have been that way. The mRNA technology was largely put together by academics, who are well meaning and ambitious about wanting to improve the lives of all people. Yeah, there is the prize of curing cancer, but that always sees a long way off, and is risky research. The big short term goal was a vaccine for malaria. Like polio vaccines, no one is going to make money vaccinating millions of brown kids. The funding comes from government, through overseas aid, and through the philanphropists. The COVID vaccines ought to have been like antibiotics for D-Day; that killer application that you do, because its a good thing to do, and not because you are seeking to make money. And $30bn really is not that much these days. It should have kickstarted research, and it will, but it seems America is excusing itself. The money and scientists won't necessarily be going to Europe. EU medical regulations in recent years have been tightened up, more in line with the US, supposedly because it will mean safer medicines (in reality, it will add 7 years to develpment). In the past, manufacturers liked Europe, because you could get something on the market 7 years ahead of the US, because it was more liberal. Investors likeed European pharma. Now, they are liking Chinese and Korean pharma. As soon as this 'roided buffoon does the inevitable flounce (and he will), I expect the research to be quietely green flagged again. Just like AI, the US cannot afford to be outside this research.

How are the Amerikaners getting on? https://globalupfront.com/2025/08/07/the-amerikaners-three-months-later-trumps-afrikaner-refugees-knuckle-down-to-hard-reality-in-u-s/ I guess he was used to having a few cheap "kaffirs" around the place, the same people he alleged were trying to kill him in Sud Afrika. Most of the 10 pound Poms went back home. Betting many of these lazy South Africans will decide the same. They are already planning holidays back to the place they were fleeing from. Strange refugees.

This has been observed in previous conflicts. If its happening in Ukraine, it's most assuredly happening in the Russian army. As long ago as 1945, the use of tournequets in combat fell out of favor secondary to excessive use for minor injuries and prolonged application without conversion, resulting in excessive harm. TQs were largely not used in Korea and Vietnam. US Navy SEALS reintroduced tactical TQs on ops in 1996. Even so, prior to going into Afghanistan, the US military had received little training on the TQ. But by 2006, it was in widespread use. The SEAL surgeons found that lack of use of then TQ in Vietnam lead to unecessary deaths. The Navy SEAL Medical Research program estimated that at least 3,400 men bled to death in Vietnam due to lack of use of a TQ. Some surgeon images on the combat application of TQs Combat, minimal injury, TQ requiring conversion This injury had a TQ in place for 5 hours, was not amenible to TQ conversion. Traumatic amputation, TQ conversion not possible These examples are from Ukraine. Extended fitment of TQs is not to do with "a cult of TQs" Captain Stevens is inconsistant. Battlefield evacuations in Iraq and Afghanistan were achieved typically within an hour. I had first hand knowledge of the superb facilities at Bagram, and the subsequent C17 flying hospitals. The Ukraine is a different kettle of fish. Amputations are not, in the main, due to Ukrainian inappropriate use of the TQ but because battlefield evacuations are typically more than 6 hours. In WW2, issues with TQs were recognised, leading to medics specifically marking casualties in large letters that a TQ was fitted. The Americans, and the British, have no comparable recent experience to what the Ukrainians are experiencing; they are rediscovering WW2 style combat. Neither the US nor British forces have experienced true total combat since 1945. Its a pretty consistant pattern in military medicine that lessons are constantly learnt and forgotten; you can go back to Alfred Keogh's anguished writings on the suffering of the wounded Tommy in the Boer War, where disease killed more men than bullets. 20 years later. He went out the South Africa as a newly promoted Major, came back just a few years later a General, largely due to his efforts in Parliament to raise the issue. In WW1, he was put in charge of the Provosts, and they had the same problems all over again, this time with trench foot. Trench Foot was a problem again in 1982, with lessons forgotten/ The biggest killer of men in Afghanistan, after IEDs? It wasn't bullets. It was sepsis, aka blood poisoning. The Telegraph article is twisted, taking a notably anti-Ukrainian line, as if the Ukrainians are uniquely acting inappropriately. They are not. We would have done exactly the same, learned the same exact lessons. And some bright spark with pips on his shoulder would have started spouting the same old military maxim/excuse, Operational Pragmatism. British biomedical engineers are at the forefront of developing a technical solution, using a new type of tournequet combined with a device that cools the affected limb, increasing the chances of saving it. Its presence though is academic, in the midst of a war that the planet hasn;t seen the like of for 80 years.

An economist has something to say about econimic statistics. I expect the usual crypto-Stalinists to dismiss it, calling it "Leftist" or something to cover their true beliefs. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-paranoid-style-in-american-economics?r=51fdhw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

The case does highlight the issue of ICDs and Pacemakers keeping dying people alive. You are more likely to receive a ICD or pacemaker if you have been diagnosed with a dementia, than without. https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/people-with-alzheimers-more-likely-to-get-pacemakers/ It seems counterintuitive; vast sums keeping alive people with no quality of life. Diseases like Alzheimers eventually cause heart failure; the autonomic functions start to be affected, and the heart doesn't beat properly. Frequently, the patients are in a care home, and fall over. Rushed to hospital where the cardiologist checks them over, and says they need a pacemaker. What happens next is a nightmare. You are kept alive long after the lights have gone out. You recognise no one. Have lost the power of speech. Your eyes work, but your brain can no longer process the images. You ability to swallow declines, so you are put on a gruel liquid diet. The families have to go through the courts to apply to get the device turned off, to allow you to pass naturally. Happened to my father. He had AD, and walked into respite care. 4 weeks later, I literally carried him out; he was essentially comatose. The cardiologist wanted him fitted with a pacemaker. For most of us, that sounded great, get on with it. Except my mum, a retired nurse, who kiboshed the whole idea. She was right, but she looked at it from the perspective of a nurse. A it was, he died 3 weeks later holding my hand. As for the issue at hand; the condemmed man. Its arisen because Americans lack confidence in their justice system, and allow for repeated and extended appeals. The condemmed feel they are innocent or there are mitigating circumstances. America should return to the British standard, when, typically, execution took place about 3 months after sentence was passed. The prisoners are allowed one appeal 2 weeks after being found guilty. If that fails, they could appeal for clemancy, about 4-6 weeks later. If that fails, execution is carried out at a time and place of the state's choosing. The prisoner has no final meal. They are taken from their cell, unannounced, to the execution chamber, only about 4-5 people in the chamber, including a priest, asked to confirm their names, hood slipped on, rope, open trap.

Running out of tanks.

He appears to be a British person, with a Soviet dad, regularly spouting the Bolshevik Russian line. https://mythdetector.com/en/free-expression-on-the-internet/

If you are quoting media, you are supposed to use the quote function and cite the sources. Otherwise, its plagiarism. Do you agree with the media representation, or are you fond of presenting points of view that you disagree with as your own?

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lveydaaswo2x https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lvezckfvd22r

No apology then. It ain't the school playground. No one will think you are the Coward of the County, if you just stated "sorry, I was mistaken". I couldn't careless about anyone's opinion of the firing, either way. No opinion was invited, but you accused a forum member of being a liar without any basis as far as I can see. That's crossed a line WRT forum rules.

Irrelevant guff to excuse your deliberate misrepresentation of UK government policy. You deliberately intimated that the UK made Hamas a condition of the UK recognising Palestine. The policy is nothing to do with making Hamas change, its about Israel, a country that does have international relations, a developed political class, understand that their internal politics (they believe Gaza to be an Israeli internal matter) has international consequences. Israel, as a vibrant and sophisticated democracy, can change direction. They must change direction, for their own sake. There might be a bitter pill to swallow; Germany murdered thousands of British civilians, but after WW2, Britain continued wartime privations in order to feed Germany. That was a bitter pill. You are not a European, I think, so know nothing of European-Israeli relations. 1 in 8 Israelis also hold a European citizenship. Thats not 1 in 8 Israelis renouncing their European heritage, but embracing their duality, maintaining it. 1 in 16 Israelis hold American citizenship. I know someone will chip in about emigration statistics in recent years, but those people are not giving up their birth citizenship; those circumstances are sad, but proof of the enduring kinship of many Israelis have with Europe, West and East. Germany started WW2 not the UK. The European Union had nothing to do with Pogroms from more than 100 years ago that occurred in Russia. But of course, you used the word "Pogrom" without actually knowing what it meant. Quit with the blood insult. You Americans had and have your fair share of anti-Semites. Evangelicals have zero historical connection to Israel. They are mostly of Anglo-Saxon descent. Their relationship with Israel, if not religious, is a fantasy one; they are descendants of people mostly forcibly converted by emissaries from Rome, who created a monotheistic religion fused with local pagan beliefs, based around the stories of a man who died 70-80 years earlier. It drills down to beliefs in the end times, and whether they are part of the 12 tribes who will be "saved". The percentage of Americans who has historical connections with the state of Israel is miniscule. Quit with the misrepresentation. What do you think happened to the Nazi foot soldiers after WW2? They disappeared, dispersed, never to be heard of again. Some popped up in the Congo and Biafra in someone else;s war, and perished. IRA thugs just melted away. 69% of Israeli weapons systems might be of American origin, which means 31% are not. 30% of imports are German. 15% of F-35 parts are made in the UK. Those systems are also critical to the IDF's continued operational cadence.