MicroB

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/01/30/7496040/

Putin's new limo https://zamin.uz/en/world/144685-new-version-of-putins-aurus-car-photo.html It does look like one of those electric London cabs.

https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/GAZPROMNEFT-RESULTS-de4bf68f-b5c4-4eb2-8c32-a31f98edd1a2 So increased costs. Refinery repair costs starting to hit? Or revenue up because the ruble is weak.

MEMRI take on Russian economy https://www.memri.org/reports/how-russian-economy-has-reacted-peace-talks

A Russian's round up events inside Russia. This guy used to be a Putin supporter, at one point celebrating a beach holiday in occupied Crimea.

Military historian Dan Snow has some thoughts

WSJ commenting on Russian covert operations https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/russia-spy-covert-attacks-8199e376

Kurth Volker comments

Educator? I thought you lot were called teachers. Isn't "Educator" a "Woke" term?

You mean Malaya, old man. The Malaya Police Action ended in 1960, making him at least 83 years old. There is nothing to stop the Royal Navy launching Trident independant of the US. The US might file a complaint afterwards, but it will be an afermath where none of us are left, least not anything resembling Washington. So its moot. Letters of Last Resort mean that its not just the Prime Minister who can physically launch. The US doesn't have the same, as only the President has the authority.

You are curiously quiet about the 82 actual assasinations conducted by the Russian state in recent years. That's all I need to know about you. NSOAD.

Your lot sent assassins to London and Salisbury just for a start. They have been fully identified. The Russian government positively identified Vadim Krasikov as both a FSB employee, as being the killer of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Russian national, in 2019. Zelimkhan Khangoshvili You obviously are clueless about Putin's role in the DDR. You should look it up. You are a fool if you believe that people mysteriously falling from windows in Putin;s Russia are just accidents. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/07/russian-anti-war-singer-dies-after-falling-from-window/ https://metro.co.uk/2024/10/21/russian-businessman-close-putin-mysteriously-dies-falling-window-21836681/ Learn to spell. Or use your native language if unsure,

US forces given 24 hours to settle their affairs and be evicted from their bases in UK, Italy and Germany? Oh, and they are behind on their rent No, interests are not served by aping an isolationist here today/ gone tomorrow President. Trumpf, given his morbid obesity, could drop dead at any time. His movement is based on the Cult of the Individual, and will fade away as quickly as Pol Pot and Mao. The EU does have financial rules pertaining to joining; Ukraine might be offered a pathway, but it will be years. NATO, as it standd, cannot permit the entry of Ukraine because of its border dispute, though imaginative mechanisms related to rewrite of Article 4 (not Article 5) might have allowed Georgia to join (article 4 defines geographically where NATO can intervene; basically anything north of the Tropic of Cancer. When written, they had in mind excluding Britain's and France's post empire wars. Hence, the Falklands War is out of scope. So is an attack on Hawaii). Being a member of NATO doesn't exclude additional security pacts. For instance, today, the UK and Norway, both NATO members, have signed a new defence pact. The European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy is a mutual defence pact; not all EU members are NATO members (Cyprus, Ireland). So expect a slew of defence pacts to be signed. This is where it gets scary in a WW1 way, because WW1 started with a duke being assassinated in Sarajevo, resulting in a train load of German soldiers being sent to fight Russians for inexplicable reasons. WW1 and WW2 resulted from a lack of unity. United we Stand, Divided we Fall. The Russian Army is now but a shell. I do not expect it to start a march to the Hook of Holland. The Russian Ambassador to the UK in interview today, guaranteed that Russia will not attack another country for 5-6 years, which is a worrying statement. Putin wants American forces to be remved from Romania. He has Transnistria in mind, which will enable him to secure the entire Ukrainian coast, reducing the country to penury (its main export is grain). At the moment, I can see thr US giving in.Will NATO members help Romania is Vlad sends his troops across Romanian territory to secure Moldova? What if he intends to unify Kalingrad. Wars start with miscalculations. Vlad might calculate that the West is degenerate and disunified, and would do nothing. Any threat to intervene will be responded with a threat of nuclear weapons; that's his trump card. He's changed Russian law to allow first strike. We haven't. We know a nuclear response is game over for all of us.

Most countries can point to cases of national indefatigability. America has the story of Valley Forge, the Alamo, the Battlin' Bastards of Bastogne, Bataan Death March, la Drang. Britain has the Blitz Spirit, the Glorious Gloucesters, Rourkes Drift, The Thin Red Line. France gets a kicking, but during the FIrst World War, the resiliance of the French people was so admired in Britain that thousands of babies were names after Verdun; so called Battle Babies, which remarkably lasted for about 3 generations. Like the British and the Americans, the Russians don't like to talk about their defeats. As defeats go, Russia has some of the more spectacular. And even some of their technical wins seem more like a defeat, such as the war agaist Finland. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700969 Its all based on the truth, but also myth making. The Soviets, after suffering far far lower casualties compared to the Russian Army, pulled out of Afghanistan in part due to soldiers; mums complaining to Gorby. German occuption of the Soviet Union lead to the emergence of anti-Soviet resistance forces, who weren't all Nazis, but opportunists. Some of them lasted into the 1960s. And certainly early in the war, the Soviet surrenders were huge, with the Germans frequently overwhelmed by the number of POWs. A country with no Navy has managed to confine Russia's most powerful fleet to port. Its been a great mystery why Russia does not control Ukrainian airspace.. if the Russian people are up for a fight, why the dependance on untrustworthy convicts in the army, and massive financial incentives for the rest?

Most countries can point to cases of national indefatigability. America has the story of Valley Forge, the Alamo, the Battlin' Bastards of Bastogne, Bataan Death March, la Drang. Britain has the Blitz Spirit, the Glorious Gloucesters, Rourkes Drift, The Thin Red Line. France gets a kicking, but during the FIrst World War, the resiliance of the French people was so admired in Britain that thousands of babies were names after Verdun; so called Battle Babies, which remarkably lasted for about 3 generations. Like the British and the Americans, the Russians don't like to talk about their defeats. As defeats go, Russia has some of the more spectacular. And even some of their technical wins seem more like a defeat, such as the war agaist Finland. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700969 Its all based on the truth, but also myth making. The Soviets, after suffering far far lower casualties compared to the Russian Army, pulled out of Afghanistan in part due to soldiers; mums complaining to Gorby. German occuption of the Soviet Union lead to the emergence of anti-Soviet resistance forces, who weren't all Nazis, but opportunists. Some of them lasted into the 1960s. And certainly early in the war, the Soviet surrenders were huge, with the Germans frequently overwhelmed by the number of POWs. A country with no Navy has managed to confine Russia's most powerful fleet to port. Its been a great mystery why Russia does not control Ukrainian airspace.. if the Russian people are up for a fight, why the dependance on untrustworthy convicts in the army, and massive financial incentives for the rest?

But Ukrainians have been displaced from their registered constituencies. Plus Russia has annexed areas; why would they allow occupants of those territories to vote in a Ukrainian election. And how could Ukraine ensure that voters from those territories have a legitimate vote, and are not in fact settlers. How would Ukrainian POWs hold a vote. How can politicans campaign in POW camps in the Russian far east? It might meet the standards of a sham Russian election, but it could not be considered free and fair. Plus the Ukrainian parliament and judiciary would need to vote on a change to the constitution.

Probably wrong to compare a thug-cook to Rommel. Hitler was not merciful to Rommel; he was afraid of a mutiny. If Rommel had been executed following a Spandau Ballet, it still would have been an honourable death, as a martyr. Progozhin suffered a mobster hit.

And American/British aid saved the USSR. The great majority of Soviet citizens who died were Belarussians and Ukrainians, not Russians. The war was won by a collaborative effort. No one could have won it on their own. All the pieces were necessary. If such unity was in place in 1938, Hitler would have been out on his ear (by 1940, Germany would have been bankrupt if it hadn't gone to war). None of the participants acted out of alturism. It was all for self preservation. If all of Europe had fallen to under the German jackboot, there wasn't much the US could do about that. But it would affect America all the same; it would have fallen to the same dark political forces sweeping across Europe in the 1930s. Its beyond argument that the United States of America would have been finished.

That might be the thought if Putin cared for the Kursk region. Much is said about "ethnic" Russians in Eastern Uktraine (in reality, Ukrainian and Russians are both slavs). So ethnicity isn't on genetic marker differences, but self identity. Ethnically, America is full of English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Nigerians, Somalis, Arabs and countless other groups. But all identify as American. In 1930, about 25% of the Kursk region identified as Ukrainian. Most recently, its less than 1% of the population of Kursk identifying as Ukrainian. I suspect the number of Ukrainians is actually higher, and they are not all dead or exiled. Putin, when faced with ejecting a foreign army from Russian territory, did not immedately prioritise his crack troops to take back the Motherland. Most of the captured Russian troops in Kursk are conscripts. Most of the captured Russian troops in Donbass have contracts. The conscripts get less training. Additionally, Putin is using, or was using, low grade North Korean troops in Kursk. He doesn't care about Kursk. The Ukrainians will get bored of it, for the same reasons he is bored of it. There is nothing there. In Donetsk and Luhansk, though, he's got his own Sudenten Germans (the Sudenten Germans enthusiastically welcomed The Germans into Czechoslovakia). That beats the miserable Asiatics in the far east, and bolshie Chechens in the South East, and translates into further support at the ballot box, to support his New Russia project, which is really about a Greater Russia for the Russian Slavs. Putin will not concede a thing, but will instead push for greater and greater concession. There are parallels with the end of the Russian war in Georgia. The Russians never called that a war; it was "Peace Enforcement" (shades of SMO). Back then it was the French negotiating. Medvedev was President (Putin taking a stint as Prime Minister (bt was really the one in charge). 4 points on the Peace Proposals. Russia got two more added, to its advantage, so no cessions. Back then, the Georgian Army was supposed to return to barracks. The Russians were as well, but the peace agreement allowed the Russians to maintain a security force until international arrangements could be agreed. If applied to Ukraine, it would mean the Ukrainian army abandoning defended positions in the contested areas, possibly including Kharkiv and Sevastopol, but no similar movement by the Russian army; the Russians mightn make up an excuse of liquidating irregulars (foreign volunteers who have no barracks to return to) or disposing of abandoned Ukrainian munitions and mines. Once back to barracks, a disillusioned Ukrainian conscript army would likely vote with their feet and go home. The Kyiv government will fall in a spate of recrimination. Citing a need to enforce law and order in Ukraine, Russia would swiftly move to occupy portions of the country.

Its reactionary and impulsive, Trumpf is likely one of those sort who don't like being lectured to. Which means, he takes no notice of security briefings, and instead trusts his own "research" (reading about it on one of his phones), because he would reason his judgement has placed him in good stead. Which might be true when it comes to things that benefit or affect him directly. But his judgement, when it affects others, is poor. Hence the mess he got into with COVID-19; there was nothing in the COVID-19 pandemic that would directly affect him (except that moment when he thought he was going to die, and looked genuinely fearful). He lost in 2020, because of a few actuons he took, which would not directly affect him, but which were catastrophic to others (eg. I'm sure the sight of seeing turban'd Taliban leaders being hosted by Trump at Camp David probably caused a few of the more sober Republican supporters to not vote for him) Nothing about Ukraine, whether they win or lose, would directly affect him. So he's being asked to make judgements on a topic he has no stake in and his knowledge of the topic doesn't extend to listening to a military or intelligence community that he himself has stated he has no faith in. So he relies on social media and his own self confidence. Is he a peacenik? No. I suspect Trumpf holds a lot of shame over his non-involvement in the Vietnam War. Yeah, publicly he says it was a law for losers now, but back then, it wasn't a young Donald who came up with the Quack diagnosis of bone spurs, but probably his Dad, the son of a man who was stripped of Bavarian citizenship for being a draft dodger; who knows how that affected Fred Jr and attitudes to conscription. That shame means Trumpf calls dead soldiers and POWs "suckers", isn't particularly sincere at military memorials (an apparent lack of sincerity apparently also displayed by Biden, who also avoided the draft), but also somehow expresses the superhero myth of the miitary. Ordering American troops to potentially their deaths must play on Trumpf's mind about somethng he didn't do.

I don't really know who ryan McBeth is, except he's a regular on Newsmax (Trumpist TV channel), and seems to think he's doing important NATO work. Seems a hopeless optimist. 4D Chess, or is it tiddlywinks. Ukrainian sources are reporting US weapons supplied have now ceased. The value of actual aid delivered to Ukraine by US is actually less than $100bn. To date, a lot of the munitions set were EOL, and therefore had zero value (and actually would cost to dispose of. Once EOL, an artillary shell is not used, unless its Ukraine under the guise beggers can't be choosers). For "new" munitions, the money hasn't gone to Ukraine. Its gone to US contractors, who will add it to the corporate bottom line, creating jobs, and a bit of tax back to the federal and state governments. Turns out the "missing " munitions were never missing. Someone in the US forgot to enter serial numbers into a database. This is in line with the last time the DoD was audited, and it was found they could not account for 60% of their assets/hardware. That doesn't mean 60% was put on ebay/stolen (though some of it is, and I was involved in some examples, that resulted in a couple of quarter masters going to prison, but paltry in the grand scheme of things)., but that accounting procedures are poor. Not unique to the US; the UK MOD has "lost" a few Challenger tanks (know one knows where they are (probably lurking in a forgotten shed at BATUS, where a few Challengers permanently sit, saving on shipping costs). And you can find shockingly old kit in stores; not long ago, WW1 rations turned up.

Or Trump just thinks they have Kompromat. But probably not. This is just who he is. An a*sehole.

Microbiologist here. Diagnosing an unknown infection is difficult, even for a so-called specialist. The specialist is the path lab microbiologist. The hospital lab will refer samples to the reference lab. Identifying a causative agent is a process of elimination, and the list of candidates is long. Its a process of ruling out. And by the time a diagnosis is made, it might be moot. With a respiratory illness, you can have opportunistic infections, which could be bacterial or viral, with very different regimens. With ARDs, the lung tissue becomes inflexible, and so you literally cannot breath (COVID was a bit different, as the lungs remained pliable but congested). 10 years or so ago, a British soldier was home on leave. He had come back from the Middle East, and took his family on holiday to Florida. On the return flight he fell very ill, and upon arrival in the UK, was taken by ambulance to St Barts. He was crashing. WBC and CEA were up, it was an unknown bacterial infection. They pumped im full of broad range antibiotics and he stabilised. The Path lab at St Barts was stumped, so was the Public health lab at Colindale. Samples were sent to Porton Down, where Health England has a lab alongside the Defence lab. They found fragments of bacterial toxins, a smoking gun, indicative of inhalational anthrax. It was suggested that what saved him was his high state of physical fitness, and that he had been previously pumped full of MOD vaccines before deployment. Another anthrax case was a bit better publicised, but also illustrates that infection diagnosis is verty hard. A man in his 50s living in the Scottish borders was admitted to hospital with an unknown infection. He died without it being resolved. The Scottish health people were a bit worried about what it was. They retained samples and sent them to their colleagues at Porton Down in England. Devolution now means the health services are much more seperated than before. In the meantime, there was a funeral. The man was a buddhist convert, and lived alone on a farm, were he made ethnic style drums. His funeral was well attended by people from all over Europe, who were invited to take away keepsakes, so you can guess what kind of lifestyle he lived. While at the time just before his death, his doctor had described him as being in good health, he did have leukaemia 10 years earlier, so likely immunocompromised. The boffins at Porton Down came back with the answer; inhalational Bacillus anthrax. Bone meal contaminated heroin was ruled out (opium that had been cut with infected sheep bone meal had caused deaths across Europe). They could not find it in the farm buildings (anthrax is a thing on many farms, and subcutaneous anthrax infection is not uncommon). Nothing found in his house, though he had a bat colony in the roof. There was some panic at Porton Down because there was literally nothing in the literature to indicate if bats could carry the bacterium. The bats were innocent. While he lived in Scotland, he was English, and his elderly parents lived across the border. Their house needed to be checked. Attention switch to his drums, as it seemed he brough sheep skin off Ebay, and these might have been illegally smuggled from West Africa. he used to store the hides at their house, Nothing found there. They found the bug at the local village hall where he used to do drum making classes for the local kids. They set up a rig to test whether bacillus spores on a drum could be aerosolised when playing the drum. They could not. They could however disturb the spores during stitching of the leather, when you tear it. They concluded he was working the leather closely, and that was it. This is where I came in, as I was consulting the lead scientist on the investigation, to seek advice about how to handle returned instruments coming from a certain country. I was told don't let the engineers wipe down a dirty but dry internal surface. My mother was rendered a paraplegic within 48 hours of an infection. The cause was never found, as the cultures all came back negative, though latent TB was never ruled out, but it was moot, as the damage was done. This was at a major UK Trust, with a close-at-hand PHL nearby. Its a lesson; treat every sore back seriously, because it might not be just a sore back, and pain killers can depress the immune system. For bacterial infections, you basically have two major approaches depending if its Gram Negative or Gram Positive. The doc could take a sample, and hang around while the lab does the staining, or he can pick an antibiotic, which should show impacts on WBC/CEA quite quickly, and if that doesn't work, switch to the alternative. If he's dealing with antibiotic resistance, then that's harder. For viruses, the options are more limited. Yes, there are anti-virals, but their efficacy largely depends on how soon was the infection, and by the time you are hospitalized, and essentially expressing viral particles, its a bit pointless. They it becomes a matter of supporting the body, and guarding against opportunistic infections, eg viral pneumonia becoming bacterial pneumonia. The really hard one, but rare, are fungal respiratory infections, because the treatments are pretty toxic.

Yeah, I think the standard policy is 30 days per country visited, usually in the small in the reams of documents that typically you can now only access online. I don't think its even dependant if its a cheap policy or not. But you can't take out a new UK travel insurance policy if already on holiday.

He's easily flattered. That;s how he was brought up, surrounded by sychophants telling him the boss's son is doing a great job. I am disappointed in Vance though. He should be more worldly., and I thought, considering his consistant public and private comments in 2016 and 2017, he was putting on some sort of necessary act. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-was-called-american-hitler-by-his-running-mate-jd-vance-list-of-criticism-6116500 But I fear he was born spineless.