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MicroB

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  1. I believe the walkback has been walked back. I suspect Rubio will be the first to leave the cabinet. First with the tarrifs, he was saying it was just a business tactic, nothing to worry about. Then Trump looked bad by appearing to cave in to mighty Canada and Mexico. Trump doubled down today on Gaza, after Rubio appeared to back off on claims. As one commentator noted, when Trump announced this lunatic plan, he was reading from a prepared speech. Some other lunatic, or room of lunatics, cooked up this idea. The next issue for Rubio will be US development aid. USAID hasn't exactly been shut down; its moved under the Department of State. Rubio believes in international aid, to further the aims of the American government, which is not the same as "no aid". Therein is the conflict. When will he flounce, given he might be eyeing up 2028. A Gaza evacuation won't actually happen. The IDF can't make it happen. What are they going to do? Burn the Gazans out? There is nothing left to burn. There will be a lot of churn in the next few years. Chaos. Plenty of things will get undone, because its easy to undo. Gettng constructive things done? Nah. Trump 1.0 never commissioned a single construction project, not a single road, bridge. Allies, either current, former, soon to former, erstwhile, will be looking at this, and think, he'll be dead any day, and none of this will count. But its an opportunity to take advantage of America. If you are going to take advantage of America, counter intuitively, now is the time, with the kids running it. Stupidity will be a running theme
  2. His goose is cooked in Thailand. Elsewhere, its made clear he had "retired" 2 years ago. But 12 months ago, the BBC World Service doorstepped him leaving work. Thailand revoked his visa, he then failed to file an appeal.
  3. Some background in a documentary The combination of no identification and that the body had been moved changed it from unexplained death to suspicious death.
  4. Communist Apologist, It was his apparent concern for the hostages that made him authorise the recent transfer of arms to Israel, using someone else's money.
  5. Well, what is notable is there are still hostages missing, live and dead. Trump is already talking about redevelopment of the land. Wonder why that is. He doesn't care about the hostages.
  6. What you state is demonstrably a fib. It only exists in your head. As a Briton, I think about the London Blitz. But I still feel sorry for the people that perished in the Hamberg Firestorm and others.
  7. While the land might be uninhabitable, there are Gazans who have legal title to the land, evidenced through Deeds. That ownership should be recognised, and land owners compensated o No redevelopment of the land until ownership issuen an individual basis. Given that the likely buyers would be Israeli property developers, I would suggest valuation based on utility as farm land, based on Israeli land prices. Much of thancien régimee Gazan strip was used for horticulture. The Nazis might have run Germany, and indeed might have had significant support when balloted, but that did not entitle the Occupying Forces to arbitrarily seize property. Certainly the Bonn government was obliged to provide restitution in the cases of property that was seized during WW2 by the ancien regime. Israel ratified the Geneva Conventions on July 6, 1951. Israel claims the Geneva Convention does not apply to operations in Gaza, as it is not sovereign territory. Others beg to differ. Mr Trumpf might agreewith Israel, until he realises what that means. Protocol V describes the Protocol on the Explosive Remnants of War. Basically it discusses what do you do with the battlefield afterwards. Who is responsible for demining territory they control. https://geneva-s3.unoda.org/static-unoda-site/pages/templates/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/Protocol%2Bon%2BExplosive%2BRemnants%2Bof%2BWar.pdf If Israel claims its a bit of Israel, then it has no obligation to demine it. It can leave it as wasteland, left to the dogs. If Trumpf pushes Article V, he can force Israel to pick up the tab for deminng rather than expecting the American taxpayer to pay for it. Israel has droped about 90-95,000 tons of munitions over a 360 square km area of land, give or take, about 260 tons per square km. Trumpf thought it would take a 2-5 years to demine the area. This is where is lack of experience in uniform becomes apparent. He is apparently unaware of the scale fo Allied bombing sorties over Germany during WW2. Berlin, a city of about 900 suare kms, received about 67,000 tons of British and American bombs. And these weren't the smart or precision bombs supposedly used on Gaza. About 15% of bombs never exploded, and that's probably still the case. 80 years on, they are still finding live bombs in the city. I'm not sure the Israelis and Trumpf have thought this through. They have salted the earth for 3 generations, and now they own the farm. I would suggest US taxpayers forcefully remind their representatives that the US budget is in deficit, and while 30% of US civil servants are set to lose their jobs, it would be an unwise act to send taxpayer money to a foreign state to decontaminate land that they contaminated. Its a cost that sould be picked up by Israeli government, and by extension, the Israeli taxpayer. 80 years, Germany spends abotu $10m per year on bomb disposal.
  8. Mr Trumpf stated "other places. You could have more than two......I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy,,,,, If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently" So he's volunteering to resettle Gazans in the United States of America if they want to come? There is precedent. FDR convened the Evian Conference in 1938 to discuss resettlement of Jews from Germany. I'm sure he will agree that America is a beautiful country with lots of spare space. Even more so as he is deporting so many.
  9. Didn't the Mexican President do this not long ago, but no tariff nonsense. https://cyprus-mail.com/2021/04/12/mexico-has-10000-troops-in-south-to-stem-migration-white-house-says And the Canadian plans were largely what had already been agreed in November. I thought in 2017 Trumpf put his top man in solving the US opiod risis, Jared Kushner. I kind of assumed Trumf had succeeded in fixing it in short order, followng his election promises. So I am puzzled why he's still talking about it.
  10. You were asked are you aware of attacks. You replied implying they are all lies. Is that the same response when asked about victims of rape "I am aware of them lying about it"? Scumbag reply when there are murders like this: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/20/brianna-ghey-found-guilty-murder Whole collection of events you consider to be nothing but lies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_for_being_transgender
  11. Good singer, cracking songs. I like singers who sing with their natural, unabashed voice. As for Wizard books written by a one hit wonder on the Dole; never read them, never will. Asked my teenage nephew what he thought of Harry Potter; zero interest in them and the films, as do all his mates, demonstrating she is no Charles Dickens (irony).n I don't care at all about the opinions of kids book writers, pop singers and comedians. Why should you? Maybe they should run for office.
  12. Lamduan had 5 sisters. So I doubt she will be on her own.
  13. The UK police issued an Interpol Bue Notice. Quite clever. No need for an extradition. Armitage would have had no choice, as n o country would want his with that hanging around.
  14. So why did they bother packing victory parade uniforms? Russia had a 10 day plan to seize Kyiv, and then complete the full annexation of Ukraine by August 2022. What's your evidence that Russia was not trying to annex all of Ukraine. Putin's speech on 24 February 2022 is not evidence.
  15. As to whether Twitter/X is now free. Only selected features are free. Other bits you have to pay for. Should someone tell the committe about that Pedo business? If he is offered it, it should be a joint award with Bill Gates, to show what two men with billions to hand can do with that money. https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up
  16. I've concluded this account is some sort of AI-generated comedy account.Its not a particularly original approach. You see this dead pan approach elsewhere, so hackneyed. Do you perform sand dances as well? Cha cha.
  17. One of the impacts of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic is the increased surveillance capacity in most countries. When we look more carefully, we see more things. This is a good thing, People are properly diagnosed, and better treatments delivered. Every pandemic leaves its mark on medicine. if we count from 1918 flu; the impact from that was the idea of PPE and distancing. The 1920s saw the start of a 40 year polio pandemic. The iron lung came about because of that, but disappeared because of the success of thr polio vaccine. But the lasting legacy of polio was Intensive Care Medicine, invented in Denmark as a response. And now we can't think of medicine without it Another benefit of polio; the FDA. Prior to Salk's polio vaccine, there was no FDA. There were no clinical trials. Salk developed a polio vaccine, which reduced Eisenhower to tears. His approach was to use inactivated polio vaccine. Key was using formaldehyde to kill the virus. Contracts to make millions of batches went to 3 companies. One of these companies didn't know how to make formaldehyde, with the result 200,000 kids were infected. The FDA was formed as a result, to provide regulatory oversight to the companies making medicines. End of the 50; China or Mao flu; 20 years earlier, Australia developed the first flu vaccine (remarkable, as the flu virus was only discovered in the 1930s). The vaccine had only limited utlity unless you knew the serotype of the virus in circulation. In 1957, a lab in Singapore, with Walter Reed in US, for the first time identified the serotype of a circulating flu virus, allowing vaccine to be manufactured in response. This stopped the 1968 Hong Kong flue from becoming a pandemic, thanks to production of an The work really initiated the whole area of molecular diagnostics, and transformed the role of the path lab. We know from improved diagnostics that the measles vaccine is not as effective as previously though. It does not prevent infections. In a population of vaccinated kids, PCR will show the virus circulating. But the burden is reduced such that the kids won't develop measles. Time tell what the lasting legacy is from COVID. Initially I thought it might be increased diagnostics capacity; before covid, not all countries could carry out PCR at large scale.. During COVID, there were massive investments into labs, which in theory should have left a skilled workforce, setting the scene for better cancer diagnostics. But that capacity was quickly stood down.
  18. But would you give an adult with Downs Syndrome the chance to clean toilets? Do you feel that Down's Syndrome adults can make any sort of meaningful contribution to society, pay their way etc, or should they be killed before birth? Or do you prefer that they become a burden to society. Are they human?
  19. Clint Eastwood, you might was to read this document: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/Order_3930.3C_withCHG1.pdf Note, the FAA employs about 45,000. Opportunities in that organisation are wide, from toilet cleaners, binmen, janitorial staff through to the ATCs that keep you awake at night. ATCs have to meet medical requirements outlined in the document. If you sincerely think that the FAA are actively hiring mentally impaired personal, such as cretins, Down Sydrome adults, into safety critical posts, then I assume that right now you are conducting a writing campaign to your political representatives, the interim head of the FAA, and other officials, the President, every US and foreign airline with destinations in the United States, imploring them to immediately halt all air operations over the United States, including military deployment missions, because of the extreme risk to life and limb. And if you are not in the US, you are planning a placard campaign at your local embassy. If you are in the US< then you should be driving or taking a bus to the capital, to demonstrate to raise this important issue that you have uncovered. If you haven't done any of that, then clearly you are just looking for likes on an irrelevant forum created for alcohol soaked old blokes sitting in bars in the SEA moaning about women, lady boys, gays, your wife, your ex-wife, your boyfriend, your ex boyfriend, the increased costs of prostitutes. None of it matters. Refer to the section Page 25
  20. In 2022, I thought a Putsch by the military was possible; an unecessary war with Ukraine was threatening to degrade their carefully cultivated empires just as the new professional military was emerging, with new kit genuinely comparable to the West. I thought the relative non-involvement of the Russian Air Force meant something; you would have thought the war would have been started by Russia first dominating Ukrainian airspace, removing the need for much conflict between ground forces. The airforce, even now, largely operates from Russian air space, preserving its capabilities. Compare that to 1990 and 2003, where the Western coalition utterly pulverised Iraqi ground assets from the air, resulting in a quickly concluded groundwar and routing of the enemy. I had thought that the emerging Generals of the 2020s, following decades of close observation and genuine working with their western counterparts would have left a mark. But these Generals didn't get promoted because they were good at teir jobs, but because they were loyal to the boss (a process happening in the US now). They genuinely don't care about their commands, their men. They don't care that instead of T14 Armatas, their tank crews are now using 70 year old hulls with scallding bolted to them. and that battle buses are literally that; UAZ-452 Loaf vans, with all the literal sophistication of a 1959 Ford Thames Van, are now the main mode of transport into conflict. When Wellington said his army were the Scum of the Earth (in response to a Fremch comment that French soldiers were all highly educated), it was said as a source of pride. When a Russian talks of their army, its with much fear (when they go back home). Putin has taken a hybrid-Gaddafi approach to holding power. He knows that the Russian Revolution started among the Russian military (the Imperial Russian Navy I believe), so he has created an internal network of rival militas, such as the National Guard, reporting to him, not the Defence Ministry, meaning that makes any of them too weak to overthrow him. But the Wagner Mutiny showed that internally, Russian forces were paper thin, with, ironically, only the air force under a central unified command. I wish the Russian would stand up like they did in 1991.
  21. Its happening to both sides sadly. Part of the motivation of Putin's aggression was demographic certainty. Putin has always bewailed the loss of the Soviet Union. and it being a great tragedy. But its a Russian saying that. The reason he sees it as a great tragedy is not the loss of fraternal relationships with other Soviet people, but the fragmentation of Rus people, who are left scattered. He couldn't care less about the other peoples; they existed to serve the Russian people. He feels a sense of injustice at the end of the Cold War, and we might think, like the Versailles Agreement, there is something in that. Hitler felt great injustice with Versailles because it left Germanic peoples fragmented. Like many others before him, Putin has misjudged the winds of change, just as those misunderstood the words spoken in 1918, 1945, 1988, 1990, 2001, 2003. Whether it was the end of WW1, the defeat of Nazi of Germany, the Polish shipbuilders strikes of 1981, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, the defeat of Iraq, 911, 2003 Euromaidan, what Putin has failed to understand is that history is the product of movements, not individual people. In his positoon as an isolated autocratic ruler, he believes he wields great power, as an individual, and we see that in Russian government footage of him hectoring officials, and the basis of his supposed expertise in many areas. He thinks this is how the world is run. I suspect Trump thinks this as well, because that's how he ran his dad's companies. The United States is in the midst of a struggle between two peoples with differing visions for the US. I'm not sure how that will play out. It may well end up in a transformation of the settled status of North America, like Europe after 1918 and 1988. I wouldn't say that means a bigger US, but a different US.
  22. It would be interesting to see how much of the Russian oil industry is dependant on Western tachnologies. How much was built or upgraded, to replace Soviet era infrastructure, and then we get a better idea how much can Russia repair. Ryazan Refinery There was a contract awarded in October 2021 with Italian contractor Maire Tecnimont to construct a vacuum gas oil hydrocracking complex, but I guess that never happened. Kstovo Refinery Maire also won a 2018 contract here: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/maire-tecnimont-upgrades-lukoils-kstovo-refinery-us527m-russia.html Chevron Lummus Global, McDermott's joint venture with Chevron, also won a 2018 contract at this plant https://www.mcdermott-investors.com/news/press-release-details/2018/McDermott-Awarded-EPC-Contract-for-Delayed-Coker-Unit-for-LUKOIL-Refinery/default.aspx Volgograd Refinery Tecnicas Reunidas (Spanish) did work in 2013-15 http://admin.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2013/02/lukoil-picks-tecnicas-reunidas-for-upgrade-project-at-volgograd-refinery/ I suspect there are a fair few people on this forum with quite a high level of understanding of the oil refining industry, maybe specifically in Russia, or can provide a general assessment. When these works are bombed/attacked, it always seems there is a lot of damage. Is this damage more superficial than it looks, or is it genuinely significant. Its probably not that much different to a fire breaking out. When damaged by fire, what sort of parts are replaced? Are parts typically "off the shelf" or custom made, fabricated For controllers and electricals/electronics; is it easy to substitute one type of part for another type of part. eg. American components switched out for Chinese/Indian parts. (not to get into a debate about quality; can they be straighforwardly subsitituted) Knowing which parts are ciritcally dependant on foreign parts would help Ukraine plan how to use drones strategically. It also wouldn't catastrophically damage the Russian Oil Industry; these aren't being degraded in a way that would utterly cripple the Russian economy post-war, which is perhaps an off-ramp for Putin's Oligarch backers who might want to stop all this nonsense coming from Putin.
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